If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

I’d have nightmares. That’s why you didn’t want me looking.” She swallowed and then lifted her lids just enough to stare at him from under her lashes. “I wish I’d listened. I don’t want that picture in my head. I’d do almost anything to get it out.”
    “I know the feeling. It’s stuck in there, though. For both of us, I guess.” He closed one hand around her ankle and started to rub the bottom of her foot. “Maybe … I dunno. Maybe I should have given you some idea of what I’d seen. That might have helped.”
    “No.” She had her eyes closed again. “I still would have tried to look, would have been determined. I can’t stand to have somebody trying to protect me, keep something from me. Even when maybe it’s better.”
    With a watery laugh, she whispered, “I wish I’d let you keep this from me, Law.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Silence fell between them, thick and tight, but no longer quite so strained. She sighed as he used his thumb on her instep, across the ball of her foot. When he put that foot down, she lifted her other foot for him. “I shouldn’thave come down on you like I did,” she said softly. “I get why you didn’t want me seeing that.”
    Law stayed quiet.
    “I’m just … hell. I just don’t deal well with being coddled, with having somebody make a decision about what I can and can’t handle.”
    “It’s not about can or can’t handle,” he said, shooting her a quick look. “I’m starting to think there’s not a damn thing you
can’t
handle. It’s a matter of why in the hell should you have that image in your head? I don’t want it in mine. Ezra has to have it—it’s his job, but you and me …?”
    He sighed and shook his head. “Wasn’t trying to coddle you. You’d cut a guy off at the knees if he tried that with you. I was just trying to help.”
    “I know.” She leaned forward and covered one of his hands with hers.
    “And I’m sorry,” she added as their gazes locked.
    “It’s okay.”
    She squeezed, gave him a smile. “No, it’s not. But at least you tolerate me being a bitch … although I don’t know why.” She sighed and closed her eyes, only to open them immediately. “Damn it—I think I’m going to see it every time I close my eyes. I want to push it out of my head but my imagination is kicking in and I’m already thinking,
what did he do with that stuff …
”
    “You need to stop wondering,” Law said. “It’s just going to drive you nuts.”
    “I’m already there.”
    “Why don’t you come to bed?” He laid a hand on her knee, squeezed it. “Get some rest.”
    “I can’t sleep with that picture in my mind and right now, it’s all I can see.”
    She lifted her hands to her face, but stopped when she saw them shaking. A harsh laugh escaped her.
    “Shit. Holy shit—I can’t stop seeing it. Why did I look?” she whispered. Sliding her gaze past him, she stared at the phone, shuddered as the image loomed large in her mind once more.
Why
 …
    Abruptly, she tore her gaze from the phone and looked at Law. His hair, still damp from his shower, was darker than normal. He’d shaved recently. He smelled of soap, toothpaste … and himself.
    Rolling to her knees, she half crawled until she was straddling his lap. “There’s no way I can sleep with that in my head. I want it out. Will you make it go away, Law? Can you make me see something else?”
    Her eyes had the look of something desperate … something just this shy of mad terror, Law thought.
    If he was any kind of decent, what he should do was find some whiskey, hold her until she felt asleep, and just be there when the nightmares came. They’d probably come for both of them.
    But he was a little too raw, a little too ragged to worry about being decent.
    Her mouth was just a whisper away from his. Reaching up, he fisted his hand in her hair, holding her back when she would have kissed him. “What do you want to see?”
    “How about you? Just you?”
    “Don’t close your eyes, then.” Still staring at her, he brought her face close … closer … until their breath mingled, until his lips covered hers. He shifted around until she was sitting on the step above him. “Wrap your legs around me.”
    Nia did and he groaned when she pressed against him. Soft and warm, separated from him by nothing more than his jeans and her T-shirt. Her eyes, wide and wild, locked on his face as he reached out his hand and caught hold of the banister. With a