Protector(55)

“Right. I am.” Still not looking at him, she added, “It’s nothing. I’m babbling. Long day and too much sangria.”

Alex wasn’t so sure about that, since she’d only had a glass and a half, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. “Well, if you’re done, I can get the check, and we can go home.”

“Sounds great.”

Was it his imagination, or had he heard a hint of trepidation in her tone? Maybe she was worried about what they’d do when they got there, whether he’d press her to sleep in his room again, just to be safe. As much as he’d enjoy that, he’d let her make her own decision. She should know he’d never urge her to do something she didn’t want to do.

After flagging the waiter down and asking for the check, he and Caitlin sat in a semi-uncomfortable silence until the rest of the ritual could be completed and he could drop the necessary number of twenties down on the table. Good thing he’d been carrying a decent amount of cash; waiting to have his credit card run would have been even worse.

They drove back to his place, still not talking. She looked out the window, seemingly staring at the clear skies above, at all the bright stars winking overhead. They couldn’t be that new to her, though; Jerome had to have even less light pollution than Tucson, even for all his hometown’s reputation as a dark sky city, a place that purposely cut back on its nighttime lighting so as not to interfere with the spectacular desert starscape.

He pulled into the garage and shut off the Pathfinder’s engine. Even as he pulled the key from the ignition, Caitlin opened the passenger-side door and got out. She did have to wait for him to come around and unlock the door that led from the garage to the house, but once he’d done that, she pushed inside, as if afraid to be alone with him in the dark.

Two of the lamps in the living room were on timers, so they came on whether he was home or not. Their soft glow provided enough illumination to show Caitlin pausing next to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, her expression diffident.

“Thanks for dinner. It was really good.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, the automatic response. He moved toward her, to the little bowl he had sitting on the end of the bar, where he generally dumped his keys at the end of the day. She stepped away — less than a foot, but enough to show she was uncomfortable with allowing him to get too close.

Damn. Talk about mixed signals. With the way she’d looked at him earlier that evening, he’d thought…oh, never mind what he thought. She was here to help find her friends and for no other reason.

“Do you watch The Walking Dead?” he asked, forcing his tone to be relaxed, casual. They had to do something to fill up the rest of the evening, since it wasn’t even eight-thirty yet. Watching TV seemed the most innocuous thing to do.

For a second, Caitlin looked puzzled, and then what he could have sworn was a look of relief crossed her face. “Yeah, I do.”

“Did you see this week’s episode?”

A shake of the head. “No, I was down in Jerome having Sunday dinner with my family. Danica was supposed to download it for me, but….” She let the words trail off. They both knew Danica probably wasn’t going to be downloading anything for a while.

Alex let it go. He knew nothing he could say would change anything or make it better. “Well, I’ve got it on my DVR. What do you say we go and put our feet up, and watch some people who have even worse problems than we do?”

For a second, she didn’t respond, only seemed to be staring down at the toes of the somewhat scuffed ballet flats she wore. Then she looked up and smiled — a real smile, the kind that seemed to light something in those beautiful blue-green eyes of hers.

“I think that sounds like a great idea.”





11





It was sort of surreal to be sitting in here next to Alex, their feet propped up on the glass and metal coffee table, attention fixed on the flat-screen hanging from the wall opposite them. The thing was huge, too, way bigger than the 42-inch television her parents had bought a year ago. Again Caitlin wondered where the heck Alex got the money for all this stuff, but that was a question that could wait for another day.

For now, she was having a hard enough time keeping her attention fixed on the TV, on the admittedly gruesome scenes playing out there. But she’d never gotten grossed out by things she saw in the movies or on television, no matter how gory they might be.

It was the real-life stuff she had problems with.

Alex had gotten them both water, and he was drinking from his glass now, attention fixed forward so she could catch the fine outlines of his profile from the corner of her eye. The Adam’s apple in his throat moved as he swallowed, and she made herself look forward again, to not think about the lean muscles of his neck and what it would feel like to place her lips against the warm brown skin there.