Donovan barked out a laugh. “Do you know what the funny thing is? If I’d known about Cliff, about the hookers he was beating, about that girl he raped, I might have killed him myself. But you got there first.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And somehow I feel indebted to you, Gin. Grateful, even. Because you killed him, and I didn’t have to.”

“So that’s what this is still about. Me killing Cliff Ingles. That’s why you don’t want to come inside. That’s why you don’t want to be with me.” I could have killed the dirty cop all over again for pushing Donovan away from me.

Donovan shook his head. “Not entirely. It’s mostly about me. Finding out about Cliff, it’s made me think. About a lot of things. And now, this mess with Warren and Violet… I’ll help Sophia and Jo-Jo watch out for them as best I can.”

“But…”

“But I’m not going to help you with Tobias Dawson. Not like I did with Alexis James. I can’t, Gin. I just can’t. I can’t be a part of something like that again. I can barely live with the fact I know what you’re going to do to Dawson and the knowledge I’m not going to do a thing to stop you from killing him.” His voice dropped again.

“And I can’t be with you. Not tonight.”

“You weren’t too concerned with Tobias Dawson and what I was going to do to him when you were fucking me in the backseat a couple of hours ago.” My voice was harsher than I would have liked. “Or have you forgotten about that already?”

Donovan flinched. “No, I haven’t forgotten about it, none of it.”

“But you’re not going to do it again. Not going to sleep with me again.”

His hands tightened around the steering wheel until the leather creaked. “No, I’m not.”

I heard the hard resolution in his voice. Donovan Caine had made himself a promise, and he wasn’t going to break it. Oh, I imagined I could get him to forget about his morals, his rules, his vows. All I’d have to do would be to crawl over and start giving him the lap dance of his life. A variation of the striptease I’d performed earlier this evening in the rain.

But I’d made the first move twice now. I wanted the detective to want me, Gin Blanco, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not just succumb to my charms in the heat of the moment, then feel guilty about it afterward.

“It appears we’re at an impasse then,” I said in a low voice.

“Guess so.”