VICTORIA FELT RAW AND exposed. She had no idea if this thing with Tristan was going anywhere. Right now she wanted it to, though there were still so many hurdles to overcome. There was no promise though, and telling him about a years-old crush would only make things hurt more if they fell apart. Because now he knew she’d been carrying this torch for that long.

“He told me who you were, and I used the rumors to force myself to back away.” Tristan sounded apologetic.

That hurt too, though knowing why he’d done it helped. “In a way you let it define me. But that’s okay, because so did I. So did Mischa, he just came at it from a different angle. I thought I’d found someone who saw under the mask, and let me be me. He tried to heal things that weren’t wrong, and that broke me. I don’t blame him. It’s not as though I had any idea. But I was looking for a friend, and he was looking for a princess to rescue, and I didn’t know how to cope.”

“I really am sorry.” Sincerity hung in Tristan’s words.

She tried to shrug off the cloud that enveloped her, and only half-succeeded. “You wanted to know what triggered my relapse six months ago. Why I hired someone to follow him.”

“Because my name was in the paper.”

She smiled, but didn’t feel the emotion behind hit. “Yes. I saw you, the blurb about your success, and I remembered what I couldn’t have. I’d just come out of another relationship that fell flat. I ended it because he and I didn’t click, but I was convinced it was my fault.” Why was she saying so much?

Because she needed someone to get it. She needed Tristan to get it. “The guy was nice enough, and I was convinced I gave him up because I was terrified of falling into the same habits I had with Mischa. I was lonely, I couldn’t have you—a guy I barely knew, who despised me, how fucked up is that?—so I fell back into chasing him.”

Victoria didn’t know how to interpret the range of emotions that raced across Tristan’s face. One instant she thought she saw pity, then disgust, or maybe sympathy. She didn’t know. She was grateful he didn’t interrupt; that would have derailed her in a way she couldn’t handle right now. “I couldn’t go through with it, so you know. Less than a week after I hired the guy, I called and canceled. Told him I didn’t want to know after all, paid him what was owed, and severed the contract.”

Tristan let out a clipped laugh.

She didn’t like that. “What?”

“If the guy was on the job for less than a week, and Mischa caught him, you’re lucky you didn’t keep him on the payroll longer.”

That was almost enough to make her smile. A release for the weight that grew inside after baring so much of her soul. “None of this changes what happened, but I wanted you to see where I was coming from, and wow, that got deep.”

“Given where the conversation started, I would have been disappointed with less.”

“And you just wanted twenty-four hours of sex and games.” She tried to keep her tone light. To joke her way out of this pit.

He scooted closer, and grasped her fingers lightly, tracing his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “I want whatever you’re willing to give me.”

His soft voice matched the way he looked at her, and her breath caught. Fear surged inside. She couldn’t do this. Not that she knew what this was, but it clenched like a fist around her lungs.

She shifted to kneel next to him, and adopted a seductive pose. “You don’t have to say that. We already agreed this is just fucking.” She trailed a finger along his jaw.

He grabbed her wrist. “We agreed we weren’t in a rush to define it. You don’t have to do this with me. You don’t have to pretend everything we just talked about doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to hide it behind sex. If you want to talk, any time, I’m listening.”

“What if that’s not what I want from us?”

“Then look me in the eye, actually meet my gaze instead of looking past me, and tell me this is only sex, and I’ll pretend the last hour never happened.”

Victoria could do that. She was a good enough actress to sell it, and even if she stumbled, he wouldn’t call her on it if she said any version of no. If she did that, this connection would die. It might be possible to patch it later, but it would never be the same. She grasped for the truth, and yanked it past terror and doubt. “What if I want to stay the rest of the day, and maybe tonight, not because of the sex, but because I want to be here with you?”

“Nothing would make me happier,” he said.

The kiss he planted on her forehead, soft and tender and unassuming, cracked her from the inside out. She shifted to rest against his chest, not trusting herself to speak. She was falling hard. More than with any guy before. More than with Mischa. The realization was terrifying.

She was so fucked when this fell apart.

*

TRISTAN DIDN’T SHOW a lot of properties in the winter. It figured he’d get a spur-of-the-moment request the one day he was out of the office, and it was for one of the office buildings on Mischa’s unsold block.

Fortunately, the man was willing to wait. Now Tristan returned the favor. Having answered all the prospective-buyer’s questions, he followed a few feet back as the man took another pass through the three-story building.

That left his mind a pleasant bit of traipsing space, about yesterday. He and Victoria made it through six Hellraiser movies, and given up at seven when they just got ridiculous. They didn’t do much else besides cuddle, and order pizza—Victoria insisted he needed to learn the latter, and that he was pretty good at the former.

It was such a simple thing, but he didn’t remember ever having a day like that. True, the turmoil in the middle of it all hurt. He wasn’t sure which part made him ache the most.

Scratch that, he did know. Victoria’s slip-up with the PI was bad, and confessing his own prejudice when they met was a test in strength, but the pain on her face, talking about her past, tore him apart the most.

The wounds wouldn’t vanish because of a single conversation, but he liked being there for her. He still didn’t think she needed rescuing, but the idea of leaning on each other was appealing.

“I like what I see.” The prospective-buyer stopped in front of Tristan, drawing him back to the present.

“Fantastic. I can draw up the offer paperwork now, if you’re ready to put a number down.”

The man chuckled. “Give me a day to do some math and I’ll be in touch.”

“Fantastic.” Tristan swapped business cards with him. “I’ll give you a call on Thursday if I don’t hear from you.”

He walked down to the street with the buyer, and hopped into his own car after the man drove off. His thoughts drifted back to Victoria. He dialed her number, taking the phone off the Bluetooth speaker, because something about hearing her voice in his ear was more intimate than blasting it through the car radio.

“Morning.” The smile was evident in her voice.

“I’m only a couple of miles away. Where do you want to go for lunch?”

“I can’t.”

“Okay.” Disappointment tickled his senses. Her no caught him off-guard enough he forgot how he was supposed to take another angle to close the deal.

“I’d like to,” she said with a light laugh. “But I have a checkup this afternoon, so I’m taking a late lunch break for that.”

“What time and where? I’ll meet you there.”

“Are you serious?”

He frowned. “I meant what I said about wanting to be involved. I’ll stay away if you don’t want me there, but I’d rather participate.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you to. I love that you didn’t hesitate to offer. But there’s that issue of being seen together in public.”

They hadn’t literally put a new label on their relationship, but he assumed they had one. “What are we going to do long term? Or is this your way of asking me to back off?”

Her sigh echoed in his skull. “It’s not. I mean it that I want you here. After we get things sorted, we don’t have to worry about the rest of the world misinterpreting us.”

“An audit can last a long time.” He was willing to wait it out, if it meant sticking by her side. The thought was unexpected, but it felt right. He didn’t like the idea of so much secrecy though.

“I know.”

“Are you going to keep me out of the delivery room?” The question popped out before he realized what he was asking. That was a huge leap from part-time dad, and weekend sleepovers.

“Are you volunteering to be there?” Her disbelief mirrored the feeling half his mind was tossing at him.

“I want to be equally involved. Even in the painful stuff. If you’ll let me.”

She sighed again, but this one sounded like relief. At least, he hoped that was what it was. “I don’t know what we do if things aren’t cleared up by then, but yes, I want you there.”

“Let me meet you at the doctor’s office,” he said. “It’s an OBGYN, not a five-star restaurant or the country club. The chances of running into anyone who knows us or cares are slim.”

“All right.” The smile was back in her voice as she gave him the address. “One-thirty. If you’re late, I’ll be hurt,” she teased.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” Giddiness flitted inside as he drove back to the office. He forced himself to focus on work for the next couple of hours, but it wasn’t an easy task.

His desk phone rang with a call from Reception a little before one. “Ralph Wolfram is here to see you.”

Tristan stared at the phone, willing the call to be a hallucination. Nope. The line was still live, and she was waiting for him to reply. “Do I have an appointment?” He knew he didn’t.

“No, but he says he only needs a few minutes of your time.”

Good, because that was all he was getting. Enough for Tristan to trip him up and see if he was responsible for this IRS investigation. “Have him wait in the conference room. I’ll be right there.”