“That had a lot to do with it,” Hart said through his teeth.
“Damn, Hart. That entire summer, whenever Zane Cooper looked at you all I saw was hate. Since Joan’s the one who flirted up a storm with you while you kept your hands to yourself, his attitude was far from fair.”
Hart drew in a slow breath. Spence didn’t know he and Joan had spent a night together. At this late date, it didn’t much matter.
“Think about it, Spence. I was the hired help from the trailer park. I don’t have to tell you that Cooper had a thing about maintaining appearances.”
“No, you don’t. Look, for what it’s worth, I felt lousy when you called a month or so after you left town and asked if I knew how you could contact Joan. Having to break the news that she’d run off to Dallas and married some lawyer didn’t sit well.”
“So, what happened?” Not that it mattered, Hart told himself. He didn’t care about the man Joan had married. Didn’t want to know any details of the life she shared with another man. He didn’t care.
“What happened with what?”
“The lawyer. I ran into Joan this afternoon when I checked in. Her name tag says Cooper. She’s not wearing a wedding ring.”
Spence winced. “I’ve had so much on my mind lately that it didn’t occur to me to tell you Joan manages the ladies’ spa at the Lone Star. I guess you were surprised to see her.”
“Yeah. I’m curious about her husband.”
“His name was Thomas Dean.”
“Was?”
“He died in a car wreck in Dallas not long after he and Joan got married.”
For the past decade whenever he thought about Joan, Hart had forced himself to think of her as a wife. The mate of another man. A young woman who had freely given him her innocence, yet never intended to stay with him for longer than one night. He couldn’t help but wonder what kind of man she had chosen over him. “You ever meet Dean?”
“No, just heard about him. Right after I set up my practice, Zane Cooper came to see me. He had decided to fund a trauma wing at the hospital in Dean’s name and hired me to take care of the necessary legal documents. I remember Cooper mentioning his son-in-law’s death happened so soon after he and Joan eloped that she hadn’t had a chance to change her name on all her I.D. That’s why she kept her maiden name.”
“That had to have been rough on her,” Hart murmured. “Her husband dying like that.”
“Yeah. And it’s a shame Dean’s daughter never got to know her father.”
Hart blinked. “Daughter?”
“Helena. You’ll probably run into her, since she and Joan live in one of the Lone Star’s employee suites. The kid’s a real doll.”
Joan was a widow, Hart thought. She had a daughter.
He sat in silence, wondering if there were other things about her life he didn’t know.
Chapter 4
Hart spent a sleepless night in his suite’s king-size bed, wrestling with ghosts of the past.
Around six-thirty he gave up and shoved back the vanilla-scented sheets he suspected had been ironed. The Lone Star had an outdoor jogging trail, and he was determined to run until he was too worn-out to think.
Why the hell had the few details Spence had told him about Joan clung like a burr in his head for the entire night? Why had he lost sleep thinking about her being a widow? A mother? Those facts meant nothing to him. She meant nothing to him.
Dammit, he had let her go.
But he had never forgotten her, he conceded as he yanked on running shorts and a black T-shirt bearing CPD’s bomb squad logo. Not completely, anyway. Memories of her had lessened over time, but there were still instances when thoughts of her managed to slip uninvited into his mind.
Like every minute throughout the previous interminable night.
He grabbed a pair of white sport socks, then elbowed the drawer closed with more force than necessary. Fine, he thought. He had never forgotten her. It wasn’t much of a mystery why a man might carry around the memory of a woman who’d cut out his heart.
He blew out a disgusted breath. Instead of focusing on the past, he needed to think about the present. He and Joan were different people than they’d been ten years ago. He doubted she still spent her days lobbing balls across one of the Lone Star’s tennis courts. She was a business woman, the manager of a classy spa. A widow, raising a child. He no longer toiled as a country club groundskeeper, making sure everything looked presentable and ran smoothly for the cultured class. He was a cop, skilled in disarming explosive devices. All he and Joan had in common was the night they spent together. One night.
One night that had meant nothing to her.
“Dammit!” he muttered as he snagged his running shoes off the yawning expanse of closet floor. Before he’d met Joan Cooper he had never given away his heart. He damn sure hadn’t felt the least bit tempted to risk giving it away since. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Someday.
Lately he’d caught himself feeling a twinge of envy when he attended the bomb squad’s monthly cookouts and rubbed elbows with his co-workers’ families. With increasing frequency he found himself wanting a real home, a wife and kids. Hart gave a derisive shake of his head. He couldn’t exactly start down the path to getting those things when a casual conversation about a woman from his past had the power to make him toss and turn all night.
So, fine, that was an issue he needed to deal with.
Fate in the form of a bombing had brought him back to Mission Creek. He would consider that a sign, he decided while grabbing his watch and door card key off the nightstand. A sign that it was time to come to grips with all that had happened that long-ago summer. Time to put the past to rest so he could move on.
He was long overdue on letting Joan Cooper go.
He strode to the suite’s door, unbolted it, then stepped into the cool quiet of the long, carpeted hallway. Pausing, he let the door drift shut behind him while he strapped on his watch. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned his head in time to see Joan appear from a doorway three rooms down.
She pulled the door closed with a soft click while giving an idle glance down the hallway. The instant she saw him, her chin came up and her shoulders stiffened.
Hart’s eyes narrowed against an immediate stab of irritation. She had proven he meant nothing to her, so why did her nerves instantly go on alert each time she spotted him? Why the hell did she react to him at all?
When she reached behind her for the doorknob, he wondered if she might retreat back into the room until he disappeared down the carpeted hallway. Instead, she stood there, her fingers gripping the doorknob while they stared at each other across space. Across time.
He slicked his gaze down her trim, tidy turquoise suit, then on to those incredible legs that a blind man would have noticed. His eyes slowly resettled on her face. She looked elegant, classy with her dark hair pulled back in a smooth twist that emphasized the long, slender arch of her throat.
His hands fisted with the realization that after so long he still remembered the soft, warm taste of that flesh. Could again hear her raw, passionate moan when he took away her innocence and made her his.
Ten years ago, wanting her had been like a fever in his blood. In the space of a dozen heartbeats, he again felt something inside him stir. And realized it was the blood he’d let settle and cool over the years.
Don’t go there, he warned, and took a mental step back. Don’t go the hell near there.
The noise of the resort awakening around them slowly slid into his consciousness. A