I laugh. “Oh, yes.”

He backs into the elevator and tugs me forward but I stop abruptly, determination in my sure footing. “I need to call the detective before we go up.”

Chris’s brow furrows. “Here?”

“I don’t want what happens once we get onto the elevator to be clouded by what we’ve left behind.”

Understanding and tenderness seep into his expression, and he steps out of the elevator. “Then we’ll call here.”

I fetch my phone from my purse and Chris leans against the wall, settling my back to his front. His hand rests on my stomach and I relax into him, the stupid nerves over this call I don’t understand are more manageable now.

After punching a button, I listen to the simple but urgent message from a Detective Grant and then hit recall.

“Ms. McMillan,” he says, clearly indicating he has caller ID

and the way he’s said my name reminds me of Mark to such a degree that I barely suppress a shiver.

“Detective Grant,” I reply crisply.

“I understand you’ve left the country.”

“I’m in Paris, yes,” I say with remarkable coolness, considering I’m unraveling inside. Was I not supposed to leave? They never said a word about me not leaving the country.

“What was the rush to escape?”

Defensiveness lares inside me. “Escape?” I counter, and I feel the lex of Chris’s ingers on my belly in response. “I’m not sure what that means, but I’m pretty sure almost being killed by a crazy woman justiies my need for a change of scenery.”

“You needed it quickly, it seems.”

Defensiveness begins to blossom into outright anger, tightening my words. “What is it you’re alluding to?”

“You managed to take over Rebecca’s job.”

“Someone had to.”

“Not everyone had her personal items and her deepest, most intimate thoughts.” He hesitates and it’s clearly for efect.

“You ended up with her job and her boss. Really, her entire life.”

My heart jackhammers and Chris molds me closer, silently telling me he is here, he is with me. He is all that keeps me from completely snapping. “I was almost killed last night,” I repeat.

“That’s a separate event from Rebecca’s death.”

“Ava confessed to killing Rebecca. She tried to kill me.

That’s pretty connected, if you ask me.”

“She now says she confessed to protect Mark.”

“Protect Mark?” I all but gasp and I turn to face Chris, my ingers digging into his arms. “She says Markkilled Rebecca?”

Chris’s expression is unreadable, but I feel the muscles lex beneath my grip, and his hands settle irmly on my waist. His eyes ind mine and hold, and I feel him beyond his touch. He is my rock, my strength.

“Ava says that you killed Rebecca and blackmailed Mark into silence,” the detective informs me.

The darkness I’ve battled for hours now becomes a black hole, and the world seems to spin. A second later, my knees buckle and the ground is all I see.

Four

I blink and discover my hands are resting on the solid wall of Chris’s chest. His arm is wrapped around my waist, anchoring me to him while he talks on my phone. My anchor. He is that and so much more, I think, as I realize I blacked out and now I’m back in this world. I’ve never blacked out before, and it’s downright unnerving to realize I’ve lost all sense of time and reality.

“Did you tell her she couldn’t leave the country?” Chris calmly asks into the phone. There’s a short pause. “Then she’s done nothing wrong.” He listens again. “Yeah, well, for the record, I know she’s innocent, too, and your ‘just doing your job’

could have waited until she got over the shock of last night, no matter how much you want to cover your bases. From this point on, you talk to her attorney, Stephen Newman. He’ll be calling you.” He ends the call.

I swallow, trying to ind my voice, panic expanding in my chest all over again. “Chris, he . . . I—”

“You have nothing to worry about,” he assures me, framing my face with his hands. “I’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”

His eyes brim with warmth and promise, and I hope he knows something I don’t. “He all but accused me of killing Rebecca.”

“Ava and her attorney had to come up with a defense for her, and you were it. The police don’t believe her, but to get an indictment they have to do due diligence. Our attorney will take care of this. And I’ll take care of you.”

There was a time when the idea of leaning on Chris would have totally scared me. After the way he shut me out over Dylan’s death, it’s still hard not to be a little scared—but it’s also never felt as good as it does now, to be in this man’s arms.

I look down to where my hands rest on his chest and they’re shaking, but I can’t seem to feel them shaking. It is as if my body and my mind aren’t communicating. “I think . . . I think I’m not so good right now.”

“Like I said. I’ve got you, baby.” He punches the elevator button and scoops me up in his arms, and I sink against him, relieved. He has me. I have him. I choose to fully believe that right now. I need to believe that.

I rest my head against his shoulder and close my eyes. As silly as it might seem, I don’t want to see what awaits us inside, in this state of mind. I want to wait and explore later, when the bad isn’t tainting the good.

When I force my lashes to open a little while later, Chris is setting me down on a bathroom vanity. He kisses me, a quick brush of his mouth. “You okay?”

I cover his hands where they rest on my cheeks. “Only because of you.”

“I say that about you every day since I met you, Sara. You do know that, don’t you? When I was gone for Dylan’s funeral, it was you that got me through. Knowing you were in my life— that’s what broke through the darkness.”

My breath escapes on his name. “Chris,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. Wrenching pain rips through me at the memory of inding Chris in Mark’s club, screaming for the lash of a whip to beat away the pain of losing Dylan. “I love you.” I can’t keep the quaver from my voice and I don’t try. I lean back and lift my gaze to his, opening myself up, letting him judge my words as he’d judged himself that night. “I love you so much, Chris.”

“I love you, too, Sara. More than I’ve let you see, but I’m going to ix that.” He brushes the hair from my eyes. “You take a hot bath while I make a few phone calls, then we’ll get some rest.”

“Yes, okay,” I say and he stands there a moment, and I can’t read him, but I think he wants to say something, or he expects me to say something. There is so much, too much, unsaid between us, but I’m unsure where to begin or even if now is the right time. He turns away, and the moment is lost. He walks to the tub, the epitome of grace and hotness, and bends over to start the water, but it’s the act of doing something so tender and caring that truly makes Chris the man I love. He’s both the man I found tied up and screaming for a harder beating, and the gentle, protective man he is right now, and the contrast sets me on ire and warms my heart.

I curl my ingers around the edge of the counter and glance around the bathroom, which is the size of a small bedroom.

It has the same white tile as our San Francisco apartment, but there are gray accents and silver ixtures. It’s luxurious, and so is the scent tickling my nose—musky and male, with a hint of spice.

Chris holds up a bottle. “My shampoo. It’s the only way I can give you the bubble bath you like, until you can stock up on what you want.”

“I like smelling like you,” I say, remembering a time I’d worn his cologne and said the same thing.

He saunters over to me, all loose-legged sex appeal in his faded jeans and a blue AC/DC T-shirt, and settles his hands on my knees. You’re mine, the touch says, and it is a welcome branding. Yes. Yes, I am his. “I like you smelling like me,” he replies, his voice a velvety-smooth caress.

It’s exactly what he’d said once before, and I react just as I had the irst time. I’m out of my head and into the moment with him, my body alive, tingling all over. He’s washed away the bad and left me deeply absorbed in him and all that he is. All that we have become together.

He brushes a knuckle down my cheek and I sense the shift in his mood. I can almost feel the dark, dangerously wicked side of Chris, ready to come out to play. My belly quivers with this knowledge and something raw and female begins to awaken inside of me, burning for satisfaction. I once denied how much I understood this part of Chris, and how much I am like him, but those times are past. I am who I am, even if I don’t fully understand that person yet. But the idea that I will, and that Chris will accept nothing less of me, is downright arousing.

Chris steps back out of reach, and I’m cold where I was warm before. His ingers curl into his palms and the muscles in his arms are tight steel bands. My gaze lifts to his and his expression is hard, his jaw harder. But the storm erupting in his eyes speaks volumes.

He’s carrying the world on his shoulders, including me. Despite every efort possible to save him, he lost Dylan to cancer.

He and I had then almost lost each other. And now Rebecca is gone, after he tried to warn her to stay away from the club.

My stomach clenches with the possibility that he’s blaming himself for her death; thinking he should have done more.

I know he blames himself for his father’s death, and maybe his mother’s, too.

He needs me. Screw the police and Ava, and every piece of hell trying to shake me. I start to get of the sink and he takes another step backward.

“I’m going to walk through the house and make sure it’s in order,” he says and turns away, disappearing out of the bathroom and leaving the door open.

I stare after him, darn near twitching to follow him, but I ight the urge. And why am I ighting it? I wouldn’t have fought it before.

My teeth worry my bottom lip. I know why. A piece of the darkness I’ve been ighting during our travel is all that’s unspoken and undone between us. We’d only begun to ind ourselves when losing Dylan, such a young, sweet child, to cancer had stirred the demons of Chris’s past and nearly destroyed us. But I came here to ight for Chris, and for us.

My decision is made. I slide of the counter and go to the tub to turn of the water, then rush through the giant bedroom, catching lashes of brown leather and a balcony. I exit into a long hallway with shiny black wood loors that fork in several directions, but there’s no sign of Chris.

My gaze latches on to the two lights of modern steel-and-wood stairs, one going up and one going down. Down seems the logical place for a kitchen and living area, and I head in that direction.

The steps twist and turn, and even open to another set of stairs that lead up. I continue down. When I’m nearly at the bottom I hear Chris’s voice, a low, rough, displeased tone as he talks to someone. I anxiously follow where it leads. I all but vault the rest of the way down the stairs and into a breathtaking living room shaped like a circle, with modern leather furniture and sleek tables that match the stairs and loors.

I don’t see Chris or hear him now, and my gaze goes to the stairs that go up to what appears to be the kitchen. As I start in that direction cool air washes over me, drawing me to the slight opening I’d missed in the balcony door. He must have stepped outside while I was on my way down the stairs.

I am at the door in a few seconds, and peek out to ind Chris’s back to me. “All I can say is, f**king make this go away for Sara. She doesn’t deserve this crap. And if they need money and resources to ind Rebecca and give her a proper burial, make it happen.”

Air lodges in my throat and I know we are already in full swing, facing his demons. I have no intention of letting them get an upper hand. All the weakness and fear I’ve let control me these past few hours evaporates.

Chris is putting on airs, pretending to be ine when he is not. He needs me. He needed me when Dylan died, and he’s not shutting me out again.

Opening the door, I don’t think twice about interrupting his call. The new day is cool, not cold, but my chest is burning.

Chris turns at the sound of my steps, a dim overhead light illuminating the surprise on his face, the Eifel Tower his backdrop.

No, that’s wrong. His pain is his eternal backdrop.

“I need to go, Stephen,” Chris says. “Call me when you have news.” He ends the connection and slides his phone into his jean pocket. “I thought you were taking a bath?”

I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him, holding him tightly. His arms close around me and his hand slides down my hair. “What is this, Sara? What’s wrong, baby? The attorney said—”

“I don’t care right now,” I say, tilting my face up to look at him. “I don’t care about the detective or Ava or anything but you. Please tell me you aren’t blaming yourself for Rebecca’s death. Ava did this. Not you. Not Mark.”

Surprise lickers in his face before the shutters come down and I can no longer read his reaction, but the way his muscles tense beneath my hands tell me I’ve hit a nerve. “I know Ava did this.”

I shake my head, sensing the guilt in him he won’t admit.

“You don’t know—you think you should have done more to get Rebecca out of the club. But you did everything you could, Chris. You did more than most would have done.”