Baptism In Fire. Elizabeth Sinclair

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СКАЧАТЬ walked out.

      Stiffening her back, she turned. Despite her determination not to react, her breath caught in her throat.

      Her ex-husband, Luke Sutherland, leaned one broad shoulder against the wall, arms crossed over his wide chest, his hands tucked out of sight beneath his muscular biceps. That purposeful, arrogant stance was also familiar to Rachel. She’d seen it many times, especially in the last six months of their marriage. He’d closed himself off, made it impossible for anyone to see beyond the stern facade he presented to the world. In short, he’d deserted her emotionally and finally physically as well.

      That shouldn’t have surprised her. Everyone she’d ever cared about had let her down in one way or another: a father who’d left when she was an infant and a mother who’d shut down emotionally and died too young. It was why Rachel had become so good at her job. If you were the best, you didn’t have to depend on anyone for anything. Rachel had clung to that independence for years, then she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. She’d met Luke and trusted him to take care of her. In the end, he’d been no better than the two people who had given her life.

      Rachel had hoped to never see him again, and now, here they were, face-to-face. She fought to control her breathing, to paint the picture of a calm, in-control woman.

      Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? She’d known she’d be running into him. After all, he worked here. Why hadn’t she thought of that? But she knew the answer. Catching the arsonist who’d taken Maggie and probably murdered her was all she’d been able to think about from the time A.J. had hung up the phone. Besides, Luke didn’t enter into this equation. She had come here for one purpose and one purpose only, and it was not to take up again with the man who had torn out her heart and left it to bleed empty.

      Now a whole new set of questions flooded her mind. Had he known she would be coming back? Had A.J. lied to her and orchestrated this to get his two friends to reconcile? No. A.J. wouldn’t do that. It just wasn’t like him.

      Rachel stared at Luke. Words deserted her. Probably because they’d said all they had to say to each other over the deposition table in her divorce lawyer’s office. But that didn’t mean that his presence didn’t spark her pulse to racing. If she hadn’t reacted to him at all, she hoped someone had ordered her casket, because surely she’d died. Once he entered a room, Luke was not the kind of man any healthy woman ignored, not even one who had dismissed him from her life months ago.

      “Hello, Rachel.” His voice was deep, rich and had the effect of silk shimmering over her skin.

      He seemed to fill the windowless room. Rachel took a deep breath, hoping to dispel the sudden smothering sensation his presence produced, despite the laboring hum of the AC. “Luke.”

      He looked past her at Tony. “I’ll take Mrs. Sutherland in, Sergeant.” Without waiting for a reply, he took Rachel’s elbow, but she shrugged him off.

      “Lansing. Ms. Lansing.” She stared straight ahead, then, when he made no reply, glanced sideways to see if he’d heard her.

      One dark eyebrow was raised, but Luke neither looked at her nor said anything. He just led her down the long hall. They stopped in front of a door with a frosted-glass panel embossed with gold letters outlined in black that proclaimed this to be the office of Captain Austin J. Branson, Chief of Detectives.

      Luke swung the door wide, and Rachel, careful not to touch him, stepped past him and into the office of the man who had been their closest friend and the best man at their wedding. “A.J.’s at a meeting. He’ll be back shortly.”

      The room thickened with an uncomfortable silence. Her back to him, she felt him move to the side of the room. It surprised Rachel that she could still sense Luke’s every movement without looking at him. But, then again, the man did have a presence that permeated all corners of any room.

      “What’re you doing here, Rachel?”

      His question stunned her. She jerked around to look at him. “A.J. didn’t tell you I was coming?”

      He shook his head. A lock of dark hair slid over his forehead. With a huff of impatience, he pushed it back. “No.”

      Luke had propped his thigh on the corner of the desk. The bunched muscles beneath the denim fabric brought images to mind of watching him during his daily workout, when sweat coated his tanned body and…

      She pushed the thoughts away with both hands.

      His dark gaze traveled slowly from her chestnut hair to her gray suit, then downward to her tanned legs, remaining there for a tantalizing moment before moving back to her face. Insanely, she wished she’d worn panty hose.

      “You’re looking good, Rachel. Georgia agrees with you.”

      Fighting off the magnetic pull of his gaze, she dropped her briefcase to the floor, then slipped into the chair in front of the desk and pulled her skirt over her knees, effectively cutting short his appraisal.

      He smiled knowingly. “You always did have legs that magnetized a man’s senses.”

      She gripped her hands together in her lap to cover their shaking. In an attempt to feed her suddenly starving lungs, she took a deep breath. What the hell was wrong with her? She was over him, over his charismatic ways, over falling victim to his pretty words. Nerves. It had to be nerves. After all, it wasn’t every day she embarked on a case that could lead her to the bastard who took Maggie.

      Unwilling to prolong this conversation, she glared at him. “I didn’t come all this way to discuss my legs. You can leave. I don’t need you to babysit me. I’ll be fine until A.J. comes back.”

      “I’ll wait,” he said and settled his back against the file cabinet beside the desk.

      “Suit yourself,” she said, then picked up her briefcase and opened it. She glanced at Luke, then quickly averted her gaze to a handful of papers she’d extracted from the open case and attempted to read them. The words swam across the bright white paper. If he would just leave or, at the very least, stop staring at her.

      Luke drank in the sight of his former wife. It had been so long. Why was she here? A.J. hadn’t mentioned that he’d been expecting her. Had she somehow heard about the arson case they’d been working on and come to offer her help?

      If she had, she had a big surprise coming her way. As head of the task force investigating the arsons, he would never agree to having her join the team and, knowing what kind of emotional strain it would put on her, A.J. would never take her up on it. Both he and A.J. knew that Rachel was one of the best arson profilers in the business, but there were too many emotional ties connected to this case, ties she didn’t need tearing her apart. So, back to his original question. Why was she here?

      She pushed her hair from her face and the light reflected off something at the open neck of her blouse. He waited for a better look, and when she straightened for a second, he saw it. The Oriental necklace he’d given her the week before Maggie was—

      He broke the thought off abruptly before it had time to fully form. The last thing he needed right now was to be distracted by the guilt that seemed to ride his back and eat at his belly daily.

      The gold necklace winked at him. Given that Rachel had done all she could to cut him out of her life—not that he blamed her—that she was still wearing it shocked him.

      His СКАЧАТЬ