ÍSA DIDN’T HAVE ANY TIME to look at the security footage before work; Harlow had managed to fall off his bicycle during a morning ride and injure his leg. After receiving a call from him just after she reached the office, she rushed to the hospital where she spent long minutes calming him down.

“Jacqueline won’t fire you for being a couple of hours late,” she said. “Even the Dragon understands physical injury. She fractured her ribs six months ago, remember?”

Ísa didn’t waste her breath on asking him to take the day off.

Harlow was tough enough to work through the pain of the cuts and abrasions, and he wouldn’t have agreed to any such demand anyway.

“I swear you’re part dragon,” she said after driving him in to work, with a stopover at home so he could change.

A delighted grin. “Thanks!”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

Harlow laughed at her stern response, his eyes bright behind his spectacles.

As a result of the late start, she was still scrambling to catch up at eleven when her mother stalked in and threw a newspaper on her desk. It was open to the business section. Ísa’s eyes went straight to the image of her walking out of a restaurant holding a large bag emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo; the dinner she’d picked up for her and Sailor last night.

The headline was: No Faith in the Fast Organic Product?

“Fast Organic isn’t live yet!” Ísa threw up her hands. “What am I supposed to eat? Air?”

“It’s the asshole I won’t sleep with,” her mother said, icy fury contained in a custom skirt suit of deepest plum. “He’s out to smear us, but you aren’t exactly helping. Be a little discreet for goodness sake.”

Ísa glared at her mother. “You realize this means some creep is following me around?”

“Or maybe it’s someone who knew you were going to be picking up the takeout.” Jacqueline raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t go there, Mother.” It was a hard rebuke, Ísa holding the green of Jacqueline’s eyes. Ísa might be furious at herself for her inability to deny Sailor her heart, but she would not permit her mother to throw dirt on his name.

Her mother threw up her hands. “Get to the bottom of this, Ísa. This tiny-penised asshole’s vendetta could sink our entire launch plan—we need to cut off his mole.”

Calling in Ginny after Jacqueline left, Ísa said, “Wipe my schedule for the day. Push anything urgent to Mother.” It was time Jacqueline got a taste of her own medicine. “I’m going to be focusing on another matter.”

Ginny was wide-eyed but nodded. “What shall I do if she yells at me?”

“Tell her I’m working on the project she assigned priority.” Ísa was going to get to the bottom of this no matter what it took.

---

SAILOR SCOWLED AT THE PHOTO of Ísa in the newspaper. “This is bullshit.” He turned his phone screen toward Gabe, who’d turned up to help him for a couple of hours before he had to attend a team meeting.

His brother’s scowl was just as dark. “Total BS,” he agreed. “Anything you can do?”

“If someone’s stalking her to get photos, then the black sedan I saw parked across the street yesterday might have something to do with it.” It had been there when he and Ísa came around from the back of the site. “Keep an eye out for it.”

Gabe nodded as he began to pound in a border piece Sailor had already finished. “Sail, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you so hell-bent on proving you’re not like the piece of shit who fathered us?” It was a potent question.

Sailor clenched his teeth and continued to work on the next part of the border. His brother didn’t push him, the two of them working quietly together until Sailor said, “It’s not rational. I’m just a little bit fucked up in the head.”

Gabe’s steely eyes met his across the garden bed before his older brother blew out a breath. “Yeah, so am I.” Gabe didn’t speak again for a while. “Your Ísa know all this?”

“I’m easing her into the crazy slowly. Don’t want to scare her away.” Light words, but he was deadly serious.

Gabriel’s lips kicked up, those incisive gray eyes intent. “You’re nuts about her, aren’t you?”

Sailor thought back to how damn good it had felt to wake up with her today; he could still feel the warm softness of her in his arms. “I’m fucking terrified that I’ll lose her.” He sat back on his haunches. “What woman is going to stick with me while I drive myself to the edge to finish what I’ve begun?” Especially a woman who’d already been let down so many times.

His brother didn’t have any answers for him, and when Ísa called to say she couldn’t make dinner because she had to drive Harlow home and make sure he’d be okay, Sailor felt another droplet of fear. It was already beginning, the distance. On the heels of the fear came harsh determination.

Fuck that.

Ísa had met her match in Sailor “Bullheaded” Bishop.

---

ÍSA HAD TAKEN HARLOW OUT to dinner; she’d known no other adult in his life would bother—and he’d needed to talk, to release all his excitement about this summer, and honestly, to just be with an adult who cared enough to be interested in his life.

“Some people shouldn’t have kids,” she muttered as she shoved through the door of her apartment. It horrified her to think what would’ve happened to sweet, smart, sensitive Harlow if Jacqueline hadn’t married his father for a split second. Her poor brother would be stuck in the no-man’s-land between his mother’s and his father’s new families.

Both seemed to have forgotten the seventeen-year-old son they already had.

Expression dark, Ísa kicked off her shoes, dumped her satchel on the kitchen counter, then collapsed onto the sofa. She was intellectually tired from the hunt to find the traitor, emotionally exhausted from worrying about Harlow, and angry at Sailor Bishop for enticing her with an impossible, beautiful dream.

Buzz.

Ísa groaned at the loud sound. One of her neighbors probably had a guest who’d pressed the wrong apartment number.

“Apartment 7A,” she said after dragging herself to the intercom.

“Hello, Apartment 7A,” replied a male voice that could seduce her into breaking all her rules. “You gonna let me in?”

An ache in her chest, she cleared him to come up and was waiting with the door open when he exited the elevator. She wanted to run down the hall to him, held back because showing him that much of herself was beyond frightening, but she’d made a promise. And Ísa Rain was no quitter.

She ran.

Dropping his duffel, Sailor grabbed her up into his arms and spun her around. “God, I missed you.” Rough heat in his touch, his arms almost crushingly tight.

Ísa’s bruised heart expanded. “Me too,” she said, taking another risk, another chance.

Door shut and locked behind them a minute later, Sailor grabbed her hips and pulled her back against his chest. “First things first.” His mouth on her neck, his erection pressing so urgently against her that she shivered.

His scent was raw, all sweat and heat and man.

Turning in his arms, Ísa sought his mouth with raw desperation.

He kissed her, lashing his tongue across hers as he walked her backward into her living room and tumbled her onto the armless sofa she could convert into a bed. She landed with a soft “oomph,” then watched as Sailor pulled off his boots.

“Shit, I got dirt on your carpet.”

“Like I care right now.”

He didn’t laugh as he tore off his socks before rising to pull off his T-shirt. The man was built like a female fantasy; it was unfair what he could do to her with just his body. Knowing that body had been sculpted by stubborn hard work just made it all the hotter. “I want to touch and kiss and taste.”

A motionless instant followed by a shake of his head… and an unsteady breath. “Nope.”

When he shoved up her dress and tugged down her panties until they hung off one ankle, she was more than ready to have him inside her.

Where she could hold him. Where he’d be hers first, before the world took its bite.

But that wasn’t Sailor’s intent: kneeling without warning, he hauled her over the end of the sofa and put his mouth on the most sensitive place on her body, the flesh there delicate petals.

Ísa’s brain exploded into tiny pieces of honeyed pleasure.

Pulling her legs over his shoulders, Sailor shoved his hands under her rear to hold her in place while he lapped her up; Ísa just gave in, riding the rippling waves until it felt as if she had no bones in her body and pleasure hazed her vision. By the time Sailor finally rose, stripped off the rest of his clothing and put on protection, she was liquid honey.

“Look at me, Ísalind.”

Ísa opened her eyes at his guttural growl. It was erotic beyond compare to have him slide into her while their eyes remained locked in stark intimacy. And yet Ísa felt the biting edge of the loneliness that awaited. Somehow finding the strength to place her hands over his shoulders, she drew him closer. Eyes glittering, he lowered his body until his chest crushed her breasts… and then she watched as Sailor Bishop lost himself in her.

All the while trying not to feel the desperation in both their bodies as they fought to hold on to a dream that threatened to crumple under the weight of harsh reality.