“To salvage your political career?” Her tone was scathing.
Clearly, she hadn’t been thinking long-term.
Pride made him try to sound matter-of-fact. “If I’d been thinking about my political career, I wouldn’t have brought you home with me at all, much less to spend the night.”
That silenced her for a moment. It didn’t quell the panic in her eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was giving us both time.” He hesitated. “I’d intended to wait until the scum who tried to kill you has been arrested.”
“Because I’m so irrational right now?”
He didn’t say anything.
She puffed out air hard enough to lift the feathery strands of hair on her forehead. “I’m sorry. You were trying to help.”
Once again, he took refuge in silence.
“We can pretend and…well, break it off after a while.”
He gazed straight ahead at his garage. “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know!” she cried in obvious distress. “Were you being chivalrous? Is that what this is about? Now you think you have to go through with it?”
His muscles were rigid, his hands fisted on his thighs. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself love this woman and imagine a future. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of rejection he’d never wanted to have to endure?
“You can say no,” he said woodenly. “I told you at the beginning, nothing personal between us will affect your job or our relationship at work.”
“It’s just…you’ve never said anything, and now this. I thought—”
“We were having hot sex, no harm, no foul?”
“No!”
She looked completely miserable, but he couldn’t seem to summon any sympathy. He felt too wounded himself.
“Cait, let’s let it ride for now,” he said wearily. “You’re not committed to anything. We’ll see what happens, okay?”
Lips compressed, she finally nodded.
He started the engine, released the emergency brake and backed out of the driveway as if nothing had changed. They didn’t talk during the ten-minute trip. He parked in the mayor’s reserved slot beneath city hall and got out, barely conscious of the dozen or more people locking cars, hurrying across the garage or waiting for the elevator. No point in subterfuge now.
Cait joined him, her face as pinched as it had been after her ex’s escapades, and they joined the stream of city employees.
Packed in the elevator with others, both stared at the lighted numbers. They reached her floor first. “I’ll call,” he said, and she nodded and exited with a couple of other women.
* * *
IT TOOK NOAH longer than it should have to get over being an idiot.
He’d stalked past his assistant with a curt “I don’t want to be interrupted,” closed his office door behind him and dropped down in his desk chair to brood. As usual, he swiveled the chair so he could look out the window toward the butte and the angel atop it.
Hurt was a knot in his chest and acid in his belly. He hadn’t been so devastated since he was a boy coming to terms with how little he mattered to either of his parents. His thoughts swung wildly between this morning’s sweet lovemaking and the scene after George had left.
It had to be an hour or more before the cramp of pain let up enough for him to really think.
There was a good reason he had planned to take it slowly with Cait. She’d been stalked for months by her creepy ex-boyfriend. Barely free of him, but dealing with the fact that he was going to jail because of his obsession with her, she had become the target of a cold-blooded killer. And, oh, yeah, meantime she’d come home to a town that didn’t seem to hold many good memories for her.
Sometimes he thought there was yet more bothering her. Her relationship with her brother had a level of discomfort on both sides that Noah didn’t entirely understand. Like him, she’d grown up in a dysfunctional family. Afraid of her father, she had ended up disillusioned with her mother, which left her more alone than a woman should be when someone like Ralston put her in his sights. And that following whatever Ralston had done that he had to be so damn sorry for.