Undercover Hunter(66)
“I’m confused,” she said finally. “Sorry.”
“It’s confusing only if we let it be. I can draw a line between business and personal. Can you?”
A fair question. “Since I’ve never done this before, I guess I’m going to find out.” The bald admission should have embarrassed her but it didn’t. “I wasn’t thinking about other things,” she admitted. “Just about...you. Us.”
She half feared she might anger him, but he surprised her with a laugh.
“Well, thank God for that,” he said. “I’d hate to think our lovemaking was a cold, calculated decision.”
He had a point, she realized, and then surprised herself by laughing, too. “Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?”
“It’s no molehill,” he said firmly, “but it’s also not a mountain. Don’t ever call what we enjoyed a molehill. But I can multitask. Can you?”
She nodded slowly and let go of her concerns, glad she’d talked about them. He’d made her feel better, as if she hadn’t just committed a crime of her own. And he’d given her permission to enjoy what had happened instead of carrying a whopping load of guilt and self-recrimination.
Now she just needed to give herself the same permission. That might be harder. It usually was. But at least they’d talked it out like two adults who knew where the lines still lay. A good thing, right?
“Relax,” he said. He reached out once again and this time clasped her hand. “We’re grown-ups. We can do this.” Then he paused. “I guess the military made you used to living with rules, huh?”
“It kept things cleaner and clearer sometimes.”
He nodded. “Nothing in life is clean and clear, DeeJay. I think you already know that. Whatever rule we just broke, it doesn’t have to keep us from being good partners on this case. That’s up to us.” He squeezed her hand, then released it.
“Back to work?” he asked.
She wanted to sigh, because truthfully she wanted to make love with him again. But the case lay spread out before them and someone’s life was on the line. Sooner or later this guy would strike again, probably sooner, and if there was any way humanly possible, they had to find him first. Or find a way to draw him out. Before someone else died.
* * *
Calvin hated the storm. It kept him from going out to look at his boys, which always made him feel better, and without them the nagging urge to act was growing stronger...just when he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He paced the small ranch house, seeking the control that was so important to him. Control was everything. Control of his victims, control of their lives and, yes, control of himself.
He couldn’t become a slave to his desire to cleanse and purify or he’d become a useless tool, one that got itself caught. No spider would be stupid enough to get caught in its own web.
His thoughts kept drifting back to that travel writer, though. He should just dismiss her, but for some reason he couldn’t. She somehow drew him as much as any of his boys.
Trying to rationalize the urge, he decided she’d make a great red herring. If he broke his pattern with her, it might be possible for him to stay longer in this county before the law sniffing around caused him to head elsewhere.