“And you just left her there?”

The question comes from Sutton Cooper, the roughneck of our little group. The censure in his voice leaves no doubt as to his opinion on the matter. He may be a hard-ass, with a background roping steer and raising hell, but he has a hard line about treating women well.

Even if that only means making her breakfast after a night of no-strings sex.

“She paid for the night,” I say blandly.

Christopher leans forward in the leather armchair, his eyes dark. They always see right through me. They see through everything. “Have you ever made a girl cry before?”

“But of course, that’s why I’m the highest-paid escort in Tanglewood. Because I say sharp and insulting things that make the women cry.”

Blue takes a sip of whatever new beer he’s drinking. “Has Hugo been sarcastic before?”

“Only when he’s upset,” says Christopher, the bastard.

We’re sitting at the Den, like we do almost every week. When we started there was only Blue and Sutton and me, starting with a handful of dollars in our pockets, determined to make something of ourselves. The Thieves Club, we called it, only half joking—our own Den of thieves. We weren’t planning on robbing any banks, but every dollar we earn means taking one away from someone else.

Christopher runs a hand through his blond curls, the ones that can make any woman swoon. Some of the women in the room glance at him as he does it, the light from the amber fixtures glancing off golden strands. He’s a veritable angel walking the earth—made hard from his fall.

“She must be something,” he says. “For you to get shaken up.”

“I’m not shaken up.”

“So she wasn’t something?” Blue says, crossing one booted foot over his knee. He wears only jeans and T-shirts and dusty black boots, in direct violation of the dress code. He wears enough suits running his security company, he says, when he would much rather be in army fatigues.

“She’s beautiful, of course. All women are beautiful.”

Christopher raises an eyebrow. “So she’s ordinary?”

They’re baiting me. I know they’re baiting me, and still it works. “Non. She is perfection. Delicate and pale and covered in freckles. Everywhere, freckles.”

“I do love freckles,” Sutton says with a wistful sigh.

“And she has a smart mouth that presents itself at the most surprising times. When I think she will be most scared and cowering, that’s when she tells me what’s what.”

Blue grunts, because he enjoys a woman with attitude. “Nice.”

“And there’s something about her—the strangeness of her staying in that hotel, for one thing. Her past. Her secrets. I want to unwrap them as much as I want to take off her clothes.”

“Which is a lot,” Christopher observes, his voice dry, but I’m not fooled.

He loves secrets as much as I do, with his neat suits and obsidian eyes. He was the last addition to the Thieves Club, one we never expected. But when he went into business with Sutton, he slid into our group as if there had always been a space waiting for him.

With his cold ambition, there is no one better suited to join us.

Plus he brings the most excellent brandy.

I take a sip, savoring the spice. “Most likely she won’t call again. She will find some handsome traveler in the hotel bar, who will finally convince her to leave the safety of her little nest.”

The thought turns the brandy sour in my mouth.

“Or not.” Blue turns the amber beer bottle in his thick fingers, studying me. “If you really upset her that much she might be too afraid to try again. You might have fucked her up.”

I choke on my next sip and set the crystal down. “Thank you for that.”

“She’s going to call again,” Christopher says, raising his finger for the server. The Den has a full bar, of course, but we can bring our own liquor, especially if we have a special bottle. The brandy he brings for me. Obscure craft brews for Blue. His business partner, Sutton, prefers Patron.

He drinks only wine himself, the kind that must be purchased at auction.

There is terrible hope inside me at that, because Christopher is usually correct.

“Because she wishes to cry again?”

“This is a woman who has spent her whole life behind bars, essentially. Even if they are bars of her own making. She wants to feel something. That’s why she called the first time. It’s why she’ll call again.”

I turn to stare into the fire as the server attends to refilling our drinks. Absolute privacy is assured in the Den, but I still would not speak of Bea in front of a stranger. In fact I do not usually tell the Thieves Club about any of the women I’m with, but she’s far from usual.

And of course there’s the issue of L’Etoile, but I have no intention of telling anyone about that—not even these men. They don’t need to know that I have a darker purpose for wanting to go back to the hotel, to get closer to the woman who lives there.

When we’re alone again, I lean forward. “I want to see her again, which is enough to convince me that I shouldn’t. I don’t have feelings about my clients. I pleasure them, they pleasure me. That’s all.”

“It’s clear this has gone beyond that already,” Sutton says. He wears a white business shirt, rumpled from a day’s use, the sleeves rolled up. They dress alike, he and Christopher, in their high-rise real estate office, but they could not be more different.

“And I’m worried that if I go again, I’ll have sex with her. Of course I will. But how can I do that, knowing she cried when I only made her come? How do you take someone’s virginity?”

“Don’t ask me,” Blue says.

He’s the only one of us in a committed relationship. He loves his wife, who had a very rough childhood. Enough that he didn’t take her virginity, even though they met as teenagers. I’ve met Hannah and she’s impossibly sweet; it’s heartbreaking to think of her hurt.

“No idea,” Christopher adds, but I happen to know he holds a deep fascination with his stepsister. She’s the reason he moved to Tanglewood, though he would not admit that.

Even Sutton puts up his hands. “Who wants that kind of responsibility?”

Mon Dieu.

“I am in very big trouble,” I announce softly.

The group drinks in silent agreement.