The Inconvenient Laws of Attraction

by Trish Wylie

  ‘Being patient wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it?’ Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘You think I like sleeping with a stranger?’

  ‘Seems to me you liked it plenty last night.’ He bit back the way any animal would when backed into a corner.

  ‘Seems to me I wasn’t alone last night.’ She lifted her chin in defiance. ‘See, that’s what I don’t get. The stranger I sleep with? He’s a pretty amazing guy. That’s why I’d like to get to know him better. The man I spend time with during the day—most of the time he’s not bad—but he could win Jerk of the Year with very little effort.’

  Blake pressed his mouth into a thin line. If she wanted to get it off her chest he could be the big guy and take it, but once she’d spit it all out they’d be done.

  She lifted a hand and dropped it to her side. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Try and pin you down to a long-term commitment? Start planning a wedding and naming our kids the second you tell me something about your life? When did I strike you as someone desperately looking for a happily ever after? If I was, I sure as hell wouldn’t be looking at you.’

  That really shouldn’t have bugged him as much as it did. ‘Maybe you should tell me what it is you do want.’

  ‘I want you. To. Talk. To. Me.’

  ‘So we can work our way through my childhood issues?’ He jerked his brows. ‘I didn’t realise therapist training was part of the course at law school.’

  ‘You think you’re the only person who has been messed up by something that happened in the past?’ she yelled.

  Blake laughed and shook his head. ‘You’re so far over the line of good judgement now you’re flailing.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘You know squat about being messed up or what it takes to walk out the other side of it.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know.’

  Glancing down the hall, she nodded, eyes glinting with raw emotion when she looked at him again. ‘When you’ve spent six years of your life believing if you’d just done one thing different you might have saved someone’s life then you can talk to me about being messed up and what it takes to come out the other side of it. Okay?’ She took a breath, shook her head and turned on her heel, her voice cold and controlled. ‘I’m done. Talk to me, don’t talk to me. Do whatever the hell you want. At least I’ll know I tried.’

  Blake ground his teeth together, determined he was going to let it go. Just because every time she took a step back he felt the need to take a step forward didn’t mean—

  ‘I can’t.’

  She was on the other side of the banister from him when the words slipped out, surprising him as much as her. Blinking, he shook his head as she stopped and looked at him. What the hell was he doing?

  ‘Yes, you can,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘No.’ It took more effort to say it again. ‘I can’t.’

  The emphasis made her pause before asking, ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not something I do.’

  ‘You could try.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  Great, now he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. He tried to figure out why he was still there. Didn’t want to leave was the obvious answer. Understanding the underlying cause was a different matter. Since there was only one way he could find out, he sat down on the stairs, setting his feet apart and leaning his elbows on his knees before he looked at her through the carved wooden balustrade.

  ‘I’m not big on sharing.’

  ‘Because it’s not easy for you,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘Because I’m not any good at it.’ He frowned.

  Avoiding his gaze, she took a short breath, narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at him. ‘Stay there.’

  Climbing the stairs, she sat down a couple of steps below him, her back to the wall as she waited for him to decide what to tell her.

  ‘I can hold a conversation,’ he heard his traitorous voice explain. ‘I just can’t…’

  Form a sentence, apparently.

  ‘It’s okay, I get it now.’

  Good. Maybe she could explain it to him.

  ‘You didn’t get it five minutes ago.’

  ‘That was different.’ She shrugged when he looked at her. ‘I didn’t know why, then.’

  And that was all it took to appease her?

  ‘Makes sense…’

  It did?

  ‘Easier to tell when someone is holding stuff back if it’s something you do yourself. You’ve always known when I was doing it, even when I thought I had my game face on.’ She grimaced. ‘I don’t find this easy, either.’

  ‘Not like I make it easy for you.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Shocking as it is to believe, it’s not actually all about you.’

  Okay, he’d deserved that.

  She smiled a small smile. ‘Has there ever been a time you spit something out without thinking about it first?’

  A corner of his mouth tugged wryly. She had to ask?

  ‘I mean personal stuff.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re like that with everyone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Marty—you guys seemed pretty tight.’

  ‘We talk the way guys talk.’

  ‘Sports analogies, right?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘I can talk in football terms if it helps.’

  Blake lifted his brows. ‘Know what would help?’

  ‘Not patronizing you?’

  She’d got it in one. When she studied him again, he waited.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘You know the problem with that?’

  ‘Apart from the fact it’s lame?’

  He let her in on a little secret. ‘When women ask that question, whatever a guy was thinking is replaced with what he thinks he should be thinking.’

  ‘Is that what you do?’ She blinked innocently.

  ‘I tend to ignore the question.’

  When the smile softened her eyes, Blake shook his head. Fighting the need to close some of the distance between them for all of ten seconds, he reached for her hand, spreading his legs wider to make enough room to tug her onto the step below him. As she leaned back against his chest, he pressed the tip of his nose to soft summer-scented hair and breathed deep, allowing her body heat to seep into him before he rested his chin on her head and frowned at the tremor he could feel running through her.

  Gently rocking their bodies, he waited until he felt her take several long, controlled breaths before the shaking eased and she relaxed into him.

  ‘Right now,’ he said in a low voice as he lifted his head, ‘I’m thinking I’d really like to know what happened six years ago but I can’t ask you to tell me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Bit hypocritical, don’t you think?’ He looked down at her as she rested her head against his shoulder. ‘You share stuff with me, you’ll expect it in return.’

  ‘Sharing does tend to involve more than one person.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong guy for that.’

  ‘Do you want to try?’

  ‘I can’t change the past, Liv. Talking about it isn’t going to undo anything.’ As he said the words he felt the emptiness inside him grow.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I think?’

  She was asking for permission?

  ‘I think we have the perfect scenario for sharing stuff. We’re those passing ships in the night. But I don’t think it matters if you know someone for five minutes or fifty years, they all become part of your journey if you let them.’ The smile sounded in her voice. ‘I know that probably sounds dumb to you, but—’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I’ve met people like that.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Name one.’

  ‘Matthew Allen. Taught me to carve wood.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Grumpy old bastard, but he had tales to tell. He could see things in a lump of wood anyone else would have burnt. Left me his tools when
he died…’

  A legacy he’d appreciated from a man who had been more of a father to him in six months than Charlie Warren had been in a lifetime. He’d mourned Matthew’s passing. He could access what he’d felt at the time with very little effort.

  ‘And now I know something I didn’t know before…’

  Nodding, Blake considered what she’d said and thought about the raw emotion he’d seen in her eyes when she’d revealed more than she intended to in the heat of the moment. He liked the idea of being part of her journey—leaving the same indelible imprint on her it felt as if she was leaving on him. What he didn’t want was the time they spent together to be seen as a mistake or for it to hurt when she thought about it in the future.

  How she felt mattered to him. It may have crept up on him when he’d been distracted by everything else but it had been there for a while.

  ‘If I’m going to try this, you can’t look at me the way you did in that room.’

  ‘How did I look at you?’

  ‘Like a kicked puppy.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t need your pity, sweetheart.’

  ‘You thought that was pity?’ She looked stunned.

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘I can tell you it wasn’t pity.’ She shook her head. ‘The problem with only getting pieces of the puzzle is people have a tendency to fill in the gaps. I went from resenting your father to forgiving him a little to hating him and angry as hell in less than ten minutes.’

  Blake was tempted to welcome her to his seventeen-year-old world.

  Lowering her chin, she watched as she smoothed her palm over his arm in a light caress. ‘I don’t understand how someone can hide their child like that. I have a two-year-old niece—Amy—and Johnnie hands out pictures of her to the family like they’re fliers. Amy’s first smile, Amy’s first tooth, the first time Amy held a spoon—poor kid never gets a minute’s peace.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing.’

  ‘It should have been,’ she argued.

  Wasn’t much he could do about that, was there? But while he didn’t agree with the majority of choices his parents had made, he understood some of their motivation. ‘Sometimes kids are better kept out of the public eye.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’ She scowled. ‘Proud and protective aren’t mutually exclusive.’

  ‘Don’t get mad, sweetheart. I agree with you.’ He smiled, wondering if it had occurred to her the child she was so passionately defending was a fully grown man.

  ‘Why aren’t you angry?’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You should be angry.’

  ‘You want to go dig him up so you can kick his ass?’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said in an echo of the warning he’d given her. Twisting around, she grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and pushed her fist against his chest. ‘That wasn’t pity you could see, you idiot. I—’

  ‘I get it.’

  It was a lie. He didn’t. But the way she was looking at him was tough enough to handle without asking what it meant. His reaction to the unknown emotion he could see in her eyes made the simple act of breathing in and out more difficult. Hadn’t she got enough out of him for one day?

  As if she’d heard the question, the hand on his arm slipped up to his shoulder and around the back of his neck, adding pressure to lower his mouth to hers. The contact was light, unbelievably sweet, whisper soft and Blake was amazed—considering how much of it they’d done—they could still find a kiss that was new.

  When their lips parted and she looked into his eyes, his thoughts returned to what she’d yelled at him. He couldn’t imagine her ever being messed up. Not the Liv he knew. Every time she dropped a piece of information into a conversation or during the meandering chatter she felt necessary to fill a silence, he’d been on it, tucking away each detail as if he was saving them for the proverbial rainy day. But what he knew wasn’t enough. Not any more. Maybe that was why she’d pushed him.

  Blake discovered he was okay with that.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened six years ago?’

  She nodded. ‘I can talk about it. The compulsory visits to the department shrink can testify to that. He ticked the “not crazy” box—always good to know, right?’

  Blake knew what she was doing. He was the master when it came to making light of things that weren’t the remotest bit funny.

  ‘You know my brothers are cops.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did I mention my dad was a cop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And his dad before him.’ A wistful smile softened the blue of her eyes. ‘It’s in the blood. My whole life was geared towards becoming a cop. I couldn’t wait to sign up.’

  ‘How did your dad feel about that?’

  ‘Mixed feelings, but I like to think he’d have been proud.’ Avoiding his gaze, she added a matter-of-fact, ‘He had a heart attack two years before I graduated from the academy.’

  ‘He’d have been proud,’ Blake said with certainty.

  She flashed a small smile of appreciation before continuing. ‘After graduation, rookies get partnered with a Training Officer. I got Nick. He taught me a lot. One of the things he kept saying was you can’t be a cop if you let your emotions take over. We have to sit on them, push them deep inside so we can do our job. I struggled with that.’

  But she’d learnt how to do it, hadn’t she? It was a revealing insight into the woman he’d met at the beginning, while at the same time leaving him feeling as if he’d barely scratched the surface.

  ‘I told you about needing to know someone’s story to understand why they do the things they do.’ She waited for his nod. ‘What we’re not supposed to do is help people make decisions.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I still suck at that.’

  ‘Little bit.’ He smiled. ‘But there’s a difference between having an opinion and telling someone what to do.’

  She raised a brow. ‘Could we remember that the next time I have an opinion?’

  Walked right into that one, hadn’t he?

  ‘We can try,’ he allowed. Contrary to the impression he might have given her with rules that might possibly have been put there to see how long it would take her to break them, he was interested in her opinion. Didn’t mean he had to agree with it or that she would change his mind, but he could make an effort to be less defensive. ‘Keep going.’

  There was a pause as she took another breath and held it for a long moment. ‘On the patch we patrolled, there was an underpass at the edge of a park where homeless people gathered. We would drive by to check in on them. We looked for drug use and underage teens—kept an eye out if anyone was missing or died during the night—that kind of thing.’ She shrugged. ‘But you get to know people…’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘There is if you’re struggling with the not getting involved part of the job.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Every time we left, Nick had the same look on his face, especially after I got to know Jo. She was my contact. She would tell me when there had been problems, keep an eye on everyone, make sure anyone who couldn’t make it to food handouts had something brought back to them. Jo was special—wise beyond her years in many ways.’ She smiled. ‘Still is…’

  ‘You kept in touch with her?’

  ‘We share an apartment.’

  ‘Takes the phrase “bringing your work home with you” a tad too far, don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t judge,’ she warned.

  If she’d started adopting strays he was with Nick. How much could she realistically have known about the person she’d invited into her home? In a sense he supposed it was exactly what she’d done with him when she decided to share his bed. He frowned at the idea of being adopted like a stray. It was the last thing he wanted from her.

  But since it begged the question of what he did want…

  Her gaze lowered. ‘Jo introduced me to Aiden. He was a good kid—messed up—but a good kid.’ She blinked several ti
mes, as if focusing on something at a distance. ‘When he had problems with a guy who was taking his stuff, I talked to him about it and suggested he try clearing the air. I got the usual lecture from Nick on the way to get coffee but he was right. While we were gone Aiden did what I’d suggested and talked to the guy. There was an argument—the guy pulled a knife—and Aiden was stabbed in the stomach. Took us less than ten minutes to get back when the call came in, but he died at the scene.’

  When Blake felt another tremor run through her body, he tightened his arms. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I wasn’t holding the knife, but it felt like it was.’

  ‘You made a suggestion. He didn’t have to follow it.’

  ‘I was wearing the uniform and he was an eighteen-year-old kid.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have known better. Or intervened—intervened would have been better…’

  Except then she might have been the one who was stabbed in the stomach and died at the scene. Blake would never have met her. He didn’t like that scenario.

  ‘Bad things happen.’ He frowned at how trite it sounded. ‘You cared enough to try and help. I bet that meant a lot to a kid living on the streets.’

  ‘It wasn’t enough,’ she said in a small voice.

  Blake crooked his finger underneath her chin and tilted her face up, leaning down to look deep into her eyes as he repeated, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you?’ He wasn’t so sure.

  ‘I want to.’ She blinked incredulously. ‘That’s the first time I’ve admitted that. How did you know?’

  ‘Guilt looks different on everyone. Same for grief.’ He may have been struggling to deal with his inability to feel either one, ‘But I know them when I see them.’

  ‘I’m better now, really I am,’ she reassured him. ‘It just takes time to work through it, you know?’

  He brushed the backs of his fingers across her jaw. ‘I know, but you can’t blame yourself, Liv. We all make choices every day—some big, some small. If we tried to figure out the chain reaction of every single one, we’d go crazy. We won’t always get everything right but we can learn from the mistakes and decide what we’re willing to live with when we look in the mirror. I don’t think anyone can do anything more than that.’