Preston was, steadily and concisely, losing his damn mind.

The event had been so high-pressured, with weeks of preparation going into it and then all of it resting on his shoulders for this one night—knowing that if he failed, if he couldn’t charm enough investors, then the entire resort would be at risk. His grandfather’s vision, left by the wayside, all thanks to Preston’s incompetence.

He didn’t know why he’d been so nervous about it. All through his career, since he first started learning the trade back in college, he’d never met a deal he couldn’t close. He was notorious for getting everyone on his side—even his rivals who previously would’ve rather seen him sink. There was something about the way he did business that worked, and he’d made himself a very rich man for it.

Except this—the resort, his grandfather’s legacy—wasn’t just another property deal. This one was personal, and he carried the weight of responsibility like an anvil on his shoulders.

It was a monumental relief, therefore, when the night had drawn to a close, and he had the assurances he needed. People weren’t just convinced by him—they were excited at the prospect of what this place could become. He almost had investors biting off his hand to get involved.

The storm drew in and cut the night short, but it had been a successful night all the same, and Preston looked forward to putting his feet up and enjoying a nightcap—with Ashley, if he had any luck. He had plans, nothing too pushy, but enough to make her start to feel more comfortable with him. Small steps.

Except she’d informed him she was attending a poker game, and there was nothing he wanted to be farther away from than a poker table.

He had his reasons.

He left her to it and retired to his room, and then an hour later, while he’d been trying to figure out how to get Ashley into his room when she was finally done playing poker, but drifting off to the rhythmic sounds of wind howling past his window, he heard the scream.

And everything from that point on stopped making sense.

Now, he stood in the doorway of his room. He’d begged off the conversation in the kitchen—hadn’t been able to focus while knowing Ashley was somewhere up here, alone, vulnerable. But he didn’t want to follow her into the Xings’ room, so he waited and kept watch.

When she finally emerged, carrying a small pile of clothes and looking as if she’d seen a ghost, Preston lost the thread of what he wanted to say to her. It wasn’t until he saw the breathtaking silhouette of her glorious body in the moonlight as she passed a window that he remembered.

“Listen, Ash, about us sharing. I don’t want you to think that I—”

“He was strangled,” she said, marching up to him like a woman on a mission. She looked full of anxiety, but with a determination about her that made him blink. “Did you see the contusions on his neck?” she continued, gesturing vaguely at her own throat. “Consistent with marks left behind after strangulation. Rope. Wire. That kind of thing.” She pushed past him into his room, whipping him up in her whirlwind and forcing him to put a buffer on this.

“We need to wait for the police,” he said, closing the door. “It’s not up to us to make assumptions.”

“Tell me about Larry Rohan.”

She turned and pinned him with eyes of steel, and his whole being stuttered to a halt. He knew that in that moment, without a single doubt, she was not a woman to settle for anything less than everything she wanted.

And what she wanted right now was information. He could almost see her brain at work.

He sighed. “There’s not much to say about him,” he said. “Divorced from his second wife, no kids that I know of. He’s an investment manager, but he comes from old money—real old. He’s dripping in it. Or he was.”

She moved to the edge of the bed and sat on it. Preston’s heart stumbled over its next beat.

“Why would anyone want to murder him?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” he snorted. “I’m with Karen here—the guy was the walking definition of an offensive creep.”

Her mouth twisted into a playful smirk—an expression he hadn’t seen on her before, but he liked it. Seeing her fired up like this, so alive with it all, was an exhilaration he shouldn’t feel right now, in this moment, talking about a murder.

“Careful,” she said, “that kind of talk can make you a suspect.”

“Are you a detective now?”

“Well, we have to figure out who’s killed him,” she said after a beat of hesitation.

There was something about the way she averted her eyes that made his stomach sour with foreboding. “What?”

She shrugged, picked at a nail. “I was kind of obsessed with the whole forensic investigator thing when I was younger. Still am,” she said, trying too hard for casual. “My DVR is packed with it—Without a Trace, The Closer…”

And then he got it, saw through the blasé stance to the heart of it. She was hesitant in telling him about all of this because she knew how it sounded—that she saw herself like the heroines of those TV shows, acting the detective, some kind of romanticized notion of playing the sleuth lighting a flame beneath her.

Irritation licked at the edges of him.

“And this is your chance?” he asked, confrontation in his tone. “It’s not a game, Ash.”

“I know that.” She looked up at him, then stood up and lifted her hands, the gesture placating and reasoned. “Just…work with me a little. Okay? I’ve got no plans to mess up the real investigation. But my own life might be at stake here tonight, so—”

The irritation changed to a sharp burst of fury, visions of her dead body in the foyer swimming into his mind and making him see red. “That’s not gonna happen,” he bit out, hands curling into fists—surprising himself with how fiercely he felt the urge to protect her. “I won’t let it.”

She stared at him, her eyes soft. “You don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“It’s just someone with a grudge against the man,” he snapped. “That’s all.”

The anger drained out of him in an instant at the sight of her expression going steely again, and he sighed and took a seat on the couch, ready to ride this out. She wasn’t going to rest until she’d talked this through—he could see it, and he was powerless to deny her.

Apparently sensing her opening, she sat back on the edge of the bed again and dropped the pile of clothes beside her, leaning forward on her elbows. It wasn’t the most ladylike stance, but the contrast of it against the elegant dress left him fighting off a smile.

“Who are they?” she asked. “What do you know about them?”

“I don’t really know the Xings. They’re here because I was told Chen is big in tourism, but I don’t think he ever had any intention of investing in the Alcott Resort, so I’ve got no idea why he or his wife came here. Maybe they were hoping to make other connections. They’re loaded, as far as I know.”

“And you’ve never met them before?”

“No.”

She nodded, focus drifting away from him for a moment, as if she was holding that information up against all the other threads pulling through her brain.

“And the sisters?”

“Karen and Maude Fregel are a mystery to everyone.” He raised his hands in a “Who knows?” gesture before dropping them back by his sides, searching for any other information he could give her. “They’re in their fifties and never lived with anyone but each other.”

“How did they come to be so wealthy?”

He cast his mind back, looking for some fragments of a story he’d been told once. He couldn’t even remember who’d told him.

“Their father made a lot of money in stocks, I think, but not until his daughters were almost fully grown. He and his wife died about six months after landing the fortune. Pretty sure it was a skiing accident.”

“Skiing?”

“Something to do with a cable car. I don’t really remember the details.”

He could see the cogs turning in her brain—parents dead while skiing…and now they were here, potentially investing in a ski resort… Even he had to admit it seemed a little shady. Why would anyone want to throw money into something that had killed a loved one? He could never imagine having any business dealings in the gambling industry, not after the brutal way it had claimed his father.

“So the sisters inherited everything.”

“Apparently,” he said, and then, just in case she felt the need to flit off and make accusations, he added, “They’re not murderers, Ashley.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Someone here is,” she said flatly, and—yeah, she had a point. “What do you know about Frank?”

He drew in a breath, gazing up at a spot high on the opposite wall as he tried to remember something about the man. “Frank Germaine. The new Mark Zuckerberg, people say. He invented some social media app that all the teens are into. That’s it—that’s all I know.”

Raising a single brow, she drawled, “You’re kinda vague on the people you invited up to your mountain.”

“My company invited a list of wealthy people who have investment interests. I didn’t personally invite anyone to spend a night alone with me in my hotel, complete with a dead body.”

“The sisters said you did.”

“No,” he said. “A member of staff told me she was overheard speaking about the completed rooms, and the Fregels invited themselves and organized the poker game around it.”

“Why didn’t you want to play with us?”

The question came out of left field, spoken all at once as if she’d been bursting to ask all along. Her eyes were cautious as she met his, waiting.

He cleared his throat, trying to inject as little as possible into his tone. “I don’t gamble.” But instead he’d managed to bite out the words as if irritated by the question—something like a snarl wrapped around his voice. She blinked and looked away.

“Okay…” she said, and he sighed. He hadn’t intended on making her feel bad for asking, and there was no reason why he couldn’t just tell her the truth. He wanted to, he realized. When he looked at her, he found he wanted to tell her everything.

“I lost my dad to it,” he said. She looked back up at him sharply. “An addiction. Gambling turned to drinking, turned to liver failure at age fifty-two.”

“I’m sorry.” Her face twisted into an apologetic smile-grimace. “If I’d have known…”

He tried to return a smile that was a lot more at ease than hers. “It’s my issue, not yours.” Then the corner of his mouth lifted for real, and he huffed out a brief laugh before adding, “Word has it you’re pretty good at it.”

Her expression softened with shyness. “Chen cleaned me out. Cleaned us all out. Larry was furious about it. I saw them arguing…” She trailed off, face clouding over as her brows knitted together. When she looked back at him, her eyes were lit anew. “Where else could he have fallen from, other than the balconies on this floor?”

His first instinct was to tell her nothing, nowhere, just drop it. But it was a lie, and she’d see right through it. She was so determined—and, truthfully, he found a certain excitement in it. She was sexy as hell like this.

“There might be something on the third floor,” he admitted with a slight grudging note to his voice. When her face transformed into something akin to morbid delight, he sighed. “I can show you.”

She nodded, got to her feet, her ball gown shimmering back into place. The blood stains on her knees were barely visible against the black fabric, but he knew they were there—and she must’ve seen it on his face, because she looked at him and then down at herself, before frowning.

“Let me just get changed,” she said, scooping up the small pile of clothes. For half a thrilling instant, Preston thought she planned to strip off right here in front of him. Then she headed towards the bathroom, and he came back down to earth with a painful bump.

She hesitated at the door of the bathroom, looking back at him with her lip caught between her teeth. When she spoke, she accompanied the words with a pretty blush high up on her cheeks. “Can you—the zipper.”

He didn’t move immediately, somewhat paralyzed by the graphic thoughts that flooded his brain in that moment. Then, gathering the part of himself that was raised a gentleman, he got to his feet and approached her, trying to pretend his blood wasn’t running thick with heat.

She turned her back to him and stood so incredibly still and stiff that he almost winced in sympathy. Part of him was tempted to draw this out, drag the zipper down with agonizing slowness, reveal each glorious inch of her skin for his leisurely gaze. Instead, he undid the dress with smooth efficiency, opening the back right down to the curve of her ass. Gentlemanly notions aside, he couldn’t help but ghost the pad of his thumb over the mole sitting in the dimple at the small of her back. His mouth watered.

In the odd silence that followed, he felt compelled to speak, make some attempt at preventing her discomfort—the whole point of asking her here with him tonight was to get her comfortable in his presence, let her feel like she could loosen up, trust him to do right by her. Not touch her skin when she didn’t ask him to, fight the urge to slip his fingers beneath the material, and spread his hands around the shape of her.

“Thank you for being my date tonight,” he said, making her startle a little at the sudden noise.

She inhaled sharply as if she’d been holding her breath all along, then turned to face him. With her spare hand, she held the front of her dress in place against her full, mesmerizing breasts.

“I enjoyed it.”

He huffed a mirthless laugh. “Apart from the murder.”

It was the wrong thing to say—her face clouded over, brows drawing in. When she spoke, it was with a delicate vulnerability that made him want to pull her in and hold her close.

“I thought it was you,” she admitted. “It was dark without the lights, and I saw the gray suit…”

Casting caution aside, he pressed fingers to her jaw and brushed a thumb over her cheekbone, over the soft skin below her troubled eyes. “Did it scare you?”

She reached up and took hold of his wrist—not pulling his hand away, just holding onto him. “Of course it scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can you just…change into something else?” she asked roughly, and he got it—every time she looked at him in the gray suit, she saw the dead body, the moment she thought she was looking at him dead on the floor.

He nodded, because of course—anything. And she smiled in thanks, pulling away from him. He watched the bare skin of her back as she headed into the bathroom.

Five minutes later she emerged in a simple outfit of shirt and pants, her hair loosened from its grips and tumbling around her shoulders, all of her looking beautifully casual, adorable in her socks and the glimpse of bare ankles.

He, however, hadn’t made it any farther than stripping off his suit, so he now stood in his boxers, black T-shirt in hand, ready to slip it on.

She looked a violent mix of mortified and embarrassed as she slammed to a halt outside the bathroom, like she’d smacked into an invisible wall. She stared at him, eyes wide, and gasped, “Oh my god, sorry.” But he didn’t miss the brief, dark flicker of her eyes down his body.

He smirked, stomach twisting pleasantly at her obviously—and badly concealed—interest. “You can look.”

Her throat burned red even as she adopted something like a scowl. “Narcissist.”

“A narcissist is someone who likes looking at himself,” he told her, and then let his own gaze drink his fill of her beautiful shape. “I can think of much better views.”

He’d embarrassed her further, but he could also see the pleased little quirk of her mouth, the way she held herself slightly taller as she scoffed at him and pushed past, scolding him with a firm, “Come on, we’ve got a murder to deal with.”

“Murder. Almost forgot.” For some wild, completely manic reason, he had the urge to laugh—not because he found any humor in Larry’s death, but because there was something about watching the effect his compliment had on Ashley that buoyed him up.

Not that she was going to let him revel in his minor success for very long—she made a show of impatience at the door, looking at him pointedly. He rolled his eyes and got dressed.

“I need a flashlight,” he said as he slipped a pair of shoes on, and she blinked at him.

“But the generator is running now.”

“There are no lights installed up on that floor yet.”

The pleasure on her face transitioned to a hint of unease, and he briefly considered calling off this little expedition. Except he knew she wouldn’t have it, that it was simpler to let her work through her curiosity and stick close to her, protect her quietly from the sidelines. If she insisted on going through all of this, then he would be with her every step of the way.

He found a flashlight in a housekeeping closet and took Ashley upstairs, through the rope that closed off the spiral staircase that led to the upper floors, his flashlight shining off bare walls and rough-wood floors. Up on the third floor, with the shutters down on the windows, it was like stepping into an expansive cave. The air was thick and stale, and he could taste the dust on his tongue as he drew in a sharp breath. Ashley shivered beside him, and he allowed himself a moment of command, taking her arm and tucking her against his side, then telling her, “Watch your step—don’t go too near the edges.” He wasn’t entirely sure how much of the floor up here had been completed, and his flashlight only went so far to light the way.

Carefully, their steps slow and cautious, he led her over to the frosted glass panel installed in the floor. The idea behind the panel was to shine natural light down onto the foyer from the skylight above, filter it through the frosted glass and give a softened effect to the reception area below, make the guests feel enveloped in warmth and welcome.

It could also, when moved, act like a hole through which someone might fall, if that person was clumsy. Or pushed.

Ashley stared at it, her expression calculated. “Could this be moved?”

“I guess? It’s not sealed in yet. But it would take more than one person.”

“Two people?”

“I don’t know.”

She stepped back and sighed, keeping her hands on her hips as she gazed around at the room, whatever murderous scenes she could see flitting through her imagination right now.

“One person alone couldn’t get the body up here.”

She had a point. Larry wasn’t a small man, and there was no working elevator.

“You think there’s more than one killer?”

She nibbled her lip and said, “I don’t know what I think yet,” and then, like a rabbit startled by gunshot, she gasped and leaped to the side, right into his space. Instinct had him grabbing her, pulling her into his sphere of protection.

“Careful.”

She was breathing quickly, glancing around this way and that, eyes wide. “Did you hear that?”

“No,” he said truthfully. He hadn’t heard a thing—he’d been too focused on watching her work through her theories. He tightened his hold on her waist, careful not to dig the flashlight into her skin. “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.”

Something in his voice caught her attention, and she looked at him, expression calming. She was so close that he could see the slight stain of gold in her eyes, even in this poor light.

She smiled. “My hero?”

“Something like that.”

“I can look after myself,” she said, but there was no conviction in it. They were both very aware of her capabilities, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t welcome her into his arms whenever she let fear overrule her focus, if only briefly.

“I don’t doubt it,” Preston said—his eyes, of their own volition, darting down to her lips. She caught the movement and swallowed, parting those lips the barest slip. He didn’t know if he imagined the way she leaned in.

Then she startled again and looked behind her, not pulling away from his hold, but still ending the moment they very nearly shared. He would’ve kissed her if he’d been granted a second or two longer.

“What’s the matter?”

She hesitated, holding her breath, standing stock still as she waited—for what, he didn’t know, but her actions were putting him on edge too, making him think they weren’t being too clever standing up here, distracting themselves with potentially charged moments.

“I heard something,” she said, and yeah—it was time to get her back to the safety of his room, even if he was already mourning the prospect of letting her go.