As soon as Dylan’s sweet face came into view, racing from his grandparents’ front door to greet them, Iris felt the breath knocked from her body.

How had she never seen it before?

Eli caught him up in a big bear hug, making her heart ache as she hung back from the reunion, remembering the role she had to play, when all she wanted to do was join in. For all his parents knew, she had just returned from several days’ rest at home, and not several nights of shattering orgasms in their son’s arms.

There was little opportunity to visit this time, as Eli needed to get back for sound check, so the few minutes she had were spent gathering the boys’ things and loading them into the back of the Escalade as the trio bid farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Vance. As Iris closed the liftgate, though, Abby appeared around the corner of the vehicle and enfolded her in a warm hug. “We loved meeting you, Iris. Remember what I said. You’re always welcome.”

Iris closed her eyes and breathed in the taller woman’s vanilla scent, wishing more than anything she’d had a mother like this growing up. “Thank you.”

Abby moved back, holding Iris at arm’s length as she took in her expression for perhaps the first time. It was that very Elijah-like way she had, a perception that seemed impossible to evade. “Is everything all right?”

“Of course.” She almost made up a lie, that she was tired from her flight, but couldn’t bring herself to look into those caring eyes and do so.

Abby put a hand to her cheek. “Take good care of my boys. But make them take good care of you, too.”

Did she detect a hidden meaning in those words? Iris smiled. “I’ll do that.”

Nothing had ended here, but as she climbed in the passenger side of the black SUV, she couldn’t help feeling as if it had. The fantasy was over and reality was settling back in, she supposed. They were back under the eagle eyes of his children, who missed nothing. Seger already suspected. But fighting the urge to reclaim Eli’s hand, which had held hers on the entire drive over, was taking every ounce of her self-control. She was more aware of him than anything else in the world right now, and it was ten times worse now that she couldn’t act on it.

Even the way he spoke to her was different. He’d shed the softened tone she’d fallen in love with and was back to the cool indifference of the early days. He hardly looked at her.

It was necessary. She knew that. Watching the city pass by outside her blacked-out window, she scolded herself. She’d made her choices, and those choices had consequences. But twenty minutes had passed since they had to begin this charade and she was already questioning her abilities to see it through.

The boys were brimming with tales of their adventures, so that was a welcome distraction, Dylan’s exuberance offset by Seger’s budding cynicism. That one was a replica of his dad through and through. No denying it. She felt sorry for the women in his future, the same way she almost felt sorry for herself.

Afraid anything she said might give her away, she kept her mouth shut on the drive. Eli’s gaze drifted in her direction a few times, seen in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t let herself look at him. He looked especially devastating today, of all days. All in black, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, sensual lips framed by scruff he hadn’t bothered to shave in days—making her remember the soft scratch of it on her inner thighs. Or against her cheek as he moved inside her with the sensual grace that left her panting.

She’d been able to make the long-awaited announcement to Sara that she finally got the fuss about sex. Her friend had squealed in excitement, but if she only knew . . .

It was so, so good. It got better every time, if that were even possible. And he was the sweetest. Last night, as she’d lain little spoon to his big spoon, he’d asked her for her favorite song. She’d told him it was “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan, and to her astonishment, he’d begun singing it for her. Perfectly. It wasn’t a love song, but it had felt like one, lying in his arms with his warm, intimate voice in her ear. She’d been amazed that a headbanger such as himself knew the lyrics to the song, and she’d told him so. His reply had saddened her. “I’ve lost enough friends to H to know it by heart, and I have an appreciation for anything that real and raw. If I had my piano, I could play it for you.”

It had triggered fantasies of long, sexy nights listening to him play and sing for her, then making love, then talking for hours, then making love again. And if he wanted to sing for her again in between, that was okay, too. She could fall asleep to his lullabies every night and be happy forever.

But if they were ever going to have that, they had to get through this. This artificial distance they had to create to hide their feelings from the world, starting with the two boys in the back.

Worst of all was that Heidi would begin to expect her frequent reports to resume. Iris wasn’t looking forward to those exchanges at all. Not having to deal with her for the last several days had been . . . a relief.

Dylan and Seger, as usual, did everything at ninety miles per hour, jumping from the SUV as soon as Eli put it in Park by the tour bus behind tonight’s venue. He managed to call for them to grab their bags from the back before handing the keys off to a roadie who scampered up. The boys obeyed, but Seger grumbled about it.

“Don’t complain, hurricane,” Iris told him.

Dylan giggled, but Seger stopped and rolled his eyes dramatically at her. “Jeez. Stop.”

“You know you missed me,” she said, trying to tug him closer to rumple his hair, but he ducked under her arm and evaded her.

“I didn’t miss your dumb rhymes.”

“Seger,” Eli snapped, having heard him as he came around back to help. “Lose the attitude and apologize to Iris or I’ll tell her to talk to you in rhymes all day.”

Seger puffed up, the very picture of adolescent defiance. “It’s just stupid. I’m not a baby anymore.” Iris tried not to let it hurt her feelings; he was a kid after all, coming ever nearer to the turbulent teen years. But she was already raw, and it stung.

“Stop acting like one, then. Now say it and get these bags on the bus or you aren’t leaving your bunk all night.”

Seger wasn’t willing to have his video games taken away, so he tossed Iris a grudging “Sorry,” heaving his duffel bag to his shoulder and stalking toward the bus. Iris didn’t think he meant it at all, but it was as good as she was going to get. Elijah watched him go while a muscle twitched in his jaw. She sensed the anger boiling beneath his surface.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I probably baby them too much.”

“It’s not all right.” He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and regarded her with simmering green eyes. “I won’t let him be disrespectful to you. Does Heidi let him talk to you like that?”

“Well . . . he never really has before. He’s probably going through a phase. It’s fine, really.”

“I should ask my mother if he was a problem for her. I’ll ground him for the rest of this fucking tour if he was.”

“Don’t do that. He just got back with us. Maybe he’d rather spend more time with his grandparents and he’s upset to leave them. Or maybe he’s homesick. It could be anything. You should see if you can talk to him, get it out of him. Or I can.”

He stared down at her, making her uncomfortably aware of all the eyes around them. Since the kids were back, she didn’t have to hide anymore, but that long, assessing look of his didn’t bode well for keeping their budding relationship under wraps. He looked as if he might kiss her at any moment. Or lift a hand to her face. Oh, she wished he could.

“What is it?” she murmured, keeping her lips as closed as she could.

“This is fucking killing me. It’s gonna be hard as hell to do this,” he returned, just as softly.

Iris’s heart melted. “I know. Same here.”

“We’ll get through it.”

His certainty brightened her spirits somewhat. But that was before she began to imagine sleeping without him beside her tonight.

––––––––

HEIDI’S CHEERY VOICE sliced through the phone, sounding to Iris’s ears like nails down a chalkboard. “Hiiii! Did you have a nice vacation?”

Had she always sounded so fake, or was Iris noticing it more? Maybe it simply had never bothered her as much as it did now, knowing what she knew. Unfortunately, circumstances now required Iris to be fake as well, so hopefully Heidi had taught her well. They would find out, wouldn’t they? “It was great.” If by vacation, we mean multiple orgasms in your ex-husband’s arms. “How are you?”

“Marvelous. Counting down the days until I get my boys back. Oh my God, I miss them like crazy. I actually considered flying out to see them, but I figured E would throw one of his little bitch fits and I really don’t want to listen to it.”

Deep breaths. Count to ten. You got this. Iris had slipped into the bus bedroom when she saw her phone’s display light up with Heidi’s name. Now she closed the door and sat on the bed. “They seemed to have a really good time with their grandparents.”

“They did. I talked to them every night. Had to go through the she-devil to do it, but whatever.”

“Who?”

“My ex mother-in-law. What a peach that one is, right? Did you get to meet her? I feel sorry for you if you did.”

Abby Vance had been nothing but kind to her. Iris suspected she had been the same with Heidi as well, at least to start. “Briefly. She seemed nice.”

“Trust me, she only seems that way.” Until you screw her son over, perhaps? “I mean, I didn’t even like the fact that he wanted to leave the boys with them for that long.”

“I think it was good for them to get a few days’ stability.” She debated with herself for a moment. “Did Seger seem okay to you when you talked?”

“He seemed like Seger. Elijah Vance, junior.” Considering she’d just accused Eli of throwing “bitch fits,” that wasn’t a ringing endorsement of her own child. “Why?”

“It’s probably nothing. He’s been a little moody since he came back.”

“Well. Like I said. He gets that from his dad. Poor thing, he can’t help it. He probably just misses me. I knew dragging him all over the country away from me might not be the best idea.”

Regardless of Iris’s feelings about Heidi, she might be on to something. Heidi was still the kid’s mom. “I would talk to him,” Iris told her, “but I don’t seem to be who he wants to talk to right now.”

The door opened. Iris’s spine shot straight as Eli walked in. He seemed to ascertain right away who she was talking to; his brows knitted together and he huffed out a breath.

“I can talk to him. Put him on.”

“He’s over with Russell’s boys right now.”

“Oh God. That fucking lush isn’t around, is she?”

“Huh?”

“Talia.”

A seductively sinister look crossed Elijah’s face. Bending over her, he nuzzled beneath her hair and slid his lips up her neck. After not being able to touch him for most of the day, Iris’s nerve endings caught fire. She almost forgot the phone to her other ear, until she heard Heidi’s voice again. “Iris? You still there?”

This was wicked. Too wicked. And she didn’t want to stop. “Um. Yeah, I am. No, Talia isn’t around.”

“Good. I don’t mind Russell. He’s all right. I can’t stand his drunk bitch wife.”

Eli withdrew long enough to roll his eyes, obviously having heard her over the phone, then moved his head down, tracing his mouth along the spaghetti strap of her cami. He dropped to his knees and, helpless, Iris fell back on the mattress, her free hand sliding through his hair.

She didn’t know what to say. She liked Talia and had only seen her drink the one time. As Eli had said, who didn’t need to cut loose every now and then? Of course, Iris probably wouldn’t have felt this way two months ago. What were these people doing to her? Who were they turning her into?

Right now, one of them was running his tongue in a line up from her belly button, pulling her shirt up as he went, and he was turning her into an addict, one strung out on him. Refrigerated air circled over her nipples as he bared them, making her shiver, making the rosy flesh pucker in anticipation of his mouth. His tongue circled first one peak, then the other.

Heidi was still talking, her voice like a mosquito in Iris’s ear, one that kept buzzing just as she was trying to slip away into beautiful sleep. It kept her anchored to reality when she was in danger of being swept out to sea, where nothing and no one mattered but Eli. She was able to offer the occasional “yeah” or “uh-huh,” sounding remarkably normal even to her own ears as he gently sucked her nipples until they throbbed with her ragged pulse. Her face flamed. This was so wrong. What Heidi had done was wrong, too, but it was no excuse for damning her own soul.

“. . . them call me when they get back. Not too late, though. If they’re not back in a couple of hours, go get them.”

“Okay.”

For the first time, Heidi paused. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure,” she forced out brightly as Eli’s tongue performed a particularly deft maneuver. “Everything’s fine. You’ll hear from them in a little while.”

Mercifully, Heidi hung up and the phone fell from Iris’s limp fingers. “Oh God. Eli. That was so—”

“I want to make you come just from sucking your nipples,” he murmured, pinning both her hands back on the bed, his fingers forming unbreakable bands around her wrists. “I can do it. You’re so sensitive.”

She hadn’t realized such a thing were possible, but considering the aching throb had migrated from her breasts to between her thighs, where she rubbed against him in slow, greedy circles, she began to wonder. “I’m scared someone will come in,” she managed to get out.

“They’re playing Fortnite, Iris.”

Despite her aroused state, laughter bubbled out of her. In other words, if she didn’t go retrieve the boys herself, they wouldn’t see them for the rest of the night. “You’re so bad. But we can’t. Seriously, Eli, this is freaking me out.”

He rolled off her, keeping her gathered in his arms. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“I mean, what were you thinking?” Even as she asked it, though, she clenched his shirt in her fists, still trying to gather some semblance of control over her own senses lest she tear the garment off his chest and lick him all over. “She could have heard.”

“I almost fucking wish she had.”

The very thought froze her heart in place. She blinked at him. He glanced at her, then directed his gaze to the ceiling. “Yeah, we’d be outed. I would never want to embarrass you or hurt you like that, that isn’t what I’m saying. I’m only saying it would be fucking over then and we could face it.”

“But you also said—”

“I know what I said the other night, and it still stands. But I’ve been thinking about this a little more. This is tearing you up, and it is me, too. I don’t know which is easier, carrying on this way or biting the bullet.”

“And we both know she would fire me.”

“Without a doubt. But you’d be with me.”

She raised her head to look at him, propping herself on her elbow. “Would I?”

His eyes flickered over to hers, saw something there. Caught, held. “You doubt it?”

“It’s not really that I doubt it, it’s just . . . my independence is important to me. My identity.”

“What do I have to do with your independence and identity, Iris? For that matter, what does your job have to do with your identity? Are you saying if you aren’t Heidi’s nanny anymore, you don’t know who you are?”

“No,” she insisted. “Not that. But this life—” she gestured around at the bus and all it entailed, “—I’m just not sure it’s for me. Where would I fit into it?”

“You could fit anywhere you damn well wanted to. If you want to work, then work. If you want to say ‘Fuck it’ and see the world with me, then see the world with me. It’s all up to you. You can be as big a part of this as you want. Or as small.”

It was thrilling to think about. And utterly terrifying. “The boys?”

“The boys adore you. It might surprise them, but they’ll be fine. They already know you. They’re already used to you. Seger’s okay. We had a talk earlier.”

“You did?” She hadn’t known about it.

“Yeah.” He smirked. “Apparently, he has a crush on someone. He’s seen her on Facebook hanging out with some other boy. But don’t tell him I told you. He’s embarrassed.”

“Poor fella.”

“I know, right? I told him to feel what he’s feeling, just don’t unpack and live there. Love fucking sucks.”

The pronouncement threw ice water on every last shred of desire she’d been feeling. He would know better than she did. “If we don’t work out for whatever reason, I’ll have given up everything and gotten nothing for it.” He opened his mouth to retort, but she laid her palm against it. “You don’t have to worry about this, Elijah. I do. This fear and risk are mine alone. No promises you make me are going to make it go away.”

He gently clasped her wrist to move her hand, planting a kiss into her palm before lacing his fingers through hers. She loved when he did that. God, she loved when he did everything. “I know that, baby. I know. If I could take it away, I would.”

“Let’s just . . . try to make it through. Keep seeing each other when we can. If we still feel the same after some time, then yes. I want to be with you. But I’m too scared to go all in yet. I’m sorry.” Somehow, saying those words gave her a rush of strength she hadn’t known she possessed when it came to him. She drew a deep breath. It cleansed her.

“I respect that,” he said softly, watching her face. “Goddamn, I hate it. But I respect it.”

“You don’t hate it more than I do,” she told him. “That’s a promise.”