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I’m … OCD? Too politically correct? A pain in the ass?” She had colleagues who would agree with him no matter which answer he picked, but he made up his own response.
    â€œUptight. Smart. Out to set the world on fire.”
    Diplomatic though his answer was, she didn’t get the impression being “out to set the world on fire” made him any less angry with her. She guessed it was just the opposite—part of what frustrated and disappointed him. “And you don’t like it.”
    â€œYou’ve created a human dump in my backyard. I don’t like that, and I’ve never made a secret of it.
    â€œSo you’re holding a grudge?” she asked, and she hoped he understood she wasn’t just talking about their difference of opinion on Hanover House.
    â€œStill trying to decide,” he said.
    â€œWell, I think it’s time you forgive me.”
    â€œHow do you know I haven’t?”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right? With the way you scowl at me if you ever happen to see me?”
    â€œScowl?”
    â€œYes. You could definitely be a little friendlier .”
    He brought one leg into his body and rested the hand with the wine on his knee. “And I think you could be a little friendlier. The only reason I scowl is because every time I look at you, really look at you, your eyes dart away.”
    â€œNo, they don’t.”
    He drained his glass and leaned forward to pour. “They just did.”
    That had much more to do with how he affected her on a sexual level, which was why she’d broken things off. She couldn’t handle the feelings he evoked, what those feelings made her want. “Stop. You don’t like me anymore. That’s the problem.”
    â€œI don’t like what you’ve done. To my town or to me. It’s not the same.”
    â€œTo you ? I tried to be honest!”
    â€œYou gave me some bullshit about friendship and then you avoided me. You have some sort of idiotic hang-up with my age.”
    It wasn’t idiotic. She was thirty-six and he was only twenty-nine. She was too old for him! She’d mentioned that, too, when she’d told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, but that had only been part of it. “Seven years is a lot.”
    â€œThat’s an excuse and you know it.”
    She narrowed her gaze. “So you’re going to treat me like I’m not welcome in Hilltop? Say things like you said at Quigley’s?”
    He didn’t apologize. “You don’t belong here.”
    Alaskans even had a name for people like her, who weren’t from Alaska and didn’t know how to live there. She’d heard it before: cheechak.
    â€œThis is my life’s work!”
    â€œYou don’t need to be studying psychopaths. What you suffered when you were sixteen, and then this last summer, has you so frightened of men you can’t trust ’em anymore. Why make it worse?”
    â€œI can trust the right people,” she said.
    â€œYou couldn’t trust me . That was the problem. I’m a cop, but I’m still a man and, as far as you’re concerned, that makes me one of the bad guys.”
    â€œSo you don’t even want to speak when we see each other?”
    â€œYou know what I want.”
    â€œI can’t handle a romantic relationship.”
    â€œI think you can. It’s time to get past what happened to you.”
    She wished he had the right of it. Part of her still craved the connection she’d felt with Amarok. She hadn’t bailed out because she wasn’t interested in him. She’d always wished she’d had some warning where Jasper was concerned and felt it only right to be honest about her own psyche. “Three days of rape and torture leaves a mark that doesn’t fade much, not even with time. And last summer, when I was abducted again, that just … brought it all back, returned me to the very beginning