Still the One. Debra Cowan

had no answer for that so he started the engine and backed the ’Vette out of Kit’s drive. He turned north on May Avenue and headed toward his house in Quail Creek. Amazing how close they lived to each other. Amazing they’d steered clear of each other until now.

      She sat on her side of the car, arms crossed tightly. He figured she was probably still mad about his comments concerning Dizzy Lizzy. That was for the best. The more distance between them, the better.

      Still, as he slid a look at her pale golden skin, the finely sculpted profile, his whole body tightened. In all fairness, their breakup hadn’t been entirely her fault. He’d blamed her all these years for not speaking up, but back then he had been too controlling, too insistent on his own way.

      Even when he’d proposed, he hadn’t asked her to marry him; he’d simply told her she would and how they would live. The realization jolted him, and he jerked his gaze to the road. That had been a valid reason to turn him down. Besides her keen sense of family responsibility, had his control played a part in why she couldn’t commit to him? The only excuse he had for his domineering behavior was that he’d been young and stupid.

      As she looked out the window at passing scenery, holding herself away from him, he realized it didn’t matter now. They’d gone their separate ways.

      Spying a police cruiser up ahead, he changed lanes and pulled into the small parking lot of an all-night doughnut shop. She sent him a questioning look and he grinned, slid out of the car and moved around to remove the tracking device from the belly of the ’Vette.

      He walked to the black and white, slapped it on the underside of the bumper and got back in his car.

      Kit laughed. “That was good.”

      “It’ll keep them busy for a while.”

      “Until we get to your house?”

      “Yeah.”

      Her smile faded, and he recognized the shadows in her eyes as memories from the past. Memories she was fighting as much as he was. The silence stretched between them, stilted and unfinished. Regret pricked at him. He was swept with a sudden urge to touch her, reassure her, but about what? The past was past. Best to leave it alone.

      He put the car in gear, reversed and pulled onto May Avenue. They drove in silence to his house. His life was markedly different from what he’d planned, even aside from Kit. She, on the other hand, still appeared to be her sister’s self-appointed rescuer.

      Despite the years that had passed, Rafe wasn’t willing to play second fiddle to Dizzy Lizzy. Yes, the more distance the better. And that meant keeping his hands to himself. After that kiss, which even now rattled him, he knew she could still affect him like a neutron bomb. He couldn’t allow himself to get close to her again, not physically, not emotionally.

      He’d have to protect her, find her sister without letting it become personal. They were over. They couldn’t go back; he wouldn’t go back.

      For the fourth time in the last half hour, Kit rose from the supple, navy leather sofa in Rafe’s living room and walked toward the sliding patio doors. He had grilled chicken and vegetables for dinner; she’d cleaned up afterward. And thirty minutes ago, he’d invited her outside, but she’d thought it would be more prudent to stay inside. Away from him.

      She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss at her house. It had completely ambushed her senses. And unleashed the curiosity that had been hammering at her since seeing him this morning.

      Rafe’s finding that tracking device had convinced Kit that her sister was in danger, no matter what he said. She’d gotten a chuckle out of his putting it on the police cruiser. He was still so darn cute. Which she didn’t need to be thinking about, either.

      Still, if they were going to be stuck together, she wanted to know how he’d gotten back to Oklahoma City. It had unsettled her to learn that they lived within five miles of each other and she hadn’t known it.

      Finally, prodded by the curiosity she’d been trying all day to deny, she stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the patio and closed the door behind her.

      Flagstone tile in variegated shades of cream and terra-cotta formed a far-reaching patio and framed a small rectangular pool. Potted plants in oversize ceramic planters guarded each corner. Bunches of petunias, begonias and other annuals spilled against a tall wooden privacy fence. A six-foot-wide border of grass edged the fence and butted up against the tile. The pool, covered with a blue tarp, waited to be filled with the first water of summer. Last week’s Memorial Day had surely been hot enough for swimmers.

      Light from inside the house washed across the tile, shimmered off the cushioned lounge chairs around the pool. It was a perfect early summer night, growing cooler as the darkness swallowed the last of the sun. The stars burned bright in a velvet sky. Moonlight skittered across the patio, danced with the darkness. Kit squinted into the shadows.

      “Over here.”

      Rafe’s smoothly dark voice came from behind her and sent a shiver over her skin. She turned, rubbing her arms. She attributed the tightening of her belly to a sudden breeze, not the delicious timbre of his voice.

      About ten feet to her right, she saw the silhouette of his upper body. The muted glow of house lights behind him played against his raven hair. Broad shoulders, seemingly carved from the night, rose from the water of a hot tub. Steam curled around him, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw he had leaned back against the wall of the hot tub, arms spread on either side, waiting, watching. Aggressive, male, primally appealing. He was familiar, and yet not. Her knowledge of the boy bumped into the mystery of the man.

      She swallowed against the purely feminine flutter in her stomach and squashed the urge to scurry back into the house.

      “If you want to join me, there’s an extra suit over there.” He inclined his head toward a storage closet partially visible in the shadowed alcove behind him, which also housed a grill and a picnic table. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Or you can go without. I won’t be offended.”

      To cover the sudden dip in her stomach, she retorted, “Yeah, that’s why I came out here. To get naked with you.”

      He chuckled, and she found herself smiling. He was over there; she was over here. She was safe.

      Still, that kiss from this afternoon was fresh in her mind, and the feel of that lean hard body against hers had opened the floodgate on memories that were better ignored.

      “You sure you don’t want to join me?”

      “Yes,” she murmured, wondering what he would do if she actually climbed in there with him.

      “Pull up a chair or scoot over and dip your feet in. Feels pretty good.” He swirled a hand through the water invitingly, stirring moonlight and shadows around his bare, glistening chest.

      She hoped he had something on beneath that water. He’d done his share of skinny-dipping in college.

      “You’ve got a real bachelor setup here. The hot tub, the pool, the extra suit.” She couldn’t keep the bite out of her voice.

      “People leave things,” he said with a shrug.

      Which answered nothing. She itched to slip off her shoes and stick her feet in the warm water, but she knew it would be safer to stay dressed, keep some distance between them. Rafe, even without the seductive softness of night, had always been able to make her do things she regretted later. Like kissing him back there at her house.

      Forcing the words past her tight throat, she asked, “So, where do we start tomorrow?”

      She glanced over as he ran a wet hand through his dark hair, muscles flexing in his biceps with the movement. “We’ll stop at Tony’s parole officer first, see if he’s heard from him at all. Then we’ll pay a visit to Tony’s employer.”

      Kit nodded.

      “Was that what you really wanted to know, Kit?”