The Man She Almost Married

by Maggie Price

  Julia’s hand rose, pressing on her stomach where an answering, bittersweet tug of longing settled. God, had she really thought the passage of time could dull the memories?

  As if suddenly sensing her presence, Sloan turned, his dark gaze meeting hers. If he was surprised to find her standing in his doorway, he hid it.

  “What now, Sergeant Cruze?” he asked smoothly. “Did you suddenly realize your sweeping search of my property failed to include a check of my fillings for murder weapons?”

  She ignored the jab. “We need to talk.”

  “That’s exactly what we aren’t going to do. I told your partner to contact my lawyer with any further questions. The same goes for you.”

  “We’ll be sure and do that.”

  She stepped into the room, feeling his cool scrutiny as she walked to the couch and dropped her purse on the leather cushion. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she tugged the gold badge and holstered automatic off her waistband and laid them beside the purse.

  She turned and faced him. “I’m not here as a cop.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “As what, then?”

  “Just...someone who wants to ask a question.”

  His mouth took on a sardonic curve. “That’s all you’ve done the past two days. Shall I wait to answer until you turn on your recorder?”

  “Dammit, Sloan, I told you, I’m not here as a cop.” She moved to the desk, her hand gripping the back of the leather chair. “This is personal, between you and me.”

  “So you’re off duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was about to pour myself a Scotch. Would you like one?”

  She blinked. “I thought you quit drinking.”

  “I thought I did, too.” He went to the carved liquor cabinet and poured Scotch from a decanter into crystal tumblers.

  “Well,” he said, walking across the room to where she stood. “Ask your question.” He handed her a tumbler, knocked back the contents of his own and sat it on the edge of the desk.

  She raised her glass, sipped. The Scotch went down like liquid gold, yet did nothing to loosen the knot in her throat.

  “Were you sick when you broke our engagement?”

  He said nothing for a moment, his eyes on hers. “It upset me to do it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s not, and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  Very deliberately she placed her glass on the desk, pulled open the top drawer and removed the thick file. “This is full of medical reports. On you.” She laid the file aside, then reached into the drawer and pulled out a handful of brochures. “These all deal with cancer. All addressed to you.”

  His eyes stayed on hers. “True.”

  “I saw your scar. You had more than just exploratory surgery, didn’t you?”

  He cocked his head. “Did you become a doctor while I was away?”

  “Don’t try to get around this, Sloan. If you were sick, I had a right to know.”

  “I had a right not to tell you.”

  “So, you had cancer then? When you broke our engagement, you knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “And because you didn’t...” Her voice trailed off and she shifted her gaze to the dark fireplace.

  “Didn’t what?”

  She forced her gaze back to his. “Because you suddenly discovered you didn’t love me, you decided I had no need to know.”

  His chin rose imperceptibly. “Under the circumstances, a clean break was best.”

  “A clean break,” she repeated coolly. “Maybe it was a clean break for you, Sloan, but I had no closure. You showed up, told me everything we’d shared had been a lie, then you walked out.” Her hands clenched at her sides. “How do you think I felt the next morning when I went looking for you, and Rick told me you’d left town? I’d never begged in my life, but I did then. You’ll be glad to know your security chief used the utmost politeness when he told me that where you’d gone was none of my business.”

  Sloan slid a hand into the pocket of his slacks. “If you’d known where to find me, what would you have done?”

  “For starters, told you what a bastard you are.”

  “Now you’ve told me. Is that closure enough for you?”

  His cool, impersonal expression stirred her temper. Damn him, she hated that wall he so effortlessly maintained around himself.

  “No, it’s not enough.” Turning, she began moving around the room, arms wrapped at her waisf as if a chill had settled in. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? I don’t understand why you couldn’t have at least told me.”

  “I was leaving. There was no point.”

  She shook her head. “No point.” Her heels sounded, hollow echoes against the polished oak floor as she paced alongside the wall of bookcases. Antique decoys nested on the shelves; the leather volumes that filled the air with their aged scent shared space with gleaming silver candlesticks.

  “No point,” she repeated.

  “Just as there’s no point to our rehashing the past. We’ve both moved on, have...other interests.”

  His very remote, very polite tone had her gritting her teeth. He sounded as if she’d dropped by to discuss the weather.

  She paused before a shelf crowded with a homey collection of family photographs in odd-shaped frames. Sloan’s parents smiled out at her as they lounged on the deck of a yacht, a glinting blue sea in the background. She had never met them—both had died years ago. Another frame held a picture of a teenage Sloan and his sister on a beach, tossing a stick to a retriever that appeared as drenched as they.

  Julia frowned as pieces of a puzzle shifted in her logical cop’s brain. A vague image formed, then immediately drifted away like gray smoke.

  She turned. Sloan had remained beside the desk, half a room away. “You talked to me only once about your parents’ deaths,” she said quietly. “You said your father died of lung cancer.”

  “What is the point of this?”

  It was not lost on her that Sloan’s voice had taken on an icy edge. She lifted the frame that held his parents’ photograph. “And you lost your mother a few months later. You said she died from a combination of grief and the sacrificing of her own health while caring for your father.”

  “Julia, this isn’t something I want to discuss.”

  She stared at him, her stomach tightening as the piece of the puzzle she’d been so long without slid neatly into place. Even after Sloan left, a deep, secret corner in her heart had never fully accepted that he had not loved her. How could he have whispered soft words across a span of uncountable nights while their bodies throbbed with passion and feel no love? How could he share such intimacies with her and remain emotionally untouched?

  Standing motionless with the frame gripped in her hand, Julia let the questions roll over her. Questions that she’d grieved over for endless hours, days. Months. Agonizing questions that had brought no answers...until now.

  “My God...” The tautness in her stomach turned into a fist, a hot, clenching fist that drained the blood from her face. “You had cancer. Did you think if you stayed with me that the same thing would happen to me as happened to your mother?”

  “I told you the reason—”

  “You didn’t love me. That’s what you said, then you disappeared, making sure I wouldn’t know you were sick. Making sure I couldn’t be with you. Couldn’t take care of you...the way your mother took care of your father—”

  “Let it go, Julia.”

  “Let it go?” she asked, her voice trembling. “You thought I’d be like your mother. You thought I might die if you stayed with me.” She replaced the frame on the shelf, her hand shaking so badly that metal rattled against wood.

  Turning, she stared into the impassive face that told her nothing. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

  He lifted a dark brow. “Ridiculous?”

  “Ridiculous, ” she shot back, feeling grim satisfaction at his reaction, however slight. “
When we met, I was a patrol officer, riding a black and white in a district called the ‘War Zone.’ I ran the risk of getting pounded, pummeled or shot every day.”

  “You don’t think I thought of that?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you thought then. Or what you’re thinking now.”

  “And it doesn’t matter,” he countered. “Don’t try to second-guess my decision. It was the right one.”

  “Right for whom?”

  “Both of us.”

  “You decided to tear my life apart, yet you gave no say in the matter? How was that right for me?”

  “So right that I’d do it again.”

  The hard set of his jaw, the cool control in his eyes sent anger and resentment bubbling to the surface. “You just turned off your feelings.” She walked toward him, stiff with anger. “And where I was concerned, opted for total amputation.”

  He sliced her a look. “It was the only fair thing to do.”

  “Fair?”

  “Yes, fair.”

  She could almost feel him tense as she advanced on him, stopping when only inches separated their bodies. “It’s all a matter of control for you, isn’t it, Sloan?” Her arm rose, her hand settling against his chest, his heart. She felt its steady beat beneath her palm, the heat of the man. Her fingers splayed, moved. “You tell yourself not to feel, so you don’t.”

  His hand shot out, gripping her wrist. The gesture, she knew, was not meant to pull her closer, but to maintain distance.

  “What’s done is done,” he said, his voice toneless. “Let it go.”

  Every nerve inside her quivered with fury. She’d be damned before she let it go. The need to break through that aloof, reserved wall was overwhelming, more powerful than the anger boiling inside her, or even her common sense.

  She stared up into dark, unfathomable eyes, her kneading fingers feeling the power in the sinewy, muscled contours of his chest. The action seemed to have too much influence on her own pulse, but she’d gone too far to back off. “Was my touch that easy to forget?”

  His silence spurred her on, had her turning her body into his until no space separated them. “Did everything we shared mean nothing?” she hissed, her breasts grazing his chest. “Did my kiss mean nothing?”

  His fingers tightened on her wrist. “This is a bad idea,” he said, his eyes narrow, whiskey-colored slits. “Very bad.”

  “Did your damnable control ever slip during the past two years? Did you even for one minute hurt the way I did?” she persisted, her voice trembling. “Did you ever once feel broken inside?” She rose on tiptoes, her weight against him now, her. mouth inches from his. “Did you spend just one sleepless night thinking you’d die from the knowledge we’d never be together again? Never make love?”

  “Julia... don’t.”

  His hand had come up to rest on her hip; beneath the fabric of her skirt his fingers felt like steel rods. Whether the gesture went deeper than just an attempt to steady her, she didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  She lifted her chin, brushed her lips against his. “You loved me then, didn’t you?” she asked, hating that her voice was nothing more than a shaky whisper. “But said you didn’t, on the off chance I might die, along with you. I wanted to die when you left, Sloan. Did die, a hundred times.”

  He stared down at her, his silence slicing at her heart. Her body trembled with the agonizing knowledge that she no longer had the power to break through the emotional barrier around him. Could no longer elicit more than the smallest reaction.

  What the hell had she expected? What the hell had she been thinking? God, that was just it—she hadn’t thought. She’d reacted to a mixture of hurt and anger. And now, with her body plastered against the one that had fit so perfectly with hers in another lifetime, she was so filled with shame she couldn’t even look him in the eye.

  Weak-kneed and furious, she started to step back but went nowhere when his hand tightened on her hip.

  “Damn you, Julia,” he said, his voice low and rough. His arms were suddenly around her, locking her body against his. Fingers shoved through her hair, gripping, arching her head back. “Damn both of us.”

  The immediate and familiar rightness of being held in Sloan’s arms passed like a shock through her whole body. He lowered his mouth to hers, and she did nothing to stop him.

  His kiss was as hard and demanding as the body pressed against hers. Air seared in her lungs. A small voice of reason had her lifting a hand to push against his shoulder. She might as well have tried to move a brick wall.

  His kiss deepened. Her mouth opened to his, and all reason slid into aching need. Something between a whimper and a sigh rose in her throat. Her hand fisted against his shoulder, remained motionless, and she found it was herself she now fought.

  She smelled the familiar mix of musky cologne and the man underneath, tasted the trace of smooth Scotch on his demanding lips. Each separate scent and taste merged, instilling a longing in her that had been with her forever, pulling her back to a time when she was completely his.

  Her mouth moved eagerly on his, while searing need churned the blood in her veins. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She was on fire, burning from the inside out, but she didn’t want to put out the flames. Wanted them only to consume her, along with his kiss, his touch.

  Her heart drummed heavily in her ears. The pulse between her legs quickened; she felt herself go wet. She was wrapped around him now, one arm circling his back, one hand against his chest, her fingers curled into his shirt.

  His hand slid down her shoulder, downward to mold her breast beneath his palm. Fingers moved, caressed; his hungry touch transformed the nipple that strained against lace into a hard, tight peak.

  A moan ripped up her throat. She wavered slightly as her legs turned to jelly.

  The tempo of his kiss changed, intensified. Need hammered inside her. She felt his hard arousal against her thigh, felt his own need pulsing.

  She gave herself up to the taste, the feel of him. She wanted only to sink onto the Oriental rug, pulling him with her, pulling his strong, hard body over hers, into hers.

  Had she ever stopped wanting him? For so long she hadn’t allowed herself to think about him, yet the sense of instant connection that had streaked through her body the first time he’d touched her was back, firing her blood. She’d been helpless to fight it then. Couldn’t fight it now.

  But she had to.

  The man who was this instant kissing her as though he didn’t give a damn about anything in the world but her had lied, torn her apart and walked away. She’d survived his leaving, made a new life for herself. A life that didn’t include him—could never include him.

  Battling for control, she stiffened her spine and pulled her mouth from his. “Sloan, stop.”

  When she turned her head, he merely tugged her face around and kissed her again, his tongue delving into her mouth.

  Her hesitation lasted only a brief second before she put her palms against his chest and shoved away, gulping in shallow, ragged breaths. “This... I... can’t do this.”

  “You were doing fine, believe me.”

  She stared up at him, one of her hands gripping the desk to steady herself, her dark hair falling down around her face, covering her shoulders. She struggled to find her voice. “I... shouldn’t have ...”

  “No, you shouldn’t have, but you did,” he shot back. “Dammit, we both did.”

  She had never seen his control snap. Never before heard the hard mix of fury and frustration in his voice, never seen his temper flash, then wash across his face. When he stepped toward her, his eyes dark and reckless, her breath backed up in her lungs.

  He captured her chin with a strong hand, forcing her gaze to his. “Would you like to know just how afraid I was for you?” he asked, his voice low and thick.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said, willing her legs to stop trembling so she could make it to the door without falling on her face. She wanted to be anywhere else but here,
with this man who’d reduced her to a pool of quivering mush.

  Pulling from his touch, she took a tentative step back. “Like you said, it’s in the past. I shouldn’t have come back here. Shouldn’t have asked—”

  “I was terrified when my parents died within months of each other,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “And when the doctor told me I was in Stage III of Hodgkins disease and had a slim chance of survival, I was sick with fear. Cold-blooded fear. Not so much that I would die, but that I’d take you with me, just like my father took my mother.”

  “God...” Julia dragged in a breath. “You couldn’t have known that would happen.”

  “I’ll tell you what I did know,” he said, his eyes flashing. “When my father got sick, my mother’s world shrank to the size of his hospital room. Month after month went by, and she wouldn’t leave him. He had private nurses around the clock, but she wouldn’t leave him. Wouldn’t let my sister or me take her to dinner, didn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time. All she did was sit by his bed and hold his hand. In the end, the drugs they gave him couldn’t touch his pain. Watching him suffer tore her apart, broke her into pieces....” His voice trailed off and he closed his eyes for a moment.

  Heart clenching, Julia raised a hand to reach for him, then let it drop to her side. “You never told me.” Her voice was shaking as bad as her knees. “Why didn’t you ever tell me these things?”

  “I see no sense in discussing something that dredges up those kinds of memories.” He shoved a hand through his dark hair as he turned and walked back to the window where he’d been when she came in. He stood in silence as he gazed out the glass, his grim profile a mix of sunlight and shadows.

  “I know your mind, Julia,” he said finally. “Your heart. You’re so much like my mother. You’d have sat by my bed, day after day. You’d have insisted on taking a leave of absence from your job, maybe even given up the career you love. It was in my power to prevent those things, to stop the same thing from happening to you as my mother. So I did.”