Swallowing hard, she asked, “Did you know…Christine?”
Mark’s eyes shuttered and he cast a quick glance around the club. “Yes, I knew her. What do you want to know?”
She wanted to know a million things. What was she like? Did she make James laugh? Did they have fun together? How long were they together? But in the end it was all the same question.
“Did he love her?”
Mark studied her for a long moment and then his eyes softened. “Why do you ask?”
Lana looked down and twisted her hands in her lap. “He said he asked her to marry him, and it wasn’t a decision he made lightly because to him it was a lifetime commitment. I just thought…it was a strange statement. He didn’t say he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He talked about getting married like he was entering into a contract.”
“Sounds like you have your answer,” he said softly. He put his arm around Katy and gave her a squeeze. “When we got married it was for love, and nothing else.”
“I know. I watched you for weeks.” Lana smiled at their obvious affection. “I was there from the beginning. I saw you fall in love.” At the time she’d thought she had the best job in the world. If she could live vicariously through other people’s relationships, she wouldn’t long for her own. But in the end, Katy and Mark walked away with each other, and Lana was still alone.
Katy’s eyes teared and she squeezed Mark’s hand. “It wasn’t an easy road.”
“But you knew,” Lana persisted. “You knew from the beginning it was something special. Something worth the hardship of the bumpy road.”
“I knew the minute I laid eyes on her.” Mark leaned over and kissed Katy on the forehead. “I would have walked through hell to make her mine. Almost did.”
Katy shuddered and Lana gave her a sympathetic glance. They had both almost lost their careers and their lives in the pursuit of justice.
“Is James here tonight?” Katy took a quick glance around the club. “I didn’t see him come in.”
Mark snorted. “He’s here, but in disguise. We’ll have to pretend we don’t know him.”
Disguise? Not once since they’d met again had she thought of James as being in disguise. He wore the biker persona as easily as he wore his low-slung jeans. But Mark was right. When his assignment was over, he would hang up his leathers, return the motorcycle and become James Hunter, crusty cop, once more.
A bruise of sadness formed in her chest. She would miss biker James. The new James was spontaneous and unrestrained. Possessive and protective. He laughed more, lived more.
Did he love more too?
“I thought you said she hated you.”
James leaned back in his chair and looked around Tony’s office—anywhere except at his all-too-intuitive friend seated behind an enormous glass-and-oak desk. Sleek, modern and sophisticated, Tony’s office was a reflection of the man, lacking only the enigmatic quality that made most people wary of the club’s owner.
“Maybe not as much as I thought.”
“So what’s going on with you two?”
James drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I didn’t come here for a psychological analysis. I came here because my life is in danger and the DEU is doing dick-all about it. I need some advice. My relationship will be neither here nor there if I’m dead.”
“You have a relationship?” Tony stroked his nonexistent beard.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did. You said you had a relationship. Not that I needed to hear it from you. I could see it the minute you two walked into the club. Body language. Powerful tool in a psychologist’s arsenal.” A grin split his face. “I can say with 100 percent certainty, she doesn’t hate you. At all.”
James shrugged. “She doesn’t want to have a relationship. She doesn’t trust me because I messed her around so bad. She wants to keep it casual.”
“What do you want?”
James stood and paced around the room. He’d asked himself the same question one hundred times since he’d reconnected with Lana. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that works for me. No one gets hurt. I don’t wind up in the same situation I was in with Christine.”
The words didn’t ring true, even to him, and suddenly he didn’t want to be having this conversation. He spun around to face Tony, knowing as he did it was the wrong thing to do. “Are we done now? Can we talk about the more serious issue?”
“We are talking about the more serious issue.”