Yes.” She floundered, stung by his obvious disdain. “This is more than a crusade. It’s…” She ducked her head, fighting resentment at his unwillingness to hear what she said.
The stutter of a lawnmower drifted from a nearby yard, accenting her discomfort.
Why did it always seem as if the two of them were speaking different languages? No matter how hard she tried to explain, he would never understand. “You can’t stop me,” she repeated, keeping her tone reasonable.
“Anything for a story, huh?”
“For this one, yes. Judge Wainright didn’t often give interviews, but he talked to me because he thought what I was doing was necessary. Important. I owe him.”
“Owe him?” Luke resettled in the seat across from her, conveying cynicism with a quirk of the lips. “Or owe yourself?”
Cassie clamped her teeth together to prevent angry words from spilling out. Why did he always attribute the worst possible motives to her? Did he really think she wanted to end up just another statistic on the police files?
She took a sip from her mug, hoping the jolt of caffeine might kick-start her brain and supply her with the way to win his cooperation. Instead, the acrid taste of cooled coffee coated her tongue and brought a grimace to her face. She shot a glance across the table. Luke’s dark eyes glittered beneath lowered brows. Arms folded across his chest, he was obviously primed for a fight. Abruptly she changed tactics. “I suppose you’re right. I am thinking of myself.”
He showed no surprise at the admission, but a subtle softening of the lines that bracketed his mouth prompted her to plunge ahead. “If my…digging…set things in motion, then I’ve as good as murdered Judge Wainright myself. The only way I can think of to make up for it is to not let his death be meaningless. I have to figure out what he wanted to tell me and finish the articles.”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Wainright made his own choices. You didn’t force him. And if his death was due to information he had, you’re risking your life trying to ferret it out.”
His cavalier disregard of her emotions, to say nothing of the ease with which he shrugged off her reasoning, blew Cassie’s composure. “Risk? With you playing bodyguard?” she scoffed. “The only risk I’ll be taking is tripping over you.”
Luke’s gaze swept over the front of her T-shirt in blatant appraisal, and despite an obvious effort to maintain a serious expression, his lips twitched with amusement. “Well,” he drawled, in a passable imitation of a Texas accent, “just make sure you’re facing me when you fall.”
His bantering caught her by surprise, and even knowing he wasn’t serious, she couldn’t stop the onslaught of tactile memories. The crispness of his chest hair grazing her swollen nipples. A tangle of legs as they sprawled across a bed, laughing. Hot kisses. Building passion.
Heat crept up her neck. If such a display weren’t guaranteed to inflate his ego, she’d have covered her breasts in a virginal attempt to shield herself from his gaze. Silently she cursed her unruly senses and wished she dared kick Luke in the shins for not playing fair. Their relationship was history. Dead history. And no amount of playacting on his part could convince her otherwise.
The thought, repeating itself like a mantra, enabled her to pin him with a quelling glance that wiped the amusement from his face. “I don’t plan to take risks,” she announced firmly. “I’m perfectly willing to play the game your way—cautious and careful. What I’m not willing to do is run scared.”
“It’s not running scared to give us time to do our job.”
“I don’t have time. I have a deadline. Eckhart has guaranteed me lead-story status if I wrap everything up within the week. Waiting will only give people the chance to cover up.”
“It’ll give us a chance to solve the case without you messing things up,” Luke retorted, his impatience getting the best of him.
“Me?” She turned and widened her eyes in pretended innocence. “You’re forgetting who trained me. You should have more faith in the job you did.”
She was playing with fire. She knew it from the familiar look of exasperation that narrowed his eyes and wrinkled his brow. Then, amazingly, his expression softened. Leaning forward, he covered her hand with his much larger one. “Let me do my job, Cassie,” he said softly.
Let me protect you.
The unspoken message was so seductive, Cassie was tempted to give in and do it his way. But she couldn’t. She’d battled too hard, too long, to yield now and let others dictate what was best for her.
She wasn’t asking much, and she knew she wasn’t being reckless. She’d agreed to delay action until he could be with her. He was just being bullheaded.
“I have to do this,” she insisted. “Now, not later.”
Luke jerked back his hand as though burned. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
Stung by the bitterness in his voice, she thrust out her chin. “Neither have you. You still issue orders and expect everyone to jump.”
“Maybe if you’d jumped instead of insisting on having your own way—” He clamped his mouth shut, then catapulted from his chair, as though he couldn’t bear looking at her one minute longer.
Cassie felt the blood drain from her face. She didn’t need to hear the words to know what he’d almost said.
If you hadn’t insisted on having your own way, Danny wouldn’t have died.
Her heart twisted in agony, the same agony she’d lived with for two years: because she’d tried to have it all, do it all, their child was dead.
She would carry the guilt to her grave.
Everyone had warned her to slow down—Luke, her father and brothers, even her boss—but she’d thought she knew better than any of them. She was young and strong, a modern woman. And her doctor had backed her up, giving his approval to continue working as long as she felt like it.
Six months pregnant, she’d jumped at the chance to show them all she was capable of juggling career and motherhood as easily as any other female reporter. She begged for the assignment of interviewing a man being held at the county jail for murder. Everyone had a theory about why he’d killed his wife, then calmly turned himself in. Cassie planned to get the story from his own lips.
The meeting itself seemed to pose no risk. Held in a secured room under the watchful eyes of two guards, it had promised to be as tame as an afternoon tea. How could she have known the man would take her hostage in a desperate bid for freedom? And who could have foreseen the results of the police chase that followed, the chase ordered by Luke to rescue her?
She still had nightmares of the car careening off the highway, trees rushing at her and the bone-jarring impact. The ride to the hospital was blurred by pain, and it was only the next day, when she saw the pity on the nurse’s face, that she knew for certain she’d lost her baby. She’d wanted to scream denial, but one look at Luke’s stricken expression had silenced her. He was having enough difficulty dealing with the death without her falling apart.
Maybe she should have followed her first instincts and loosed
