Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(91)

I winced against the remorse that pummeled me at learning she’d been so upset, but then her words struck me. “You booked your flight home.”

Allison nodded. She’d caught her lower lip between her teeth, and her eyes told me she knew exactly what I’d just realized.

“Operations didn’t book it for you?”

“No.”

“You weren’t finished with your assignment.”

“No.”

“How did you convince them to let you leave?”

“I just said I had to go.”

“You told your boss you had to leave in the middle of an assignment?”

“Yes.”

“And did he ask for an explanation?”

“He didn’t have to. Considering I told him I needed to go home about three seconds after he finished briefing us about what’d happened to you, I think it was evident.”

Holy shit. I gaped at her as my mind spun helplessly. Her rushing here the way she had was a definite, concrete declaration about our relationship. Surely she had to realize that. How would she react when she finally comprehended what she’d done?

“Huh,” I finally came up with. Should I be pleased or concerned? Allison might be okay now, but after some time passed, she might freak the hell out. And that would land us right back where we’d started. I couldn’t go through that again.

“You know what’s funny?” she said, her dark eyes starting to twinkle and a dimple appearing on one cheek.

I shook my head, not even wanting to guess.

“Not one of the guys on that trip seemed surprised when I announced I wanted to beam myself back here to New York to be with you. Guess I wasn’t as good at hiding my feelings for you as I’d always hoped.”

I studied her, trying to determine whether she was as fine with that as she pretended to be. Again, I briefly suspected she might one day decide having the guys know we were—well, whatever we were—was a catastrophe. But before I could voice my concern, she went on.

“Maybe now’s a good time for us to have that talk.”

My insides combusted, then turned immediately to ash, and the sudden departure of heat made the cold that followed that much more pronounced. I tried to swallow and give a halfhearted nod. “Sure. I’m not going anywhere. Do you want to sit down?”

Allison shook her head. “No, thanks. I sat enough on the flight home to last a lifetime. I’ll stand.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know why I broke up with you, Ryan?”

I winced. Wow. Way to ease into this. Her words were like barbed wire. They caught on my heart and twisted, mangling tender flesh. God, the woman knew how to deliver a timely hit. I swallowed, successfully this time, and tried not to allow my pain to show on my face.

“Honestly? No. I have no idea.” And I hadn’t, because all she’d said to me had been, “Ryan, I’m really sorry. But this just isn’t working.” I’d questioned, pled, and attempted to appeal to her sense of fairness, but she’d refused to give me more than that.

If someone or something had pressed me—by, say, threatening to have a crocodile named Glocamorra maul me—I’d have guessed she’d wanted to stop seeing me because we’d been fighting so much about people finding out about us. I’d have speculated that I’d loved her more than she’d loved me and that she hadn’t wanted to deal with the depth of my emotions for her. But no one had pressed me, with crocodiles or otherwise, so I hadn’t been forced to articulate what I assumed her reasoning had been. Thank goodness. That wasn’t a conversation I’d been prepared to have—ever.

When she didn’t reply, I shrugged. “You weren’t exactly forthcoming.”

“I probably should’ve brought this up before now. I mean, I suppose it would’ve been best if I’d discussed it with you at any point during the past few years, but now I really feel like we should have talked before we…” Allison’s eyes flitted to the vicinity of my breasts. My breath caught, and I shivered as my nipples immediately hardened. “But I couldn’t stop myself from touching you long enough to think.” She smiled at me wistfully.

My heart soared, and I started tingling. I wanted to say something but decided she needed to get through this, so I remained silent.

“It was always that way with you, you know.” Allison’s voice was barely more than a whisper, and another nameless emotion glided beneath the surface of her eyes the way a shark slinks smoothly underneath the ocean.

“What way?”

“I always felt completely powerless around you. And confused and out of control. And wonderful.” And now the barest hint of a frown flowed across her face. “Did you know I used to spend most of my day sitting at my desk thinking about you?”

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t.”

“I don’t think I could quantify the amount of time I spent wondering what you were doing, who you were talking to, whether you were dazzling everyone with that gorgeous smile. I vacillated between dreading to see you, terrified anyone with eyes would take one look at me and know instantly how I felt about you, and hoping you’d storm into my office and kiss me breathless.”

Her words made me weak, and I hated to dispel the feeling, but I had to insert a very important truth. “You hated it when I came to your office.” True, I’d never kissed her in there, but toward the end of our relationship, the majority of my visits had earned me mostly dark scowls and clipped answers.