She lifted one perfectly arched and waxed brow in that haughty, “I care so little about you that just this tiny part of my body is affected” way that drove him nuts. This woman who used to love him with every part of her body and soul now looked at him with as much interest as a bug under her heel. “You and I don’t have anything to say to one another.”
So much for his good intentions. You could almost hear him snap. He moved so quickly up the stairs, she gasped when he pushed her back into the hall and closed the door behind him. He resisted the urge to back her up against the wall, but his body was definitely leaning in. He could feel the heat of anger radiating from her lean body, drawing him in like a magnet.
“Is that right?” he asked. “I think you have a hell of a lot to say. How about a goddamned explanation for why you never told me Scott was your brother? Or for how you not only let me think that all my former teammates were dead, but how you lied to me and led me on a fucking goose chase the past month to keep me from finding out the truth?”
It had stung when he’d figured out that the only reason she’d been spending time with him was to keep him busy and prevent him from learning that some of the guys had survived. She’d known how much they meant to him, and she’d let him think they were all dead.
And here he’d been thinking how much he likedworking with her again. How much it felt like old times. The worst part was that he’d known she was lying to him about something. But he’d followed her to a hotel, saw her with a man, and assumed...
Shit. “It was Scott, wasn’t it? He was the man you met at the hotel that night?”
“You mean the man you accused me of cheating on my fiancé with?”
He’d done more than accuse. Colt had been so out of his mind with jealousy that he’d cornered her in an elevator and kissed her. They’d been a few seconds away from doing a lot more before she’d pushed him away, apparently coming to her senses. But was there more to it? Had she kissed him back just to keep him off the trail?
His gut wasn’t the only part of his body twisting as she took a step toward him and met his anger full force. She’d never backed down from him. Never. He’d always loved that about her. The bigger problem now was that she was wearing a tight tank top and her breasts were one deep breath from brushing his chest. Heat pooled in his groin.Not the time to get a hard-on.But his body wasn’t exactly listening to him.
“I don’t owe you a damned thing, Colt. Get the hell out of here. Go back to whatever dive bar you’ve probably been hiding in the past week.”
He wanted to deny it, but she knew him too well. He drank and played pool when he was angry. It made him feel better. Usually. There was something else that always made him feel better, but he hadn’t taken any of the offers thrown in his direction the past week. Month. And that pissed him off even more. Kate didn’t care whom he fucked; why should he?
Because the only woman he wanted to fuck was her. It had been like that since the first time he’d met her. Sex before he’d met her had always been satisfying. But after... he knew what he was missing.
Damn her to hell.
He wanted to touch her but he didn’t dare. Not when she was so close to him, and not the way he was feeling like this. He was likely to explode. In more ways than one.
He stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to ratchet down the anger—and the heat. “You knew how much I cared about those guys, and you let me think they were all dead. How could you do that? Do you hate me that much?”
Her cheeks were still flushed, but when she looked away, he knew he’d gotten to her. “Scott didn’t want anyone else to know. He thought it was too dangerous.”
“You should have trusted me.”
Her gaze lifted back to his, but there was nothing in her expression to give her thoughts away. He used to be able to read her. But she’d changed. Hardened.
God, had he done that to her?
“My trust and loyalty belong to my brother. You lost them a long time ago, Colt.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell me you were related? Did he ask you to keep it secret so there wouldn’t be any problems with the team?”
“Scott wanted to say something. It was me who asked him to keep it a secret. I didn’t want to hurt my mother. I don’t think she knew my father cheated on her.”
He’d heard that Kate’s mother had died last year.
Despite the explanation, he felt his temper firing again. “Didn’t you think I deserved to know that my wife wasn’t sleeping with my best friend?”
“I told you that I wasn’t. More than once. You just didn’t want to hear it.”
“I would have listened if you’d said he was your goddamnedbrother!”
Her cheeks flushed with bright pink spots of anger high on her cheekbones. “When was I supposed to voice my suspicions—suspicions that were only confirmedright before my accident, by the way? When I came to see you in Honolulu at the bar and you had another woman on your lap or when you told me that you wished the drunk driver had killed me along with our baby?”
She might as well have slapped him. The truth of the accusation brought him harshly back to reality. The reality where all his anger and resentment were just a front, an excuse to prevent him from having to think about his own actions. About the accusations he’d made and the cruel things he’d said. Words that he hadn’t meant but that could never be taken back. About how he’d left his injured wife in a hospital to mourn the death of their unborn child alone because he’d been half-crazed with jealousy and hurt.
Kate had always been good at forcing him to confront what he didn’t want to acknowledge, and just like that, his anger disintegrated. He wanted to be ill. Could someone throw up from shame?
The destruction of their marriage was his fault.Hewas the one responsible, not her.
