Jacob stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto a brilliant early fall day. An unusually strong wind had made Tahoe choppy today, making the deep blue water sparkle and flash in his eyes.

He’d reached a breaking point.

He’d had enough of Harper avoiding him. Her anger at discovering that he had been Jake Tharp stunned him to the core. He’d expected shock. He’d expected disbelief and anxiety. But her fury had completely taken him off guard. What she’d said before she stormed off had altered him, somehow. Transformed him. He still could hear her voice as clearly as if she stood next to him, three days after the fact.

“Harper McFadden thought Jake Tharp was the bravest, smartest, nicest person she’d ever met in her life.” And then, “I loved you, don’t you get that?”

His feeling of shock and amazement remained as well, as fresh as the moment she’d uttered those words. He would have questioned her veracity in saying it if he hadn’t witnessed firsthand her fierce anger.

He recalled how in awe he’d been when they were kids in that police station, huddled together on that cot, when she’d spoken out loud about their invisible connection. But his amazement on hearing her say three days ago that she’d thought Jake Tharp was the bravest person she’d ever known had been far greater. The simple reason for his shock was that while they shared so much, and felt so much in common . . . Jacob held the opposite opinion of Jake Tharp.

And Harper was pissed off at him for that.

At first, he’d been just as furious at her for her stubbornness. What right did she have to be mad at him for wanting to transform himself into something that was the opposite of what he’d been as a boy? But then as the hours turned into days, and she continued to avoid him, he’d had time to think. Slowly, it began to dawn on him. Her anger at him was the official stamp of truth. Harper honestly felt like she’d been robbed of Jake Tharp. Not only by her parents. But by him—Jacob Latimer.

It was a jaw-dropping revelation to him. It was her anger at her loss that made him first start to reconsider that scared, weak little boy that he’d been. If Harper had loved Jake that much . . . didn’t that mean Jake had been somehow worthy?

He didn’t have all the answers. He only knew he wasn’t going to figure any of it out, without Harper at his side. The ability for deep, restful sleep had abandoned him. How could he possibly rest enough to puzzle out his life, with Harper gone? It’d become an acknowledged fact in his mind during the past several days. He loved her. He’d never stopped loving her, even though the type of love he felt as a man was more complex than it’d ever been when he was a kid. It was deeper. Exponentially more compelling.

Another thing he knew? He was worried sick about her. He knew better than most how stubborn she could be.

But so was he.

He knew precisely where she was at that very moment. He knew plenty of people in town who had been willing to report back to him whether or not her car was in the Gazette parking lot and if she appeared reasonably healthy over the past few days. Harper was no Regina, of course. She wouldn’t fall to bits just because they’d argued. Apparently, she wasn’t going to disintegrate even at the discovery that he was Jake Tharp.

Did that mean she wouldn’t flee or freak out if she discovered his other shameful secret?

One thing was certain: He was never going to find out standing in his office. He’d go over to the Gazette. He’d demand that she talk to him. When they were little, Harper had told him nothing could sever their bond. If that was true, not even her anger at him could cut it.

That was all there was to it.

He jerked around and stalked rapidly toward his office door. Before he could touch the knob, however, there was a knock on it. He opened it impatiently.

Elizabeth stood on the other side.

“Jacob,” Elizabeth said. She looked startled.

“What’s wrong?” Jacob asked, recognizing his assistant’s atypical discomposure.

“It’s Regina,” she said under her breath, nodding subtly behind her to her office. “She’s . . . not well.”

“Jacob,” Regina Morrow called loudly. “Jacob, I have to see you. Now.”

Jacob saw Regina striding toward him. She wore a pink trench coat belted at the waist, four-inch brown leather heels, and a matching purse. Her breasts swelled at the opening of the coat. Her lush, long hair was mussed and her lipstick was smeared. He immediately knew she was either intoxicated or in the midst of a manic episode by the shiny brilliance of her eyes, her plastered smile, and the way she put her hands all over his chest and abdomen. She leaned in to kiss him. He caught her wrists and frowned down at her. Her scent entered his nose.

Sex. She smelled like perfume, sex, and semen.

“What the hell are you doing, Regina? You didn’t drive to Tahoe Shores, did you?” he asked, going cold at the thought.

“Why shouldn’t I visit you? You act as if we’re not old friends. Haven’t we known each other for twenty-two years?” She gave Elizabeth a sly, sideways look. “Did you know Jacob and I have known each other that long? He was the skinniest little thing you ever saw back then, but sweet. So sweet,” she said, breaking her hands free of Jacob’s hold and rubbing his lower abdomen suggestively, her fingers stretching downward. “It’s hard to believe that this big, gorgeous man ever could have been so tiny, but he was. Little Jake Tharp. Of course he’d started to come into his own by the next time I ran into him,” she crooned, staring fixedly at Jacob’s face and sliding her hand down onto his crotch.

Jacob snapped up both of her wrists again and pulled her into his office. She staggered after him, laughing outrageously.

She’s a loose cannon.

He urged her over to a chair. “Sit, Regina,” he ordered.

“But Jacob, I came all this way—”

“I’ll be right back,” he insisted, pressing on her shoulders to keep her in place in the chair when she tried to stand again. She turned her chin, planting a kiss on his inner wrist.

“Regina,” he warned. She smiled up at him innocently. “I know. I’m a bad girl,” she whispered. “I mentioned Jake Tharp in front of Elizabeth. I know you hate it when I say that name.” She motioned locking her lips and throwing away the key.

“I’ll be right back,” he said again sternly. When she appeared to be willing to stay put for the moment, he walked over to Elizabeth where she hovered in the doorway.

“Security let her through, but I can’t figure out how or why,” Elizabeth said in a tensed, hushed voice. “She’s on your list for allowed guests, but they have instructions to always call me first in her case.”

“Does that new hire, McDougal, have guard duty?” he asked distractedly.

Elizabeth blinked. “Yes, I think he does.”

“Regina had him for lunch, and she was his dinner. That’s how she got through.”

Elizabeth looked startled at his blunt assessment of events, but his assistant didn’t know Regina like Jacob did. McDougal may have been a decorated army captain and possessed six years of top-notch corporate security experience, but he was relatively young and virile, and would be no match for Regina . . . especially a manic, hypersexual Regina. She’d known how to wind men around her finger since she was a girl.

She’d been forced to learn how to get what she could from men.

“Jim was just here,” Elizabeth whispered. “He’d gone out to park her car when she pulled up to the house earlier. She just bulldozed past him, but Jim got a look in her car. He came up to tell me that there’s several bottles of prescription medication empty in the passenger seat . . . along with a dress and some underclothing.”

“Go down and get the bottles, please. Bring them up. I’m going to call 9-1-1, and then Dr. Fielding. I think she’s manic . . . and high.”

Elizabeth nodded and hurried out of her office. Jacob went over to his desk, moving aside some papers and locating his phone. The phone thumped on his desk when Regina grabbed his arm roughly and jerked it.

“Jesus,” he muttered incredulously. She was completely naked, save her heels.

“Surprise,” Regina said, her red lips curving. She stepped into him, pressing her breasts against his ribs, her hands making a manic tour of his body.

Apparently neither Jacob nor Elizabeth had altered her security clearance since she’d stormed out of the Lattice compound three days ago. Harper entered Jacob’s mansion without incident and jogged up the grand staircase.

What Burt had revealed in her office just minutes ago kept pulsing in her brain. The inflammatory information certainly confirmed the many fears she’d long held about men of Jacob Latimer’s caliber.

But now she knew that Jacob was in a class all his own. What’s more, Jake Tharp would never be so callous or cold-blooded. And she very much wanted to believe that Jake Tharp hadn’t completely been killed off by Jacob.

When she approached Elizabeth’s office door, she was surprised to see that it was open. She stepped over the threshold. Elizabeth didn’t appear to be anywhere around. Jacob’s door was ajar, though.

“Hello?” she called. She looked around the door and froze.

Jacob stood next to his desk in profile to her. Regina Morrow was pressed tightly against him. She was completely naked. Harper stared, her stunned brain absorbing a myriad of details in one stomach-dropping moment: Jacob’s hand on Regina’s hip, her naked, large breasts smashed against his lower chest, her upturned, pouting lips . . . the fact that her buttock looked reddened, as though it’d been spanked.

Suddenly, Jacob was staring directly at her, his face rigid.

“Harper.”

She stood there, speechless, the graphic image of the pair of them pummeling at her unprepared consciousness. It was as if her worst fear had sprung out of her brain and taken shape. Regina turned, her gaze landing on Harper. Her full lips opened. She started to laugh hysterically, pushing on Jacob’s chest and stumbling in her high heels. Jacob caught her by grasping at her elbows. Her bare breasts swayed. They looked liked they’d been manhandled. They were reddened. Harper realized numbly she could see the outline of fingerprints on the flesh.

She wasn’t aware of turning around, but suddenly she was face-to-face with Elizabeth.

“Harper, I didn’t realize you’d—”

“Excuse me, Elizabeth,” she said woodenly, gliding swiftly past Jacob’s wide-eyed assistant and out the door.

She was so badly shaken that she just left her car where it was at Jacob’s and headed toward the terrace. She plunged out the glass doors, jogging down the multiple levels. When she hit the beach, she kicked off her shoes and tossed them in her purse. She didn’t look to the left, where she and Jacob had played with the dogs the other morning before he’d taken her up to his bedroom and made love to her with a fierce wildness. She didn’t look to the right a moment later, to the spot where he’d first walked up to her on the beach, putting her under his spell from the very first.

Harper just stared straight ahead toward her townhome, using all her energy to block the image of Regina and Jacob from her head.

She plunged into her townhome, gasping for breath. As disoriented as she was, however, something had altered in her on that sunny flight down the beach. She’d gained a little perspective.

It’d been horribly damning, of course, the nude Regina, the signs of recent, forceful sex on full display on her lush body. It’d looked bad.

Very bad.

But as she hastened to her kitchen, Harper admitted to herself that her nearly panicked state had as much to do with what had been going on inside her for the past several days as it did the volatile image of Jacob with a naked, beautiful woman in his arms. It related to her grief over losing that special boy, and her parents’ intentional lies, and the fact that she’d fallen in love with a man who intimidated and overwhelmed her.

Jacob Latimer had the power to crush her heart to dust. Knowing that he’d once been Jake Tharp only increased his ability to hurt her, and that very thought had been increasingly terrifying her.

He’s turning my whole world upside down. What’s happening to me?

She took a glass down from her cabinet, panting. After she’d drained a glass of cold water, she stood there, dazed and breathing heavily. Powerful emotion rose in her, bursting through the surface.

She grasped the edge of the counter, shuddering with feeling.

“Get ahold of yourself, Harper. You’re your own worst enemy, I swear.”

She shook again, but this time, she inhaled with effort and brought her ragged emotional state under control.

It’d been her father’s familiar voice in her head. It’s been something he’d say to her with patient exasperation sometimes when she was going through that bad period after returning home with them from West Virginia . . . after she’d reluctantly left Jake behind that last time, after Emmitt’s sentencing . . .

After she’d been told Jake was dead.

She clamped her eyes closed tightly. She was so confused. She’d never missed her father more. Her dad had guided her steadfastly through the most difficult chapter of her life. She missed both of her parents so much. Their absence burned inside her. She struggled to recall what her father used to tell her when she was a child on the occasions when she’d verge on hysteria.

“You know you catastrophize when that anxiety factory in your head starts chugging away. Go back, Harper. Remember what you saw, but see everything this time—not just the things that sets those anxiety red flags to waving around your head, vying for your attention.”

Harper took another swallow of cool water, willing her racing brain to slow. Deliberately, she called up the inflammatory image of Regina in Jacob’s arms.

True, there were signs of rough sex on the brunette’s body . . . but when had Jacob ever left such vivid marks or fingerprints on her—Harper’s—body?

Never.

Regina had stumbled, she recalled, and Jacob had reached out to steady her. Had that been why his hands were on her hips when Harper had walked into the room? In order to stabilize her or even push her away? She recalled how Regina had been wobbly on the night of the opera, too.

And Regina’s laugh: It’d filled Harper with a sense of horror when she’d heard the high-pitched giggle reverberate around Jacob’s office. Now, as she stood in her kitchen on bare, sandy feet and her mind began to calm, that laugh suddenly struck Harper as hysterical.

Intoxicated.

Desperate?

Jacob’s face suddenly leapt into her mind’s eye at the moment when he’d turned and seen her standing in the doorway of his office. He’d looked tense and wild, and not in the out-of-control, delicious way she’d seen in his expression when he was in the grip of lust as they made love. Instead, he’d looked worried.

She pressed her hand to her chest when she felt the uncomfortable jump of her heart.

“Shit,” she said out loud.

She tossed her purse on the counter and began to dig for her phone. No sooner had she closed her hand around it than she heard the wail of sirens in the near distance. She froze, staring in the direction of the sirens . . . and of Jacob’s house. An unpleasant wave of dread swept down her spine. A strange prescience overcame her.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

She hastily found the number for the newsroom on her phone.

“Cassie?” she asked, recognizing the voice of one of the newsroom’s interns. “It’s Harper McFadden. Can you do me a favor and go and turn on the newsroom’s police scanner right away?”

Harper jogged into the North Lake Hospital ER, searching the waiting area for Jacob’s familiar tall form. She didn’t see Jacob, but she saw Elizabeth sitting tensely in the back row of a seating area all by herself.

“Elizabeth?” she asked breathlessly as she approached.

“Harper? How did you know?” Elizabeth asked, standing awkwardly.

“The newsroom police scanner. They didn’t give any names, but I guessed . . . it’s Regina?” she asked, dread weighing her words.

Elizabeth nodded. Jacob’s assistant looked so frayed, Harper grasped her upper arm for reassurance.

“Let’s sit, okay?” she prompted.

Elizabeth let her guide her down to the chair. Harper sat down next to her.

“She passed out,” Elizabeth said numbly. She blinked and focused on Harper’s face. “It was just after I saw you . . . after you left.” Harper nodded, recalling seeing Elizabeth in her office before she’d run out of Jacob’s house. “We found more pill bottles in her purse. Jacob thought she might have taken them just before she came up to his office. He had me call 9-1-1, but while I was on the phone, Regina stopped—” Elizabeth gasped, her eyes going wide at the memory. “Breathing. Jacob did CPR, and she started to breathe again, but—”

“Is Jacob with her now?” Harper asked, pulling some tissues out of her purse and putting them in the other woman’s hand, so that she felt them. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. Elizabeth nodded and removed her glasses. She blotted her eyes with the tissues.

“He was so upset. He cares about Regina so much. All he’s done for her—gotten her jobs, paid for her treatments, given her a home to live in . . .” Elizabeth faded off, blowing her nose.

“He obviously cares for her a great deal,” Harper said, sitting back in her seat. She felt numb. “And Regina still loves him. I heard her say so, while we were in San Francisco.”

“Still?” Elizabeth asked, wringing her hands and crumpling the tissue she held.

“Still . . . even though they’re not a couple anymore. Are they?” Harper asked uncomfortably when she saw Elizabeth’s bewildered expression.

“Jacob and Regina? A couple?” Elizabeth laughed mirthlessly and shook her head. “You misunderstood, if that’s what you thought. They’ve never been a couple. Jacob saved Regina. He saved me, too. He’d never sleep with any of us—not the ones he saves.”

“Saves?”

“Regina was a high-priced call girl when he found her ten or fifteen years ago,” Elizabeth sniffed. “It was before he hired me, so I’m not exactly sure about all the details. I’ve helped him out with her over the years; Regina was constantly in crisis. Neither one of them would talk much about how they knew each other. I only know they have a long history. Jacob never gave up on trying to get a better life for her, even though Regina—bless her—gave him plenty of reasons to wash his hands of her. He’s probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her and countless hours. Who knows why he does it?” Elizabeth shrugged helplessly. “Who knows why he came to my rescue? He’s driven by something. Not demons, though . . .” She faded off, a faraway look on her face. “His angels, I think. That’s what drives him.”

Harper’s heart squeezed tight when Elizabeth sobbed quietly. She dug for more tissues and handed them to Jacob’s assistant.

“He . . . he came to your rescue?” she asked when Elizabeth had composed herself somewhat.

Elizabeth nodded. “Lattice sponsored a job fair seven years ago, and Jacob insisted that people in San Francisco shelters and halfway houses be invited and given priority. I was living in a battered women’s shelter at the time. I was a wreck . . . not even a whole person . . . more like fragments of one. The only thing that glued me together was shame. He must have seen something in me, though. I had secretarial experience, but nothing in comparison to what I do now. He remade me . . . somehow put me back together again, and even added some major parts. He’s good at that. I’m not the only one he’s saved. But Regina . . . I think she was just so far gone, even when he’d found her.” Harper put her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders when she shook again.

After a moment, Elizabeth sniffed and glanced over at her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was just so scary, seeing her like that. It brought back so much. It made me think of what it was like, to be so vulnerable.”

“I can imagine,” Harper empathized, squeezing the other woman’s shoulders more tightly. So many thoughts spun in her head.

If Jacob and Regina had never been involved sexually or romantically, why had he led her to believe that they had? Why would he feel the need to hide amazing acts of kindness and charity?

“He’d never sleep with any of us.”

She thought of Jacob’s sexual preferences, how exciting and challenging she’d found them. It made sense, though, that he didn’t want to expose vulnerable women to his bent for bondage, for fear of traumatizing them.

“Harper?”

She started in surprise at the sound of his familiar, deep voice. She turned and saw Jacob standing in the aisle. His face looked weighted with grief. Her heart squeezed unpleasantly in her chest.

“Jacob?” Harper mouthed, dread settling on her.

“How’s Regina?” Elizabeth asked hopefully, but Harper already knew the answer. She’d read it in Jacob’s eyes as he’d fixed her with his stare.

“She’s gone,” he said.

Harper hugged Elizabeth tighter to her side when she heard the other woman’s miserable moan. She continued to hold Jacob’s stare, though. In that moment, when death hovered around them, she clung onto their invisible bond like she would a life raft in choppy water. Still hugging Elizabeth to her, she reached for Jacob’s hand. He grabbed it, and she inhaled shakily in relief. Somehow, she sensed he was accepting her support and taking strength from their bond. For that, she was profoundly grateful.

After Jacob had seen to some necessary arrangements in regard to Regina’s funeral, Jim came to get them at North Lake Hospital. Upon Jacob’s request, the driver dropped all three of them off at Elizabeth’s. His assistant had taken the news of Regina’s overdose and death hard.

Elizabeth lived in a cozy little ranch home on a cul-de-sac in Tahoe Shores. Harper cleared the last remnants of the herbal tea she’d made earlier to help calm Elizabeth. It soothed Harper, to do something domestic and ordinary in the midst of a crisis. It helped, to have something mundane to focus on while grief and sadness seemed to cloak Elizabeth’s neat home.

Jacob walked out of the hallway into the living room. She looked up and their stares held. Her heart began to throb in her ears. He looked strained and tired. Yet he was freshly amazing to her. She questioned numbly when that feeling of miraculous wonder at his existence would fade.

Or if it ever would.

“Is she resting?” Harper asked him softly.

He nodded. “She’ll be okay, I think, after some rest. I didn’t realize she felt so close to Regina.”

“I think she felt like they were two of a kind,” Harper said slowly, setting the mug and sugar bowl on the tray. “She told me in the waiting room that she and Regina had something in common.” She noticed his slight puzzled expression and met his stare squarely. “Elizabeth told me you’d saved both her and Regina.”

The ensuing silence seemed to press on her ears. Her heart. Jacob looked so solemn to her as he regarded her unblinkingly.

“Is that what you were doing with me?” She asked a question that had been hovering in the back of her mind ever since she’d spoken to Elizabeth in the waiting room. “Saving me?”

“No,” he said emphatically, taking a step toward her, but then abruptly halting himself. “It’s not like that, Harper. Jesus,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his short hair in a frustrated gesture. She straightened and walked toward him, feeling guilty for making him more upset when he was clearly already distraught over Regina’s death.

“I’m sorry,” she said honestly. “I’m sorry for asking you that. And I’m so sorry about Regina.”

His gaze flickered over her face and caught. Her chest hurt at what she saw in his eyes.

“What you saw in my office with Regina . . . it wasn’t what it looked like. She’d just shown up there. She was high and out of control. I thought she was out of it, but I’ve seen her worse. I think she might have taken more pills while I was talking to Elizabeth. I tried to call 9-1-1, but Regina stopped me before I could even dial one number. Then you walked in—”

Pain shot through her when he shut his eyes reflexively, trying to block the potent memory.

“Jacob, it wasn’t your fault. She took you by surprise. It all happened within a matter of minutes. Seconds, even. You did everything you could.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes and pinned her with his stare.

“Why didn’t you tell me she lived on your property in Napa? Why did you make me believe you two had been lovers? Jacob?” she asked when he just continued to look at her. “Is Regina the woman you talked about that reminded you of me?”

“You must know that you’re not like anyone else, Harper,” he said gruffly after a pause in which the ache in her chest swelled. “When I told you in the beginning that you reminded me of someone else, I was talking about you when you were young. Not Regina. I was . . . torn. I felt guilty for wanting you the way that I did, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

She swallowed thickly, partial understanding dawning. “At least it helps me to understand why you seemed so ambivalent about me at times,” she admitted with a mirthless laugh.

“You’re different than any other woman I’ve met. And you know why. You’re the one who said it out loud first.”

A clock on Elizabeth’s mantel seemed to tick abnormally loud in her ears. She knew what he meant. He referred to what she’d said when they huddled together under that blanket in the police station, when she first spoke out loud of their bond.

“I’m yours,” she said softly.

“And you’re mine.”

They stood with several feet separating them, but she’d never felt their bond so deeply.

“While we were in San Francisco,” Jacob said, taking one step toward her. “I told you that you and Regina were alike, do you remember?”

She nodded. “You meant because we’d both been hurt by men. Regina by Clint Jefferies and countless others. Me by Emmitt Tharp.”

“Both by Emmitt Tharp.”

“What?”

She saw his throat convulse and he glanced away. “I don’t know yet how much you actually remember about details from when we were young . . . those days and nights we spent together, but—”

“Everything. I remember everything, Jake,” she interrupted, stepping toward him. “What do you mean, Regina and I were both . . .” Jacob looked over at her when she faded off. “Oh my God,” she whispered disbelievingly. “You told me when we were kids that Emmitt had done it before. That he’d taken another girl, and when you’d found her and talked to her, he’d threatened to cut out your tongue before . . .”

“He killed me,” Jacob finished.

“That other girl was Regina?” she whispered.

He nodded once, his face a mask, his eyes the only windows onto his turmoil. “Back when I first found her tied up in the barn, she’d gone by the name Regina Stellowitz. Even though it was seven years later when I next saw her on Jefferies’s property, I recognized her right away.”

“Jake,” she muttered feelingly.

She rushed into his arms. She felt his lips move in her hair, and then press tight against her skull.

“I never knew what had happened to Regina until I was eighteen,” he said hoarsely. “Then I saw her one night, coming out of Clint’s bedroom. She’d been beaten. There’d been hints before that Clint was rough with women during sex, but I hadn’t really gotten the depth of how twisted he was until that night. I already knew he was regularly unfaithful to his wife and had a penchant for call girls. Young ones,” he added bitterly. “I was young, still, as well. He tried to keep me at a distance when it came to his more severe proclivities. I didn’t really get the extent of his sickness until Regina walked out of his bedroom that night, and I recognized her as being the girl Emmitt had kidnapped years before.

“Emmitt’d sold her into a sex slave ring. They’d hooked her on drugs. Raped her repeatedly. Starved her. Beat her. Eventually, she began to prostitute willingly. Who wouldn’t, given the alternative? When I saw her that night, she was twenty years old, but she might as well have been fifty, for all she’d seen and done since Emmitt had first gotten ahold of her when she was thirteen years old.”

Harper shook her head against his chest and squeezed him tighter. “That’s what Emmitt would have done to me, if you hadn’t saved me. How horrible for Regina,” she said shakily. She sent up a silent prayer for the other woman. Regina’s life could so easily have been hers, if it weren’t for the man she held in her arms.

“It was at a big party at Jefferies’s lake house that it happened, wasn’t it?” she asked against his chest. “You called 9-1-1 and an ambulance came for Regina?”

He moved back slightly. She looked up to see him peering at her face.

“How did you know that?”

She sniffed. “I’ve told you I had a reporter, Burt, who was angling for a story on you in addition to Ruth. He has a friend who is a detective at the Charleston PD who looked up any incidents associated with Jefferies or his property during the time period before you showed up at MIT with a different name—”

“Before I bought and sold the Markham stock,” Jacob interrupted grimly.

She nodded. “Anyway, his friend sent him an incident report regarding the 9-1-1 call regarding a Gina Morrow. It was called in by a Jacob Sinclair.”

“And you realized that Gina Morrow was Regina and that Jacob Sinclair was me. Is that when you started to suspect I was Jake Tharp, as well?”

She tried to read his expression, and couldn’t. Was he mad at her for her revelation that a reporter under her watch had been investigating a past he guarded so closely?

“I actually didn’t start to suspect that in any solid sense until I realized the police report was from Charleston, West Virginia. Before that, it was just the occasional sense of déjà vu, intense dreams . . . unbelievable suspicions.” She swallowed thickly. “You told me you were from South Carolina. You kept West Virginia secret from me, because you were covering any associations between you and Jake Tharp.”

His brow quirked. “And you’re still mad at me for that, aren’t you?”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but found she couldn’t.

“I’ll never agree to you making that little boy disappear, Jacob,” she said softly. “I’ve fallen in love with you. But I’ve always loved Jake Tharp. I’ll always be loyal to that brave, incredible kid.”

He just stared down at her, his eyes alight with emotion.

“You believe you love me?” he asked her thickly.

“I don’t believe it. I do.”

“Despite what everyone says about me?”

“Yes. And even if some of the lies hold a grain of truth.”

“Is that reporter at the Gazette going to continue to dig for a story?”

“No. Sangar has quashed it. He’s forbidden both Burt and Ruth to pursue a story. It so happens that he agreed with me. There’s nothing solid to print. You’ve buried your secrets well, Jacob. I know your soul,” she whispered. “I understand you, I think. Finally. And your secrets are safe with me.”

He flinched slightly at that. “Are you sure? I’m no saint. What if I told you that a lot of the rumors are true about how I made my first fortune?” he asked bitterly. “I am guilty of colluding for gain when I was eighteen years old. I’d have done almost anything to make myself powerful.”

“It’s not too surprising, giving how helpless Emmitt and even Jefferies must have made you feel. You blackmailed Jefferies, didn’t you? You threatened to expose his violent, illegal sex practices and love of young prostitutes to the press, his wife, or both. He offered you inside information on that breakthrough diabetes drug, and you took the information in exchange for your silence. You did it in one desperate last-ditch effort to climb above all the chaos, evil, dysfunction, and helplessness that you couldn’t seem to escape, even when you’d thought you had by gaining Jefferies’s patronage and friendship. And you succeeded because of your own brilliance and savvy. Afterward, you did everything in your power to wipe the taint of your one sin clean. You washed your hands of Jefferies. Then you sought out Regina Morrow—and any other victims of greed and sadism that you could reach—and you tried to save as many of them as you could.”

She noticed his incredulous glance at the evenness and calmness of her tone.

“Did you really think I’d be shocked, Jake?” she asked, shaking her head. She reached up and touched his face, tracing the miracle in every chiseled line. He reached up and covered her hand with his. Her breath hitched. “I told you I know you, in and out. I’m starting to get just why it was so important to you to rise above your past. Like I said before, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Unless you or Clint Jefferies comes forward and confesses about why he gave you insider information, I don’t see how a case could ever be reopened by the SEC. And I’m starting to really get just how hard you’ve worked to make up for the way you rose to power. All the charities, and the job fairs . . . the way you helped women like Elizabeth and Ellie and Regina. Especially Regina. I get it now. I realize how guilty you felt as a boy, for not being able to save her from Emmitt, like you saved me.”

His expression turned stony at that, but his eyes shone with emotion. She touched his jaw and then his brow, pouring so much love in every caress. He was so big, and so strong, and so powerful . . . and he didn’t fully get that.

Still.

“Do you remember what I told you about Mrs. Roundabout?” she whispered.

He didn’t reply. She saw his throat convulse, and thought maybe he couldn’t.

“I told you that you had nothing to do with her death or the cruelty she knew while she was alive. Emmitt was solely responsible for that. Did you believe me when I said that, when we were kids?”

“Yes,” he said, his stare on her unflinching.

She stepped closer and encircled his waist with her arms. “This is the same. Emmitt and Jefferies, and so many like them, were responsible for the tragedy of Regina’s life. You did what you could to help her. I know she must have had some happy moments, amidst all her suffering. You were the one to help her have those. You took her away from a life of degradation. Those were huge things. But there was nothing else you could do,” she whispered, looking up at him, entreating him to understand. “You were brave and kind and so generous. But Regina was hurt too badly, Jake.”

She felt the slight give in his solid body. She hugged him tighter to her, absorbing the grief he felt not only for Regina, but for the loss of the boy he’d once been.

A moment later, he lifted his head and spread his hands at the small of her back. She looked up at him, and he solemnly kissed her mouth.

“I’ll ask Jim to come back and stay the night here, just to make sure Elizabeth is okay. Let’s you and I go home,” he said a moment later.

Harper nodded.

As bone-tired as she was upon entering his suite, Harper knew that Jacob was exponentially so. She encouraged him to take a shower and she’d call Lisa to see if food could be sent up. He insisted he didn’t want anything. While he was in the shower, however, Harper did contact Lisa and request that some tea, water, and a light meal be sent up, just in case Jacob changed his mind.

Harper took a quick shower after him, slipping into the soft robe. When she left the bathroom, she paused in the open doorway. Jacob sat on the sofa in the seating area of his suite. He wore a pair of black pajama bottoms. The soft lamplight gilded the tanned skin of his ridged abdomen and muscular arms. She saw a red and white shoebox in his lap. The lid lay on the cushion next to him. As she neared him, she saw that the shoebox was old: a Converse All Stars. He stared fixedly at a piece of folded notebook paper.

“Jacob?” she asked softly.

He looked up at her, his gaze unfocused, like he’d been miles away. Slowly, his stare sharpened on her.

“Come here,” he said, scooting aside the lid of the shoebox and patting the cushion.

She came down next to him.

“Better late than never?”

She blinked at his wry question, confused. She looked down at the box and saw several dozen envelopes, each with Return to Sender marked on the front in a bold hand.

A tremor went through her. Oh God. Was that her father’s writing?

She picked up the piece of paper he’d been reading, squinting to read the handwritten note penned in blue ink.

The folded piece of notebook paper fell from Harper’s numb fingertips. Grief tore through her, choking off everything for a pain-filled moment. She’d read loneliness and longing between every blue-inked word.

And there had been no one to hear him. No one for twenty years.

She realized that his arms were around her, and his lips were on her ear. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I never thought I’d show them to another person. I’ve been going back and forth since I first saw you here in Tahoe Shores about whether or not to show you.”

“Don’t be sorry. I want to read them all,” she said emphatically in a rush. “They were meant to be read. They were meant to be read by me.”

Another wave of sadness washed over her at the realization, and then he was silently urging her to stand. He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, where he put her down gently. He slid onto the mattress with her and took her into his arms.

“Don’t cry,” he entreated quietly as he held her, as she sensed his misery. “Please don’t cry for me, Harper.”

She hugged him tight to her, unable to stop the torrent of grief. “I’m crying for Jake,” she said.

He didn’t try to halt her grieving then. He just held her until the storm had passed, and she slept.

When she awoke the next morning, she immediately thought of the box of letters, and knew that she’d rise from bed in a moment and read every last one of them, finally hearing that lost boy’s thoughts, finally acknowledging his dreams.

For the moment, though, she lifted her head and studied the man who had held her fast throughout the night. Something told her he always would hold her so securely, always would keep her safe, even when he himself suffered.

Jake had always been like that.

Again, she visually traced the miracle of his handsome face as he lay sleeping.

He’d been the one to pull out that old Converse box. He hadn’t meant to upset her, of course. Her grief had been inevitable. But surely in revealing those letters, he was unburying a part of his past . . . revealing a vulnerable part of himself.

Exposing Jake Tharp to her loving eyes.

He looked strained, even as he slept, and Harper wondered if he’d just recently fallen asleep. She touched his face softly, willing some of his tension to fade. Maybe in time, it would. Something told her that perhaps she hadn’t been the only one grieving the loss of Jake Tharp last night.

And that was just as it should be.