She was trapped. Stuck in a nightmare with no way to escape. Darkness swirled all around her. Allyson forced herself to stand. When she tried to run, she tripped and fell hard onto the cold stone floor. The vise around her ankle tightened. She stared down at it, the sight of the shackle around her ankle making her heart sink like a stone. What the hell was going on?

Her eyes snapped open. No. This wasn’t right either. The darkness had given way to a white so bright she could hardly see. A tube was protruding from her arm and the whiteness started to spin.

And then she saw blue. A pair of indescribably blue eyes that pulled her out of the abyss.

“Allyson? Can you hear me?” Dane’s voice. Her husband’s voice.

With her heart pounding, she seized her husband’s hand in desperation. “What’s happening?”

“You’re in the hospital,” he said in a low voice. “You’re safe now.”

A groan escaped her throat. The whiteness began to stop spinning, and after a few moments she saw she was in a private hospital room. Propped up on a bed, hooked up to an IV. “My head,” she rasped.

“You have a concussion,” he said. “You were wearing a hat, which protected you. If you hadn’t…”

Hazy memories flashed in her mind. The darkness. A streetlight overhead. A baseball bat coming down on her. A wave of nausea hit her.

She’d been attacked. Someone had actually beaten her up. Why in the world would someone do that? “Did they find who did this?”

“Not yet.” His jaw clenched, and his blue eyes darkened with fury. “Whoever did this better hope to hell the cops find them first. Did you see who it was?”

“No. They were wearing a mask and a hoodie.” She shook her head and rubbed her temple. Her head hurt, but not as much as she thought it should. Still, she couldn’t shake the dizziness. “I feel woozy,” she croaked.

“That’s probably the drugs.” He sat down in the chair beside her, but didn’t let go of her hand. “You’ve been here since last night. For a second I thought I’d lost you. I thought that bastard was going to kill you.” His voice was thick with emotion. Sadness. And something else. Rage.

Her heart squeezed in terror at the thought of what her husband might do to find out who had done this to her. “I’m still here. I don’t they were trying to kill me.”

“I doubt it was just a robbery,” he said, casting her a flinty stare.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They took your bag,” he said, “but it couldn’t have been a routine mugging. It looked too…efficient to be something that desperate and random.”

“My bag…” Her eyelids fluttered closed momentarily as she tried to remember. “The will. Nicholas Handel’s will was in my bag.”

He swore under his breath. “Dammit! Your attacker must’ve known.”

“How?” she demanded, and then winced, lowing her voice. “Nobody knew I had the will in there. Not even you.”

“No, but Nicholas must have figured out that the will went missing,” he pointed out.

Allyson forced herself to remember the attack. Her stomach churned at the memory. She had been walking away from the car, trying to flee back to New York. And then, out of nowhere, a hooded figure had appeared and beaten her down with a baseball bat.

She wracked her brain, trying to remember what the attacker looked like, but the mask and hoodie had hidden everything. And it had been so dark. She didn’t even know what color her attacker’s eyes were. “You don’t think Nicholas was the one who attacked me, do you?” she asked in horror.

“Who else could it have been?” His hold on her hand tightened. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him for what he did to you—”

“We don’t know that it was him,” she insisted.

“If it wasn’t him, it was someone he sent,” Dane said coldly.

“Look, Nicky can be a jerk, but you don’t actually think he’d beat me with a bat, do you?” 

“It’s exactly what I think,” her husband muttered. “It was a Prescott bat, for one thing.”

“Plenty of people have Prescott baseball bats,” she said.

“Including Nicholas Handel,” he said.

She shivered at his tone. Dane wasn’t going to let this go. Her husband might have good breeding and have been born into a privileged family, but he was ruthless when it came to protecting her. It didn’t matter if Nicholas Handel had actually attacked her. Dane believed he had, and that meant Nicholas had a target on his back.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“I called your parents,” he said. “They’re worried. I had to beg them not to get on a flight out to London.”

“Thank you.” She was grateful that her husband knew her well enough to understand that, while her family deserved to know that she had been hurt, she didn’t want to face them right now. Didn’t want to see them after the argument she’d had with her mother. They probably all believed she was a thief, and she was in no state to defend herself. “How long do I have to stay in the hospital?”

“Not much longer,” he replied. “The doctor said that, at most, you’ll spend another night here. If thinks you look good you might even be out of here later today.”

“Thank goodness,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. After her attacker had raised the baseball bat to strike, she had momentarily believed he was going to do far worse damage. Maybe even kill her. She shuddered at the thought. Whoever had attacked her must have been desperate to get the will back.

“After that I’ll be heading back to New York to take the plea deal,” he said.

“What?” She sat up straighter. Her head throbbed with pain, but she ignored it. “No. I left so that you wouldn’t have to face this.”

“You really think you’re in a fit state to hand yourself over to the court?” His eyes narrowed. “Allyson, you could have been killed. There’s no way you can survive three minutes in jail, much less three years.”

“I survived a night in lockup—”

“While dressed in an evening gown—”

“What? You think I’m too spoiled to go to prison?” she snapped.

He sighed heavily. “I think that, as my wife, you’re not going to prison. No wife of mine is going to jail. This is not what I married you for.”

Tears stung her eyes. “Please don’t do this.”

“Allyson, I thought that son of a bitch had killed you,” he forced out. “I thought you were dead. That’s why I tried to break the damn windows in the car to get to you.”

It was then that she noticed the bandages around his knuckles. She gasped. “You’re hurt.”

“I tried to punch through the glass like a damn fool,” he confessed. “Thank God Lester came back outside as quickly as he did. He’s the one who called the ambulance while I watched over you.”

She tried to imagine what it would like to watch someone attack Dane so badly she thought that he might die. Just imagining it felt like a crushing weight on her chest. There was no way she could stand to see something that unspeakable.

No wonder he was so adamant about protecting her now. In her rush to protect him from prison she had gotten hurt, and caused him so much more suffering than she had ever planned or imagined. Forcing him to watch her go away to prison was one thing. But Dane thinking she was dying must have been ten-thousand times worse.

Dane raised her hand to his lips, the kiss heating her all over. “I’m doing this. No man could let the woman he loves suffer like this. I’m your husband. It’s my job to protect you. Let me do my job.”

She brushed her tears away. “Why are you so old-fashioned?”

“Because I come from an old family,” he said. “No more arguments. All I ask is that you wait for me.”

“Of course, I’ll wait for you. I love you.”

He leaned over to plant a kiss on her forehead. She shut her eyes, the sensation of his lips on her skin making her heart ache with a longing she didn’t even know was possible. How was it possible for her to miss her husband when he was still right here with her?

Three years without him. It was a better deal than thirty years apart, but she knew that the next three years would be the longest of her life. She choked back a sob, trying to be strong. It was probably her injury that had made her relent to his demands. Guilt was eating her alive. Dane was going to pay for something he didn’t do, on her behalf. She had no idea how she was going to live with herself.

A nurse appeared. “You have some visitors. Are you feeling strong enough?”

Allyson exchanged a glance with Dane. “Visitors?”

“My dad,” he replied. “He’s been worried sick about you.”

“Oh, poor guy—let him in,” Allyson said.

The nurse nodded and stepped back out. Moments later, Dane’s father and his assistant, Fran, walked into the room.

Alfred’s face was pale with worry. “You’re all right.”

Allyson nodded. “Yes. I feel a bit dizzy, but I’m glad to be okay.”

“Are you doing well enough to speak to Lester?” Alfred asked. “He wanted to talk to you about the plea deal. He isn’t sure if Dane is still going to go in your place.”

“Let me talk to Lester,” Dane said.

“That’s probably for the best. We can let Allyson get some rest while we tie up loose ends with Lester.” Alfred turned to Fran. “Can you stay with Mrs. Prescott until we come back?”

“Of course, sir,” Fran replied.

With that, Dane and his father headed out of the room. Allyson felt a twinge of regret as she watched them leave together. Dane and his father were very close. And now, after Alfred’s heart attack, he had to deal with his only son going to prison for three years.

Despair tore at her. She was on the verge of tears again, but she refused to cry in front of Francesca Barnes. Not after all the awful things Fran had said about her to Katherine that day in the bathroom at Prescott Global.

She eyed Fran warily as the young assistant sat down beside her.

Fran bit her lip. “Look…I know that we aren’t exactly friends—”

“No, we’re not,” Allyson said sourly, in too much pain to bother being civil. “Not after you disparaged me to Katherine Handel in the bathroom.”

Fran’s eyes went wide. Her hand flew to her mouth, shame etched on her lovely heart-shaped face. “Oh, crap. You heard that.”

“I did,” Allyson replied through clenched teeth. “You called me common, if I remember correctly.”

“Now I understand why you don’t like me anymore,” she said miserably. “Allyson…I mean, Mrs. Prescott…I was an idiot. I was wrong to talk about you like that. Especially to a woman like Katherine Handel.”

The venom in Fran’s voice when she mentioned Katherine was unmistakable.

“What do you know about Katherine?” Allyson asked, hoping that maybe Fran might know something about the Handels that could save Dane from prison.

“I know that she’s a liar,” Fran spat out. “I was her confidante. Told her every piece of gossip I heard about you and Mr. Prescott’s relationship. In exchange she promised to get me a good job, but after she ran off back to England she totally screwed me over. There had never even been a job. She just lied to get me to do what she wanted.”

“That sounds like Katherine,” Allyson said. “I just want to know if you’ve heard anything in relation to the embezzlement. I know it sounds crazy, but Dane suspects the Handels set me up. We need to get the real culprit.”

“I don’t know.” Fran bit her lip, her eyes darting around the room. “The Handels can be so vindictive. My family is going through financial trouble because my brother’s ex-wife took everything from us, and I don’t want to make the Handels angry. They’re so powerful.”

Allyson sighed. There was a chance that Fran had heard something, but pushing her too hard for information might backfire. Instead, she made a mental note to gently pry for more information later. “I understand, believe me. Going against them can be dangerous, especially if you’re trying to keep your head down and help your family.”

Fran nodded. “Again, I’m so sorry about those awful things I said about you.”

“Forget about it,” Allyson said. “I’ve got way bigger problems than office gossip.”

Dane reappeared in the room, catching Allyson’s attention. He did not look happy. At all.

Her stomach churned. The nausea was coming back. “What is it?”

“It’s not good,” he replied. “Lester got a call from New York from the prosecutor. The plea deal is off the table.”