Deadly Past. Kris Rafferty

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СКАЧАТЬ Foulkes. The center of her universe, her past, her present, her best friend. He stood between her and the phone, arms folded over his chest, and he was glowering. Totally pissed. Almost as pissed as she was with him. Cynthia had been avoiding Charlie for months, and just looking at him now made her cringe with embarrassment.

      “Damn, Charlie!” She holstered her gun, only then noticing she’d even pulled it, and that her living room was a mess. Among other things, an empty carton of mango sorbet with an accompanying dirty spoon littered the side table. Clean laundry waited to be folded on the ottoman, and four pair of heels were underfoot, scattered over her rose-colored Persian rug. Fighting back mortification, she gathered the shoes and tossed them behind the leather couch, pretending not to hear the loud clatter as they bounced off the oak wainscoting. “I almost shot you!” she said.

      Charlie—Boston Police Department’s forensic pathologist—didn’t seem all that impressed with his close call. Sexy as hell, his red hair disheveled, Charlie wore his usual jeans, boots, and short-sleeved shirt. His big blue eyes were hooded by furrowed brows, his full lips thinned with anger, and the sight was impressive. Intimidating, even.

      Lifting the laundry basket, she gave Charlie a wide berth as she set it next to the grandfather clock, out of his line of sight. After a last scan of the room, she decided the rug didn’t need vacuuming, and the books and newspapers on her antique side tables weren’t technically clutter, so she mirrored Charlie’s posture—arms folded over her chest, scowling. Cynthia hated when Charlie got mad at her. Other people? She could give a damn. But Charlie? It really bothered her, and he knew it. He’d weaponize himself, and her one defense was being angry back, because it really bothered Charlie when she was angry at him.

      They were best friends; it didn’t have to make sense. They’d known each other since she was twelve, and up until a few months ago they’d been as close to inseparable as friends could be. Friends. Just friends. Whatever had prompted his drive to her apartment—at nearly the crack of dawn—had him upset enough to interrupt his morning routine. He’d foregone his shave. Cynthia hadn’t seen him unshaven since…well, since the accident, and that was ten years back. The scruff was a menacing layer to his full-bodied frown. Boots braced shoulder width apart, Charlie towered over Cynthia’s five-feet, six inches, intimidating her, though he’d be the last person to admit that was his endgame.

      “You look like shit,” he said. His biceps twitched as he rolled his shoulders, as if working out a kink.

      “Kiss my ass.” She nudged a matted lock of hair behind her ear, hating that he was right. Hating that he looked sexy and fit in his dishevelment, while she not only felt like hell, he’d assured her that she looked like it, too. She walked to the couch, peeled off her ruined suit jacket, and then sat, using her jacket to protect the leather from her disgusting hair.

      “Where have you been?” Charlie lived for his job and his family, and not in that order. He was taking her absence personally. She wanted to throw a denial in his face, to tell him he had no right to worry about her, but she knew it wasn’t true. They didn’t share so much as a DNA strand, but Cynthia was family by default. Terrance’s little sister. Terrance, who’d died ten years ago, after wrapping his new roadster around a tree with his best friend, Charlie, in the passenger seat. “I’ve been waiting here since eleven last night,” he said.

      “Who asked you to?” Cynthia hated the guilt he easily summoned. “Since when do you show up unannounced at my apartment, using a key I gave you only for emergencies, by the way, and question my whereabouts?”

      “Cynthia—” Her name left his lips on a growl.

      “No, really, Charlie.” She felt at a disadvantage—sitting, while he towered over her—so she flavored her tone with belligerence to hide her weakness. “What if I’d pulled an all-nighter last night with a strange man I picked up in a bar? Then I find you here when I return home, making things all awkward. I could lie to you, of course, and pretend it didn’t happen. That I wasn’t doing the nasty between the sheets with some dude named Jeff. Should I? Should I lie?”

      She hated that he’d just assumed she’d be here when he showed up last night, as if she had no personal life. Odds were nil she’d do the nasty with a stranger, named Jeff or otherwise, but damn. A woman had her pride and he had no right to assume her sex life was dull as dishwater. That was Cynthia’s sad little secret. She wasn’t even sure he was listening, because he seemed fascinated by her hair, his anger expanding his chest and widening his eyes.

      On a sharp exhale, he said, “Your head is bleeding.”

      “Huh?” She pressed her palm to the top of her head, instinctively trying to hide the evidence, which was stupid. No hiding that she’d been roughed up.

      He finally met her gaze, and looked ready to explode. “Are you telling me Jeff did this to you? You had sex with a ‘Jeff,’ who did this to you?” Shock nudged aside irritation, and now that she thought on it, it wasn’t unreasonable for Charlie to draw that horrible conclusion from her hypothetical social life with the nonexistent Jeff.

      “No.” She bit her lip, recoiling from the thought. There it was again: guilt, guilt, guilt. There seemed to be guilt connected with every damn interaction they’d had lately. “No, Charlie. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.” Yada yada yada. Her head hurt. She didn’t have any more energy to wade through another emotional quagmire. When would she learn to just shut her mouth?

      “So Jeff,” he said, allowing his words to hang as he waited for more information.

      Cynthia waved him off. “Doesn’t exist. Forget it.” Flushed, she felt stupid now that her Jeff example had blown up, especially since it seemed like a clinical example of a blatant cry for attention. Almost as if she’d wanted to make Charlie jealous. She peeked at him from behind a lock of hair hanging over her right eye, wondering if he was…but that would be insane, because they were just friends. She wanted to change the subject. Not easy, under the pall of Charlie’s dark frowns and him looming over her, making it hard to think.

      Especially since the last time they’d talked, really talked, she’d been quite drunk on tequila and had kissed him: a full-throttle, moan-inducing, tongue-thrusting, hips-grinding kiss. Just thinking about it mortified her. Well, not the kiss so much as what had happened afterward. The damn man pushed her away, and the kiss had gotten off to such a great start, too. Hot. Sexy. Bone-meltingly arousing. She could tell he’d liked it, too, because when her hips ground against his rock-hard erection, he’d moaned, too. It was the sexiest, most arousing sound she’d ever heard in her life. Then he rejected her.

      Rejected her kiss, and more importantly, rejected everything the kiss would have preceded. She’d been drunk, so she’d respected his integrity and everything, but Cynthia’s pride still stung. And despite all attempts to avoid him since, Charlie kept pushing, pushing, and pushing past every roadblock she’d erected between them. The guy refused to give her privacy to lick her wounds and move past his rejection, and insisted on hovering, worrying, trying to gentle them back into the comfortable “friendship” they’d enjoyed since the accident.

      But she wasn’t ready. Every time she looked at him, she remembered how she’d revealed herself. She’d been emotionally naked, and he’d pushed her away. How did a woman move past something like that? She didn’t.

      Cynthia went so far as to decline invitations to his parents’ house to protect her pride. Even that backfired. Delia and Paul Foulkes, his parents, kept sending Charlie to her house, demanding to know why she was avoiding everyone with the last name of Foulkes. Well, Charlie knew. Actions had consequences. Rejecting her kisses had consequences. And the man had to learn.

      “What СКАЧАТЬ