“I didn’t think you heard that,” he said with a laugh, and then gave her a nonapologetic shrug. “It’s your fault for looking at me that way.”
“Like a stripper?”
He thought that was hilarious and laughed. “More like I just killed your mother.”
“You were going to leave me!”
He sobered, and their eyes met. “I’m glad I didn’t.”
She knew he was talking about what might have happened to her, but the intensity of his gaze made her wonder if he meant something more.
“Me, too,” she said softly.
From the way her chest tightened, she suspected she did.
Only when his gaze flickered behind her and he swore was the moment lost.
Sixteen
Old habits died hard, Colt thought. Rain or shine, the first thing Sunday morning—before coffee or breakfast—Kate went for a long run. With her multimillion-dollar town house in McLean overlooking the Potomac, it wasn’t hard to anticipate her route.
Colt sat on a bench overlooking the river path and waited. He was tired. His red-eye flight from Los Angeles had landed at Reagan National at six, and he’d come straight here so as not to miss her. She was always out the door by eight. On the rare Sunday that he’d been around to sleep in, he’d grumbled about it.
Once or twice he’d made her late.
It was probably best not to remember how. Sex had sure as hell never been their problem.
Two or three runners went by—none younger than seventy (who else liked to be up this early?)—before he saw the familiar slender form approaching, thick blond ponytail swinging with every long stride.
Summer in the DC area was hot and humid, and she was dressed for the weather in a skimpy top and tight spandex capris that left nothing to the imagination. Although he didn’t need to imagine. He remembered.
She’d always had an incredible body—lean, athletic, andtoned. It hadn’t changed, except that she was thinner than he remembered.
But still sexy as hell.
She was wearing earbuds and not paying as much attention to her surroundings as she should be. Something he’d warned her about countless times. She didn’t notice him until he stood.
She stopped so suddenly that she stumbled. Surprise didn’t give her time to completely mask her expression. He saw the flash of pain before it was carefully swept away behind the classically patrician facade.
With her blond, blue-eyed, WASPy beauty, she looked more Junior League and Hamptons than CIA.
That had always been part of her appeal. The stuck-up country club facade made him want to dirty her up a little on his side of the tracks.
But it was only a mask—one that had even fooled him at first. Unfortunately there was no hint of the quiet, kind of shy, heart-of-gold girl he’d married when she looked at him. It was all ice. Must be something they taught you at country clubs or cotillions. He’d laughed his head off when he found out she was a debutante. All that fanfare to be introduced into society and she’d ended up with him.
It was still hard to believe that someone who looked so icy on the outside could be such a wildcat in bed.
Her eyes were hard and unfriendly. He studied the flushed face and noticed a few more lines around her eyes and mouth. But she still looked more late twenties than almost thirty-five.
“How did you find me so quickly?” She stopped, answering her own question. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”
He didn’t deny it. “You made it easy—habit and routine are tricks of the trade.”
She flushed angrily. “Your tricks. Not mine. I’m an analyst, remember? I leave the dirty work to the experts.”
As the jab was well earned, he didn’t object.
“I thought I made it clear when you called that I don’t want to talk to you. You and I have nothing to say to each other.”
