Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(78)

“Is your brother married?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah. Why?” Sara scooped up a bite.

“I’m trying to understand where he’s coming from. Why would he want you to go through with it when you weren’t sure?”

She watched Nolan as he twirled pasta. They had the same fork-spinning method, only his bites were bigger.

“He’s been married six years and has two kids,” she said. “He seems happy, but we’re not all that close, so who knows? His wife’s a life coach.” She rolled her eyes. “She actually gave me her business card after I called off the wedding. Like I need a card if I want to call my sister-in-law.” Sara shook her head. “Why are we talking about this, anyway?”

“Because I want to get to know you.”

She met his gaze. Those brown eyes were so serious, and she felt a flutter of nerves.

“Nolan . . . this thing with us . . .” She trailed off, not sure what she wanted to say.

“We don’t need to label it.”

“I tried to warn you, I’m bad at relationships.”

He laughed. “Says who?”

“My ex-fiancé, for one.”

“Yeah, well, he may be biased.”

“The same thing happened in college when I had a two-year boyfriend. I’m not good at commitments. I start to feel . . . trapped.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Claustrophobic, maybe?”

“You’re making light of it, but I’m bad at follow-through.”

“Bullshit.”

It was her turn to laugh. “How can you say ‘bullshit’ when you don’t know me that well?”

“I know enough.” He sipped his beer, watching her. He placed the bottle on the counter. “I know you spent six years getting a PhD. That takes follow-through. You spent a year on a humanitarian dig, when most people would have lasted a week. You applied for and landed a job at one of the top crime labs in the freaking world. You follow up on cold cases and victims everyone else has forgotten about. You work like a maniac, giving up most of your weekends.” He paused. “When something matters to you, you commit.”

His words filled her with a tingling sense of disbelief.

He got up and carried his plate to the sink, then turned and leaned back against the counter, smiling.

“I bet Patrick was all wrong for you, anyway.”

She shook her head. “You never even met him.”

“Don’t need to. I bet I could guess what he’s like.”

“Now your arrogance is showing.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Let me take a stab at it.” He rubbed his chin and looked at her. “Private college. Maybe grad school but no doctorate. You’re more educated than he is, so he’s probably threatened by you.”

“Go on.”

“I’m guessing he’s a rules type. Law and order. And you were living near Washington, so . . .” He gave her a squinty look. “FBI agent, D.C. office.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“Am I right?”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “U.S. Attorney’s Office, Alexandria, Virginia.”

“Sorry, I’m way off.”

No, he’d pretty much nailed it. Sara just stared at him, too shocked to speak.

“I bet he’s pretty shrewd, too,” Nolan said, “so when he realized you weren’t going to marry him, he said a bunch of shitty things to you to give you a complex and keep you from moving on.”

That hit a little too close to home. Every word Patrick had said to her had been stuck in her head for two years on a continuous loop.

You’re a selfish bitch, Sara.

I’m a bitch because I want to talk about this?

You think you can just jerk people around? If you do this now, that’s it. We’re done, and I can tell you right now, you’re going to end up alone.

Sara took her plate to the sink. “You don’t need to be my shrink.”

He shrugged. “Fine. But you brought this topic up twice now, trying to scare me off. I’m just pointing out you’ve got a hang-up about something, and I don’t think you should.”

“I’m not trying to scare you off.”

“No?”

“No.”

What was she trying to do? She wasn’t sure, and that was part of the problem. She’d been involved in two long-term relationships, and both had failed. She didn’t want to go there again, at least not right now. Now was supposed to be her time to focus on herself and her career, to be the strong, independent woman she’d always wanted to be.

She turned to look at Nolan, and he smiled slightly as he gazed down at her with those deep brown eyes. How had this happened? She’d taken so many precautions, and still she could feel herself being pulled in. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to give in to this intoxicating feeling of being with him, even though she’d perfected being alone. She had it down to a science, really—going through her life without letting people close. She had her job, her friends. But she didn’t have intimacy. She was terrified of it.

Nolan watched her with that perceptive look of his, and she felt like he could read her thoughts.

His phone beeped with a text, and he stepped over to check it. He was probably getting a callout, meaning he would have to leave after this weirdly open conversation.