Page 100 of Silent Threat
“I have no regrets. You?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Shouldn’t have asked that.Why bring it up when everything was going so well? Did he need to hear it so badly?
Annie was pulling back already. Guilt replaced the bliss on her face. “The ethics guidelines advise a two-year wait period after therapy is terminated, before patient and therapist can have a sexual relationship.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t ...”
He understood without her having to finish the sentence. She hadn’t meant to go this far. At least, not yet.
She slipped off him and began pulling on her clothes. Her flight instinct was kicking in.
Exasperation washed through him as he came up on one elbow. “I’m not now, nor ever was, your patient.”
He appreciated her ethics; he really did. But if she thought he was going to give her up for the next two years over some random, stupid rule, she was crazy. He wanted her again, already.
“I wasn’t anyone’s patient,” he told her. “I was at Hope Hill undercover, to investigate a case.”
Time stopped.
Her eyes snapped wide with shock. “You weren’t a patient. You didn’t come for therapy?”
“That was my cover. I was investigating someone.”
“Who?”
He wished he could tell her, because, clearly, this was the moment for truth between them, but he couldn’t. So he just shook his head. “The point is, you don’t have to worry about impropriety.”
She looked at him as if the words coming out of his mouth didn’t make any sense. Her breath caught, as if he’d stabbed her in the chest. He could almost see the metaphorical blood he’d drawn.
“What case?”
Man, he was messing this up. She was supposed to be relieved.
“I can’t talk about that. But we’re OK. You and I are fine to do whatever we want to do. Annie, I—”
“Stop.” She held up her hand, palm out. Her mouth tightened with pain. He beautiful eyes swam in gut-wrenching disappointment. “You came to Hope Hill under false pretenses? So every word you’ve ever said to me has been a lie?”
“Of course not every word. Annie, listen—”
“I can’t.” She cut him off, the broken look in her eyes killing him.
She blinked. And Cole could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she said, “My ID card. I keep misplacing it lately.” Her gaze sharpened with suspicion. “Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I borrowed it now and then.”For good reason, dammit.Cole reached for her. He had to make her understand. “Annie ...”
She shrank back—as if she no longer knew him, wanted him. As if she loathed him. “You used me.”
She turned another shade paler, as if she were bleeding out right in front of him.
“What we have—”
“We have nothing.” Her eyelashes trembled. “Nothing we had was ever real.”
Cole’s heart drummed madly. Cold panic surged through his veins when he finally began to understand how much he’d hurt her.
“Oh God. The Murray curse strikes again.” She said the bitter words. “I’m just too stupid to learn.” Her lips wobbled. “Please leave.”
Her eyes glinted with tears, devastation in her expression, in the way she held herself, as if on the verge of collapsing.
Jesus.He’d made her cry. Cole’s gut twisted.
