He didn’t say anything, and she took a deep breath, plunging on with an emotional recklessness she might regret later, but which felt utterly essential right now.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I trust you on a level I’ve never trusted anyone else except my dad, and all of my senses recognize it.” It was hard admitting that, but she’d never been one to lie to get out of a tough situation, and his whimsical question had turned out to be just that.
His body shifted away from hers in what felt like a violent repudiation of her words. “I’m no white knight, Josie. Don’t weave daydreams around me taking care of you because it’s not going to happen.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He made her sound like a parasite. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, you can. You don’t need me watching over you. Remember that.”
It was impossible to keep her focus on the computer screen. She jerked her gaze back to Daniel, who apparently was having no problem continuing to watch the slide show, his face impassive.
“If you are so intent on not watching over me, why did you refuse to allow me to go outside this morning? Why insist on helping me find my dad and investigate the bombing?”
His jaw looked hewn from granite. “I already explained that. I’m part of this mission because the school is half mine now and your dad is my business partner. Keeping you from taking unacceptable risks is part of succeeding with the mission.”
“So, you’re saying that I personally had absolutely no influence over your actions in the past three days?” she asked, unwilling to believe he could be as emotionally distant as he was implying.
“No.”
Relief pulsed through her. She and Daniel were simply suffering another miscommunication, something she’d come to believe would always be a challenge for them. Their brains didn’t work the same way. His thoughts were as alien to her as if he really were from Mars, like the popular book on male-female relationships said.
“The decision to take you to bed had nothing to do with the mission. It was entirely personal.”
“But temporary,” she heard herself saying.
“You said that was acceptable to you.”
Had she, or had she agreed to the limitations he set for their intimacy because he hadn’t given her any other choice? Did it matter? He hadn’t changed his mind even if she had changed hers.
Having just convinced herself she’d misunderstood Daniel’s earlier words, his confirmation that apart from sex, she had no personal interest for him felt like a double bull’seye blow from a stun gun. The pain seared through her, leaving bruises that no one else could see, least of all him.
Her eyes flicked back to the computer screen, her brain screaming that she needed to focus on something besides her decimated emotions or she was going to break apart. And she saw him. Their state policeman had been one of her father’s students.
She grabbed the mouse and clicked the back arrow three times, halting the slide show and taking them to the picture that had caught her attention.
“What are you doing?”
“I think I have an I.D. on our guy.” Amazingly the words came out even and controlled, not giving away the wild torment inside her.
She’d used shaky evidence to convince herself that even though Daniel obviously didn’t love her, he did care and even shakier reasoning to convince herself his caring was more than a temporary side effect of their sexual compatibility.
“I didn’t see him.” Daniel’s voice sounded odd, but that was probably a trick of her hearing.
“He looked different.” Her own voice was starting to wear around the edges, and she made a conscious effort to rein it in. “Dad takes the pictures of his trainees when they come to the camp, before he enforces his crew cut, no facial hair rule. This guy showed up with longer hair, sporting a mustache and a beard.”
The picture was frozen on the computer screen, the man a dead ringer for Officer Devon if you took away the beard and buzz cut the hair.
“What’s his name?”
“I’ll tell you in just a sec.” She checked the number on the file and cross-referenced it with client records. “Abner Jones. If that’s not his real name, he’s incredibly unimaginative when it comes to aliases.”
“Your dad does background checks on his students before he admits them into the school.”
“A determined person could fake his identification and past as effectively as Dad has set up his own aliases.”
“Did Jones attend with anyone else?”
Josie checked. “His record isn’t cross-referenced with any of the other soldiers in training during the same session, but their records are probably a good place to start for possible connections all the same.”
“How will you do that?”
“Hotwire and I will compare their files and the information from their background checks for anything they might have in common. Dad’s trainees are from all over the world; even coming from the same state would be a pretty significant connection for two students to have.”
She brought up the list of soldiers who had attended the training camp with Jones and printed it off along with the individual files for each name. Thank goodness her laser printer had been left behind by the thieves. It had probably been too unwieldy to take, being larger than the small television they’d lifted from the living room.
When the reports stopped printing, she handed them to Daniel without meeting his eyes. “Why don’t you start going through these while I see what I can find on Dad’s possible aliases? You’d probably be more comfortable spreading them out on the table in the dining room.”
And she would be more comfortable with him out of the room. Her heart was still hemorrhaging, and she had to cauterize the wound, but she needed some time to herself to do it. It wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in love when he’d only fallen in lust, but having him around while she came to terms with that truth was more than she could bear.
Daniel got up without a word, but stopped at the doorway. “You never asked what you smelled like to me.”
“No. I didn’t.” What could he have said? Maybe that she smelled like sex, or stupidity.
She recognized the thought as a bitter one, but not necessarily an untrue one.
He waited as if expecting her to ask the question she had no intention of asking. “You smell like everything a woman could or should be.”
With that he walked out, and Josie sat staring at an empty doorway in a state of incredulity.
Had she heard him correctly? Because if she had, none of what he’d said earlier made any sense, or did it? Maybe he’d only been talking about female perfection in a sexual sense. She smelled like everything a woman could or should be in bed.
She wasn’t deluding herself into believing it could be anything else. Not this time.
Daniel made coffee and took a mug of it to a quiet, preoccupied Josie before sitting down at the dining room table as she’d suggested in order to go through the records.
It was hard going, though, trying to concentrate. He’d hurt her again, and that was the last damn thing he wanted to do. When she’d said he made her feel safe, he’d felt as if someone had taken a shredder to his insides. Of all the things she could rely on him for, things he’d do everything in his power to give her, safety was not one of them. He wasn’t trustworthy with a woman’s life.
His mother had learned that the hard way, teaching him an indelible lesson in the process.
But he hadn’t told Josie that. He’d merely told her not to count on him, like she didn’t matter to him, which was nowhere near the truth. He hadn’t been honest with her, and she deserved better than that from him. In fact, he’d out and out lied to her when he implied she had nothing to do with his decision to find her father and the men who’d tried to kill Tyler.