Eve blinked, taken off guard by what he'd said. Unconsciously she rubbed her arm where bruises were already forming. The football player
had
hurt her. But everything had happened so fast that it hadn't registered until now that the drunk's rough handling had been the catalyst that had set the match to McClain's fuse.
"Oh," she said, feeling contrite suddenly but grappling for a reason not to be. She didn't want to feel grateful. Or beholden.
When she looked at him again, she realized he was still staring.
"That hadn't occurred to you, had it? That I was actually trying to help, not muck things up?"
She looked away and thought about what to say to that. Finally, she just stated the truth. "Honestly, no. It hadn't occurred to me."
He grunted, oozing disgust. "And you want to know why?"
"Because I could have handled him the same way myself if that's what I'd wanted to do?"
"Because you're looking for reasons to be pissed at me."
OK. This was true. She did look for reasons. Not that she had to look too far.
"I'll tell you something else," he said, shifting the ice from his knee to his eye. "You're a tight-ass. You need to loosen up. And you need to let things go. So I screwed up. It was a long time ago. Years. Believe me, I've screwed up a helluva lot more since."
Scowling over the tight-ass remark—not just that he'd said it but because he'd hit a little too close to the mark—she searched his face. It really was an interesting face, she admitted grudgingly—bloodied lip, bruised eye, put-upon glare, and all. She'd seen the promise of a handsome man in the boy's face at eighteen. Even then, his dark eyes had invited; his full lips had enticed.
He wasn't that boy any longer. Despite his smart-ass facade he was harder now. His eyes were a darker life-worn brown. And there was little of that teenage boy in the mature man's face that was all interesting angles and sculpted planes. All devastating, dangerous, and lived-in good looks—even bloodied and bruised.
She dragged her gaze away. Quelled the unexpected eddy of sexual awareness and thought about what he'd just admitted.
I
screwed up.
He didn't know the half of it.
Knee-jerk responses to a dozen shifting emotions had her twisting the screws. What he'd just said was long overdue. "Did I actually hear an apology in there somewhere?"
He sniffed, fished a chip of ice out of the cup, and, looking surly, touched it gingerly to his lip. "I don't know. Maybe."
God. He just kept surprising her. Against all odds she smiled at his grumpy concession. Not just because of his reluctant admission, but because of the irritation in his tone when he made it. Or maybe she was just tired and her guard was down. It had been a long day. Despite a call earlier from Uncle Bud telling her the bartender had spotted Tiff at Sloppy Joe's last night, she'd run up against another dead end. Just like she'd run up against dead ends all day.
She was also tired of bickering with McClain. And maybe, just maybe, she was growing weary of holding a grudge.
"Well," she said finally, "maybe I accept your apology— if you made one."
He grunted. "Did hell just freeze over?"
She stared toward the crowd sardined together on the wharf and facing the bay. "And I'm sorry you got hurt."
"Because of you," he reminded her, one corner of his mouth tipping up with a hint of amusement and expectancy. A wince of pain quickly followed when the action tugged on his split lip.
She smiled, too. Didn't even try to fight it. "Don't blame me."
"I don't think Joe College liked my shirt."
"
I
don't like your shirt, but it doesn't provoke me to violence. It has crossed my mind to rip it off, though."
"Now you're talking," he said with a smart-ass smirk.
"You wish."
For a long moment she just sat there, getting used to this surprising turn of events. They were actually bantering with each other—no heat, no anger. Evidently, it took a while for him to get used to it, too, because he was also quiet.
"I was an ass," he said after a long moment. "Back then— you know. I should have called."
When she met his eyes, he looked away. But not before she saw the guilt in them.
"Anyway. I'm sorry. You didn't deserve to be treated that way."
She was stunned. First peace. Then an outright apology. He was giving her reason to let it go. But there were things he didn't know. And there were things she could never let go of.
Still, she almost told him then. About the baby. Almost blurted it out. But in the end, she didn't. She couldn't. It was a secret she'd kept to herself for too long. She didn't want to trust him with it yet. She didn't want to trust him at all.
For now, he was going to have to settle for a truce. While she thought it over. In the meantime, the chocolate wasn't doing the trick.
"Are you hungry?" she asked rather than commit.
"God, yes."
With little argument, he agreed to let her go pick up something for them to eat if she let him pay for it. She opted for the shortest line and came back to the bench with foot-longs and lemonade.
"Hope you like them loaded."
When he dug in with a mumbled, "Thanks," she laughed.
"I'll take that as a yes." She started in on her own.
While they couldn't see the line of the horizon beyond the bodies packing the wharf, they ate in an almost comfortable silence, watching the twilight sky transition from orange, to red, to muted lavenders and pearly pinks, listening as the crowd applauded and cheered, paying homage to the striking beauty of the setting sun.
"Where's your car?" she asked as salsa music played in the background and the crowd slowly dispersed to the outdoor gardens and clubs and any number of eateries leading to and lining the square.
"A helluva long way from here."
So was hers. "Want to split the fare on another pedicab if we can nab one?"
He wiped his mouth with a napkin, taking care around his split lower lip. "I think that would fall into the category of working with the enemy. Edwards might find out."
She knew that Mac was kidding as she balled up her napkin and gathered up the rest of their trash. "I won't tell if you won't."
"Fair enough. But just so you know, I still plan on finding her first."
"We all need fantasies to cling to."
He just smiled.
They sat in silence for a while longer before she decided to take a chance on confiding something that had been eating at her. "Do you still think Tiffany is just running wild?"
"Nothing tells me otherwise."
"Clayborne is such an ass," she said after a long while.
"This is news?"
"What kind of a father wouldn't be out looking for his own daughter? I mean, if Clayborne cared, wouldn't he want a hand in finding her? I can't help but think of this from a parent's perspective. If... if Tiff were my child, I wouldn't be able to stand sitting back while someone else did the work. Don't you agree? What if
you
were a father—"
The look on his face stopped her cold. He turned his head away, but not before she saw a bleakness in his eyes that made her heart race.
And she knew.
"My God. You have a child, don't you?"
He looked past her toward the darkening sky. "Careful. You might find out more about me than you want to know."
Yeah. She just might. She'd decided to opt for wisdom instead of curiosity and not press the issue when he took the matter out of her hands.
"It will come as no surprise that there's another woman in the world other than you who thinks I'm a rat-bastard. She's in San Diego now. Happily remarried." He stared at the hands he'd clasped between his knees. "To a man who tells my daughter she doesn't have to call him Daddy, but he'd sure like it if she did."
Chapter 8
OK,
Eve thought, wishing she could
close her heart as easily as she closed her eyes. This was too much information. She hadn't wanted to know this. She hadn't wanted to know that McClain wasn't just a smart-ass ex-cop PI who'd taken her virginity and her innocence and left her pregnant when he was pretty much a kid himself. She hadn't wanted to know that he'd lived through a divorce and suffered the loss of a child.
There might have been another child,
a sad voice reminded her.
Another child for him to miss.
And because she heard pain in his voice for the child he loved and missed, she found herself resisting the urge to touch him when she needed to be irritated with him.
"Ali," he continued, still not looking at her. "Her name is Ali. She starts school this fall."
And clearly, Tyler McClain, absentee father, was mourning the fact that he wasn't going to be there for his little girl's first day of school. Or for many other firsts.
Crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
He'd done it. He'd gotten to her. Was becoming far too human, with human wants and needs and loss and pain. Like she'd known loss and pain.
"That's got to be hard," she heard herself saying, unable to hide the empathy in her voice.
He, of course, possessor of the macho gene, heard pity. So naturally, he bristled right up to make sure she understood he didn't need anybody's sympathy.
"That's why I took this job. For the money. Like I said. It's all about the money. Divorce settlements are a bitch. So is frequent airfare to California."
She was going to hate herself tomorrow. "What happened?"
He cocked his head, looked at her for a long moment that relayed how surprised he was that she'd opened herself up enough to ask such a personal question. "To my marriage?"
Yeah, well, color
her
surprised, too. And stupid, because she nodded.
"The decree called it irreconcilable differences."
Deeper and deeper. "And what did you call it?"
He pushed out a weary grunt. "I called it quits."
All around them people talked and laughed and walked across the square without care.
"She got bored being the wife of a cop," he added after a while. "And we had different interpretations of the word
fidelity
."
That
Eve really didn't need to hear. She'd been on the wrong end of the cheating game herself. Knew how it felt. How deeply it cut.
"But enough about me," he said with an abrupt attempt at levity that didn't quite succeed. "You never got married?"
She shook her head.
"Come close?"
"Not even close." It was a lie, but he didn't need to know that she, too, had discovered a cheating partner she'd trusted and thought she might actually want to build a life with.
"Spoiled you for any other man, did I?"
She was too tired to rise to the bait. And he
was
baiting her. Cease-fire or not, it seemed to be a mandatory part of their relationship.
Whoa. They did not have a relationship. What they had was ancient history and current competition. And that's where it started and ended.
"About that pedicab."
His eyes were full of questions as they held hers, but thankfully he let it go. "Yeah," he said at length, and rolled his head on his neck. "About that. And about Clayborne's methods—I think you're chasing smoke."
"Maybe," she said, but she wasn't sure she agreed. Something felt wrong here. She'd figure it out eventually. In the meantime, she had to figure out something else.
Like why she was having such a hard time disliking this man. And why he'd struck a nerve with his crack about spoiling her for any other man. It should have been outrageous, but what it was, was unsettling.
She walked slowly to accommodate his limp. They'd just gotten a pedicab driver's attention and were about to board when a beat-up older-model blue van came careening around the corner on two wheels.