Page 45 of Second First Kiss

“What friend?” He lifted her right hand and brought it to his lips, then kissed her fingers that looked to be covered with Cheetos goo.

“I plead the Fifth.”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Why?” She jerked her hands back. “If I don’t answer, are you going to cuff me, Ranger Carmichael?”

“Agent Carmichael,” he corrected and then gave her a long once-over. Man, was she sexy. “Now all I can think about is you cuffed to my bed.”

“I’m not into bondage.”

“What are you into? You know, so that I can file it away for when the next moment presents itself.”

“I think you’ll be too busy repainting your house to engage in anything else, Ranger,” she mused, leading him in the direction of the garage door.

“Did you at least enjoy yourself?”

“Watching someone take on the great Agent Carmichael? Top ten moments of my life.” She laughed. “I’m more of a letting my horse poop on your lawn kind of woman, which, if you’ll notice, I did not do.”

“I noticed. Does this mean I’m growing on you?”

“I guess it means that being a good guy sometimes does pay off,” she mused. “Although an argument could be made that someone saw beneath the Superman exterior to the secret jerk lurking beneath.”

“I’m nowhere near perfect, but I’m not a jerk. What you see is what you get, Kat. You have my word on that.”

She gave a major eye roll, but not before he saw a flicker of uncertainty, as if that old adage had never worked out so well for her. Another thing he wanted to change.

She glanced at the door and back to him. “Well, someone disagrees.”

“You happen to know who?”

“I can, but I gave my word that I wouldn’t rat him out,” she said.

“So it wasn’t R. J.?”

“Do you think he’d still be alive?”

Nolan laughed. “Fair enough. But it is a he?”

“A very young he who has a very valid reason for doing what he did. But if it makes you feel better, he regretted it the minute he was done. In fact, he made me promise not to tell you because he thought you’d be mad at him, and he couldn’t stand the idea. He looks up to you.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. Nolan worked hard to be the kind of man people could depend on, the kind of man who went out of his way to make others feel loved and accepted. The idea of some kid being afraid of disappointing him didn’t sit right.

“I’m drawing a blank here, Kitten. You’re going to have to help me out, because I need to fix whatever is broken and I can’t do that unless I know what I did.”

He knew the moment she gave in. She worried that lower lip and her eyes went soft with understanding. “This hits close to home for you. Really close.” She rested a gentle hand on his pec. “It has something to do with your ex.”

“Ah, shit,” he said on a breath. “Tommy? I thought they were in Montana.”

“I don’t know about that, but it seems like he misses you and doesn’t know how to say it.” Her palm slid up to cover his chest. “It kind of broke my heart.”

It didn’t break his heart, it shredded it. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He walked backward and sat hard on the porch step, then rested his head in his hands. That same pinching sensation in his chest he felt whenever he thought of Tommy became acute.

“What did he say?”

“What did he say or what does he think?”

“Both.”

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