“Traipse?” I demanded. “Are you fucking kidding me? You were doing something far more dangerous than I was!”
“I had backup!” he said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t doing it alone! If Knox had found you…” His chest heaved.
I walked over to him, my anger softening as the reason for his reaction began to sink in. “You were scared something would happen to me.”
Outrage washed over his face. “I thought I made that pretty damn clear.”
“You weren’t worried,” I said more to myself as I reached him, putting my hands on his chest. “You were scared.”
“Again,” he growled. “I made that clear.”
I looked up at him in disbelief.
Frustration flooded his eyes, but then he stiffened and it bled away. His hand sank into my hair at the nape of my neck, his fingers fisting around the strands. “Harper, why is it so damned hard for you to believe I care about you?”
“Because,” I said, frustrated. “You’re you.”
His chest muscles tensed under my palms. “You think I’m incapable of caring about someone?”
“I know you care about people, even if you don’t like people to realize it. It’s just hard to believe you care that much about me.”
“Harper.” He shook his head. “If I’d known you were traipsin’ around the city?—”
“Again, I wasn’t traipsing?—”
“—I would have lost my fucking mind. It was bad enough when I thought you’d just come back to the hotel.”
I searched his face. “You have to trust me, James.”
“I do. But no matter how careful you were, there are a dozen ways he could have taken you.”
“It’s done,” I said. “Now what did you find out?”
“Did Keith recognize you?”
I rolled my eyes. “I told you I was wearing my wig.”
“So? I’d recognize that ass anywhere.” His free hand grabbed a butt cheek and pulled my body flush to his.
“I was sitting on a barstool, so it’s unlikely.”
He made a face.
“Besides, he didn’t recognize a side profile of my face, and he was about a foot from me. I doubted he’d recognize my ass.”
“Jesus Christ,” he groaned, leaning his head back and staring at the ceiling. Then he leveled his gaze on me. “Are you trying to give me a stroke?”
“I was fine. He didn’t recognize me, even when he tried to hit on me.”
His jaw clenched so hard, it was a wonder he didn’t crack a tooth.
“Listen, that part’s not important?—”
“The fuck it’s not,” he growled.
“He was meeting another detective. Bobby says they come in around that time a lot lately, around the same time, and sometimes one or two other guys meet them.”
“So?”
