“Yeah, it’s, um, working out just great. Really great.”

Apparently tired of waiting, Justin ran two hands up Mel’s legs, slow and lazylike, toying with what he found between them.

Melanie’s eyes crossed with lust. Did she really want to grill her niece when she had this gorgeous man ready and willing to worship her body?

Then that gorgeous man slid a finger into her. “Okay, then,” she managed to say. “I’ll call you in a few days to check up on you. Bye, sweetie-”

Justin disconnected for her and tackled her flat to her back, holding her still while he smiled wickedly into her face.

“What are you going to do with me now?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“This.” Then he put his mouth where his fingers had been, scattering her thoughts like the wind.


B EN HAD GOTTEN her pregnant. Seventeen years old, the world finally, finally, at his fingertips, and he’d really screwed up this time. He reached for Rachel’s hand and found her fingers icy. “It’s going to be okay.”

Choking out a laugh, she pulled her hand free. “Really? How is that Ben? I’m having a baby, for God’s sake.”

Yeah. A baby. His stomach rolled, but that could have been hunger given he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Nothing new in that. He’d planned never to be hungry again on the other side of the planet.

With Rachel at his side.

Looking at her in the moonlight, with her long hair and haunting eyes, his heart constricted. God, he loved her. Ridiculously so. Who’d have thought the no-good, black-hearted nobody had it in him to feel this way, as though he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything if she wasn’t in his world?

And they’d made a baby. By accident not design, they’d come together and created a life, a perfect little life, and suddenly his panic turned to something much lighter, something much closer to…joy. “Marry me.”

“Ben-”

“Look, I love you, that’ll never change. And we’d have gotten married eventually, we’ll just move the plans up a bit.”

“But…where will we live?”

“Well, we’ll start out in South America, but-”

“Ben.”

“We’ll have to hit Africa in the fall, and then-”

“Ben.”

He was losing her, he could hear it in her voice, so he kept talking, fast as he could. “And then we’ll go to Ireland, because-”

She grabbed his hands, brought them to her heart. Her eyes were huge and wet, her voice so low he had to lean close to hear her. “Ben, listen to me. You love me, and that’s my own miracle, believe me, but I can’t. I can’t become Mrs. Asher.”

“So don’t change your name,” he said deliberately misunderstanding her. “I don’t care, Rach, I just want you.”

She let out another choked sound, this one a sob. “I can’t…I can’t give you what you want. We’re too different.”

“Different doesn’t matter.” He was going to have to talk her into wanting him. His stomach rolled and pitched again. No one had ever just wanted him, no questions asked. “Look, I’m going. You’re coming with me. We love each other-”

“No! God, you don’t get it!” Her face twisted. “I…don’t love you. Okay? I don’t love you.”

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry.” Drawing in a deep breath, she stood. Her eyes were still wet but inscrutable now, hiding herself from him. She was good at that. “I won’t see you again before you go.”

With the words I don’t love you echoing in his head like a bad refrain, he could just stare at her.

“Goodbye, Ben.”

“Rach-”

“Go. Please,” she whispered brokenly. “Just go.”

It was a hauntingly familiar request for him. She didn’t love him and she wanted him to go. Fine. He wouldn’t beg. “Goodbye, Rachel,” he said, but she’d already walked away, vanishing into the night.

In hell with the memories, Ben woke up with a gasp. He lay in a white bed with white fluffy pillows, sweat streaking his body, air chopping in and out of his lungs as if he’d been running a marathon.

Nope, not hell, but close enough. The walls seemed to close in on him, strangle him.

How fast could he get out of town? Out of the country? Asia should be far enough for today. Surely he could get to Asia. With a vicious oath, he scrubbed his hands over his face, just as someone leaped onto the mattress at his side. Battle-ready, he whipped around.

Emily sat at his hip, with a wide cheeky grin. “Morning, Daddy.”

And just like that, his heart sighed. Sagging back against the mountain of fluffy pillows, he let out a shaky breath. Asada. Rachel.

Emily.

Revise. He was in hell. “Morning, sweetness.”

She wore cargo pants low on her hips, a tank top in neon yellow that made his eyes vibrate with the brightness, and held her laptop in her arms. She bounced a few times for good measure.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” she wanted to know.

“Fine.” Not fine, not really. Late last night he’d gotten a call on his cell phone from one of his editors. They’d received a letter at the magazine’s head office, forwarded from his last job. It’d been handwritten on fancy, stiff, olive-colored paper. “I’m still going to make you pay,” it had said.

Obviously Asada, but that it’d come to Ben in South America gave him hope-Asada still didn’t know where he was.

Or whom he was guarding.

When Ben had finally gotten into bed there’d been the nightmares of Asada finding this precious woman-child right in front of him, of losing Rachel and Emily now, in the present, as he’d lost Rachel so long ago.

Bounce, bounce. “You looked tired, Dad.” Bounce, bounce. “Maybe you should sleep some more.”

Bounce, bounce.

“Em, you’re scrambling my brain.”

“Sorry.” She stilled-a momentary miracle, he was certain. “Mom’s still sleeping. Wanna go out to breakfast and get artery chokers before I have to go to jail?”

“School isn’t jail, Em.”

“This school is.”

“No luck getting your mom to home school you yet, huh?”

“None,” she said on a dramatic sigh.

“What are artery chokers?”

“Scrambled eggs, a mountain of bacon and the best hash browns you’ve ever tasted. It’s at Joe’s, a sidewalk café right around the corner. Mom hates the place, but she doesn’t know how to enjoy herself.” Hopeful smile. Bounce, bounce. “Oops.” She stopped bouncing. Again. “Sorry.”

Cracking a glance at the clock, he managed to contain his groan when he saw three fives all lined up. “It’s not even six.” In his body’s time zone-God knows which one that was exactly-it felt like the middle of the night.

“Duh. That’s why Mom’s still sleeping. Come on, she’ll never know.” Leaping off the bed, she grabbed his arm and tugged. “We can get a milk shake to go with it, double chocolate. They’re huge.”

Ben rarely ate before noon unless it was a hunk of bread or cheese on the run. And it’d been so long since he’d been in the States, much less in a civilized country with sidewalk cafés that served huge chocolate milk shakes and “artery chokers,” he supposed he couldn’t blame his stomach for quivering hopefully. “Give me five minutes to shower-”

“Shower later.” She pulled him out of bed, making him grateful he’d pulled on a pair of knit boxer shorts before tumbling into bed the night before. The jeans she tossed him hit him in the chest, his shirt in the face.

“Hurry.” She bounced again, from foot to foot this time. “I’m starved.”

“Okay, forget the shower, but I still need two minutes.”

“Da-a-ad!”

“Two minutes,” he repeated, putting his hand over her face and gently pushing her out of the bedroom, shutting the door on her.

Her sigh came through the wood. “I’ll wait on the porch. Two minutes. One hundred twenty seconds, okay? Not like Mom’s two minutes, which are really twenty.”

“Em, no. Not the porch.” He didn’t want her outside, unsupervised, ripe for a kidnapping. “Wait inside.”

“Yeah, yeah. Two minutes, right?”

“Inside.”

“Gotcha.”

He used half his two minutes to call for his messages, hoping Agent Brewer had checked in. After this latest letter, they’d promised to double their efforts, but there was nothing new this morning.

Ben brushed his teeth and ran his fingers through his hair. One glance in the mirror assured him he wasn’t quite ready for a public appearance stateside. His hair was long and he needed a shave. His face seemed leaner than he remembered, and he had new lines fanning out from his eyes. Not laugh lines, given his life and what he’d done, but hard-living lines. Artery cloggers…yeah, he supposed he could use a few weeks of high-fat, over-processed food. Scrambled eggs, bacon and hash browns with his daughter seemed like a good start.

Risking his last few seconds before Emily came looking for him, he left the bedroom and because he was an idiot, a glutton for punishment, his hand touched the handle of Rachel’s door, twisted it. Pushed. The huge bed was still, covered in pillows and comforters, with an unmoving lump beneath them.

He moved closer. Nothing of Rachel showed, so he gently pulled the covers away from her face.

Her head was covered by a handkerchief, her face creased in a frown, but after a beat, she relaxed back into the deep sleep of the exhausted, flat on her back.

Maybe she wasn’t quite on her deathbed as Emily had led him to believe, but she was hurting, he could see it in the tight lines of her mouth, the delicate purple bruises beneath her eyes. All the painful injuries made her seem so vulnerable, which was hard to take because Ben remembered her well, and one thing she’d never been was fragile. A pillar of strength, most definitely. Full of immense courage and pride, yes. Stunningly intelligent and mouthwateringly gorgeous, yes. Fragile, no.

It made him feel fragile in return, just looking at her.

Letting out a soft exhale, she turned to her good side, winced, then went still again. Her creamy shoulders were in view, as were the straps of that amazingly sexy pj’s set he’d put her in yesterday.

He let out a slow, slow breath. He hadn’t allowed himself to think while he’d had his hands all over her body, but he was thinking now. She’d been hauntingly beautiful at seventeen, but at thirty, her beauty had only ripened, deepened. She had the little birthmark on her right inner thigh. He’d noticed that yesterday. He’d loved that birthmark, had loved to put his mouth to it and-

And those thoughts were going to lead to nothing but trouble. As if he didn’t have enough. He took one more long look, feeling like he was dying of thirst and she was a long, tall drink of water.

Once upon a time he’d been ashamed of how much he’d needed her, a woman who’d prided herself on never needing another soul.

And yet she needed him now. She needed him now and didn’t even know it.

She let out a little murmur, a half whimper, and broke his heart. “You’re okay,” he whispered, and lightly stroked a hand over her shoulder. She’d always had the softest, sweetest-smelling skin, and that hadn’t changed, either. He let his fingers linger, as suddenly and rather desperately, he wanted his mouth there. Everywhere. “Just sleep.”

Beneath his touch, her response was instant and shockingly gratifying. She relaxed. Just because he’d spoken.

The curve of her breast pushed at the top of the camisole, and he had to take his hand off her and stuff it into his pocket. Feeling like a pervert for wanting to touch her, he covered her back up, and reminded himself why he was in South Village.

Why he couldn’t hop on the next plane out of it.

Turning away, he caught sight of a stack of mail on her dresser. At the mac and cheese celebratory dinner last night, right in this room, Ben had met Garrett, Rachel’s neighbor. Apparently he always brought in the mail for them. Ben had wondered darkly what else he brought Rachel, but decided he was a fool for caring.

He started to walk out of the room, but jerked to a stop when he caught a glimpse of an envelope sticking out of the stack of mail. The sight of the fancy, stiff olive-colored paper backed the air into his throat. With a quick glance back at the still sleeping Rachel, he slid the envelope out from the stack.

It was addressed to him, in the carefully scripted handwriting he was beginning to recognize all too well. The return address said simply Asada, South America, postmarked a few days prior.

A new letter. Recent contact. With the envelope burning his fingers, he moved into the hallway and ripped it open, his hand shaking as he skimmed the words: “Ben, Worried yet? Frightened yet? Good, because we’re still not even…”