I pulled out from under him and rolled away. He caught me and brought me back.

I glared at him. He ignored the glare and his face (and I might add his fantastic mouth) started to come closer.

“You scared me,” I blurted in a whisper, do not ask me why. He still had twenty-six years, three hundred and sixty-four days left on his Silent Treatment Sentence.

His head stopped moving and he looked from my mouth to my eyes.

Go on, Ava, share. Pour out your heart, Good Ava said softly in my ear.

Quiet! Shut down, Ava. He’ll just use it to hurt you eventually, Bad Ava was sounding desperate.

“You were gone a long time. I was worried something happened to you.” Now why did I say that? Why was I talking at all?

Still in a quiet voice I kept sharing, unable to stop myself. “I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know who you are, what you do. But I know that scar on your belly isn’t from an appendectomy.”

Oh… my… God.

Someone shut me up.

He rolled me to my side facing him and both his arms came around me as he said, “Ava.”

“No, Luke. I thought I was protecting myself against all things men. After last night, I’m protecting myself from something a lot scarier. I’m not one of those women who can hack that kind of life. I don’t want any part of it.”

“So this is your new excuse?” he asked, instead of being accusatory, his voice was soft, gentle, affectionate.

“It’s not an excuse, Luke. I figure you’ll screw me over or leave me, one way or another, and I’ll end up alone. I’m alone now and I’m happy with it. Why go through the pain of losing someone again?”

“Someone you care about,” he said.

“What?”

“Go through the pain of losing someone you care about.”

Whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

We were not going to go there.

Time to change the subject.

“What’s the scar from?”

“Bullet to the gut,” he shared without hesitation.

I closed my eyes tight, visions of Luke with a gaping, bloody wound at his belly danced unhappily through my head. I didn’t like the visions, they scared the shit right out of me so I opened my eyes again.

“When?” I asked.

“Last summer.”

“How?”

“Babe,” he said softly and with a hint of regret. “I can’t tell you that. The cases we work are confidential.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m good at what I do.”

“I’m sure you are.”

His hands drifted up my back, pulling me closer. “You’re hangin’ on to this to hold me back. You’re a lot stronger than you’re sayin’ and you know it,” he told me.

“How did Vance feel when he was trying to staunch the blood pouring out of Jules?” Luke’s body went still at my soft words and I knew it was wrong to use this against him but I kept at it. “I get the impression from both you and Jules that you two are close. You were there. How did you feel seeing her lying there bleeding?”

His face changed, to my shock he let me see the pain slice through it and it hurt like hell to watch.

Then he said, “Quiet, Ava.”

“You want me to go through that?”

One of his hands slid up my neck into my hair, twisting it gently in his fist. “You wanna know what I want?” he asked.

Um. No. I definitely didn’t want to know what he wanted.

Before I could get a word in, he told me. “I want the old you to come back and make me laugh. I want the new you to toss your attitude around and make me hard. I liked comin’ home tonight to you, even knowin’ you were pissed at me. I liked leavin’ last night for work, knowin’ you were in my bed. I might like it for a week or I might like it for a lot longer. I can’t make any promises. All I know is, I want you now and you want me even though you won’t admit it. And I’m gonna do whatever it takes to give us what we want for as long as it lasts until however it ends.”

“You never listen to me,” I told him, beginning to get angry because I was right, if his latest speech was anything to go by he didn’t.

“I listen to you,” he said.

“Then you don’t hear me.”

“Ava, I hear you,” he was beginning to sound impatient.

I stared at him. He stared at me. This went on for a while.

He sighed and touched his lips to mine then said, “I’ll take you to dinner.”

“I don’t want dinner,” I shot back.

His eyes started to melt. “All right. I’m hungry but I’m happy to eat somethin’ else.”

Ee-yikes!

“I’ve just realized, I’m hungry. Let’s go to dinner.”

He gave me a half-grin.

We went to dinner.

Chapter Thirteen

Solid

It was the middle of the night again when Luke rolled, taking me over the top of him, settling me on the other side of the bed.

“Why do you do that?” I mumbled sleepily.

I was about to fall back to sleep, feeling his hand tag the back of my knee and pull it over his hip when he murmured, voice husky, “You’re on the wrong side of the bed.”

I cuddled into him, sliding into dreamland. “Then I’ll sleep on this side.”

I was so out of it, I didn’t realize all that my words said nor what it meant when, upon hearing them, Luke’s arms went tight around me, pulling me deep into his body.

“This side’s the wrong side too,” he told me.

That got my attention, because it made no sense.

I tilted my head back and looked at him in the dark. “What?”

“I can’t sleep on one side too long, the wound still gives me some pain.”

For some reason, I felt imaginary pain in my own belly at his words.

To hide my reaction, I stated the obvious, “Then just roll over.”

“If I roll over, you won’t be in arms reach.”

I blinked then, sleepy or not, I started to get angry. “Luke, I’m not going to sneak out of your bed in the middle of the night and do something stupid.”

“That’s not why I want you in reach.”

Whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Stop right there.

Time to go to sleep.

I dipped my chin and closed my eyes. Then because I had Barlow Bitch Blood pumping through my veins, I muttered, “You do that with all your women, they’ll think you’re nuts.”