Page 58 of Threat of Danger
“Jess?”
She abandoned the dresser and dropped onto the bed. She winced as she looked at him. “I overheard you and Brody and Jared talking about the tower, egging each other on. I thought if I climbed up, kind of proved myself, you’d take me into the club.”
He ran his fingers through his still-military-length hair. He was never going to forget the image of her so high up she looked like a small doll, clinging to the top rung, tears rolling down her face, too scared to move up to the platform, too scared to come back down.
“You did that to impress us? Jesus.” Then he told her the sad truth. “You could never have been in the club. Boys only. Sorry.”
She scoffed. “How is that for a stupid rule?”
She reached for a bathrobe to fold, her soft cotton shirt molding to her incredible breasts. Predictably, Derek’s body responded.
“Pretty stupid,” he agreed. “We didn’t know what we were missing. I still can’t believe you climbed that high. We were all too chicken.”
She stilled, only her eyebrows moving, higher and higher. “You were?”
“Brody made that shit up to give Jared a hard time. None of us ever had the balls.”
Until Jess was up there, stuck. Then Derek had gone after her. He would have done anything for Jess.
Air left her lungs in a huff; then her smile snapped back into place, stretching from ear to ear. “Hey, I was a total badass.”
“I seem to remember the expression tossed around wasout of control.”
“They were right.” She set the folded robe aside and picked up a long, flannel nightgown. “I was establishing a pitiful pattern.”
“What pattern?”
“Trying to get your attention,” she said without looking at him. Her cheeks pinked again. “I was desperately in love with you back then.”
Derek thought he’d never heard of a sadder word than thatwas. He hated it.
He stepped farther into the room. “Jess ... I’m sorry I left. After ...”
She busied herself with shaking out and refolding more clothes, sorting them into two piles. “Even if you hadn’t left, I couldn’t have stayed here.”
“I should have gotten in touch over the years.”
She finally looked at him. “I’m not sure I would have responded.”
She abandoned folding at last, stood up but stayed where she was, out of reach, shoving her hands into her back pockets. “I wanted to forget everything and everyone associated with my past. I needed to remake myself into someone else, somebody who wasn’t a victim.”
“Into a kick-ass action-movie heroine?” He tried not to stare at the breasts that her posture pushed out and lifted even more.
“Maybe.”
“You were never a victim, Jess. You survived and you thrived. You were always the heroine of the story.”
“And you were the hero?”
“No. Our story didn’t have a hero.” But, God, Derek wished he could have been one, that he could have fought off the bastard right at the beginning, before Jess had gotten hurt.
She watched him with a torn expression.
Common sense said to walk away. She’d worked hard to make a life for herself in LA that worked for her.
Screw common sense.He stepped forward and reached around her, looped his fingers around her slim wrists, and tugged her hands from her pockets. Then he took those hands and drew her closer to him.
“Derek ...”
