I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was alone for even a second of my trek back to the cabin. Surely there were eyes on me from several directions, and I could bet Reese wasn’t far behind. But he stayed quiet and unobtrusive, allowing me my petty hissy fit as I stormed away from the Marian family.

Coming to the vineyard had been a mistake. There may have been safety there for Georgie and me, but there was no peace. I wasn’t sure my heart could take any more run-ins with Griff and his gorgeous, successful brothers. It was like having proof of my inadequacy slapped in front of my face over and over again.

Look, here’s the loving, supportive family you didn’t get.

I shook my head to clear it from my self-pitying thoughts. There would be time for that later. Now, I needed to pack our things and figure out how to get the hell out of there. I was done letting Reese and his people boss me around. They may have thought they knew what was best for me, but they didn’t have all the information.

When I tried to turn the knob on the cabin door, I realized it was locked. Of course it was. Only, I didn’t have a key. I ground my teeth together and turned around. Reese stood several feet behind me with his open palm out.

The key.

I grabbed it without meeting his eyes and let myself into the cabin, taking Princess Kitty and Georgie into Georgie’s room to let the spider settle down after her crazy journey.

“Will you tell Princess Kitty a story?” I asked. I needed to distract Georgie while I made plans to leave. Since Reese had followed me back to the cabin, I knew it wasn’t going to be a peaceful conversation.

As I stepped out of the bedroom, I saw Georgie reach for some of the picture books the guys had gotten her. Instead of returning to the main room, I made my way into my bedroom, ignoring the pillows and blankets on the floor from where Georgie and I had ended up curled around Reese’s big strong body during the night.

Enough with the mopey lovesick shit.

I gritted my teeth and began collecting items into a shopping bag. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, disposable razor, deodorant, boxer-briefs, extra T-shirts… I noticed one of Reese’s button-down shirts hanging from the closet doorknob. Before allowing myself time to think, I yanked it from the knob and shoved it deep in the bag. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice it was gone until it was too late.

“Don’t worry. You can have it. I have plenty more.”

I spun around to see Reese leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“I didn’t… I don’t…” I huffed a breath. “Thanks. Whatever.”

I went back to my task, this time feeling his intense gaze on my back. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What?” I barked.

“I’m afraid if I tell you what I’m thinking, you’ll get even angrier than you already are,” he said in his calm, controlled voice.

“Not possible,” I muttered, reaching for a pair of Georgie’s socks that had ended up on the floor by the blankets.

“You’re so beautiful when you’re mad. Your skin flushes, your eyes sparkle… It makes me want to pick fights with you.”

I stood up straight and glared at him. My nostrils flared and my jaw tightened.

“See,” he said with a chuckle, unfolding his arms and shrugging. “I told you it would make you angrier.”

“I have to go,” I said, feeling at once determined and at the same time sad beyond measure.

“I know.”

We stared at each other.

“You’re not going to… I mean…”

Reese’s smile was devastating. “Oh, I’m going to follow you. I’m not letting you out of my sight. In fact, you might as well consider me your own personal ankle monitor.”

I took a breath to let him have a piece of my mind, but he shushed me before I could speak.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re angry. And I know you’re hurting. It’s obvious this situation is tearing you apart. But I can’t let you walk out of here and into danger. And I’m sure as hell not going to let you take Georgie into danger. When you stop for a minute and take a deep breath, you’re going to realize that this vineyard is full of bodyguards and family members who care for you two whether you return their feelings or not. It’s exactly the best place for Georgie. She needs counseling, and we’ve already arranged for the psychologist to stop by tomorrow to meet with her, remember?”

I fucking hated it when people were right and I was wrong, but I wasn’t about to admit it to him.

His gaze held such calm affection. How did he do it?

“Reese, I don’t think I can do this. I told you I didn’t want to see him.” My voice came out whinier than I intended.

He stepped forward slowly and took me into his arms, pulling me against his broad chest and brushing a kiss into my hair.

“Ben, Griff and his husband live here. I’m sorry, I didn’t actually know that when you said you didn’t want him here. But he’s agreed to respect that boundary… today was just him trying to make up for whatever happened between you two.”

Like there was any making up for that.

“Reese, I don’t want to talk about it—” I began, since I assumed he’d start questioning me about what I’d blurted out in the lodge. Reese already knew I hadn’t had a perfect family life, but I hadn’t told him anything about why my hatred for Griff ran so deep.

And I didn’t intend to.

“Don’t worry about it,” he responded. “I wasn’t going to ask.” He began caressing my back. “Baby, you’re exhausted, and Georgie probably is too. I think the best thing to do is lock that hairy monster you call a pet in the bathroom, put a movie on and all of us pile onto the sofa for a rest. You need to take some pain medicine and get some food in your stomach too.”

The deep, rhythmic sound of his comforting voice was already lulling me into a stupor. A big part of me wanted to give myself up to his tender ministrations.

“Okay. But after that, we make another plan.”

“Mm-hm,” he agreed, pulling me toward the main room and the deep sofa that awaited us. We both knew we weren’t going anywhere, but I appreciated him pretending to humor me anyway.

Once he retrieved Georgie from her bedroom, her eyes were already heavy like mine were. Princess Kitty was nowhere to be found, and I wondered what he’d had to promise Georgie to convince her to leave the spider in her room. Reese set Georgie next to me before coming to settle on my other side.

I fell asleep before I even saw which movie he picked.

During the following two weeks we fell into a pattern of sorts without realizing it. In the mornings the three of us would take a walk to the pond and back, looking for bugs and collecting early spring wildflowers as we went. Upon returning to the cabin, Georgie would meet with Dr. Dash for an hour of play therapy. I had to admit, Dash was a godsend. It was hard to believe someone with his credentials and education lived in the middle of nowhere wine country, but he did. Supposedly, his family owned nearby Chateau Brumeux, and he’d recently moved home from the city to live with them on the estate.

Despite being younger than I expected, he was magical with Georgie and completely unafraid of spiders. In fact, he used Princess Kitty to help draw Georgie out about her experiences during her abduction. There had been a couple of days where she’d seemed even more withdrawn than normal, but the past few days she’d been lighter. She giggled more easily and asked to go visit the horses in the barn, even though the barn was in an area of the property full of strangers working on the vineyard. She also spent time playing outside with Jamie and had even worked up the nerve to go to their cabin a few times, though Reese or I had to go with her.

I had to admit that Blue and Tristan had gone above and beyond to see to her comfort. They’d been nothing but generous and friendly, often stopping by the cabin to let their daughter, Ella, bring a handful of wildflowers for Georgie or to let Georgie pet their dog.

The late afternoons would find the three of us, Reese, Georgie, and me, snoozing together in a pile on the sofa in front of a cartoon we rarely watched. The new routine lulled me into a false reality—one in which the three of us were a little family and neither my foster father nor the men he associated with existed anymore.

But I knew it wasn’t real. Reese was there because he was a professional bodyguard. Georgie and I were there because it wasn’t safe to go home again. During the times I remembered that reality, I went stir-crazy. My skin itched and I was overcome with a restlessness I’d rarely experienced before.

I wanted to go home, if only to feel normal again. As things were, I couldn’t even work. My job as a freelance game tester was in jeopardy of disappearing if I couldn’t find a way to get the cast off my hand and get back online. My clients may have loved the work I did for them, but it wasn’t like they could delay the development or release of their games while I healed.

Things hadn’t progressed much in terms of the investigation into who the men were who’d taken Georgie, either. Ronan and his team had managed to figure out that the owner of the storage unit contents Kirk had acquired was a janitor who’d died almost a year earlier, but there was no indication what, if anything, Kirk had found among his things that the men seemed to want so badly. Nothing had stood out about the janitor, either, other than he’d worked for a custodial services company. The company had had contracts with several agencies that ranged from utility companies to government subcontractors and even a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company. To make matters worse, the contents had all been trashed by the owner of the storage unit after Kirk had taken whatever he wanted out of the unit, so there was no way to even check out any of the items. Ronan had assured me that his team would find something, but I knew even if they did, it likely wouldn’t get me and Georgie out of this mess anytime sooner.

And so help me, if I saw another damned Marian brother who just “happened” to be stopping by the vineyard all the way from San Francisco, I was going to scream.

There were a total of nine Marian siblings, including Griff. Six biological children and three adopted sons. And they obviously adored each other as if their very selves were fashioned out of chocolate chips. It was disgusting. Everyone hugged and laughed and asked after each other like something from a heartwarming Hallmark movie. It was so sticky-sweet and perfect, I felt sick from it. The anger and resentment vibrated under my skin like a volcano coming out of dormancy.

One afternoon, it erupted.

“I hate this fucking place and these fucking people!” I screamed.

I was alone in the shower after a particularly excruciating run-in with the Marian clan. We’d been on our regular walk that morning and had seen a thousand of them lounging on the back patio of the lodge with coffee mugs and plates of breakfast pastries. Of course, they’d asked us to join them as we’d walked past, but Reese had given our friendly regrets before I could shoot anyone the bird in response. Griff’s face had been the only one not painted with open smiles. He’d looked more haggard than usual, to tell the truth. Like maybe he hadn’t been sleeping well.

Join the fucking club.

As soon as we’d returned to the cabin, Dr. Dash had been there to invite Georgie on a visit to the barn where they’d discovered a litter of kittens being born the day before. I’d taken the opportunity to shower off my bad mood.

It wasn’t working. The screaming just made me want to do more of it.

The bathroom door slammed open, causing me to jump.

“What’s wrong?” Reese called, ripping back the shower curtain. I stared at him in shock, completely naked and dripping wet. My hands immediately went to cover my junk as I sucked in a breath and accidentally choked on the hot water.

“Fuck,” Reese muttered. “Here, let me grab a towel.”

He pulled me out onto the plush bath mat and began drying my face and rubbing my back. I spluttered and coughed until I could speak.

“Let me go,” I snapped, pulling away from his attentions. “Leave me alone! I wasn’t hurt. Nothing’s wrong. Jesus, I was just showering.”

Reese stood still and blinked at me. “You screamed.”

“Yeah, I screamed. I was letting out my anger, so what?”

I quickly stepped back into the shower and yanked the curtain closed. The end of the fabric pulled away from one of the hooks and hung out into the room, offering a peek-a-boo strip for Reese’s viewing pleasure.

He remained where he was, staring after me.

“What the hell? You were just randomly screaming?” he asked.

“Yes. Now go away.”

I tried to drown everything out by sticking my head under the hot spray. If even a single tear even dared escape my eyes, I was going to lose my shit even worse. The last thing I wanted to do was appear any more vulnerable and useless than I already felt.

The sound of muffled shuffling broke through the thunder of the water, and I assumed Reese had made his way back out of the bathroom. I took my time finishing up, washing everything several times in order to stall. The guy was bound to interrogate me about my “feelings” when I got out.

I turned off the water and sat down in the tub, wrapping my arms around my knees and putting my head down for a minute.

The curtain opened slowly, revealing Reese sitting on the closed toilet seat.

“Glad you got the waterproof cast?” he asked.

The question was so unexpected, I couldn’t help but laugh. But then he surprised me again.

“Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”