Becky made a face, crunching down on the sucker and chewing loudly while simultaneously answering. “Eve texted him. She’d forgotten about it what with all the hullabaloo surrounding her father and ex-husband. It wasn’t until everything was coming out in the wash that she even remembered doing it.”

“Which is why he made the point of telling Eve she needed to leave her phone as evidence,” he mused aloud, remembering Buchanan’s last words to Eve before they’d gone to confront her father. “He wanted to make sure he got his hands on it in order to delete the text.”

“He had his hands on everything,” Becky muttered, shaking her head. “He kept the police files so he’d know exactly what everyone was doing, what everyone knew. He rode CPD’s asses so when something did finally happen to Eve he could say I told you so and keep speculation off himself. He was smart. He played everything and everyone just right.”

“Except for one thing,” Bill said, smiling at his sister.

“What’s that?” She cocked her head.

“He underestimated Eve…”

* * *

Eve pressed herself against the wall beside the open door to Billy’s hospital room. Oh, thank you, God! He’s talking. And the sound of his voice was like music sent straight from heaven…

However, as much as she’d been looking forward to this moment, she’d been simultaneously dreading it. Because now that he was talking, she could no longer pretend that what he’d told her out there in that blood-soaked parking lot was true. He’d thought he was dying…

An image of him, thick blood leaking from his mouth, flashed before her eyes, followed immediately by the image of Mac and Delilah jumping from the fierce, black BKI helicopter. What happened next was mostly a blur. But she remembered Mac and Delilah helping her load Billy onto chopper. She remembered Ace at the throttle as the helicopter lifted from the surface of the lot. She remembered a crazy, five-minute flight to the nearest trauma center where dedicated medical staff worked hard to stabilize Billy before having him Life-Flighted straight to Chicago’s prestigious Northwestern Memorial hospital. She’d called in every favor she could in order to get Billy in the operating room with one of the country’s best cardiothoracic surgeons. Then, after about eight hours of surgery, a dozen pins and a steel rod inserted into his leg, what followed were two very stressful days where he remained unconsciousness and where every odd beep or strange blip of a monitor nearly caused her to stroke out.

Then, yesterday he turned the corner. And today he was talking. Sweet Lord in heaven, he was talking! Which meant very soon, she’d have to hear him tell her he hadn’t really meant that I love you.

He thought he was dying. And he was Billy. Loyal Billy. Courageous Billy. Trustworthy Billy. Sweet Billy. So he tried, even in what he’d thought were his last moments, to give her comfort. To be…kind. And it was so beautiful. So like Billy.

But he didn’t die. Thank goodness. Which meant now she had to let him off the hook. And she would let him off the hook. Just as soon as she could work up the courage to walk into that room…

A second passed. Then two. A nurse in bright blue scrubs walked by, cocking her head, and Eve realized she probably looked highly ridiculous, pressed there against the wall like her toes were curled over a twenty-story ledge, a cardboard carrier with three cups of coffee held tight against her chest.

Okay, Eve. You can do it. Ladyballs in the house, remember?

Then again, ladyballs were generally useless when dealing with matters of the heart…

Oh, for Pete’s sake! Stop being a coward! Your love is without strings, right? So, what does it matter that he doesn’t really love you back?

Taking a deep breath, she pasted on what she hoped was a smile, then stepped into the room.

* * *

And there she was. Eve…

Billy’s heart raced at the sight of her. Literally, the monotonous beep, beep, beep of some monitor he hadn’t noticed until then picked up its cadence.

“Eve,” he said her name and watched her eyes immediately fill with tears. Watched her lower lip tremble in the most adorable way.

“You’re talking, Billy,” she sniffed, barely sparing Boss a glance when he grabbed the cardboard coffee carrier out of her hands.

“I’m talking.” He patted the bed beside him. Grinning when she bit her lip, hesitating. “Come on. I won’t bite,” he promised hoarsely.

“We’re gonna leave you two alone for a bit,” Boss said, to which Becky lifted a brow, frowning.

“We are?” Becky asked. “But why? I mean Billy just woke up and—”

“Clue in, woman!” Boss thundered, and Becky stuck out her chin, scowling. Boss just rolled his eyes, heaving a long-suffering sigh, and hooked an arm around her shoulders. She tried to backpeddle when he marched her toward the door. But then Boss bent down and whispered something in her ear. “Oh,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Eve, then, “Oh!” She nodded, smiling, and allowed Boss to escort her from the room.

Eve watched them go then turned back to him, her eyes searching and uncertain.

“Now.” He patted the mattress again. “Come. Here.”

“Billy, I—”

“Are you really disobeying the wishes of a man who just had two bullets dug out of him?” The more he talked, the easier it became. That made him happy. Because there were a lot of things he wanted to say to Eve.

She shook her head and scurried toward him. Her hair was pulled back in a clip. Her face was free of makeup. She was wearing slim-fit jeans paired with a demure little pastel blouse that was guaranteed to raise his blood pressure on a better day. The bulk of the bandage on her upper arm where that round had grazed her—his stomach flipped just thinking about how close she’d come—showed through the flimsy material. And there were dark circles beneath her eyes from a combination of long, sleepless nights and the soul-deep sorrow of discovering who’d really been behind the attempts on her life.

Sonofabitch. He still had trouble believing it. Her own goddamned cousin. And then what she’d had to do…it was terrible. Unthinkable. And they’d have to deal with it. Probably for a long, long time to come. The psychological trauma of that kind of thing didn’t just go away overnight.

But right now, he didn’t want to think about Jeremy Buchanan. They had a lifetime to work through all of that. No. Right now, he wanted to think about them. Talk about them. About their future.

He frowned when she didn’t sit on the bed beside him, instead choosing to stand there. And when she lifted a hand to start chewing on a hangnail, he cocked his head on the pillow. “Eve?”

“It’s okay, Billy,” she blurted. “I know you didn’t r-really mean it. You’re off the hook, okay?”

Huh?

He didn’t realize he said the word aloud, until she swallowed and sputtered, “Y-you know. Out in the parking lot when you thought you were dying. I know you didn’t mean it. I know you don’t really love me. I know you can’t ever trust me again after what I did. And it’s okay. I understand. I—”

“Eve, stop.”

She snapped her mouth closed and swallowed, staring at the baby blue coverlet on his bed as if it held the answers to man’s greatest questions.

“Look at me,” he commanded, and she swallowed again, gnawing furiously at her lower lip. But slowly, ever so slowly, she lifted her gaze. And the look on her face was a two-fisted punch in the gut. Good God, she actually believes what she’s saying. She actually believes she doesn’t deserve forgiveness. That she doesn’t deserve a second chance. And because none of that was accurate. And because he didn’t have the strength to argue or explain it all, he said the three truest words he could think of. And he said them with a conviction she couldn’t mistake. “I love you.”

Two fat tears spilled over her lower lids and streaked down her pale face. There was still a flicker of disbelief in her eyes, so he repeated himself. “I love you.”

“B-But how?” she wailed, throwing her hands in the air. “After I betrayed you with B-Blake. After I broke my promise, broke my vow, how can you ever trust me again? How you just change your mind about that? About wanting me? What’s different now?”

“Well…” He snagged her hand, and he tugged her forward. Or tried to, anyway. He was surprised and appalled by how weak he was. He had no more strength than a newborn. Still, she obliged him and perched on the edge of the mattress. “It’s easy. I can trust you because I love you. And because I know you love me.”

She searched his eyes. “But we loved each other back then, too.”

“Yes we did,” he smiled. “But we were also young and dumb. Hopefully we’re not so much so anymore and—”

He was interrupted by a commotion outside the room. Boss’s and Becky’s voices rose angrily, and then right before Patrick Edens barged through the door, he heard the man say, “Dr. Fisher told me he was awake, and I need to see them, damnit! I have something for them!” Boss slapped a huge mitt on Edens’s shoulder, ready to drag the man back through the door. “I have something they need to hear!” Edens roared, struggling ineffectually against Boss’s meaty grip.

And as much as Bill hated the sight of the man’s face, and even though he couldn’t possibly imagine what Edens could have to say, he felt Eve stiffen beside him, felt her fingers instinctively curl around his. And he realized she might need to hear whatever it was her father was determined to convey. So, he said, “It’s okay, Boss. Let him go.”

Boss and Becky both eyed Edens like one might eye a pile of cow manure swarmed by flies and baking in the sun, and Bill couldn’t help himself. One corner of his mouth twitched. Then, once Boss released him, Edens threw his haughty nose in the air, grabbed his lapels, and straightened his gray, pinstripe suit jacket, and Bill felt himself following Boss and Becky’s lead. He opened his mouth to demand that Edens get on with whatever he’d come to say, but Eve beat him to it.

“Why are you here, Dad?” she asked. Her voice was steady though he could feel her fingers trembling.

Tough. His woman was one hundred percent, straight-up tough. And he was so goddamned proud of her.

Edens’s eyes drifted over Bill, and to his utter astonishment, there seemed to be pain and…was that…? Hell, that looked suspiciously like remorse in the man’s gaze. Then Edens turned to Eve and blurted, “He tried to call you.” His voice was hoarse, but his words were clear.

“Wh-what?” Eve asked. And now there was a tremor in her vocal cords to match the one in her fingers.

Edens licked his lips, shaking his salt-and-pepper head. “Twelve years ago, after you had your cell phone turned off because the press got your number and started hounding you about the photographs, Reichert called the house. He left a dozen messages for you, asking you to call him to let him know what was going on. But I never gave you those messages.”

Eve sucked in such a large breath Bill was shocked there was any oxygen left in the room. Her hand flew to her throat, covering the bruises that’d turned from deep purple to a jaundiced-looking yellow. “H-how could you n—” she sputtered, but Edens cut her off.

“And she wrote to you, Reichert. Twice,” he said, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He reached into his suit jacket, pulling out two envelopes that were yellowing around the edges. “In the first letter, she laid everything on the line. She sent the pictures and the articles. She begged you to forgive her and asked you to call her at her new phone number. In the second letter, she told you about Blake’s proposal, asked if there was any chance you still loved her because she wouldn’t go through with it if you did. But I intercepted the letters in the mailbox.”

Edens hesitantly stepped forward, handing Bill the envelopes. And when Bill looked down at the things, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He lifted the flap on one and out fell the pictures of Eve, those heartbreaking pictures, and the tabloid articles that’d run alongside them. And then there was the note. He’d recognize her handwriting anywhere because he’d lived for her letters, read and reread them thousands of times while he’d been in BUD/S training.

“I-I don’t expect either of you to forgive me,” Edens said, his nostrils flaring. “But after what you two have been through together, I realize I—” He stopped and cleared his throat, his chin sinking just a notch. “You may not be the kind of man I envisioned for my daughter. But you’re the kind of man she needs. And I was…I was wrong to interfere.”