“And you probably wouldn’t be in here if you hadn’t run like a rabbit. At least not as quickly. With Al going on maternity leave again and everything. So it’s worked out well…for you.”
She was going to keep sticking that knife in, wasn’t she? Needling him because she knew she had him.
Jac only did that with him. He’d long thought it was because she trusted him. Felt safe enough with him to make him squirm when she could. Or she had. Once. He wanted her to tease him again—just not at this particular moment. “I did. It took me a few weeks to get Pamela straightened out. And I...”
“Put what happened between us on the back burner.” She hopped off his desk and just stood there in the middle of his office.
He didn’t want walls between them. There wasn’t any other way to put it. “I hurt you. I am so damned sorry for that. By the time I resurfaced, it was too late. You were in Tallahassee, I think.”
“That was a few weeks before Masterson. You could have sent an email. Even a carrier pigeon.”
“And said what? Sorry I acted like an asshole after the best damned kiss of my life?”
Heat hit her cheeks. She glanced away.
Max studied her face as he realized the truth. She was unsure because of the kiss.
Of course, she was; Jac wasn’t extremely experienced. She’d never told him that, but Max knew.
“That would have been a good place to start. Instead, you just dropped me like a rock and left me hanging. I would have understood. If you had bothered to trust me.” She came close enough he could smell the shampoo she favored. “We’ve worked together over five years, been good friends for at least three of those years. You should have trusted me to know that I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Max wanted to close his eyes and just breathe her in. That’s when her words registered. She was right; he hadn’t trusted her at all. “Jac...”
“Just...tell Emery I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And there is no way that I will ever break a promise to her. I know what it means to her for someone to keep their word. Trust…it’s the most important thing there is.”
She darted out of his office as quickly as she had come in. Leaving him staring at her like an idiot. Damn it. He had hurt her through his careless actions all those weeks ago.
Deeper than he had realized.
Making things right between them was going to be harder than he’d thought. Convincing her to give him a chance for something more with her was going to be even more difficult than that.
It was a definite uphill battle.
Especially with PAVAD in between them, demanding so much of their souls.
He needed a plan. A stronger strategy. Something.
Max sank into his chair and sat there for a long time, just trying to think. He’d broken her trust. Now, he had to find a way to earn it back.
20
Jac took the long way to the multipurpose room where the Monday morning briefings were held. Max’s words were replaying in her head now. No wonder he’d overreacted to one simple kiss.
Pamela had nearly destroyed Max, just before Jac had met him. Pamela had left him for her career and because she’d hated being a mother. Pamela had told Jac once that she had flat out despised the whole process of dealing with an infant on daily basis.
They’d even had a live-in nanny at that point. It hadn’t been enough. Pamela loved Emery in her own way, but there was some significant abuse in Pamela’s past that made her not want to be a full-time parent. Or even a part-time one.
It was probably for the best.
Because she did love her daughter, she’d chosen not to be an active part of Emery’s life. Pamela paid child support and for Emery’s tuition to the best school in the city, and that was about it.
Pamela visited from Chicago a few times a year. Sometimes. Following through on her promises to Emery was not something Pamela considered important. At all. Jac had always known that, from the moment she had first met the statuesque blonde who worked in corporate law in Chicago.
Pamela and Max had been divorced for two years by the time Jac had transferred to St. Louis. That the other woman had wanted to reconcile with Max shocked Jac to her toes. Pamela had barely seemed interested in him at all.
She’d mostly treated him like a slightly dimwitted younger brother.
It had infuriated Jac every time.
It had most likely been a spur-of-the-moment thing for Pamela. She was rather mercurial. Most likely, she’d seen what she’d given up and was feeling broken that day.
Max’s second post after coming out of the academy was St. Louis. He’d been stationed in Illinois before. He’d gotten a later start at the academy than Jac had. He’d finished a PhD degree in sociology before entering law school, where he’d met Pamela.
Max was as brilliant as they came, and a phenomenal profiler—but when it came to interactions with women, he was completely clueless. Jac had observed that a time or million herself.
He’d dated other women since Jac had met him, quite a few. There had been one woman named LeeAnn who had taken a particular dislike to Jac and had tried to poison Emery against her repeatedly.
Who they were sleeping with—if anyone—was very high on that do-not-discuss list for both of them.
She hadn’t given much thought to Max’s love life before. Those were just details they hadn’t ever shared. She hadn’t exactly lived chastely over the past five years. There had been two men that she’d felt comfortable enough to have slept with since coming to St. Louis.
She hadn’t known he’d been having
