She nodded slowly, not looking away from him. “It can be. I don’t have many real friends because I live for my job. I’m pretty much on the job twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn’t leave much time for socializing.”
“And the asshole who cheated on you?”
“It happened two years ago. He was an agent, too, in a different department, thank God. I don’t have to see him every day. It was convenient. We both worked long hours, got together when we could. But I thought we were monogamous. He didn’t. It hurt, but it didn’t break me.” She tried to look away, but he turned her head up again to keep eye contact.
“Who have you been with since then?” His voice was demanding.
“Nobody until you,” she admitted. “I know we didn’t use a condom last night. It was careless of both of us. But I’m clean, and I’m still on birth control—”
“I know you’re clean. I saw your last physical. I knew you were on birth control, too. It was in your medical records.”
“You looked at my damn medical records,” she said irritably. Really, what the hell else did he have access to?
“You saw mine,” he reminded her cheekily. “Fair is fair. And if you didn’t see a physical, I’m completely free of any diseases. I never fuck without a condom. And I haven’t been with anybody at all since my accident.”
Lara gasped softly. “Why?” She would have thought that Tate Colter would have a ton of women waiting in line to jump into his bed.
“Because there was nobody I wanted to be with, Lara. My leg isn’t a pretty sight, and the desire just wasn’t there,” he answered bluntly. “Before that I lived for my job, too.”
“What changed?” She held her breath. His eyes drilled into hers, smoky and possessive as he stared.
“I saw you.” He stroked an errant lock of hair from her cheek. “My dick has been hard ever since,” he said unhappily.
Lara laughed until she snorted.
“It’s not funny,” Tate growled, annoyed.
“I’m not exactly a femme fatale.” Just the idea made her want to laugh again. “I eat like a pig. I hate dressing in heels, and I rarely bother to put on makeup unless I’m forced to. I don’t bother messing with my hair, and I’m most comfortable in jeans or a dark pantsuit and ugly, comfortable, flat shoes for work. I work in a male-dominated field, so I have to be tough. Most of the time I’d rather be kicking a guy’s ass than screwing him. How is that the least bit sexy?” She pushed on his chest and stepped away from him to put a safe distance between them.
He leaned a jean-clad hip against the kitchen counter and grinned at her. “There’s something really erotic about a woman with a gun who wants to attack me.”
“You’re deranged.” She covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. Dammit! He was so freaking hot that she did want to jump him. There was no denying they were attracted to each other. Sparks were almost visible as the heat and chemistry flowed between the two of them, making it very hard for her to keep her hands to herself.
One of the most attractive things about Tate—and there were unfortunately way too many of those—was that he accepted her exactly the way she was. He found her desirable even though she rarely released the feminine side of herself. Not only was he attracted to her, but he also seemed to actually like her.
He stepped toward her again. “I already told you that a woman with a healthy appetite turns me on.”
She stepped back out of his dangerous reach. “That reminds me that I’m starving.” Actually, her heart flip-flopped around in her chest. Every trait of hers that he mentioned that he accepted as sexy made her just a little bit giddy. “I was going to make breakfast. Now that the weather is clear, I need to get going after breakfast.”
His face turned grim. “You have to tell me what’s going on, Lara. I can help. If you don’t tell me, I’ll tail you. So you might as well spill it. I know you were headed toward Marcus’s property when you had your accident on the sled. Were you trying to get his cooperation in an investigation?”
Her heart clenched, and she hesitated. She shouldn’t tell him anything, but he had a right to know, and he might be able to help. However, she didn’t want to hurt him. “No. I wasn’t trying to get his cooperation.”
He gave her a questioning look. “Then what were you doing?”
She sighed. “Your brother Marcus is actually a suspect. We have very good reason to believe that your brother is instrumental in trying to organize a large-scale terrorist attack. I was sent here to investigate your oldest brother, Tate. I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t react at all like Lara expected. Tate Colter did the one thing it never even occurred to her that he might do when he found out about Marcus.
He laughed.
“Did you and Dad ever fight?” Chloe Colter asked her mother as they sat at the table together to have a late breakfast. Her mom had arrived home on an early-morning flight, and Chloe had gone out to the airstrip to pick her up.
Aileen Colter loved every one of her children equally, and worried about different problems with each one of them. But right now, she was concerned about Chloe. Her only daughter and youngest child had always had the sunniest personality, a happiness that always seemed to radiate from her being. Lately, that bright light that was her Chloe seemed to have disappeared. “Sometimes we did,” she answered her daughter carefully, wondering why Chloe asked about her relationship with her husband, Chloe’s father.
Chloe put down her fork, her food untouched, and reached for her coffee. “I never remember hearing you two argue.”
Aileen looked at Chloe’s full plate and frowned. “What happened to your wrist?” When her daughter had put her fork down, she’d noticed bruises on her arm.
“James was trying to teach me some martial arts moves. It was an accident,” Chloe explained.
An accident? Maybe it had been accidental, but how had James bruised up Chloe’s arm by teaching her beginner martial arts? It wasn’t a tiny bruise. Her entire wrist and arm was purple and yellow. “Your father and I did disagree sometimes, but we respected each other enough not to yell.” Her deceased husband, Russell Colter, had been a handful—just like his boys—but he’d never raised his voice. He had never had to. Aileen had always sensed when something was wrong, and they’d been able to talk it out. If things got out of hand and they wanted to vent, they never did it around the children, and they never disrespected each other.