Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

dangerous,” I lightly said, but he didn’t laugh.
    “I think we should halt our personal relationship for the time being. Until we resolve things with Mallory.”
    My heart fell to my knees, and I found I couldn’t speak a single word. This couldn’t be happening. Not after all we’d been through. Not after I’d lost him and found him again.
    “And if things aren’t ever resolved with Mallory? If you can’t ever be one hundred percent sure that you’re free of her? What then?”
    He looked up at me, and he didn’t answer.
    Apparently, four hundred years did a lot of damage to a man’s psyche, and Ethan’s defense mechanism was to throw up barriers to every emotion he didn’t care to feel. A few months ago, I’d have walked away from this conversation, and from him. I’d have taken the emotional punch like a trouper and left the room without a parting shot. But he was facing down a demon of his own making, and I wasn’t going to help him with the illusion.
    I fought back tears. “You’d just give me up?”
    “This isn’t about giving you up. I can’t—I’m not in control of myself, Merit.”
    “Then it’s about not trusting me enough to help you when you’re in a bad situation.”
    “It’s about keeping you safe until this problem is resolved. I didn’t save your life so that I could tear it down again, Merit. I will not put me or you in the position of hurting you again. God willing we can find a way to separate Mallory and me before our immortality has passed us by.”
    There were times I secretly enjoyed Ethan’s alpha-male posturing. But this wasn’t one of them. My anger began to rise, spurred by his irritating stubbornness and blind desire to control every situation.
    “You’re resolving this problem by pushing me away. You’re a four-hundred-year-old vampire and avoidance is the best solution you’ve got?”
    “Until you’re at the mercy of someone else’s thoughts and whims, I’m not looking to you for advice.”
    That bullet was aimed right at me, but I kept up my guard. “Ah,” I said, nodding. “So you’re going to take shots at me until I walk away? You know, we’ve been down this road before. It ended with your apologizing.”
    “This is different.”
    It wasn’t. Not really. But if he believed it, what could I do? He thought he was protecting me; how was I supposed to convince him his instincts were wrong?
    Tears threatening to spill over my lashes, I strode to the office door. I would not cry in front of him.
    “We weren’t done here,” he called out.
    I risked a glance back, and I could see the panic flaring in his eyes. Maybe the consequences of his ridiculous position were finally occurring to him. Good. Maybe he’d come to his senses. But I wasn’t going to waste time arguing with someone who needed to be convinced I was an asset.
    “According to you,” I said, “we are done here.”
    Rarely had slamming a door felt so good.

C HAPTER T WELVE

    HIS LIBRARY? WELL STOCKED
    I t was a good thing we weren’t telepathically connected, because he wouldn’t have enjoyed hearing my thoughts on the way back down to the Ops Room.
    I decided my best option was to help the team with the investigation of Paulie Cermak’s death, but with my mind absorbed by Ethan’s stubbornness, I was pretty useless. Hoping to identify a specific motive for Paulie’s death, I’d printed off as much information on Paulie Cermak as I could find on the Web. The stack of papers sat on the table in front of me, but I hadn’t so much as glanced at them in half an hour.
    All my brain cells were busy being furious at Ethan and wondering whether I could keep him from imploding our almost relationship. He was afraid he’d hurt me. It couldn’t have been easy to feel trapped in someone else’s neuroses, but that wasn’t Ethan—the man who’d taken a stake for me.
    But what was I supposed to do? What was the right thing to do? Respect his wishes and keep my distance? Play the sexy minx and use seduction to get him to change his mind? Or just ignore him until we got Mallory’s mind meld squared away?
    Getting her squared away was definitely the first thing on my revised agenda.
    “Merit!”
    I jolted to attention and found Lindsey, who was back from guard duty and sat across from me at the conference table, staring at me with amusement.
    “What?”
    “Your phone is ringing.”
    For the first time, I heard the phone ring from the pocket of my jacket, which I’d slung