Steffie wasn’t in the pool or hiding in the gardens. They fanned out to search every room of the house, including the attic and the wine cellar, but she wasn’t anywhere. Harry’s complexion took on an ashen hue as Ren made the call to the local police.

“I’ll take the car and look along the road,” Harry said after Ren had hung up. “Jeremy, I need another set of eyes. You come with me.”

“I’ll search the grove and the vineyard,” Ren said. “Isabel, maybe Steffie’s hiding in the farmhouse. Why don’t you check that out? Tracy, you have to stay here in case she comes back.”

Tracy reached for Harry’s hand. “Find her. Please.”

For a moment they simply gazed at each other. “We’ll find her,” he said.

Isabel had her eyes closed, so Ren knew she was praying, and for once he was glad. Steffie seemed too timid to wander off. But if she hadn’t wandered off, and there hadn’t been some kind of accident, that left only one alternative. He pushed away the ugly thoughts that had started working overtime in his brain. The Night Kill script was doing a number on him.

“She’ll be fine,” Isabel whispered to Tracy. “I know it.” With a reassuring smile, she set off for the farmhouse.

Ren headed through the wet garden toward the vineyard, the muscles in his neck growing more tense with every step. That damned script . . . He reminded himself that this wasn’t the city, where predators skulked in alleyways and hung out in abandoned buildings. They were in the country.

But Kaspar Street had found one of his victims in the country, a seven-year-old girl, riding her bicycle down a dirt road.

It’s a movie, for chrissake!

He forced himself to concentrate on the real instead of the imaginary and mentally divided the vineyard into sections. It was barely three o’clock, but so cloudy it was hard to see. The mud from the earlier rainstorm tugged at his running shoes as he began making his way along the rows. Tracy said Steffie had been wearing red shorts. He kept his eyes peeled for a flash of color. Wherever she was, he hoped there weren’t any spiders.

Street would have used spiders.

The back of his neck tightened. He absolutely could not think about Street now. Come on, Steffie. Where are you?

 

Tracy gave Bernardo a photo of Steffie she kept in her wallet when he showed up in response to Ren’s call. She asked Anna to stay by her side as an interpreter so there wouldn’t be any miscommunication. Occasionally she stopped to reassure Brittany and cuddle Connor, but nothing could keep her terror at bay. Her precious little girl . . .

 

Isabel searched the farmhouse, but no child had hidden herself away there. She checked the garden, peered beneath the wisteria that grew over the pergola. Finally she grabbed a flashlight and headed for the pie-shaped section of woods that ran close to the road, between the villa and the farmhouse. As she walked, every step she took was a prayer.

 

Harry inched along the road, with Jeremy keeping watch on the right while he watched the left. The clouds had begun to boil in the sky, and visibility was growing more limited by the minute.

“Do you think she’s dead, Dad?”

“No!” He swallowed the lump of fear in his throat. “No, Jeremy. She just went for a walk and got lost.”

“Steffie doesn’t like walks. She’s too afraid of spiders.”

Something Harry had been trying to forget.

A splatter of raindrops hit the windshield. “She’s fine,” Harry said. “She’s just lost, that’s all.”

 

The rain was coming down so hard that Ren wouldn’t have noticed the storehouse door if a bolt of lightning hadn’t flashed just as he slogged past it. Two days ago it had been locked. Now it wasn’t shut all the way.

He swiped the rain from his eyes. It was unlikely that a child with a fear of spiders would go inside, at least not voluntarily. He remembered how the door had dragged in the dirt. She wouldn’t have been strong enough to open it herself. But someone else could have opened it and carried her inside. . . .

Kaspar Street had him spooked. He headed for the door. As he pulled on it, he noticed it didn’t drag nearly as much as it had. The rain must have washed away some of the dirt. He pushed it back on its hinges.

Inside, it was dry and dark as hell, even with the door open. As he skirted a pile of boxes, he wished he had a flashlight.

“Steffie?”

There was no sound except the thud of rain. He banged his shin against one of the wooden crates. It shifted on the dirt floor, making just enough noise that he nearly missed it.

The sound of a sniffle.

Or maybe he’d imagined it. “Steffie?”

There was no response.

Resisting the urge to push through the clutter, he stayed where he was and let several seconds tick by, until he finally heard it again, a muffled sob coming from the back, just off to his left.

Relief shot through him. He started to move, then hesitated. He didn’t know what he’d find, and if he weren’t careful, he’d frighten her more. God, he didn’t want to do that.

“You don’t want to frighten the little ones. Not until it’s too late for them to get away.”

His stomach lurched. He’d read the script only once, but he had a good memory, and too many lines had stuck.

“Steffie?” He spoke softly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

He heard a rustle, but no response. “It’s all right,” he said. “You can talk to me.”

A tiny, frightened whisper traveled through the gloom. “Are you a monster?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Not now, sweetheart, but give me another month. “No, honey,” he said quietly. “It’s Ren.”

He waited.

“P-please, go away.”

Even in the face of her terror, she’d remembered her manners. “Polite little girls are the easiest victims,” Street said in the script. “Their need to please outweighs their survival instincts.”

He was cold and clammy from the rain, but he started to sweat. Why did he have to be the one to find her? Why couldn’t it have been her father or Isabel? He moved as quietly as he could. “Everybody’s looking for you, honey. Your parents are worried.”

He heard something shift in the dirt. She was moving also, too frightened, he suspected, to let him come closer. But what had frightened her?

He hated the feeling that he was stalking her. Even more, he hated the way he automatically added that emotion to the teeming garbage heap inside him that made up his actor’s stockpile—the place he visited when he needed to access the ugliness of the human condition. Every actor had one of those stockpiles, but he suspected that his was more squalid than most.

Only an act of desperation could have forced her in here. Unless she’d been given no choice. . . . “Are you hurt?” He kept his voice calm. “Did anybody hurt you?”

Her breath caught on a soft, frightened hiccup. “There are . . . lots of spiders in here.”

Instead of going after her and upsetting her more, he moved back toward the door so there was no chance she could slip past him. “Did you . . . did you come in here by yourself?”

“The d-door was open, and I squeezed in.”

“By yourself?”

“ ’Cause I was afraid of the thunder. But I didn’t know it would be so . . . dark.”

He couldn’t shake off the shadow of Street. “Are you sure you didn’t come here with somebody?”

“No. By myself.”

He let himself relax. “That door’s pretty heavy. How did you close it?”

“I pulled real hard with both hands.”

He drew a full breath. “You must be really strong to do that. Let me feel your muscles.”

A sucker was born every minute, but she wasn’t one of them. “No thank you.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . you don’t like kids.”

You’ve got me there. He was definitely going to have to work on his relationship with children before the cameras started to roll. One of the things that made Street such a monster was the way he could enter their world. They didn’t sense his evil until it was too late.

He forced himself back to reality. “Hey, I love kids. I used to be a kid myself. I wasn’t a good kid like you, though. I got into a lot of trouble.”

“I think I’m going to be in trouble.”

You can bet on that. “Naw, they’re going to be so happy to have you back that you’re not going to be in any trouble at all.”

She wasn’t moving, but his eyes had adjusted enough for him to see a dim shape huddled near what looked like an overturned chair. One more time, just to be absolutely certain. “Tell me again, honey. Are you hurt? Did anybody hurt you?”

“No.” He saw a slight movement. “Spiders in Italy are very big.”

“Yeah, but I can kill them for you. I’m good at that.”

She didn’t say anything.

While Steffie made up her mind about him, Tracy and Harry were going through the torments of the damned. It was time to get serious. “Steffie, your mom and dad are really scared. I need to take you back to them.”

“No thank you. C-could you please go away?”

“I can’t do that.” Once again he started toward her, taking it slow. “I don’t want you to be scared, but I have to come and get you now.”

A sniffle.

“I’ll bet you’re hungry, too.”

“You’re gonna r-ruin everything.” She started to cry. Nothing dramatic. Just a few miserable gulps that tore at him.

He stopped to give her a little time. “What am I going to ruin?”

“E-everything.”

“Give me a hint.” He slipped sideways between some crates.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

He was nearly close enough to touch her now, but he didn’t. Instead, he crouched in the dirt about five feet away, doing his best to compress his height. “Why is that?”

“J-just because.”

He was overcome by his own inadequacy. He didn’t know a damn thing about kids, and he had no idea how to handle this. “I’ve got an idea. You know Dr. Isabel? You like her, don’t you? I mean, a lot better than you like me.”

Too late, he realized that probably wasn’t the best way to phrase a question for an overly polite little girl. “It’s okay. My feelings won’t be hurt. I like Dr. Isabel a lot, too.”

“She’s very nice.”

“I was thinking . . . She’s the kind of person who understands things. Why don’t I take you to her so you can tell her what’s wrong?”

“Would you go get her for me?”

Tracy hadn’t raised a fool. This was going to take a while.

He propped himself against one of the wine crates. “I can’t do that, honey. I have to stay with you. But I promise I’ll take you to her.”

“Would my d-daddy have to know?”

“Yes.”

“No thank you.”

What was this about? He kept his manner casual. “Are you afraid of your dad?”

“My daddy?”

He heard the surprise in her voice and relaxed. “He seems like a pretty nice guy to me.”

“Yes.” The word held a universe of misery. “But he’s going away.”

“I think he just needs to get back to his job. Grown-ups have to work.”

“No.” The word trailed off on a wispy sob. “He’s going away forever and ever and ever.”

“Who told you that?”

“I heard him. They had a big fight, and they don’t love each other anymore, and he’s going away.”

So that’s what this was about. Steffie had overheard Tracy and Briggs fighting. Now what was he supposed to do? Hadn’t he read somewhere that you should help kids verbalize their feelings? “Bummer.”

“I don’t want him to go,” she said.

“I’ve just met your dad, so I don’t know him real well, but I can tell you this: He’d never leave you forever and ever.”

“He won’t leave at all if I get really lost. He’ll have to stay and look for me.”

Bingo.

She was a gutsy kid, he’d give her that. She was willing to face her worst fear to keep from losing her father. In the meantime, though, her parents were going crazy with worry. He wasn’t proud of himself, but it had to be done. “Don’t move! I see a giant poisonous spider!”

She hurled herself at him, and the next thing he knew, she was plastered against his chest, trembling all over, her clothes damp, bare legs icy. He pulled her into his lap and held her close. “It’s gone. I don’t think it was a spider. I think it was a dust ball.”

Little girls didn’t smell like big girls, he noticed. She smelled sweaty, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and her hair smelled like bubble-gum shampoo. He rubbed her arms, trying to get some warmth into her. “I tricked you,” he felt bound to confess. “There wasn’t really a spider, but your mom and dad are upset, and they need to see that you’re all right.”

She started to struggle a little then, but he kept rubbing her arms to calm her. At the same time he tried to figure out how Isabel would handle this. Whatever she said would be just right—sensitive, insightful, perfect for the occasion.

Screw it.

“Your plan sucked, Steffie. You couldn’t stay hidden forever, right? Sooner or later you’d have to get something to eat, and then you’d be right back where you started from.”

“I was worried about that.”

She relaxed a little, and he smiled over her head. “What you need is a new plan. One without so many loopholes. And the place to start is by telling your mom and dad what got you so bent out of shape.”

“I might hurt their feelings.”

“So what? They hurt your feelings, didn’t they? A word to the wise, kid: If you go through life trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings, you’ll turn into a big wimp, and nobody likes a wimp.” He could almost see Isabel frowning at him, but what the hell? She wasn’t here, and he was doing his best. Still, he offered an amendment. “I’m not saying you should hurt people on purpose. I’m just saying you have to fight for what’s important to you, and if somebody’s feelings get hurt in the process, that’s their problem, not yours.” Not much better, but it was the truth.

“They might get mad.”

“I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but frankly, I think your mom and dad are going to be mad anyway. Not at first. At first they’ll be so happy to see you they’re going to slobber all over you. But after that wears off—now, I’m just taking a guess here—after that I think you’re going to have to do some fancy footwork.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means being smart about how you handle yourself so you don’t get in too much trouble.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . when they finally stop the slobbering, they’re going to start getting upset with you for running away, and that’s when you’re in the danger zone. You’re going to need to lay on the guilt about how you heard them fighting, and—this is the important part—while you’re doing that, you should probably cry a little and look pitiful. Can you do that?”

“I’m not sure.”

He smiled to himself. “Let’s go over to the door, where the light’s a little better, and I’ll show you. Is that okay?”

“Okay.”

He picked her up and carried her to the door. The toes of her sandals banged into his shins. She clung to his neck, too big to be carried but feeling the need. When they reached the door, he crouched down again, ignoring the mud to sit with her on his lap. It had stopped raining, and there was enough light to make out a very dirty, tear-streaked face and solemn, expressive eyes gazing at him as if he were Santa Claus. If she only knew.

“Okay, the idea here is to keep from getting grounded for the rest of your life, right?”

She nodded solemnly.

“So once they calm down, they’re going to decide they have to punish you to make sure you never do anything like this again.” He whipped her a lethal-weapon look. “And just so we’re clear, if you ever do decide to pull this crap again, I won’t be half as easy to manipulate as your parents, so you’d better promise me right now that you’ll figure out a smarter way to solve your problems.”

Another solemn nod. “I promise.”

“Good.” He pushed a little spike of hair away from her face. “When your parents start talking to you about taking the consequences for your actions, that means they’re thinking about punishment, so you have to start telling them about why you ran away. And make sure you don’t forget to say how bad it made you feel when you heard them fighting because, face it, that’s your ace in the hole. Naturally, talking about it is going to make you sad again, which is good, because you’re going to use that emotion to look as pitiful as you can. Got it?”

“Do I have to cry?”

“It wouldn’t hurt. Let me see how you’re going to do it. Give me a real pitiful look.”

She gazed up at him, all big sad eyes, just about the most pitiful thing he’d ever seen, except he realized she hadn’t started yet, and he nearly laughed as she screwed up her face, pinched her lips, and took a huge, dramatic snuffle.

“You’re overplaying your hand, kiddo.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Make it more real. Just think about something sad, like being locked in your room for the rest of your life with all your toys taken away, and let it come out on your face.”

“Or about having my daddy go away forever?”

“That should do it.”

She mulled it over for a minute, and before long she’d worked up some pretty good misery, complete with a lip quiver.

“Excellent.” He needed to put a quick end to the acting lesson before she got carried away. “Now give me a quick summary of the script so far.”

She dabbed at her nose with the back of a skinny arm. “If they start to get mad, I have to tell them about hearing them fighting and how I feel about Daddy leaving, even if it hurts their feelings. And I can cry when I tell them. I just think about something really sad, like my daddy going away, and look pitiful.”

“You got it. Gimme five.”

They smacked hands, she grinned, and it was like watching the sun come out.

As he led her by the hand through the wet grass up the hill, he remembered his earlier promise and grimaced. “You don’t still need to talk to Dr. Isabel, do you?” The last thing he wanted was for Reverend Feelgood to undermine all his hard work with what would surely be talk of honest repentance. Soon the lip quiver would be yesterday’s news.

“I think I’m okay now. But”—she gripped his hand a little tighter—“would you . . . Could you stay with me when I talk to them?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I think it is. If you stayed with me, you could, you know, look pitiful, too.”

“Everybody wants to direct.”

“What?”

“Trust me when I tell you that I’d only screw up your big scene. But I promise to check in on you. And if they decide to lock you up in a dungeon or anything, I’ll smuggle you some candy bars.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

Her look of mild reproof reminded him of Isabel, and he smiled. “Exactly. So what are you scared of?”

 

Briggs had just arrived back at the house to check in, so they were all gathered in front when Ren came up the path from the farmhouse with her. The minute they saw her, both parents started to run. Then they were on their knees in the gravel, half smothering the poor kid.

“Steffie! Oh, my God, Steffie!”

They kissed her, checked her over to make sure she wasn’t hurt, and then Tracy jumped up and tried to slobber Ren with kisses. Briggs actually reached out to hug him, something Ren managed to avoid by bending over to tie his shoelace. Isabel, in the meantime, stood there looking proud, which annoyed the hell out of him. What had she expected him to do? Kill the kid?

That’s when it occurred to him that at some point during his time with Steffie, he’d mercifully stopped thinking about Kaspar Street.

Isabel’s attitude didn’t keep him from aching to sink into her again, even though it had only been a few hours since he’d done just that. And even though he wasn’t crazy about those terms she’d laid out in the car this morning. Not that he wanted too many emotional entanglements—God knew he didn’t—but did she have to be so cold-blooded about it? Then there was the matter of Kaspar Street. She hadn’t liked the fact that he was in the business of killing young women. What would she do when she found out about the kids?

He finally managed to get her away by reminding her that he was soaked to the skin, cold as hell, and hungry. That kicked in her female instincts, just as he’d hoped, and within an hour he had her in bed.

 

“Are you mad?” Steffie whispered.

Harry had a lump in his throat the size of Rhode Island. Since he couldn’t talk, he brushed the hair back from her forehead and shook his head. She lay curled in bed with her oldest teddy cuddled to her cheek. She was clean from her bath and wearing her favorite blue cotton nighty. He remembered her as a toddler, waddling toward him, arms out. She looked so small under the covers and so very precious.

“We’re not mad,” Tracy said quietly from the other side of the bed. “But we’re still upset.”

“Ren told me if you locked me in a dungeon, he’d sneak me some candy bars.”

“What a wild and crazy guy.” Tracy smoothed the sheet. Her makeup had vanished hours ago, and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she was still the most beautiful woman Harry had ever seen.

“I’m sorry I scared you so much.”

Tracy looked stern. “So you’ve said. But you’re still spending tomorrow morning by yourself in this bedroom.”

Tracy was made of stronger stuff than Harry was, because he wanted to forget all about discipline. But then Steffie hadn’t run away on account of her. It was him. He felt defeated and disoriented. But he also felt resentful. How had he managed to become the bad guy?

“All morning?” Steffie looked so little and miserable he could barely keep himself from overriding Tracy and promising to take her for ice cream instead.

“All morning,” Tracy said firmly.

Steffie thought it over, and then her lip started to quiver. “I know I shouldn’t have run away just because I got so sad when I heard you and Daddy fighting.”

Harry’s stomach twisted, and Tracy’s forehead crumpled. “Until ten-thirty,” she said quickly.

Steffie’s lip stopped quivering, and she sighed one of those grown-up sighs that usually made him laugh. “I guess it could be a lot worse.”

Tracy tugged on a lock of her daughter’s hair. “You bet it could. The only reason we’re not locking you in that dungeon Ren mentioned is because of your allergies.”

“Plus the spiders.”

“Yeah, that, too.” Tracy’s voice got thready, and Harry knew they were thinking the same thing. Having her parents together was so important to Steffie that she’d been willing to face her worst fear. His daughter had more courage than he did.

Tracy leaned down to kiss her, clutching the headboard to support her weight. She stayed there for a long time, eyes closed, her cheek pressed to Steffie’s. “I love you so much, punkin. Promise you won’t ever do anything like this again.”

“I promise.”

Harry finally managed to find his voice. “And promise that the next time you get upset about something, you’ll tell us what’s bothering you.”

“Even if it hurts your feelings, right?”

“Even then.”

She tucked her bear under her chin. “Are you . . . still going away tomorrow?”

He didn’t know what to say, so he simply shook his head.

Tracy went to check on Connor and Brittany, who were sharing a room, at least until they woke up and crawled in with their father. Jeremy was still downstairs playing a computer game. Harry and Tracy hadn’t been alone since their disastrous argument that afternoon, and he didn’t want to be alone with her now, not while he felt so raw, but parents couldn’t always do what they wanted.

She shut the door and stepped back into the hallway. Then she pressed the small of her back against the wall, something she did late in her pregnancies to ease the strain. With her other pregnancies he’d massaged her there, but not with this one.

The weight of his guilt grew heavier.

She cupped her hand over her belly. The brazen, overly confident rich girl who’d led him on such a merry chase a dozen years ago had disappeared, and an achingly beautiful woman with haunted eyes had taken her place. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

What are you going to do? he wanted to say. She was the one who’d left. She was the one who was never satisfied. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“We can’t talk anymore.”

“We can talk.”

“No, we just start hurling insults.”

Not the way he remembered it. She was the one with the sharp tongue and atomic temper. All he tried to do was dodge. “No insults from me.” He slipped his glasses back on.

“Of course not.”

She said it without any bite, but the knot inside him tightened. “I think what happened this afternoon pushed us past the insult stage, don’t you?”

Despite his good intentions, he sounded accusatory, and he braced himself for her retaliation, but she simply shut her eyes and rested her head against the wall. “Yes, I think so, too.”

He wanted to wrap her in his arms and beg her to let this go, but she’d made up her mind about him, and nothing he’d said so far had been able to change it. If he couldn’t make her understand, they had no chance at all. “Today proved what I’ve been saying all along. We have to buckle down. I think we both know that now. It’s time for us to buckle down and do what we have to.”

“And what’s that?”

She seemed genuinely perplexed. How could she be so obtuse? He tried to hide his agitation. “We can start behaving like adults.”

“You always behave like an adult. I’m the one who seems to have trouble.”

It was true—exactly what he’d been trying to tell her—but the expression of defeat on her face tore him apart. Why couldn’t she just adapt to things so they could move forward? He searched for the right words, but too many feelings lay in his way. Tracy believed in digging through those feelings whenever the whim struck, but not Harry. He’d never seen the benefit, only the downside.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Spoke softly. “Tell me something I can do to make you happy.”

“Be realistic! Marriages change. We’ve changed. We get older, and life catches up with us. It can’t always be like it was in the beginning, so don’t expect that. Be satisfied with what we have.”

“Is that what it comes down to? Just settling?”

All the emotional jumble inside him had come together in his stomach. “We have to be realistic. Marriage can’t be moonlight and roses forever. I wouldn’t call that settling.”

“I would.” Her hair flew. She thrust herself away from the wall. “I’d call it settling, and I’m not doing it. I’m not phoning in this marriage. I’m going to fight for it, even if I’m the only one with the guts to do that.”

She’d raised her voice, but they couldn’t have another argument, not with Steffie so close. “We can’t talk here.” He took her arm, pulled her away, steered her down the hall. “You don’t make sense. You’ve never once—never once in our entire marriage—made sense to me.”

“That’s because you have a computer for a brain,” she railed at him as they rounded the corner into the next wing. “I’m not afraid to fight. And I’ll do it until we’re both bleeding if I have to.”

“You’re just trying to create another one of your dramas.” He was appalled at how angry he sounded, but he couldn’t seem to calm down. He shoved open the nearest door, hauled her inside, and hit the switch. Big room, big furniture. The master bedroom.

“Our children aren’t going to be raised by parents who have a ghost marriage!” she cried.

“Stop it!” It was anger he felt—that’s what he told himself. Anger, not desperation, because anger was something he could control. “If you don’t stop it . . .” A monster sucked at his bones. “You can’t do this.” He drew in air. “You have to stop it. You have to stop it before you ruin everything.”

“How can I ruin—”

An explosion went off in his head. “By saying things we can’t ever take back!”

“Like what? That you’ve stopped loving me?” Angry tears filled her eyes. “Like the fact that I’m fat, and the novelty of screwing a pregnant woman wore off three kids ago. Like the fact that I can’t ever balance the checkbook, and I misplace your car keys, and you wake up every morning wishing you’d married somebody neat and tidy like Isabel. Is that what I’m not supposed to say?”

Leave it to Tracy to go off on some ludicrous tangent. He wanted to shake her. “We can never work this out if you won’t be logical.”

“I can’t be any more logical than this.”

He heard the same desperation in her voice that he felt inside, but why should she feel desperate when she was saying such stupid things?

She never remembered to carry tissues, and she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Today you asked me what you could do to make me happy, and I lashed out instead of saying what I wanted to. Do you know what I wanted to say?”

He knew, and he didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want her to tell him how boring he was, and that he was losing his hair, and that he wasn’t even close to being the man she deserved. He didn’t want her to tell him that he’d served his purpose by giving her children and now she wished she’d chosen differently, someone more like her.

Tears made silver streaks on her cheeks. “Just love me, Harry. That’s what I wanted to say. Love me like you used to. Like I was special instead of a cross you have to bear. Like the differences between us are good things instead of something awful. I want it to be the way it used to be when you looked at me as though you couldn’t believe I was yours. Like I was the most wonderful creature in the world. I know I don’t look the way I did then. I know I have stretch marks everywhere, and I know how much you used to love my breasts, and now they’re halfway to my knees, and I hate this, and I hate that you don’t love me like you used to, and I hate the fact that you’re making me beg!”

This was absurd. Completely illogical. This was so wrong he couldn’t figure out what to say to set it straight. Of all the . . . He opened his mouth, but he didn’t know where to start, so he closed it, tried again. It was too late. She’d already fled.

He stood there, numb, trying to figure out what had hit him. She was everything to him. How could she think, even for a moment, that he didn’t love her? She was the center of his world, the breath of his life. It wasn’t him . . . She was the one who couldn’t love enough.

He sagged down on the side of the bed and dropped his forehead into his hands. She didn’t think he loved her? He wanted to howl.

A door creaked, and the hairs stood on the back of his neck, because the noise hadn’t come from the hallway. It had come from across the room.

He lifted his head. There was a bathroom. . . . Dread pooled in his stomach as the door opened and a man stepped out. Tall, good-looking, with a full head of hair.

Ren Gage shook his head and looked at Harry with pity. “Man, you are so screwed.”

And didn’t he just know it.