“Lying to me? Manipulating me? Working me—isn’t that what the intelligence people on TV do with their assets?” He’d been so smooth, bandaging her up and taking care of her after the tub water had scalded her, holding her while she let her guard down and showed him her fear, her desperation, and her passion for him. He’d become her dream again. “And then there’s you sleeping with me to force my memory to return. Or was it to tempt whomever’s screwing with my mind to show himself? Well, gee, score one for the good guys. Job well done on both counts, Special Agent Marinos. You almost have your man. You played your cards perfectly.”
Shaw turned and headed inside, fuming.
She’d been left completely exposed to the danger circling around her, while Dawson and the rest of Cole’s task force had assumed she was a neurotic or a liar. And he had let it happen. What did any of them care, as long as they nailed their felon in the end?
And that device she’d discovered. It might just as easily have been a camera. Someone could have been watching Cole and her the whole time they were in the bedroom, talking, dealing with their personal history. And making love. She shivered. Someone had listened to them loving each other. No, having sex, she angrily corrected herself.
Still, what did it matter, really, when the person who’d violated her most was the federal agent following at her heels?
“I was protecting you.” Cole grabbed her, sounding as if he really did care, just like he’d said when he’d left her in the bedroom. He forced her to stop and turn back before she got to the kitchen. “The only way I could.”
“You could have trusted me.” She wanted to believe him so badly, even now. “You could have really worked with me, the way you promised you were, instead of putting your job first.”
“You could have forced my hand at any time and told me about Dawson yourself. I haven’t been the only one withholding the truth.”
“You’re right,” she agreed with a tight nod. “I didn’t completely believe in you, either. Not enough to risk looking like a head case because my government handlers didn’t care enough to actually leave someone here to help me. I was so grateful you were willing to. That you were going out of your way to help me, for no other reason than our past. But all along, you were one of them. Dawson sent you here.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “Because I made an ass out of myself six months ago, scoring a spot on the task force.”
“And you stuck out your detail like a pro until you had your answers.”
“Until I could prove for sure someone was threatening you.”
“And only then did you decide to come clean. That doesn’t change how you used me to get what you wanted, just like everyone else, while I was in danger. You’ll get one hell of a promotion, isn’t that what you said, if you nail this bastard? You never gave me the chance to deal with this on my own terms. How can you stand there and try to make it sound as if you’ve been on my side all along? A part of you never could forgive me, could you? Not after what I did to you when we were kids.”
“I did what was best. I had no idea what was really happening here until after you were hurt with the bath water, and then—”
“Then you took time out of your busy task-force duties to fuck me. Isn’t that against some regulation where you come from, sleeping with a prisoner?”
Cole’s anger dissolved into the blank expression they must drill into agents at his academy. There wasn’t a messy emotion to be found in his ice-blue eyes. Gone was the man she’d fallen in love with for the second time in her life.
She’d been such a fool.
“All right,” he said. “If that’s how you insist on seeing everything I’ve said and done. Let’s talk facts. Try and keep up without resorting to more hysterics, okay? I’ll hog-tie you to keep you beside me from here out, now that you know the score. Or at least you think you do. You’re under investigation,” he said, “not a prisoner. The U.S. Attorney was about to throw a net over you.” His lips thinned. He pocketed his cell phone and braced both hands on his hips. Every drool-worth muscle in his exposed chest and washboard abs flexed, reminding her that she was still wearing his T-shirt. “When you were shot, then told the local authorities your story about overhearing something that night that had made someone try to kill you, it was enough to postpone the charges until we knew more. But you couldn’t be allowed to return to work or to associate with anyone we couldn’t vet.”
“Or to have a cell phone, or a car to drive into town, or to use the Internet.”