CHAPTER TEN
Monday, June 19
9:39 p.m.
Maggie clutched her sheet to her chest, trying to convince herself that she’d heard Vic wrong. She played back his words in her head, but they didn’t make any more sense the second time. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s about damn time for the truth between us. I want you, Maggie. I have ever since we became partners, despite there being a whole hell of a lot of reasons for me to keep my hands off you.”
She looked around her darkened bedroom wildly. There was a camera set up somewhere, recording this. There had to be. It was the only explanation why Vic’s low voice was in her ear, telling her things she’d almost given up fantasizing about. “But . . . you were married.”
“I haven’t been married in a very long time.”
“But the case—” Her voice broke, and she had to stop and clear her throat. “Vic, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if you tell me you aren’t interested, this is it. We’ll pretend this conversation never happened. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven thirty, and we’ll move on with both the case and our lives.”
She wetted her lips. “And if I say I’m interested?”
“Then I’ll still pick you up tomorrow at seven thirty so we can visit Dr. Huxley.” He kept talking before disappointment could take root. “But tomorrow night, we’ll go find somewhere to eat—just the two of us. We won’t talk about the case, and we won’t talk about our past. And at the end of that date—because make no mistake, it will be a date—I will kiss you, and this time it won’t be something that can get swept under the rug as a mistake.”
She couldn’t quite draw a full breath. “That sounds nice.”
“It may be a lot of things, but nice won’t number among them.” He exhaled as if releasing the same tension twisting its way up her spine. “Good night, Maggie. Get some sleep tonight—you need it.”
“Good night, Vic.” She hung up before she could do something truly insane—like invite him over now. Maggie plugged her phone in and then double-checked to make sure it was charging before she wiggled down to cuddle up under her covers. She closed her eyes, but her mind wouldn’t stop whirling. How did Vic think she was going to get any sleep after dropping that verbal bomb on her?
A date.
Being a park ranger didn’t leave a ton of time to pursue relationships—unless it was with other rangers. It had taken all of a week before Maggie decided that wasn’t a path she was going to take. It was hard enough getting the other rangers to take her seriously without sleeping with one of them—the park rangers and FBI were a lot alike when it came to that sort of thing. It was a slippery slope, and she had no intention of taking any part in it.
She’d tried online dating about a year ago. For two weeks, during which she’d been sent three unsolicited dick pictures, been called a bitch by two dates—one when she wouldn’t sleep with him on the first date, and the other when she had to cancel because of work—and the single guy she’d managed to go on three dates with had been so uninspiring in the bedroom that she’d written the whole experience off as a loss.
Dating Vic was something else altogether.
Tuesday, June 20
6:45 a.m.
Maggie’s alarm went off, shooting her into awareness. She sat up, frowning at the pale light steaming through her window. “I fell asleep. No way.” She must have been even more tired than she realized, because she’d been sure she was destined for another all-nighter, mentally circling around the idea of dating Vic. “Stupid. So stupid.” She should be worried about what the unsub was up to while she’d been out cold—and if any of those hikers were still alive.
No. She couldn’t think like that. There had to be hope. There had to be.
Her phone rang, and she cursed as she scrambled for it. “What?”
“I’m running early.” Vic sounded far too awake and put together for the hour.
She peered at her clock. “It’s not even seven.”
“I know. Can you be ready in fifteen?”
Maggie was already moving, jumping out of bed and stripping on her way to the shower. “You know, being early is only a virtue after noon.”
“I have coffee.”
“Key is on top of the door frame. I’ll be ready shortly.” She dropped her phone at the edge of the sink and twisted the handle to get the shower going. There wasn’t time to wait for it to heat up, and the freezing spray of water had her cursing again. It was almost enough to distract her from the fact that Vic was on his way there right now. If she lingered in the shower . . .
“He wanted a date, he’s going to get a damn date.” Saying the words out loud didn’t do much to dispel the image of him walking into the bathroom, his pale eyes going hot at the sight of her through the clear plastic curtain. He’d cross the room, yank the flimsy barrier aside and . . .
She started. “What am I doing? Move.” She had to get through today without the world falling apart before she could worry about the date with Vic tonight—or about what might come after. There wasn’t anything standing between them anymore—nothing to keep them from doing anything and everything that two people did when they were attracted to each other.
Desire rolled in a tidal wave that made her knees weak. She shut off the water before she could give in to the temptation to touch herself. There wasn’t time, and it wasn’t like before—there was a very real and very tangible possibility that Vic would be touching her before too long, and it felt a little like robbing him of that if she jumped the gun.
Though she was pretty sure wanting him had curdled her brain at this point, because that last thought didn’t make a lick of sense.
Maggie dried off and grabbed her uniform. Not for the first time, she wished it was more comfortable and in line with what was required for long days spent hiking and dealing with all sorts of weather, but it was the uniform rangers had worn basically since the beginning of park rangers. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal. She dried her hair enough that it wouldn’t leave a wet spot on her shirt and then braided it out of her face.
Maggie wasn’t beautiful. Her features were too strong to be termed beautiful, much to her mother’s chagrin. Even before her nose had become crooked from getting broken, it had been too big, too prominent. So much so that her mother had offered to get her a nose job for her sweet sixteen.
Sweet sixteen, indeed.
It was right around then that she’d decided to stop bending over backward to try to please her parents and start focusing on what pleased her—being capable. She was smart and had skills that many people didn’t possess. She even had the respect of most of her coworkers and her boss, which wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
But today, with Vic showing up shortly, she spent a useless moment wishing she’d paid attention when her mother tried to teach her about makeup or doing her hair in anything other than serviceable styles. “Stop it. He knows you. Out of all those idiot dates you’ve been out with in the last few years, this man isn’t going to expect anything of you but the truth.” Hell if that wasn’t terrifying in a totally different way.
The sound of the front door opening spurred her into movement. She cast one last look at the mirror and chuckled softly. Makeup. What in God’s name was she thinking?
She found Vic in her tiny kitchen, setting coffee on the counter. His head nearly brushed the ceiling, and his eyebrows raised as he looked around. She knew what he saw. The cabin was barely up to code—the walls didn’t do much to keep out either the cold or the heat—and the furniture she and Ava had bought was secondhand because neither of them spent enough time here to justify more expensive options.
They kept the kitchen in closer to working order out of necessity, but the counter was scarred from whoever lived there before them, and the cabinets had seen better days. The fridge was a blast from the seventies, but it worked, which was more than she could say for the microwave.
Maggie cleared her throat. “It’s not fancy, but the government doesn’t exactly blow big money on ranger housing.”
He looked at her, and she forgot what she’d been about to say. Vic stalked toward her, his huge strides eating up the distance in two steps, and then he was there, his chest brushing hers with each breath. He cupped her jaw with one massive hand. “I told myself I’d be professional until tonight.”
She licked her lips, devastatingly aware of the way he tracked the move. “How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s not.” He kissed her. It wasn’t like the last time, hurried and so full of guilt that she could taste it. No, Vic kissed her like he was memorizing every second of the experience. She opened for him, sliding her hands up his chest, drunk on the fact that she was touching him. That she was allowed to touch him. The second her tongue touched his, a shudder worked its way through his body, and he lifted her, walking them backward until he had her pinned between his body and the flimsy living-room wall. He used his hand on her face to angle her mouth to allow him deeper, even as his big body wedged between her legs. His free hand was everywhere, stroking up the outside of her thigh, over her ass, dipping beneath her shirt.
Vic dragged his mouth along her jaw and down her neck, and she let loose a breathless laugh. “We’re going to break a hole in my wall.” She didn’t even care. Maybe she’d frame the damn thing. It’d be proof that this happened, long after he’d gone.
He exhaled harshly, his body so close she could feel exactly how much he wanted her. Maggie shifted, biting her lip at the feel of his hard length. She wanted. God, she wanted. “Vic—”
“Give me a second.”
A small, purely feminine part of her was pleased that he was so close to losing control. It made her want to arch and kiss him again, to see if he’d throw caution to the wind and follow through on the promises their bodies were making to each other.
But then she caught sight of the digital clock on the oven over his shoulder. If they kept this up, they’d be late, and there were more important things than the hollow ache between her thighs. They’d waited this long. They could wait a bit longer. So she held still and didn’t protest as Vic’s hands came to her hips and he lowered her to the ground. He stepped back, but not far enough to require him to stop touching her.
His pale eyes flamed with a hot light. “I changed my mind.”
“About what?” She couldn’t look away.
“We’re not ending tonight with just a kiss.”