I sat there in stunned silence just staring at Saint as he paced in front of the doorway. “Wh-what?” I finally managed to sputter. “What the hell?” Had he just been fucking around with me for some reason? Was I the butt of some big joke? Humiliation bloomed harsh and fast throughout my entire body, strangling me with its familiar hold.

Saint’s face was flushed, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the kissing or something else.

“Augie, I can’t,” he said, running fingers through his hair and moving restlessly around the room. “That was my boss, okay? And you’re my client. You’re Lanny’s client. I can’t do this. I’ll lose my job. We shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t you fucking say it,” I warned, a mixture of relief and embarrassment beginning to fill my face despite knowing I’d done absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.

“I’m sorry,” Saint said. And the look on his face was awful. He looked miserable—such a far cry from how he’d looked just moments before when we were laughing together. I wanted to climb back on his lap—kiss him again and tell him it was all okay. I was so relieved that it wasn’t some big joke—that he really seemed into me the way I was into him. But maybe he was right. “My boss wants me in Dallas by morning. I can’t stay here with you and face him, Augie. I can’t.”

“Okay,” I said instead. “Go.”

Saint stood staring at me, forehead crinkled in confusion and indecision. I could tell he was torn between wanting to stay and needing to go.

“It’s okay,” I repeated softly. “I understand. You have to know I wouldn’t want to do anything to put your job in jeopardy, Saint.”

“Augie…”

I made my way toward him slowly, careful not to step on any of the debris on the floor, until I was standing in front of him.

“One more kiss good night?” I asked with a smile.

He swallowed and stepped into me, wrapping his strong arms around me. Instead of kissing me though, he tucked his face into my neck and hugged me tightly. My entire body relaxed into his arms immediately, and I felt my throat tighten with an unfamiliar emotion. A possessive feeling I’d never had before as long as I’d lived.

You belong with me.

The next day at work I found myself daydreaming about that last kiss with Saint. Well, all of the kisses with Saint, really. But that last one had been the most heart-wrenching mix of sweet and desperate, and it somehow left me feeling an aching emptiness inside way worse than anything I’d felt before. Saint had pulled back from the hug and kissed me with everything he’d fucking had. And the kiss had burned away any final suspicion I’d had about him playing me.

There was no way on earth someone could have faked what that kiss had been between us.

Earlier that morning, I’d thought back to the dinner I’d had with my family a few nights before. Brett had only stayed long enough for one drink before disappearing for some kind of meeting at work, but that hadn’t stopped Mom and her brother from being just as annoying as my cousin.

Uncle Eric had asked me for Melody’s antique writing slope, which she had left me in her will almost a year before. I’d had to explain accidentally forgetting it at home.

That writing slope had been in my family since it was handcrafted in 1790 for a distant ancestor named Margaret Baker, who at the time had lived in a small village in Buckinghamshire called Penn and had a passionate, forbidden love affair with a local craftsman. I’d spent hours reading Margaret’s small collection of love letters inside the ancient wooden box, along with the diary she’d kept after her lover’s untimely death only two years later. It had been the central romance story of my young years until I’d discovered the Jude Devereaux paperbacks stashed in a shoebox under Melody’s bed one summer at the Hobie farmhouse.

In fact, the tiny intricate key Margaret had used to lock her writing slope had become the first key of my collection. Melody had given it to me years before, and I now wore it on a chain around my neck under my clothes. The only times I took it off were for things like my self-defense lessons when I feared it would get snagged on something. There wasn’t much monetary value to the items inside the box, but the words were raw and pure, private and intimate. I held the key near my heart more as a symbol of respect than anything else, as if I was guarding someone’s innermost desires, and in Margaret’s case, innermost pain as well.

When my grandfather had delivered the slope into my possession after Melody’s funeral, it had come with a lecture about understanding its value and keeping it safe. As if I didn’t know that. I had multiple degrees and certifications in art history, antiquities, and appraisal. And all of it had been born out of a genuine connection with my own family history and artifacts. To finally have Margaret’s slope in my possession was a bittersweet feeling.

So when Grandfather had asked to see it the other night at my house, I hadn’t been surprised. I’d assumed he was checking up on how well I was keeping it safe. I’d never known him to be particularly sentimental, but maybe he had feelings I was unaware of. After retrieving it from my bedroom closet, I’d brought it out to him for inspection. To my surprise, he’d pulled a duplicate key out of his pocket to open it.

“Just want to make sure everything is still here,” he’d mumbled, almost to himself. I’d rolled my eyes, trying not to flash back to all the times in my childhood he’d been a controlling, micromanaging bastard, and I’d headed into the kitchen to put water on for tea while he’d rifled through the letters or took whatever ridiculous inventory he’d felt he needed to take in order to determine whether or not I was an irresponsible good-for-nothing.

When I’d returned to the living room, the box was locked back up, and Grandfather looked noticeably more relaxed.

At the time, I’d truly thought of it as an annoying checkup on me the same way he’d once made me bring home every single assignment from boarding school one semester to prove I was working to “Stiel potential.”

But now I wondered what the hell he’d wanted with a bunch of old love letters. When he’d left that night, he’d strongly suggested I keep the slope in the floor vault in the barn.

“You can never be too careful, August,” he’d said with narrowed eyes. “After the break-in, I would think you wouldn’t want to take any chances.”

It took me until now to wonder why he hadn’t suggested the same care and safekeeping for the set of ten Japanese Meiji chargers I had on display in the glass-front George III corner cabinet in the dining room. The charger collection alone was worth over twenty thousand dollars, and Grandfather knew it because he had purchased the set as a gift for Melody on her eightieth birthday. Or why he hadn’t insisted I present and properly store Melody’s 1940s Cartier Art Deco enamel and jade bracelet that had to be worth over forty-five thousand dollars. The amount of high-value items in my house right now was shocking, really. The last of Melody’s belongings from the Dallas penthouse had been delivered to the farmhouse as soon as the new security system had been activated. I’d quickly stored many of the small valuables like jewelry in the barn safe, but there were plenty of expensive collectibles still on display around the house.

Was he envious that I owned this piece of family history? That concept didn’t hold with the Jonathan Stiel I knew. He’d sold his wife’s wedding dress when someone had requested it to use in a movie. For enough cash, my grandfather would do almost anything. So why be more concerned about the love letters than the expensive antique jewelry and collectibles?

I pondered over it for several hours until I received a call from my cousin Brett.

“It’s my mom’s birthday today,” he said without preamble.

“I know. I already called her this morning,” I said. “We’re having dinner next Friday night at Grandfather’s house, right?”

“She wants to have dinner tonight at The French Room. She’s craving fois gras. I suggest grabbing a burger on the way since their portions are the size of a grain of rice. At least, that’s my plan.”

“Grandfather said there were no plans to celebrate on the day because Aunt Prima was going to a charity fashion show or something. I can’t just leave work again on short notice.” It was a lie. My part-timer was due to arrive any minute, but Brett didn’t need to know that. I was annoyed at the repeated command performance so soon after the last one.

“You know what a cow she’ll have if you’re not there. Persona non grata and all that. Suit yourself, Augustine.”

And with that, he hung up on me.

“Fuck,” I spat. I fucking hated my family, but even worse, I hated how ingrained it was in me to not rock the boat. I knew without stopping to even argue with myself that I’d be there. For all the hassle my uncle had given me over the years, Aunt Prima had never missed my birthday.

When I arrived in Dallas a few hours later, I decided to valet park my rental car at a nearby hotel so I wouldn’t have to go into a parking garage alone. As soon as I approached the restaurant, I felt like I was being watched. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten that eerie feeling, but because of everything that had been happening to me, it was the first time I’d actually thought there could be something to it. Sure enough, I looked around and spotted someone looking at me from twenty yards away.

The man wasn’t much to look at, actually. Normally he wouldn’t have stood out at all, but he was clearly watching me. When he saw me notice him, he looked away quickly. Did that mean he was watching me for nefarious reasons? Surely not. Maybe I had wet paint on my ass or something. Maybe he thought I looked like someone he knew. Hell, maybe I was someone he knew. But the encounter left me feeling shaky and unsure nonetheless. Instead of heading into The French Room, I ducked into the nearest place I could find which was a cell phone store.

Once inside the store, I debated about whether to call Saint but quickly dismissed the idea. I was being paranoid and ridiculous. And besides, the whole reason I’d signed up for the lessons was to be able to defend myself without needing someone else to do it for me.

After nodding a kind of apology to the cell phone worker, who looked at me with a questioning glance, I exited the shop and was relieved to see no trace of the man. I made my way toward the French Room and tried to put it out of my mind.

Just inside the restaurant, I saw Brett waiting. I approached him and was surprised to hear him say Eric and Prima had canceled.

“Mom decided to go to the charity thing after all, so we’re back on for Friday night. Hey, you want to grab a burger around the corner since you’re here anyway? My treat,” Brett said.

I side-eyed him. He’d never in my life wanted to have a meal with just me. But I had to admit, I was starving. “Ah, sure?”

Once we were seated at Chop House Burger, I finally allowed myself to take a breath. I’d sped to the city and then hustled from the valet stand to the restaurant like someone was after me. But now that I was sitting in the burger place, I realized how ridiculous my paranoia had been.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked. “Weren’t my mom and Grandfather coming too?”

Brett shrugged. “No idea. Hey, how are things going in the shop? It’s been open a couple months now, right?”

I stared at him. Why was I surprised he didn’t know better? “It’ll be a year in January,” I corrected. Even though January was still a couple of months away, I wanted to make the point that it had been much longer than a “couple months.”

“Oh right. You started it with Melody’s inheritance.”

I nodded and took another bite of my burger, unwilling to babble some apology or excuse as to why she’d left me so much and him only her hunting rifle collection. I wondered if he knew that had been a joke from beyond the grave. He was a terrible shot, and even into her eighties, Great-Aunt Melody had taken great pride in outshooting him at the range. I hadn’t gotten to see any of those victories in person since I had a paralyzing fear of guns, but I’d heard the stories and they were entertaining as hell.

But Brett, like the rest of us, had shares in the Stiel Corporation, which meant he had plenty of money to live comfortably. He had a job in the accounting department at Stiel as well, which meant Grandfather had an excuse to funnel even more money to him without inheritance tax one day.

I hadn’t actually planned on opening my own shop, but Melody’s death had coincided with me landing a promotion at an auction house that meant reporting to an old family friend of my mother’s who’d had a crush on her for years. After the first two weeks of working for the guy, I learned he was telling her every little detail of my life and work. It took an already nosy family into extreme intrusion territory. Now I had a much more peaceful life in Hobie, away from the Stiel name and family. I loved it there. The small town was much more my speed, and the people were incredibly friendly.

“Have you sold that, um, what’s that thing called again? That writing box deal she used to have?”

The food turned to a clump of lead in my gut, and my skin began to tingle. I looked up at him. Brett was munching on fries and doing his best to look nonchalant.

He failed.

“Oh, yeah,” I lied, making shit up on the spot. “I sold it the other day. A nice older couple bought it with a silver gravy boat.”

I took a sip of my sweet tea and eyed him as I swallowed.

His eyes widened. “Really? I thought you loved that thing.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I did when I was a kid, you know? But I got five hundred bucks for it, so I figured what the hell. I’ll find another one like it at auction one day if I decide I miss it that much.”

There was no way he’d have any idea how significant the box was to my great-aunt. If he was asking about it, something seriously weird was going on.

“Huh. You sure? I can’t see you parting with it. You and Melody were close.”

“We were. But now that I have the house and everything, I don’t feel as sentimental about the little stuff,” I said, hoping like hell my voice was steady. I wasn’t the best liar in the world.

“Weren’t there papers inside? Where did you put those? I kind of wish I’d asked to look at that stuff before she died. My dad said there were letters or something?”

What could my idiot cousin really want with a bunch of antique love letters? I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything. But an idea popped into my head.

“There’s an old wooden steamer trunk in the apartment above the shop. I tossed them in there with some of Melody’s nicer vintage clothes until I have time to go through them.”

“Cool. I’m sure the old broad had some amazing dresses from like the twenties and stuff.”

I stared at him. “Melody was born in 1931, Brett. I don’t think she had flapper dresses.”

“Oh. Huh. Well, that’s too bad. I’m sure all you guys love that kind of thing,” he said while checking out the ass on a passing female server. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” I said, putting down my napkin and standing up, “if by ‘you guys’ you mean antique appraisers, you’d be right. We do love that kind of thing, especially if we can confirm provenance, valuate the item, and find out interesting history attached to a particular garment. Thanks for the burger.”

I left him sitting there with his jaw hanging down in surprise. Of all the Stiels, I was definitely the least likely to make waves. But not only was I sick of his stupidity, I was also nervous as hell that everyone in my family seemed to want to get their hands on the writing slope I had stashed away in my nest back home.

Before I got back to the valet stand to collect my car, someone grabbed my elbow hard enough to bruise. I whipped around and saw my cousin with a nasty look on his face. It was only there for a brief second, and then he was all smiles and fake friendliness again.

“You should have offered that box to one of us before selling it, Augie.”

“Why? You never cared about family history before.” I hoped my voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt.

“Things like that are more valuable than you think. I’d like you to bring me the contents at least.”

I yanked my arm out of his hold. “Stop touching me,” I said loudly enough for passersby to hear. I followed it with two giant strides away from him the way Saint had taught me. “And you’re not getting the contents. Melody left it to me to do with as I please. There’s nothing in a pack of old love letters you could have any interest in. Goodbye.”

I turned and stepped quickly to the valet stand, hoping he’d let me go without grabbing me again. My elbow still smarted from his tight grip. He’d always been a bully, but this was just plain weird. Even for him.

Brett called out to my retreating back. “See you Friday.”

“Said the lion to the lamb,” I muttered under my breath. Voices in my head began clamoring for attention and action, but the strongest one must have taken charge of my body because the next thing I knew, I was on the road, halfway to the Dallas office of Landen Safekeeping.

And Saint.