I’ve been caught in the act. I know I have. And you know what?

I don’t feel guilty about it. Not one little bit.

If there’s one person in this life that I have a duty – am obligated – to look out for, it’s Poppy Wolfe. She’s My Daughter, and she’s all I’ve got left.

Until Skye, that is.

Because – right now – as I look at this gorgeous, dressing gown-wrapped, flame haired, woman standing in front of me – I soften. It’s so freaking obvious to me that she’s different from every other woman I’ve met over the past ten years that it pains me.

Skye Warren doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She would never betray me; I know that just by looking at her. She’s not like any girl I’ve ever come across.

Not since Ashley, anyway.

“I guess you want to know what all that was about?” I say, struggling to pitch my tone respectfully. I’ve messed up, I know it. So now I need to find a way out. I don’t think I could bear it if Skye turned her back on me. Not now.

Skye inclines her head. She’s acting cagey… which is unlike her. “I guess I do.”

I consider my options. I know what the old Harlan would have done. The man I was before I met Skye, before I – mostly – came clean to her on the plane ride up here.

I would have lied through my teeth. I would have done anything necessary to do what I thought was right, if it meant protecting my daughter.

Because, in my world, protecting Poppy means hiding her – from my friends, my enemies, and anyone who might be trying to get close to me.

So I almost lie anyway.

My brain conjures a story, spits it out onto my tongue, ready to burst forth at a moment’s notice. I could claim that Poppy’s really my niece, or maybe I’m in the Big Brother program. I don’t know. All I know is that if I had lied, I’d have fucking owned it.

I could sell snow to an Eskimo, and have him come away thinking he’s screwed me!

But I don’t. Not this time. I can’t do that. Not to Skye. Not anymore.

“She’s my daughter,” I say.

I pause for a few seconds, as much to let my brain deal with the admission, as to let Skye do the same. I’m breaking every code I have. Poppy’s my secret – because it’s safer that way.

But then, Skye’s right.

I can’t just go barreling through the world like a bull in a china shop for the rest of my life. There are – some – things on this earth that I cannot control.

And my relationship with this gorgeous redhead is one of them.

“But I guess you knew that already,” I say with a pained grin. Skye grimaces. I let out a deep sigh. “Okay, okay,” I mutter. “I’ll come clean.”

Skye crosses her arms across her chest, but doesn’t say a word. She’s studying me with that therapist’s eye – and I know that she’ll know if I lie to her.

But I have no plans of doing that.

“I told you about Ashley, right?”

Skye nods.

I bite my lip. I didn’t expect it to be so hard to talk about this. I guess a decade’s worth of pushing down on my emotions can’t be unwrapped in one evening…

“We both signed up straight after 9/11. We met not long after basic training, a few weeks after I applied to join the SEALs the first time.” My voice softens as I recall that happy time in my head. In fact, I kind of forget where I am and who I’m talking to.

“We had one of those crazy military relationships. We’d catch each other for a week here, when I was back from training in San Diego, or right before she was about to ship out for a tour in Afghanistan.

Hell, sometimes we’d come across each other on bases in the middle of fuck nowhere, all covered in dust. We beg and borrow some illegal hooch, and find a broom closet for a sneaky conjugal…”

I pause, cocking my head and look at Skye. “TMI?” I ask, throwing her a lifeline.

She shakes her head, spellbound. Somehow I knew that that was always going to be Skye’s answer. She’s not the kind of girl who gets jealous. She’s not the kind of girl to spit with rage – she wants the best for me, and I…

I want to let her give it to me.

And I want to treat her right. And that means being honest.

“Well it was like that for, what – three years?” I say, counting it out on my fingers. My throat chokes up a little, but nowhere close to how it did yesterday. “Three years it was just… casual.”

“What then?”

I shrug. Strangely it doesn’t hurt, remembering Ashley like this. Telling the whole truth, not just a sanitized version – like the one I gave Skye yesterday.

“I fell in love,” I admit. “I guess Ashley did too. I asked my CO’s permission, and we got married on a couple of week’s shore leave. We had the wedding down in San Diego, then we spent a couple of weeks prancing around the Florida Keys on our honeymoon.”

“Then you went back to war?” Skye asks quietly, as though she can’t quite understand how I could do such a thing.

How we could have done it. She doesn’t ask why, but the question’s written plainly on her face.

In truth, that’s a question I’ve asked myself a hundred times. Why didn’t we just quit when the going was good? We could both have requested a training gig stateside, and grown fat and lazy with each other.

But we didn’t.

“Because we loved it,” I say, answering Skye’s unspoken question.

“Both of us – there’s nothing like it, Skye. There’s nothing like the adrenaline of fighting shoulder to shoulder with your brothers – and sisters – out there in the desert. There’s nothing like saving your buddy’s life, feeling the adrenaline surging through you when a bullet bites the dust a couple of inches from your foot. At least, there wasn’t back then.”

Skye shakes her head. “What changed?”

“Everything,” I say. My voice sounds deep in my own ears, as though I’m lost in a giant drum.

“Everything changed. We found out Ashley was pregnant in ‘06. Finding out Poppy was on the way was the best news I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that happy again,” I admit.

“Why did Ashley go back to war?” Skye whispers.

That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s question that has kept me up every night for a week. That’s the question that – really – has haunted me all of the last ten years. If anyone had to die, why couldn’t it have been me?

Poppy’s mom never wanted to hurt anyone. Ashley only ever wanted to help, to save lives. I was the killer. Yet she’s dead, and I’m the one who survived.

“Because she had to,” I grunt from the pain returning. “2007 was the surge, and every man woman and child who could walk was sent out to Iraq to fight.”

“Even –?”

I nod. The gesture hurts me, digging up memories I thought I’d long suppressed. “Even Ashley. There was no way anyone was stopping her from shipping out with her unit. That was just the way she was.”

“… But she died,” Skye says, tears glinting in her eyes.

I find it strangely touching that Skye is so moved by my own painful history. It says a lot about her that she’s not threatened by it. I don’t know that a lot of women could be so brave.

“She did,” I say, the reminder hitting me like a haymaker into the gut. “At that point, I was done. I couldn’t fight after that. I shipped pretty much straight back home – no way was my CO forcing me to fight after that. I don’t even know if I could. I would’ve been a liability – a threat to the men beside me.”

Skye shakes her head. “No…”

“Yes,” I growl, with more intensity than I intended.

“I was a wreck, a mess. All I had was this perfect, tiny little bundle to focus all that anger and depression and energy into. I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to give Poppy the best life I could. Even without a mother.”

“So that’s why you built Wolfe Capitol,” Skye says, her voice becoming professional again. I know she’s psychoanalyzing me – or whatever it is she does, but I don’t care.

Because she’s right.

“You wanted to build a world where you were in charge, where nothing could ever snatch Your family’s – Poppy’s – safety out from under your feet.”

I nod. A tear leaks its way down my face. “Damn right,” I say harshly, choking over unexpected emotion. “Nothing was ever going to hurt Poppy the way that fucking IED took Ashley’s life. Nothing.”

Skye takes a step towards me. Haltingly at first, but then another, and another. She closes the distance until she’s only a pace away from me, and then reaches up, hesitant, and strokes my cheek.

“You did a great job,” she whispers.

“How do you –?”

“I know,” Skye says firmly. “I know because there’s no way a man, who speaks about his daughter like you just did, could possibly be anything other than a great father.”

“But…” I say in a sad, broken laugh. “The way you’re speaking, it’s like you’re not done.”

Skye flashes me an apologetic smile – just a tease really – a flash of her pearly white teeth. “But it’s a double-edged sword. The very same drive that built this life for you and Poppy is going to be what brings it all to a crashing end.”

I fake a laugh. I really don’t feel like laughing. Worse, I’ve got a feeling that Skye isn’t pulling her punches because – she’s right.

“Well don’t sugarcoat it, doc…”

“I told you I’d be honest with you,” Skye says.

“I don’t know what this thing is between us. But I do know that you’re still my patient, however compromised I’ve gotten us, ethically. And I’ve finally got your diagnosis.”

“Well don’t leave me hanging…”

Skye winks at me. “Believe me, I’ve got no plans of doing that,” she chuckles.

“I’ll lay it out straight. You’ve built this perfect life for yourself, Harlan. For you and Poppy. But you can’t change the whole world, no one can. You’re trying to control everything, but that’s not possible.”

Then she hits me with a question out of the blue.

“When did Ashley die, Harlan?”

“You know when,” I reply gruffly.

“No, Harlan,” Skye whispers. “The date,” she says.

Her hand is still resting on my cheek. I want to turn away from her closeness – it’s almost painful.

But I don’t. Because I’ve got a feeling she’s right. Either I confront this thing that’s stealing my sleep and haunting my waking hours, or I’ll never be the dad that Poppy needs me to be.

“June 29, 2007,” I say, closing my eyes.

“Last week,” Skye says, as if the revelation is no surprise to her, “ten years ago last week.”

I nod, and Skye’s hand inadvertently strokes my face.

“It was the ten year anniversary of your wife’s death, Harlan. Is it any surprise that this all hit you then? There’s only –,” she breaks off, as if hesitant to face my reaction.

“Say it,” I growl.

“There’s only so long you can build walls, Harlan. Only so long you can hide from the pain inside you before it builds to a crescendo and pummels those walls to pieces. I know. I’ve been there.”

“How can you possibly know,” I spit, “how it feels. How can you know how it feels to have lost someone like that, someone you – ”

“I know,” Skye says firmly, in fact, more than just firmly. Her voice takes on a determined, hard edge.

She says it in a way that I know immediately that as fierce a memory lies behind her protestation as lies behind mine. I fall silent.

“My mom died, Harlan,” she says, taking that last pace to close the space between us. She rests her forehead on my chest and softly says, “When I was just a kid – Poppy’s age, maybe.”

“Skye,” I whisper, suddenly disgusted at how self-centered I’ve been. I knew from the start that Skye had her own secret, I just didn’t know how deep her pain ran.

It wasn’t that orgasm thing. That’s just a symptom of what ails her. I knew it, and yet I was going to… What?

Exploit it?

Am I really that kind of guy?

“Don’t talk,” she orders me, her voice crackling with hoarse emotion. “For once, Harlan, just – listen.”

Skye takes a couple of seconds to compose her bearing before she speaks. I raise my arms and cuddle her. I feel like we’re both on a rock in the middle of the ocean, being battered by storms of emotion. We’re all either of us has.

“She was dead almost before she was diagnosed,” Skye says, her voice choked, as though – like me – she’s been squashing this memory into the darkest pits of her brain for years. “Cancer. We had a happy fucking family,” she spits, “and one routine visit to the doctor changed everything.”

Skye pauses. I feel a couple of hot tears burn out of her eyes and onto my T-shirt. I hug her tight.

“But my dad didn’t react like you did with Poppy, Harlan. He became a drunk. It didn’t happen all at once. He went through the motions, and honestly – I can’t blame him. I shut down for a while as well. Years, really. I was that weird kid at school, all dressed in black, the only color in the picture, the short-cropped flash of red on my head.”

I try and picture Skye like that, but I can’t. It doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t see anything but this beautiful woman she’s become.

And yet I know it’s true. The hurt and pain in her voice couldn’t possibly come from any other place.

“By the time I was fifteen, my dad was gone. At least, the man I knew was. He lost his job, hell – started stealing to pay for his habit for all I know. I still love him, believe me I do, but the man I loved is gone.”

“Skye…” I whisper, running my hands through the soft, silky hair at the back of her head. “I didn’t know.”

“How could you have?” She says, sniffling against my chest. “I’ve never told anyone before. As far as the rest of the world knows, my dad’s dead.”

“But not to you?” I ask, wary I’m stepping on unsafe ground. Even after all this time, if anyone – other than Skye, at least – asked me about Ashley, I’d react badly. Hell, I’d bite their head off. I wouldn’t blame Skye for doing the same to me.

Skye shakes her head – as best she can inside my embrace, anyway.

“Not to me. Because he’ll always be my dad, you know? I’ll never give up on him – even when he turns up at my apartment at three in the morning, stinking of booze, and needs a place to stay so the police won’t lock him up. He’ll always be my dad.”

We fall silent in each other’s arms for a few seconds.

A few minutes, maybe. In that moment, it feels like it’s just me and Skye against the world. It feels like every barrier that once stood between us has collapsed in one fell swoop, that we’re completely, entirely open, and at each other’s mercy.

Raw.

“We’ve got more in common than you know,” Skye says, still sounding stifled inside my embrace. “You know?”

I feel her shake her head loose, and she looks up. I pry my eyes open – I didn’t even know they were closed – and look down at her tear stained face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We’ve both got exactly the same problem – the same curse dragging us both down.”

My eyebrow wrinkles, and I stare down into Skye’s ocean blue eyes.

“Care to share?” I smile.

Thankfully, an answering smile shakes itself loose on Skye’s beautiful face.

“Control,” Skye says simply. “We both need to be in control at all times. Look at you – you built a multi-billion-dollar company so that your daughter would never, ever, be at risk.”

I stay silent for a few seconds. The truth is, this rings true to me. I do need to be in control. From the very first moment I decided I was going to sleep with Skye, I made it my mission. I even picked the clothes that I wanted her to wear!

But Skye…

My forehead wrinkles.

“What is it?” Skye asks.

“I think I’ve got an answer to your problem,” I say, the words coming out slowly, haltingly. An ingenious – or perhaps devious – plan forms inside my head.

I’m not sure that Skye’s going to go for it. Hell, I can’t think of many women that would.

For my plan to work, Skye needs to give herself over to me, completely. She needs to trust me. It’s going to involve her testing every boundary she’s ever held dear, and then blowing right past them.

“What’s that look on your face?” Skye asks with a hint of worry on her own. “I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” I say, leaning down and grazing her lips with mine. “But I think you will.”

“Tell me,” Skye pleads. “I don’t like surprises.”

“You’ll like this one,” I say. “I’m no therapist, but I’ve got a funny feeling it might solve both of our problems…”