Dare to Love by Tara Taylor Quinn Page A

gaze, by the potential in him that she was only now beginning to discover.
    â€œAnd I had you figured for a smart lady,” he retorted, but the edges of his lips twitched with just a hint of a grin.
    â€œWhy don’t you do that more?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSmile.”
    â€œIs that what I’m doing?”
    â€œLooks that way to me.”
    â€œThen maybe you need to have your eyes examined. And have your IQ looked at while you’re at it.”
    He sounded like he was trying to be sarcastic, but he looked too pleased. Andrea shared a grin with him for a few dangerous seconds, and then sobered.
    â€œWhy are you so afraid of talking to me?”
    She asked the question boldly, expecting a sexual comeback.
    He crossed his ankles. “Who says I’m afraid?”
    â€œAren’t you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen why do you run every time the conversation gets a little thick?”
    â€œI’m not going anywhere.”
    Andrea digested that in silence. He was right. He was still hanging around. She wondered why.
    â€œSo why won’t you tell me about your research for your speech?”
    He lifted a hand to his hair, running his fingers through the lush brown strands. “It’s not important.”
    â€œHow do I know that if you won’t tell me? Are you doing some kind of work with troubled kids that you don’t want me to know about?”
    The possibility had just hit her, but she didn’t think it was nearly as farfetched as it sounded.
    â€œNice try, but nope.”
    â€œSo that story you told about the kid escaping a chemically imbalanced mother—you just made it up?”
    â€œNo. It happened.”
    â€œAnd the other, the one about the sexually abusive brother—was that real, too?”
    â€œEven I couldn’t make up something like that.”
    â€œAnd you just met these people through your work on the streets?”
    â€œDon’t we all?”
    Andrea supposed that at one point or another all cops came across stories as tragic as the ones Doug had told. But his stories hadn’t been told by an impartial bystander. They’d come from the heart. That’s why they’d been so painfully real, so able to move everyone who listened to them.
    She was beginning to wonder if maybe those kids he’d talked about had been people he’d known. Maybe he’d gone to school with them. Maybe they’d even been his friends. How else could he have known the details he’d given that afternoon? Some of that stuff never made it into police reports.
    It suddenly dawned on her that if Doug had a firsthand knowledge of the pressures these kids faced every day, he was probably more qualified to be a DARE officer than any of the other two hundred trainees in the hotel.
    â€œI’m glad we had this talk,” she said. She’d pushed him far enough for the time being. She’d lose him forever if she tried for too much too soon. Men like Doug Avery just didn’t crumble.
    â€œThen I’m glad, too,” he said softly, reaching across the couch to brush his fingers against her cheek.
    Andrea knew that he’d just crossed the imaginary boundary she’d erected between what she could and could not allow. She could tell by the watchful yet hungry look in his eyes that he knew it, too.
    But his gaze was so full, so tempting, that she was mesmerized. Doug was the most intense individual she’d ever met, and she was responding to him in a way she couldn’t seem to control. There were no half measures here, no cute little comments to defuse the moment. There was nothing a giggle would do except come out on a sigh of longing.
    Her gaze was locked with his and she leaned into his simple caress as naturally as if she’d willed the action herself. He cupped his hand around her neck and pulled, guiding her across the couch until her lips touched his.
    His very first kiss was hot and strong and full.