My heart thunders in my chest as I turn away from Quinn and go to greet the press, and it continues to pound as I shake hands with the photographer and ask him about his gear. Then I chat with the reporters and mention casually that I’m making more time in my schedule to volunteer. I tell them that my mother did a lot of work while she was alive to try and lift people out of homelessness, and I want to honor her memory. At the last moment, I tack on that I’m making a rather large donation to the Bowery Mission.

The whole thing goes off without a hitch. A guy like me—like Christian Pierce—doesn’t let one moment of awkwardness throw him off his game.

But something nags at me.

There’s a pattern in myself that I don’t like.

The things Quinn says are innocent. She doesn’t know my secret. Intellectually, I know that, but every time she says something that brushes up against those boundaries, I react in a way that’s impossible to hide.

Well, it’s possible to hide it from other people, maybe. But I can’t hide it from her.

How does she know how to read me so well?

We met each other last week, and already she can read me like we were born to be together. She even picks up on the subtle things that most of my other friends—even the closest ones—have never noticed, or if they did, they gave no indication of it.

My head is a mess.

I’m falling so hard for her and it’s throwing me off-balance, out of control. I love it and hate it at the same time. I love that a woman has finally made me feel this way, but I hate that there’s something inside me that will bring it all crashing to the ground.

It’s time to get out of this.

It’s a half-hearted thought. I’m barely in it yet.

I’m being torn in two, but I hide it while we walk to the Town Car.

Half of me wants to grab her right now and kiss her on the sidewalk, for all the world to see.

The other half of me wants to run in the opposite direction as fast and hard as I can and put Quinn Campbell far behind me.

She’s a threat. There’s no two ways about it. The way she reads me, the way she sees me, the way she is—it makes me want to be around her. Be with her. Be hers. Have her be mine.

And if that happens, I can’t keep secrets from her.

Not the kind of secret that I’ve been keeping.

I can’t.

Why not?

The little voice in my head wants to play devil’s advocate again.

Why not? Why can’t I have her, experience the greatest happiness I could ever experience in my life, and put the past behind me?

The answer comes immediately: because it will eat me alive.

I can’t lie to her for the rest of my life. That kind of guilt would rot me from the inside out. And now, knowing what I know about Derek—knowing what I know about Quinn and the way she always demands honesty, even from herself—how could I do that to her?

We get into the Town Car, and as soon as I’ve closed the door behind me, Louis steers the car away from the curb.

“That was excellent,” Quinn says lightly, looking down at her phone. “I’m not going to do a big push on this one because it will look too heavy-handed, but we’ll get the photos circulating by tomorrow morning. You’re bound to get a couple of low profile mentions, which is perfect for our purposes.” She looks up at me and smiles. A little jolt of surprise runs through me. There’s something in her eyes that wasn’t there this morning. Part of it is confusion—after I got all fucking weird out there, she knows something’s up but she doesn’t know what—but part of it goes much deeper than that. She’s practically glowing with it.

I want her to be close to me, even if it is a recipe for disaster.

“I’m looking forward to the next one,” I tell her, both of us acting like it’s important to maintain the facade in front of Louis.

For about twenty seconds.

That’s as long as I last before I slide across the seat toward Quinn, wrap my arm around her, and pull her in for a hard, deep kiss.

“Wow,” she says softly when I pull back to look into her eyes. “What did I do to deserve that?”

“Isn’t it enough that I wanted it?”

“Wanted it?”

“Want you.”

“I want you, too,” she whispers in my ear.

“Come home with me.”

“I can’t.”

I laugh out loud. That’s Quinn Campbell—give her a direct order and she’ll refuse.

Wait until I have her back in bed again.

“You can.”

“I can’t. I promised Carolyn I’d go for drinks with her as soon as this was over.”

This is probably some kind of sign that I should take a minute—a day, even—and get my mind right about this situation before I fuck up my entire life. “Okay.”

Disappointment flickers across her eyes, but then she gives me a sultry smile. “Tomorrow, maybe?”

“We need to drop Quinn off at her place, Louis,” I say. He gives me a jaunty salute in the rearview mirror and takes the next left.

* * *

Two hours later, I’m eating alone at the Purple Swan.

It’s something I rarely allow myself to do. I’m already off-script for a Friday night. Instead of hosting a table full of loud assholes and gorgeous women in the main room, I’m seated in the smaller, more formal private dining room at a table for one.

All I can think about is Quinn.

All I can think about is how this ends.

All I can think about is how to get around having to end it, but there’s no way to avoid it.

“Chris!” a voice booms behind me, and I turn to see my best friend in the city, Jax Hunter. He’s been a busy guy lately now that he’s married, and we haven’t seen each other in a while. His wife, Cate, is on his arm. They’re both beaming.

“Buddy!” I say, standing up and clapping him on the back. “How’ve you been? Where the hell are you these days?”

He and Cate share a conspiratorial look.

I don’t get it at first, and then Jax gives Cate’s still-flat belly a pointed look and raises his eyebrows at me.

“Are you kidding me?” I say with a big smile. Jax shakes his head. “Oh, my God—that’s incredible news.” I reach around Jax and give Cate a hug.

“What about you? You got that promotion, I see! Nice work.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” I joke. I’d love to sit down with Jax and tell him about Quinn, but he’s already moving on.

“We’ll see you around the club. Maybe not quite so often, though!” he tells me, and then I’m looking at their backs as they make their way to a round table next to the picture window at the back of the room.

My heart twists with jealousy.

Then at least one thing seems crystal clear: I could have what they have, and I could have it with Quinn.

I only need to figure out how.