The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #9)(16)

Rafe could barely bank his fury at the thought of anything ever happening to the too-trusting woman sitting across from him. "Don’t ever joke about something like that. It isn’t funny."

* * *

Coming out into her kitchen and finding Rafe making breakfast had felt like a dream come true, especially when he made the best scrambled eggs she’d ever had. With his big hands and rugged handsomeness, she could only imagine the way women must throw themselves at him...and how many he must have caught over the years to take to his bed.

It felt so natural to have him in her house—two friends who had been lucky enough to reconnect after so many years apart—that Brooke had found herself questioning everything she’d felt last night. Was Rafe truly darker and more intense now? Had she invented the frustration she’d seen on his face when he’d told her, ever so briefly, about his job as a private investigator? And had she imagined the hard tone of his voice when he’d told her flat out that he wouldn’t let her blindfold him for a taste test, obviously because he didn’t trust her?

Or was it simply that she’d been so surprised to see him—and had been so bowled over by his good looks—that her brain had spun off in ridiculous directions? Particularly the ones that had kept her up part of the night, dreaming of what it would be like to have his hands, his mouth, on her.

But just when she’d almost convinced herself that he was still the same carefree soul he’d once been, he’d brought up the locks and his concern that she was putting herself in danger by not dead-bolting herself inside. Even as she’d tried to tell herself it was just some guy thing, she knew it wasn’t.

Her parents had taught her to obey the rules and not to ask questions that might offend someone or shake things up. But Rafe was her friend, and she cared too much about him to worry about putting herself out on a limb.

"What happened, Rafe? Why are you so concerned about how secure my house is when you know as well as I do that virtually no one locks their doors or even their cars here at the lake?"

"People do bad things everywhere, Brooke. Even here." With those parting words, he was out the door and heading off to the hardware store on his motorcycle.

* * *

He came back thirty minutes later with what had to be the biggest lock the local hardware store had in stock—an ugly silver deadbolt that looked scary all on its own—and a brand-new loaded tool box. During his absence, Brooke had been trying to focus her attention on a second round of the new summer-with-a-hint-of-winter truffle recipe she’d been so happily working on the day before. But now, her recipe came a distant second to the beautiful enigma kneeling in front of her door, screwing in the ugly bolt.

"I’m surprised they even sell locks like that here," she murmured as she picked up the thick plastic packaging and put it in her recycling bin.

He hadn’t said a word to her since he’d come back, had simply walked in through her unlocked door and gotten to work. Now he informed her, "I ordered some new latches for your windows. They’ll be in later this week."

Brooke’s natural inclination had always been to let people do what they thought was best for her. But she ended up surprising them both by pulling the screwdriver out of Rafe’s hand in midair.

She took a step away from him so that he couldn’t grab it back. "Why, Rafe? Tell me why you’re being like this and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you finish putting this horrible, ugly lock on my door."

He moved so slowly, so carefully toward her, that she had no doubt that he was good at his job as a P.I., and that the people he investigated never even knew he was there watching them.

"I already told you why," he said in a low voice that rumbled up her spine and made her feel hot all over.

"No," she countered, "you haven’t. The last time I saw you, you were a fourteen-year-old boy who laughed all the time. You were wild and happy."

"We’ve both grown up, Brooke."

Even though he all but growled the words at her, instead of taking another step back as he likely intended her to do, she moved closer. Close enough to put her free hand on his face so that she could lightly stroke the stubble on his square jaw as she whispered, "Yes, we definitely have." Close enough that she could have gone up on her tippy-toes and pressed her mouth to his in the kiss she’d been dreaming of since the moment she’d seen him.

But even though she thought she read a similar desire in his eyes, before she could act on it, he moved away from her...and finally started telling her what she wanted to know.

"I started on the police force after college, on the traffic beat along with the other rookies. They let me shadow a couple of detectives, and it turned out I had a knack for tracking crooks. After I solved a high-profile tech fraud case, I struck out on my own and started the agency."

"Tech fraud wouldn’t have you worried about the lock on my door, though, would it?"

"Pretty early on I took on a client who was convinced her husband was cheating on her, even though she couldn’t prove it. He was a very wealthy CEO of a Fortune 500 company and she said no one else would take on her case because they were afraid of him. She also told me that the only way she and her kids would be able to survive financially after a divorce would be if she could prove he’d cheated on her. Something about her reminded me of Mia. And I hated to think of my little sister stuck in a crappy relationship with a rich creep who held all the cards."