“You need to dial back the obvious,” Lacy said, from where she stood right next to Marc. “You’re going to have to go really, really slowly with her.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Of course he did. Marc had never been stupid. He helped his sister-in-law grab the drinks as Rafe hugged Ariella.

“Sure you do, bub.” Lacy smirked, then turned serious. “You think we haven’t seen how you look at her? At least Jilly and I have. I’m not sure she has. Ari’s been lost in her own head for a while lately. Since Albright. We’ve just been waiting for her to find her way back to her. We’d hate to see a man blindside her right now. Not unless he was damned serious about her. And understood what she needed.”

Travis leaned around her and snagged a carrot. “We asking Marc’s intentions toward our favorite fairy?”

Marc glanced back at her. Rafe was finally letting her go. He winced. His brother didn’t do overly well with wet-eyed females. They terrified Rafe to his core.

But it wasn’t his right to interfere yet. To swoop in and comfort the way he wanted to.

Ariella wasn’t his just yet.

Discussion at dinner was understandably on Rafe and Ariella’s missing siblings and whether they should look any further. Or if Rafe should be concerned with contacting this twin. Rafe showed no inclination to want to. Ari felt differently. She didn’t exactly argue with his brother, but she made her beliefs known.

No surprise, Jillian and Lacy backed her up. Fast.

Marc didn’t quite understand what was driving her, but something was.

He didn’t like to use the word maneuver, but that was exactly what he did to get her in his car after dinner had ended.

Rafe had made a decision—Ari was going to be the one to contact this brother, on his behalf.

Marc wasn’t too keen on the idea, but she wouldn’t be alone.

He’d do his damnedest to make sure of it.

It had been mentioned that Mel might accompany her. It wasn’t what he’d prefer, but he would keep his mouth shut until he had the right to say differently.

Instead, he contented himself with having her alone for the time being. He hadn’t expected that to happen.

She was quiet on the drive, and he didn’t blame her. His guards were right there in listening distance, and her guard was only a car length behind. Marc had seen them on his brother’s property, but while his were paid to be unobtrusive, hers were paid to be almost invisible.

He wrapped his hand around hers and scooted her closer to him in the back of the limo. “You ok?”

She stiffened in his arm. “What are you up to?”

“Excuse me? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, of course you do.” She turned to look him straight on. “I watched both of your brothers with my best friends, you know. The way they acted, the way they talked. The way they were right there everywhere, tying Jilly and Lacy in knots. You…you’re more insidious.”

“How so?”

“I thought we were friends.” Dark eyes narrowed and he knew he was in deep trouble. For a variety of reasons.

“We are. Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Do you look at all of your friends that same way? Do you kiss them the way you’ve kissed me?”

“No. I can’t say that I have.”

“Then why me?”

“Why not you?”

“Don’t play games with me, Marc. I’ve never learned the rules. What do you really want from me? And I don’t mean just recently. You’ve watched me from the beginning. I’m just starting to figure it out. Maybe I’ve been an idiot, or just blind, or caught up in my head since the lieutenant governor almost killed me, but you…what exactly do you want?”

He saw his opportunity and acted. Marc slipped one hand behind her back and the other around her front. He ignored the twinge from the bullet wound, and lifted her.

She didn’t weigh much. One denim-covered leg went over his knee, until she practically straddled him.

“Oh!” Her hands landed on his chest, and big brown eyes widened even more. “Marc!”

“You asked what I really want from you. It’s time I stopped hiding it. For months, you’ve tormented me. Made me realize that I am still alive. We’re connected, you and me. I have thought about you, dreamed about you from even before I realized you were Rafe’s sister. Do you remember meeting me right after Albright? You looked at me, and could barely breathe from the damage that sonofabitch had done to you. Yet you smiled at me, when I should have stopped him. And…every time I saw you, I just had to watch. I don’t know when that changed to something more. But it did. Maybe at that benefit for W4HAV. Seeing you up there, healing, and looking so beautiful. I dreamed about you that night. And then again. In so many ways. I don’t know if that’s made this worse or better.”

* * *

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” She used her hands on his chest to push up where she could look down in his eyes. Never had a man looked at her quite the way Marc was in that moment. Never had one said the things he had just said.

At least not to her. She’d never been that important to a man before. Everything she’d experienced before had been slow, light, relationships that just grew from friendships.

Never had she just practically opened her eyes and been there with a man who hungered for her quite the way Marc was saying he did.

She felt his body stirring beneath hers.

Her breath caught. Her fingers curled on his shirt, wrinkling it. That look was back in his green eyes.

“The first moment I met you, do you remember when it was, baby?”

She did. It was right after she was released from the hospital. Her father had shown up at the Becks and demanded she be loaded into his car. He was taking her home, no matter what she wanted. Period. Because he’d been afraid and worried after what had happened.

She hadn’t gone home. She hadn’t wanted to leave Jillian—or Lacy—after what had happened to them all. Her father hadn’t liked it, but he had understood. Jillian had been so fragile, that even though Ari had been in far worse physical shape than her friend, she’d felt in a better emotional place.

Which was saying something, considering how bad she had been.

Marc had been there at the Becks’ that day. With Elliot and Chance.

Chance had been the one to carry Ari from the back of Houghton’s limo. They had walked right by Marc. He had held the door for them, introduced himself, and asked how she was.

She hadn’t seen him again until after she already knew Rafe was her brother. She thought. “What about it?”

“I heard what you told your father that day. About Jillian needing you and that she was the sister of your heart and you would never abandon her.”

She vaguely remembered it. She didn’t argue with her father often—especially since Henry had taken her—but she had that day. Maybe it had been the pain pills loosening her tongue. Making her less afraid to say what had been important. She honestly didn’t remember. “She is.”

“There was such a quiet, beautiful strength in you. I couldn’t help but pay attention every time after that. And once Travis went coo-coo over Lacy, and everything started with Logan Lanning, that strength just intensified.”

“That’s not me.” She hadn’t felt strong in a very long time. She’d been wrapped up in darkness for so long. It seemed like the night was never going to end.

It had been that way from the moment the bullet had ripped into her chest.

Lacy had jumped her that day, knocking her down. If she hadn’t, she would have died.

Ari thought for a moment. The darkness went back farther than that. Much farther. She’d lost her way the moment Henry’s car had pulled out in front of hers on a lonely stretch of highway between Finley Creek and little Garrity, right outside the satellite campus for FCU. The same school her sister Pen now attended.

It had changed her entire world. And wrapped her in a damned blanket of darkness since. Why hadn’t she realized that? It was only Jillian and Lacy that had brought her out of it at all.

And Marc.

Ari’s fists tightened on his shirt.

She’d never sat on a man’s lap. At least not one like him. Had she been so wrapped up in that darkness that she’d missed what he was saying? Missed that he was around in a way that wasn’t strictly platonic? “Sometimes I miss things.”

“I think we all do.” His hands went around her waist and he shifted her. Ari pulled in a breath. He felt hard and strong beneath her. No denying how he felt in that moment. Or that he wanted her.

“No. Sometimes what other people—especially men—are feeling escapes me. I don’t see or understand. And I never know how I fit. I don’t know how you fit. And I don’t know why you would see me. I don’t even know who the me I want to be is right now. I haven’t in two years, maybe. Definitely the last year. Since…Albright.”

He eased his hold on her slightly. “Why two years? Tell me what happened to you, baby.”

She swallowed as the fear came back. “I have always hated driving in the night. In the rain. It was raining lightly. I had just finished orchestra practice. I had an older car. It had been Kay’s before she married my dad. He’s always kept it running for me. I was careful. But Henry was waiting. He bumped me. On purpose. When I got out of the car, he shoved a needle in my neck.”

Marc’s hands tightened on her. “Like that damned Claireson delivery guy.”

She nodded. She’d not been lost to the similarities, either. “When I woke up, I was in a basement. It took him a full day to get back to me. When he did…he looked like my father. So…unthreatening. I was terrified. Until he told me why I was there.”

“And why were you? Did he hurt you, baby?”

“He saved my life. The man…who shot Mel and paralyzed her was going to kill me and use me to taunt Paige. Henry learned about it first.”

“But it still hurt. Terrified you.”

“After, I knew that I had gotten lucky. The man…he got Simon instead. And he killed our birth mother. I knew that I was the lucky one, and that there were so many women out there who weren’t as lucky. But I didn’t know what to do next. Just that I needed to do something. And my father…he started to hover. Until I couldn’t stand it. So I transferred to Finley Creek U’s main campus.”

He was running his hands lightly up her back. To comfort.

Ari shifted, pressing closer. She rocked her hips, almost before she realized she was doing so. “I knew I wanted social work, but I needed the comfort of my music. So I signed up for the orchestra. I walked in and there was Jillian. She took one look at me and told me exactly who I was. Mentioned Paige by name; asked if I knew her. She told me I wasn’t lost, and to stick with her. Luc showed up two weeks later to tell me that he was my big brother and I just had to deal with it. I’m not entirely certain, but I think Jillian called him and told him how…lost I was. That was the first time he rescued me. Or she did. I’m not entirely certain.”

“Were you lost? Or were you just finding your way back? I’ve felt like that, sweetheart. I know how much it hurts when the night ends. When you open your eyes and realize just what you have to face. What you really can’t forget. And that opens the gates, to the pain. I’ve been there.”

She stared at the man in front of her. “I’m not so sure it ever ends. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop being so afraid all the time. How do I deal with the fear?”