Body Heat

the other to grasp the high railing so she could peer out for a better look. “This is almost surreal.”

Jake came up behind her. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it.”

She nodded. “And your sister owns this along with the penthouse? No one else in the building can come up?”

“No one.”

She let out a brief whistle. “I guess this is what they mean by wealth.”

“Guess so.” He propped one hip on a rung of the guardrail. “Nice life if you can get it.”

Brianne heard the chill in his voice and was reminded of the only time he’d frozen her out: when she’d verbalized the conclusion that he didn’t live in this apartment, that he was a visitor much like herself. She’d wondered then why he’d turned cold, and figured now was as good a time as any to ask.

“Jake?”

“What?” He stared out over the panoramic view of the city, obviously lost in thought.

She tried to come up with a way to formulate the question that wouldn’t set him off further, and realized there probably wasn’t one. “Why is money such a sensitive issue with you?”

He turned and looked at her. “I suppose when a guy’s wife leaves him for what he doesn’t have…”

“…he decides to paint all women with the same brush?” She finished the sentence for him, the conclusion not hard to figure out.

“I guess so,” he said with a brief nod.

And it hurt, Brianne thought. For so many reasons. The first of which was that she hadn’t known he’d been married. The thought of him in love with someone else stabbed her in the heart. Add to that the painful truth-she didn’t know much about him at all.

Except how he’d been injured. What it was like to share living space. And the rapture of his body deep inside hers, intimate in a way she’d never felt before. She was wrong. She did know him, she just knew too little about his past. And she’d wanted to keep it that way, to avoid the pain of emotional connection.

But it was too late. She’d already entrusted him with personal insight-her parents’ death, her difficulty dealing with anxiety and danger, and the frugal way in which she’d been forced to live in order to survive. She’d given to him emotionally despite the risk. It was time she let him talk in return.

But there was another reason his attitude about money and wealth hurt. She’d been open and honest about who and what she was but she’d never once given him the impression she’d taken this job so she could live the good life. In fact, no matter how he looked at it, she was still working two jobs to make ends meet. “It’s not like I’m some gold-digging tramp,” she muttered.

“No, you are not.” He grabbed for her hand.

His low growl and warm touch snapped her out of her internal dialogue and brought her anger to the surface. “Then, why do I feel like you’re thinking otherwise?”

“My fault for overreacting.” He glanced down as he ran his thumb over her wrist and massaged the pulse point there in an erotic circular motion.

His touch felt wickedly good, but she was more interested in what he had to say. Forcing herself to ignore the sensations traveling from a place as mundane as her wrist to other more private parts, like her breasts, wasn’t easy. But she managed, and one second later she was glad she’d remained alert enough to hear his next words.

“And showing my fear.”

Her heart leapt in her chest. “Fear of what?” Because Brianne thought she held a monopoly on that particular emotion. Hearing that a big, tough guy like Jake could not only succumb to fear but admit to it was a revelation she couldn’t believe.

“Fear of your judging me and finding me lacking, for one thing.”

She felt her eyes open wide-along with the heart she’d tried so desperately to keep shut tight. She stepped closer and found herself reaching for his face. A small voice in her head warned her she was treading emotionally deep waters, but she couldn’t stop.

His deep blue eyes bore into hers, and she cupped his razor-stubbled cheeks in her palms, the abrading sensation both ticklish and yet subtly arousing against her skin. “How could any woman find you lacking?” she asked.

“Do you have any idea what a cop earns?”

A smile worked at the corners of her mouth. “More than I’ve had left after boarding school bills, I’m sure. But I’ve never been unhappy. Just overwhelmed, exhausted and cash-poor.” She forced a laugh, then sobered quickly. “But if I’ve learned anything since my parents died, it’s that we make our own happiness in life.”

“My ex-wife looked to me to make her happy.” He shook his head. “Scratch that. She looked to my checkbook. The incredible thing is, she knew all about my lifestyle and what I could and couldn’t afford when she married me. She was a teacher, which meant her salary wasn’t over the top, either. I really did think we shared the fundamentals. Like the desire for a family.”

Brianne’s heart ached at the thought of Jake sharing anything with any woman other than herself. Uh-oh. “Did you have…kids?” She nearly choked on the word.

He shook his head. “But I wanted them.”

Did he still? “What changed?” she asked, quickly denying herself the time to think through the notion of Jake with another woman’s baby. The idea was too painful.

“I still don’t know. We moved to the suburbs, she met different people, more affluent couples-doctors, lawyers, businessmen.” He shrugged. “Then Rina met and married Robert. That couldn’t have helped.”

“None of that should have changed how she felt about you. None of that should have altered who your wife was inside.”

His eyes narrowed, and she could almost see the wheels turning inside his head as he sorted through his past. “Maybe that’s it, then. I never really knew who she was inside. I never took the time to find out.”

Her pulse picked up rhythm, if only because Brianne knew he’d taken the time to discover who she was. Enough to take her on a real date, to bring her ice cream because he thought that had been in short supply in her life. And to give himself, a warm, caring, loving man.

He may not have opened up before but he was doing so now, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to contemplate why. He’d started in the permanently off-limits column of her life, and now she wanted to move him over, into the more stable, long-term column. A place he couldn’t, wouldn’t want to be. He’d made that abundantly clear at the outset.

“Did you love her?” Brianne bit down on her lower lip, wishing she could call back the too-personal, too- revealing words.

“I thought she loved me but it turns out she never fully accepted who I am. What I’ll always be. She gave up on me when she realized she couldn’t change me.”

And that had scarred him badly, Brianne realized, enough to make him wary of other women and of the future. He had good reason. Brianne’s reasons for being wary of the future were different but she hadn’t fully accepted him and who he was, either. She’d admitted as much to his face. From the beginning, she wished she could change him from someone who loved danger to someone who preferred security and stability.

Is that what she still wanted? Because if she desired to change him, there was no chance for them or for the future. And a part of Brianne refused to accept that. Confusion twisted inside her.

He reached up and grasped her wrists. She hadn’t realized she was still holding on to his face, so natural was the flow of conversation and intimacy between them. And wasn’t that intimacy more indicative of what they shared than her dislike of his career? She felt the mental shift occurring slowly and knew she needed time to absorb the implications.

“To answer your question, I suppose I loved the person I married, not the person she became,” he said, speaking of his ex-wife. Jake’s gaze held Brianne’s, full of unspoken meaning. “I realize now that I never loved my ex-wife enough to change and grow with her.”

Brianne swallowed hard. “You couldn’t have made her happy then, Jake. And vice versa. Money didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I am. Look at my life. Money might have given me more free time but I’d still have been a too-young,