Page 29 of Fast Kill

“No. Turned out, all our problems were still there, only then they were bigger because we were talking about bigger stakes. A family, the rest of our lives together. So yeah, things didn’t get better. I was addicted to my work, and she felt abandoned. It was a no-win situation and I wasn’t willing to give up the job I loved. She was the one who finally asked for the divorce. Pretty sure she was just as relieved as me when it was all over.”

“Do you have any contact with her now?”

“Not really. Every once in a while she’ll call me about something, usually advice on a decision she has to make or whatever. It’s not like we hate each other or anything. We both realize we made a giant mistake in getting married, that we were trying to force something that was never going to work. She’s moved on and so have I. And her brother and I usually go hunting together once a year if our schedules allow it.” He put his empty plate on the coffee table. “What about you? What’s your family like?”

Again she looked away and forked up more pie. “I don’t really have a family.”

Oh, shit. No family? Why not? Had they died? “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” But she’d closed back up again, and quickly finished the last of her pie. “Well thanks for having me over. I’d better get going. Lots of work to be done.”

“No need to rush out on my account. I’m just gonna be sitting here getting fat from the pie I won’t be burning off. Want to stay and watch a movie or something? I won’t make you watch the ballgame, promise.”

She flashed him a smile but shook her head. “Thanks though. I’d better get some more work done. No, stay where you are, I’ll get these,” she told him when he grabbed his plate and started to stand.

He let her take his plate, but followed her to the kitchen on his crutches and ordered her to leave them in the sink. Of course she ignored him, rinsed them and put them neatly in the dishwasher. He was pretty sure she wrinkled her nose at how crowded and dirty everything inside it was.

She glanced at the cupboard beneath the sink, then looked at him. “Where do you keep your detergent?”

Logan fought a smile. “Under the sink.” He started toward it but she bent and took out a packet of detergent, popped it in the dishwasher then turned it on.

It was so hard to keep from grinning when she straightened. “Thanks for the pie. It was great.”

“You’re welcome. But mostly I wanted to come and apologize for last night in person. I…felt badly.”

“I’m over it.” He should have called to warn her he was on the way over, and her coming here to apologize made it all a non-issue. Plus, peanut butter pie. The woman could turn him into putty in her hands so easily. And for some reason, that didn’t worry him in the least. But was she into him or not? She had him second-guessing his instincts now.

Her smile was full of relief. “I’m glad. And now I’ll let you get back to your game.” Purse in hand, she headed for the door.

He went with her, stopped a step further away from her than he would have anyone else, because he didn’t want her to feel crowded. “I still want to take you to dinner. If that’s okay.”

Another smile, this one sweeter than all the others. He wanted to hug her so bad. “Yes, I’d really like that.”

He didn’t want her to go. Not yet. He wanted to touch her. Kiss her. “Drive safe.”

With her hand on the knob she paused and turned back to him slightly, her gaze on the mat inside the door. She seemed to wrestle with herself before speaking. “In your job back when you were undercover. Did you ever have to do something that made you feel like you’d been torn in two?”

More than the words themselves, the way she said it—in that lifeless tone—and the haunted look on her face when she finally looked up at him, hit Logan in the chest like a punch.

His gut tightened, instinct screaming at him that something was wrong. Big time wrong. She was an agent. Something minor wouldn’t rattle someone like her, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have mentioned anything to him if it wasn’t huge. That alone worried him.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” She’d told him she’d had a shitty day, but he’d never guessed she’d been dealing with anything this serious. Add to that the way she’d acted when he’d gone to her house last night….

Something was definitely wrong. She could have just apologized by text, but she’d not only made a point of coming over to do so in person, she’d brought him a pie she had known he would love.

Because she was dreading going home, he realized with sudden clarity. Why? Was it that she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts and whatever problem she was facing? Or was there something more to it?

He opened his mouth to offer to follow her there, just to make sure she was okay, but then she shook her head.

And her careless shrug was less than convincing. “No, I’ll be fine. It’s just been…a really hard twenty-four hours, that’s all.”

Logan clamped his fingers tighter around the grips on the crutches to keep from reaching for her. After so many years in undercover work, he had the street equivalent of a PhD in reading people.

Strong as Taylor was, closed-off as she tried to be, right now she looked like she needed a hug in the worst way, and he’d love to be the one who gave it to her. But he wasn’t sure if she’d push him away if he did, and didn’t want to risk her shutting down.

“Once,” he said, and those green-flecked eyes lifted to his. “Once I had to do something that made me feel that way.” A drug trafficker he’d come to admire—even cared deeply about, in a twisted sort of way. Logan had been forced to turn on him at the end of a two-year-long op.

There’d been no way around it. But to make it in undercover work meant you had to get close to the target. Real close. Earn his trust, his loyalty. And it sucked when the target you had to bring down was more like a brother to you than your own flesh and blood.

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