Nausea licked at the back of her throat.
She knew him.
Intimately.
How could she have forgotten?
Maybe because he was one in a blur of many one-night stands from her early post-college years. She didn’t even remember his name—maybe never knew it—but the intensity of his gaze,thatshe couldn’t forget. At the time, he’d been a junior lobbyist forone of the big firms on K Street, brash and confident and darkly handsome, and not afraid to approach her where she sat with several friends at the bar of a Georgetown restaurant.
He kept telling her she looked too young to be there and joked that she must have a fake ID. If he’d really believed she was underage, it hadn’t stopped him from taking her to a hotel.
The image of him with the girlin the photo flashed through her mind. Tara frantically unbuckled her seatbelt and lunged into the tiny bathroom. She barely managed to flip up the toilet seat before she lost her breakfast.
Oh, God. Tears streamed down her face. She heaved again but only coughed up bile.
I had sex with a pedophile.
Her stomach rebelled again. She hadn’t just slept with any pedophile, but a man who had recentlyannounced his candidacy for the US Senate and might do anything to avoid being exposed.
Christ. She really did have the worst judgment when it came to men.
Breathe. She gripped the bowl and forced her mind to conjure an image of a tropical island, the waves slowly breaking onshore with a gentle hush. Back and forth, solid and constant, nonjudgmental and reliable as the sunrise.
After a fewmoments, the nausea subsided.
Flushing the toilet, she rose on shaky feet to wash her face and brush her teeth. Maybe this was what she got for being so loose with her body. She’d managed to escape her promiscuous years pregnancy- and STD-free thanks to religious use of condoms backed up by birth control pills, but karma had a way of catching up, didn’t it?
They’d been approaching downtownRichmond when Tara launched herself from her seat and disappeared into the back.
Oh, shit, was that retching?
As soon as it was safe, Jeff eased the RV to the shoulder, but left the engine running, hazard lights flashing. Maybe all that time on her phone had made her motion-sick.
Unbuckling his seat belt, he slowly approached the back. “Tara?”
She sat on the couch with her arms wrappedaround her knees, face scrubbed, lips pale. A wet, but empty, glass waited next to her on the counter.
“You need anything?”
She shook her head, eyes trained on the floor.
“Did you get carsick?”
Another head shake.
“What’s wrong?” He dropped to one knee in front of her, ignoring the turbulence in his stomach.
Her dark brown eyes were full of pain, her breaths shallow. She bit her plushlower lip and he desperately wanted to take over with his own teeth.
Christ. He shifted back. What was wrong with him? She was clearly suffering.
Besides, this was Tara. Coworker. City girl. Miss Perfect.
Not for him.
Except that she was stronger than he’d expected. Despite the stories Todd had told him, after everything she’d been through, he’d expected Tara to break down by now. Hadshe been upset after the men tried to kidnap her? Absolutely. But she hadn’t whined, wallowed, or become paralyzed with fear. She’d dealt with each blow, and then dusted herself off and gotten back to life.
More proof she was tougher than she looked, and he should stop expecting otherwise. Unfortunately, it only increased her appeal.
