Chapter Sixteen
Dawn filtered in through the windows, a soft purple glow in the darkness. Linc sat in a chair across the bedroom watching Carly sleep.
He’d scared her a little last night. Hell, he’d scared himself. He hadn’t realized he could be so possessive of a woman, that he could demand so much from her. And yet she’d taken everything he’d tossed at her and hadn’t for a moment backed down.
They were good together. Better than good. He wanted to know if the things he was feeling were real. If whatever was happening was more than just an affair.
In the years since his failed marriage, he’d told himself he wasn’t interested in getting involved with a woman on more than a superficial level. He could do just fine, the way he always had.
Over the years, he’d dated any number of women and enjoyed them. But this was different, at least for him.
Linc was the kind of man who went after what he wanted. Trouble was, in this case, he didn’t exactly know what that was. If things went wrong, Carly could get hurt. He didn’t want that. And there was always a chance it could end up the other way around.
He studied the woman asleep in his bed, smiled at the tangle of heavy blond hair spread over his pillow. She was important to him. He’d do his best not to hurt her. But he wasn’t letting her back away from him, not when she clearly had feelings for him, too.
Not until they had time to figure things out.
Beyond that, she needed his protection.
Yesterday in Dallas, he’d had the Drake cargo manifest from the crime scene messengered over to the City DNA Lab. He’d paid extra to have them put a rush on it, asked Townsend to keep an eye out for it, but it would still take a few days.
If the spot turned out to be blood, and he had a hunch it was, he needed to know if it was Miguel’s. If it belonged to someone else, they might have a suspect. If the lab could come up with a DNA sample, Townsend could get it run through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), look for a match.
Tightening the sash on his terry-cloth robe, he rose from the chair and padded barefoot down the hall for a quick workout in the weight room adjoining his home office. Changing into a T-shirt and a pair of navy blue gym shorts, he pushed the weights around for a while, hit the heavy bag, then jogged for half an hour on the treadmill.
Since Carly still wasn’t up and he didn’t want to wake her, he went into the bathroom at the end of the hall and took a quick shower. Wearing the robe again till he could get something out of his closet, he sat down behind the desk and forced himself to focus on work, starting with the notes he’d made on the tire rebuilding plant.
When he looked up, Carly stood in the doorway, looking rumpled and pretty, reminding him of last night and making him start to get hard.
She walked toward him in one of his T-shirts, which hung on her like a sack but did nothing to cool his ardor. She sat down in a chair on the other side of the desk.
“You okay?” he asked. “I was pretty rough on you last night.”
A slow smile spread over her face. “Sometimes rough is good.”
His mouth edged up. No question last night had been great.
She toyed with a lock of gold hair. “So . . . umm . . . how many times have you used sex to get what you want?”
Amusement slid through him. “Counting last night? One.”
She smiled, relaxed back in the chair.
“It’s early,” he said. “Why aren’t you still asleep?”
“I’ve been doing some thinking.”
“Yeah, what about?”
“About you . . . about El Jefe. About the sheriff.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“We could use the sheriff ’s help to stop whatever’s going on, but you don’t trust him. I know it has something to do with the night you were arrested. You know a lot about me. Except for what I’ve read, I don’t know much about you.”
He tilted back in the black leather executive chair. “What do you want to know?”
“I’d like to know what happened the night of the robbery.”
