I needed a break after the last couple of days and I was sure Ally and Jane needed one too. Hopefully, by Monday, now that the police were involved, this would be sorted and all would be back to normal. That was to say, normal with Duke back and normal as it would ever be.

Rosie, I knew after last night, was likely never coming back.

I just hoped whatever he did in not coming back, he did it breathing.

This made me sad, but I pushed that thought aside too.

I got up, staggered to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I was running on empty, not just my morning caffeine jolt but also the fact that I’d had a lot less sleep than I usually required. I stared in the mirror noting the bruising on my face was subsiding but not by much, or perhaps the scary dark circles under my eyes were running interference for the bruising.

I walked out of the bedroom to make coffee and stopped dead, staring at the Command Center door, which was open.

I expected that Lee was gone, off for a run, off to command mercenary troops in a drug war in Peru, off to put tracking devices on my car.

Instead I heard him talking on the phone like it was an everyday room and not the nerve center for an international commando cartel.

Normally, curiosity would have forced me to walk right in or at least eavesdrop on his conversation.

Instead, I went straight to the coffeepot.

Priorities.

The pot was almost full.

I emitted a sigh of delight.

I filled a cup, splashed in the milk and walked it to the balcony off the living room, sipping my coffee and staring at the beauty of the Front Range.

Lee had a killer view.

As the caffeine permeated, I allowed my foggy brain to plan my day.

I was going to call Jane and Ally and go put a note up at Fortnum’s. I was going to go get Tod and Stevie’s car, go home and make macaroni salad so it had time to ferment before the barbeque. Then I was going to go to bed until I had to wake up to make the brownies and get ready for the barbeque.

If I felt like it, I might lay out in the sun rather than sleeping in my bed.

That was going to be my day.

It sounded like a good day.

Two hands, undoubtedly connected to arms which connected to Lee’s body, settled on the balcony railing on either side of me. I felt his warmth at my back.

I had a moment where I felt I should turn around, screaming like a banshee and scratching his eyes out for having the audacity to handcuff me to his bed.

Then I thought about how he held me while I trembled and played with my hair until I fell asleep and decided against it.

“Hey,” I said as he moved my hair with his chin and kissed my neck.

“How’re you feelin’ this morning?” His voice sounded in my ear and tingles slid across my skin.

“Okay.”

I realized I forgot to factor Lee in my plans for the day.

I didn’t have time to perform any mental recalculations as he turned me around, took the coffee cup and put it on the teak table that was just within reach. Then his arms slid around me, I opened my mouth to say something, anything, and then he kissed me.

The tingles intensified by about one hundred percent and started to target specific zones.

After the kiss, his lips trailed along my cheek to my ear, I had my hands pressed against his chest and I said, perhaps stupidly and definitely shakily, “What are you doing?”

He answered, “Saying good morning.”

He said, “good morning” really, really well. Far better than he said, “thank you”.

Okay, I decided, something had to give here.

All this playing around was all well and good (some of it really good). The thing was, I’d made a decision about keeping my distance from Lee a decade ago and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go back on that decision.

Well, if I was honest, I had to admit I wanted to, no doubt about it. It was Lee and I’d spent a lifetime wanting exactly this.

But, there was a lot at stake here. What happened if it didn’t work out? What happened if he got bored and moved on? It would change everything. I’d be devastated but also there were relationships to consider, family, people that meant a great deal to both of us.

“Lee, we need to talk.”

“Mm?” This was mumbled before his tongue ran from the skin at the hinge of my jaw, down the line of my neck.

“Lee!” My toes were curling, my nipples were hard, this was getting serious.

“Talk,” he said. “I’m listening.”

He was not listening. His hands had gone up under my shirt and were sliding up my sides.

“We need to talk about what’s happening between us.”

His mouth came to mine again. “Okay, shoot.”

Then he kissed me, this time serious tongue action and I was forced to put my arms around his neck to remain standing.

When his mouth went away, one of his hands went to cup my ass and pull me closer and I could feel his God-given talent pressing against my belly. Tingles shot down the insides of my thighs.

“I’m not sure about this,” I told him even though I was kind of sure and my body was definitely sure and getting surer by the second.

“No?” he asked, his head coming up and he was looking at me. His brown eyes were melty-chocolate and one look at them made me catch my breath.

The hand at my ass came up and in and then cupped my breast, the rough pad of his thumb sliding across my hardened nipple. I bit my lip as electricity shot straight from my nipple to my nether regions.

“That feels pretty sure,” he said.

“That’s not what I mean,” I whispered.

“I see. You mean something else. I’ll check there too,” He grinned, his hand moving from my breast down my belly straight to…

“Lee!” My body jerked, half to get away from him and half in surprise but I had nowhere to go, except over the railing and to an icky death on the sidewalk fourteen stories below.

He smiled, full-fledged, causing my stomach to do a quick dip and his hand detoured back to my ass. “Let’s have this talk after I make love to you.”

My stomach had lurched at the smile, my legs went even weaker at his hand at my ass and I knew I couldn’t take much more and somehow, don’t ask me why, that made my eyes sting with tears.

Both his hands went to my ass and he lifted me up. I gave a small cry of surprise and my arms tightened around his neck as I threw my legs around his hips.

Holding me by the bottom, he turned and strode back into the condo. One hand left my ass and went into my hair and he tilted my head back with a soft yank, kissing me as he walked me to the couch. He put me down and came down right on top of me, his mouth still on mine.

I moved my head and, using the last shreds of my ragged control, tried one last time to talk. “We fuck this up, Lee, we fuck everything up. Ally, Hank, your folks, my Dad, are you prepared for that?”

His body became still.

After a moment he slid a hand in the hair at either side of my head and held my face to look at him.

And when I did, it felt like a lead weight settled in my chest at what I saw.

Something significant had changed. Something significant and scary. He wasn’t happy, the melty-chocolate look was gone and something hard had come into his face.

“You think I want a quick fuck?”

I shook my head and bit my lip. Honestly, I didn’t know what he wanted but at that precise moment, I wasn’t going to say that.

“You think I’d touch you unless it meant something?”

Holy crap.

I held my breath thinking about what that might mean, my eyes widened, the tears stinging them began to threaten to fill them.

His hands moved from my face to my hips.

“Christ, Indy, there’s more to me than this.” He yanked my hips, putting them in brutal, intimate contact with his and the hardness between them.

He held me there for a minute and stared into my eyes.

Then he said, “Forget it.”

He put his hands on the couch, pushed himself up and got off me.

“What?” I asked, dumbfounded, my body in temporary shock at the loss of the weight of his, my brain not caffeinated enough to think clearly.

He stared down at me, his face hard and blank. Just like it was when it closed down when Dad asked him if he hit me.

“Get dressed, I’ll take you home.”

I blinked.

“What?” I asked again.

He hauled me off the couch and set me on my jellied legs.

“I said, get dressed, pack your shit. I’ll take you home.”

I blinked again. Then I did it again.

Say what?

“Hang on a second…” I started.

He was walking away, muttering to himself. “I knew I shouldn’t have started this. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Um, say what?

I narrowed my eyes at his back. “Excuse me?”

He was gone.

The tears were no longer threatening in my eyes, they’d filled them and they were flowing over. But instead of them being full of the confused emotions of a woman who was close to getting everything she ever wanted and was scared to death of it, they were tears of a pissed off woman-on-the-edge who was close to murdering someone.

Emotional tears were unacceptable.

Pissed off tears were perfectly fine, so I let them flow.

I stomped into the bedroom and started to tear through it. I pulled on a pair of jeans, my bra and my Def Leppard T-shirt, my black belt and boots from the night before. I found my handbag sitting on my clothes in the armchair which Lee must have recovered for me last night.

He’d get no thanks from me for that act of thoughtfulness.

I shoved anything I found that was mine in my bag, rifling through drawers and the closet, making an utter mess along the way. I didn’t care, I was way beyond caring about tidiness.

I went into the bathroom and got my face soap, he could keep the goddamn toothbrush, and saw that Lee was leaning against the doorjamb when I walked back into the room.

“Ready?” he asked, his face stony.

“Damn straight,” I answered, stalking to my bag and pushing stuff into it, zipping it with a vicious tug. “You’re a crazy man. You’re nuts. You and Tex should form a club. After years and years, you think you can crook your finger and I’d come running, no questions asked. I just wanted to talk! I wasn’t asking for an act of devotion akin to wrestling a tiger.” Some of my stuff poked out of the bag and I jammed it in and carried on with my rant. “Getting me all hot and bothered, twice…” I stopped and held up two fingers at him as he stood in the doorway, then I went back to my bag, lugged it up and looped the strap over my shoulder. “Then walking off leaving me that way. I’m more trouble than I’m worth? Ha!”

I grabbed my handbag and stomped toward him, with the intention of going right by him.

“Don’t bother taking me home. I’ll call a taxi. I’ll call Ally. I’ll call my Dad. No more favors from you!”

I had made it to him and said (maybe yelled) the last bit up on my toes and leaning into his face.

When I was done ranting, he stood in the doorway and I stood in front of him, too close for comfort. I was still crying and I was sure my face was red and wet with angry tears.

“Get out of my way,” I demanded.

He didn’t move.

“I said, get out of my way!” I shouted.

“Why are you crying?” he asked conversationally.

“Because you piss me off.”

“You’re crying because you’re angry?”

“Seems like it, now get out of my way.”

Quick as a flash, he grabbed my purse and threw it across the room.

I watched it sail, land in the armchair again and then I turned back to him, eyes wide.

“What the –” I started.

He pulled the bag off my arm and also threw that across the room. It landed on the floor with a soft “phunf” a foot away from the armchair.

I watched it go and then turned back to him. Words escaped me, so I just stared.

His hands came up to my face, his thumbs running along the tears on my cheeks.

“Stop crying,” he demanded.

My mouth dropped open.

“You can’t just tell me to stop crying,” I informed him.

“How hot and bothered were you?” he asked.

That was the time to try my “knee him in the balls” maneuver, I was pretty much sure of it.

“Get out of my way,” I jerked my face out of his hands and started to walk back to my bags.