Page 45 of Cross That Line

She gave him a thoughtful look. "That might be one of the nicest things you've ever said to me."

He laughed. "Then I definitely need to step up my game. I should be able to do better than that."

A smile lifted her lips. "I can't wait to hear what you come up with next."

He had a lot of things he could have said next, but as the traffic slowed in front of him, he decided to focus on the road instead of on the beautiful woman next to him.

Rachel also seemed less inclined to talk as she settled back into her seat. "The city looks pretty from here, doesn't it?" she said a few moments later as the lights of Manhattan lit up the scene in front of them.

"It does. But a lot of things look better when they're in the distance than when they're up close."

"Cities and people," she said in agreement, making him wonder what she meant by that comment.

But since she didn't explain, and he didn't really want to talk about the darkness behind those words or the lights, he let it be.

A half hour later, he pulled into a spot just down the street from her apartment building. "I'll walk you to your door."

"You don't have to do that. I'm perfectly capable of making it to my apartment building."

"I want to." He ignored her comment as he got out of the car and met her on the sidewalk.

She lived in a nice, safe neighborhood, but he still kept an eye on their surroundings.

As they reached the stairs leading up to her building, she paused. "I can take it from here, Tyler. Thanks for letting me go with you today. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to figure out what medical facility Jack went to after he stopped coming to see me."

"Okay. But don't do anything without talking to me first. If you want to go somewhere, I'll go with you."

"You're not sick of me yet?"

He really wished he was sick of her. "No. I'm…" He wasn't quite sure how to finish that statement, so he just repeated her words. "I'm not sick of you."

"I'm having a hard time hating you the way I used to," she confessed.

"Me, too."

The air between them cracked with a new kind of tension, the one that had first sparked between them a long time ago. God, she was beautiful in the moonlight. She was beautiful in the daylight, too. But now, he felt a pull that was so strong, so hard to resist, that he couldn't seem to say goodnight and walk away, even though he knew that's what he should do.

"If we forgot for a minute about the past, about what we have to do tomorrow. Would you want…" her soft voice drifted away. "Never mind. It's the wine talking."

"Is it?"

She met his gaze. "No."

He should have said goodnight. Instead, he waited, giving her one more second to step back. She didn't. He slid a hand under her hair and kissed her, slow at first, then not slow at all. She kissed him back like she'd been waiting five years to do it.

Maybe she had. Maybe he had, too.

As they broke apart to take a breath, she stepped back and put her fingers to her lips. "I…I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything."

"Right. It was just a kiss," she murmured. "A goodnight kiss. Goodnight," she added belatedly, and then she hurried into her building, closing the door behind her.

He stared at that door for a long minute, wondering what the hell had just happened. Her words echoed through his mind, but they didn't ring true. Because that had not just been a kiss… It had been the start of something that was probably a very bad idea.

Chapter Thirteen

Rachel entered her office Monday morning with a headache and not nearly as much regret as she should have. She couldn't believe she'd kissed Tyler. She could still feel his hand at the back of her head, holding her like this time he didn't intend to let go. And she hadn't wanted him to let go. In fact, she'd wanted to take things further. She'd wanted to invite him in, but thank goodness, she hadn't lost complete control of her senses. Their relationship was complicated, and while she could blame the kiss on the wine, she really wouldn't have been able to rationalize anything else.