“What the hell is it?” I stared expectantly at Otis as I slid the door to the lanai shut behind us. The moon was still high in the sky. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Just past one in the morning.”

I sighed, my muscles still heavy with fatigue. “This better be important.”

“We had a visitor.” He frowned, a grim expression darkening his youthful face.

I glanced around, my heartbeat ticking up as I readied for confrontation or danger.

“Not here, Bryson. Out there.” He pointed toward the boat, whose starboard side faced us now. “I couldn’t really sleep, but the boat was dark. I was just fucking around on my phone when I heard another boat getting close. I got up to see what it was, and the police were pulled up beside Katherine like they were getting ready to hop on and look around. I flipped the lights on and, honestly, they looked surprised to see me.”

“What did they say?”

“When I asked them what they wanted, they said they’d had a report of suspicious activity and just wanted to check it out.”

I frowned, running every possible scenario through my head. Leiloa was a quiet little island, and if anyone knew how to lie low, I did. “I have no idea what would warrant suspicion. I fucked my wife against the bowsprit last night. But we were at least a mile away from where anyone could see us.”

Otis blinked a few times, his mouth agape. “That’s hot, man. But yeah, I don’t get the feeling that’s what they were talking about. I mean, they had their fucking guns out like I was a drug runner or something.”

“Did they search the boat?”

“Nah. They asked me a few more questions, like where I was from and what I was doing hanging around the island. I just told them the normal stuff. The truth with a bit of fiction, you know? They seemed satisfied, I guess, and then they took off. Weirdest fucking thing.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face and paced around the lanai. Blaming my worry on a year’s worth of paranoia would be reasonable, but something wasn’t right. I could feel it in my gut, and my gut had kept me alive and out of trouble since that plane went down. After that day, I’d sworn I’d never again ignore my instincts.

“Something’s wrong,” I finally said.

Otis’s lips thinned. “Yeah.”

I dropped into a chair, rested my elbows on my knees, and looked to the ground. Fuck. We couldn’t just have three weeks…or even one? Just a few more days of peace? Some time to figure out a plan for our future? Maybe even spend some more lazy afternoons exploring the islands? But no. This place was soon to be our past.

A cocktail of troubling emotions stirred in my veins. Dread and exhaustion fell heavy in my stomach. How could I do this to Kate? Had I really known until this moment what bringing her into my rootless life would be like? I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, as if I could stymie the flood of emotions there.

“Bryson…”

“That’s not my name,” I said shakily.

He was silent a moment. “I know, man. I know there’s a lot you haven’t told me, but I figure you have your reasons. Just tell me what I can do to help.”

I shook my head in my hands. “I shouldn’t have brought you into all this.”

“It’s all right, boss. I came to you, remember? And you know me. I like a little adventure.”

Otis was young, still at that age where he considered himself invincible. Little did he realize this adventure could get him killed.

I looked up, a sudden appreciation for Otis and his unfailing loyalty tumbling over me. He was a good kid, and he could have a bright future. No way was I bringing him further into this mess. No one needed to know his part in it. I’d have to cut him loose. Sometime this week after I sent Chelle home and figured out how to get Kate and me someplace safer.

His duffle bag was packed full at his feet, like he was already preparing for imminent change.

“You can stay here tonight. Grab one of the empty bedrooms. We’ll figure out a game plan tomorrow.”

“Cool. Thanks, boss.” He grabbed his bag, slid open the door, but paused at the threshold. “You coming in?”

I shook my head.

“You should get some sleep,” he said. “We have no idea what tomorrow will bring.”

“Thanks, Otis. I’ll be in shortly.”

He left, but I had no plans for sleep. Different scenarios pinged through my brain like rapid-fire. I always had contingency plans, at least a couple running at any given time. That was the nature of this new existence. But the possibility that the people who had tried to kill me really knew where we were had my adrenaline spiking like never before. In a few more hours, Kate and my sister would awaken. I’d need a plan for all of us.

I sat that way for hours, silently mapping our next steps. Before the sun rose, I took the dinghy out to the boat, retrieved some valuables from a safe hidden in the master bedroom, and packed a small bag. My personal items were few. Nothing held sentimental value anymore. Kate was my whole world, and our new life was about to begin.

She’s going to leave everything behind for you. If you can’t keep her safe, this was all for nothing.

My doubts tormented me as I worked in silence. By the time I made my way back to the villa, Kate had risen, though the sky was still dark. She stood on the lanai as I approached from the beach, her arms crossed and worry written across her face. I dreaded the conversation we needed to have.

“Where were you?” she asked when I joined her.

Instead of answering her, I pulled her into my arms and slanted my mouth over hers. She was tense, not resisting but not surrendering the way she had so easily yesterday. I flicked my tongue along the seam of her lips, but she wouldn’t give in to me.

“Kiss me back, Kate,” I whispered against her lips.

She turned her head, avoiding my lips and my gaze. Instead, I kissed her exposed neck, licking and nibbling at her skin until she shivered.

“Don’t shut me out. I have to know you’re with me.”

She lifted her gaze to mine. “Shut you out? Every time you keep the truth from me, you’re the one shutting me out. I’ve been lying in bed waiting for you to come back for hours. I searched the house and you’re nowhere to be found. How is that supposed to make me feel? Where the hell were you? What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to keep you in the dark. I just… I needed to touch you.” I drifted my palms down her arms. “Otis woke me up to tell me the police tried to search the boat. There was a report of suspicious activity, supposedly. They left when they saw Otis was on board. But between the car and that, I’m worried about us staying here.”

“Are you sure it’s them?”

Them. The phantom word that represented Cybermark Enterprises, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate who’d rather I were dead.

“I’m not sure of anything. But I’m not about to risk your life by being complacent. We should leave in the next twenty-four hours. I’ll have Chelle change her flight as soon as she wakes up. Otis will ensure she gets off the island safely.”

Kate swallowed hard but kept her jaw stiff like she was trying to be strong. “What about us?”

“How do you feel about Bali?”

She winced. “We can’t stay here?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I was certain my constant apologies were beginning to lose their potency.

“What will I tell my family?”

“Chelle will tell them you fell for a local guy and decided to stay longer. She’ll feed them updates for as long as she can until we can have you reach out by email. We don’t want to raise any suspicions about your safety and risk an investigation of any kind. So we’ll come up with a story about this new life you’ve chosen, gradually close out your affairs in New York, and space the updates to once a year or so. Eventually they’ll get used to the idea that you’re not coming back. They’ll think it’s extreme, of course, but you had a traumatic loss and you’ve been suffering. They shouldn’t be completely surprised that you fell hard for someone new and wanted to start over in a dramatic way.”

Even as I said the words, I sent up a prayer of gratitude that Kate’s life had not taken that turn. If she’d already given her heart to someone else… I couldn’t even imagine it.

She stepped away from my embrace, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared out toward the sea. Tension lined her bare shoulders, and her fingers were pale from gripping her arms so tightly.

“It’s better than faking your death, Kate. I didn’t want to put Chelle in the middle of that story or your family through the grief. Plus, if Cybermark thinks I’m still alive, pretending you’re dead isn’t going to deter them, anyway. It’ll just needlessly hurt the people you’re closest to.”

Several minutes passed as she stood in silence. I’d have given anything to have a line in to her thoughts, but I didn’t want to push her. She was already fragile, and I’d just dropped a lot on her.

“How will we live…with no money? No identity?”

“I have plenty of money.”

When she turned toward me, tears glistened in her eyes. “How? None of our accounts were touched after you died.”

I sighed and geared up to tell her another unwelcome truth. “I had an account you didn’t know about.”

She squared her body toward mine, her lips parted slightly. “What?”

“The only good thing about falling out of a plane outside of Zurich was its proximity to the Swiss bank account I’d set up a few years ago. I’d opened it not long after I started working for myself.”

Kate’s hands fisted into tight balls. “How much was in it?”

“A few hundred thousand. It’s not what you think, though. I wasn’t trying to keep money from you. It was meant to be a nest egg. A safe one, in case anything went down with my work.”

“Were you doing anything illegal?”

“No, Kate. Jesus.” I cursed inwardly. “It’s not unusual in my line of work—”

“It’s not unusual to keep three hundred thousand dollars hidden from your wife in a Swiss fucking bank account? No, that sounds totally normal to me.”

“Well, thank God, I did. Otherwise I’d have been a dead man emptying his bank account. Or I’d be working odd jobs off the books somewhere just to get by. Instead, I was able to pull the funds out and buy a new identity.”

“Bryson.”

I nodded. “Bryson Carr. I’d rather be Price, obviously, but it was close enough that I could get used to someone calling me a different name.” I shoved my hands in my shorts and scuffed the bottom of my bare feet against the decking to fill the awkward silence. Once I got Kate off this island, I never wanted to talk about any of this shit again. “I used the money to buy you a new identity too. Passport, birth certificate, social security card. Anything we’d need…just in case. None of that came cheap.”

Her bottom lip trembled slightly. “And who would I be?”

“You can be Kate as long as this story holds. If it doesn’t, you’ll still be my wife. Bethany Carr.”

She turned away again, keeping her expression hidden from me. Bethany was the name of her oldest friend. They’d grown up together. She’d been Kate’s maid of honor, and even though distance kept them apart, they had always stayed in touch and kept up the friendship. Still, I couldn’t help but feel guilty, having chosen a name without her. I hadn’t had any other choice.

Hell, I just needed her eyes on me. Her touch. Some reassurance that we could still do this. I started toward her, but she raised her hand to my chest before I could embrace her. The firm pressure on my sternum halted my progress, though her strength was no match for mine.

“You don’t want to be kept in the dark, Kate, but—”

“I want to go back to New York,” she said, her voice watery but firm.

I sucked in a breath, but my chest wouldn’t expand enough to fully accommodate it. “Kate. No. Please.”

“We can’t live this way.”

I curled my hand around hers, even as she took another small step back. Goddamn, she was going to make me beg.

“Kate, they may have followed you here. Once you’re off the grid like I’ve been, we won’t be running like this. I promise you. I want a good life for us. Something safe and stable. I want children with you and a home, preferably one that doesn’t float. A place where we’re not always looking over our shoulders.”

“You can’t promise me that.”

Her words stung like the lash of a whip. They were undeniably true.

I’d been traveling the world as a dead man. I’d been running, but not from anything more than my own fear and misery. I couldn’t guarantee her any kind of stability if bad people were intent on finding us.

I was running out of promises I could keep. But what about her promises?

“You promised you would stay with me.”

“I know.” She pulled her hand away, casting her gaze to the ground.

No. No. No. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t lose her.

“So that’s it? You expect me to just let you walk away?”

In an instant I knew I could never let her say no. I’d convinced myself that the choice to stay would be hers. The truth was I would fight for her until my dying breath, and I was about to fight dirty if it meant keeping my wife.

“I expect you to give me time to figure this out. I’m a journalist for heaven’s sake. I don’t put pen to paper until I know all the facts. You’re spoon-feeding them to me, just what I need to know, and now you expect me to jump when I don’t have the whole story. I’m not giving up my life—our life—until I know we’ve exhausted all other options.”

“What other options? Do you think if there were any other way I wouldn’t be running like hell in that direction?”

“I think you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t win this fight. You could expose these people and what they’re doing. Let me help you find enough damaging information to take them down before they can hurt either of us.”

My eyes went wide at her insane suggestion. “Go after them? Hell, no. Do you want to get us all killed?”

“Information can be more powerful than greed and malice.”

I let out a short laugh. “Don’t be so naïve, Kate.”

She slapped me across the face.

Fucking hell. I feathered my fingertips over the sting on my cheek. Heat rose to my face and a kind of electric energy coursed through me as I chased the right words. She was wrong. I was right. She was being stubborn and altruistic and blind to the reality we now faced. She had no goddamn right to go back to New York without me. She was mine. We belonged together.

I could say it all damn day, but I’d rather show her.

“You’re not going to New York without me, Kate.”

The muscles in her jaw tensed as I took a step closer. I caught her wrist and yanked her toward me. I held her tense frame against mine, giving her no room to consider putting space between us again. I was mad as hell, but our bodies together felt perfectly right. Nothing would ever change that.

Fire burned behind her bright blue eyes. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You lost that right when you left me.”

“You were always with me, everywhere I went. Haunting me, breaking me, and keeping me alive all at once.”

She closed her eyes with a wince. “Stop.”

“I won’t stop. I’ll never stop loving you. Needing you. Fighting for you.” I slid my palms down to her ass, caressing and squeezing her bare bottom through her sarong until she was pressed firmly against me. “Fucking you,” I murmured against her parted lips.

I brought my hands to the front of her sarong and parted the swaths of fabric that hung like a curtain over her bare curves. I cupped her breasts, kneading their fullness and gently pinching her pert nipples between my fingertips.

“Price. Not now.”

“Yes, now.”

I pinched harder until she gasped, closing her eyes against the pleasure I knew it gave her.

“You’re threatening to leave me, and I’m going to show you why that won’t work.”

“I’m not—”

I didn’t let her finish. I pressed our lips together, taking advantage of the interruption to swipe into her mouth. I groaned into her when our tongues met.

Within ten seconds of feasting on her, I was hard as granite. Ready to take both of us straight out of this reality and into a better one. I’d lived inside fantasies of being with her for so long. Having her here, in my arms and in the flesh, was still too miraculous to fully comprehend. Didn’t matter how pissed she was with me.

Hoisting her up against me, I held her up by the thighs and carried her toward the house. Her back met the solid glass of the slider while I took her mouth in another uncompromising kiss. As I contemplated the door, I decided the bedroom was too far. I had to have her now.

“Hold on, baby,” I rasped, guiding her arms around my neck with one hand.

Then I pushed down my shorts and guided my cock into her. Something about our fight must have turned her on because she was fully aroused, gloving me with ease. I rutted deeply and she cried out, digging her fingernails into my shoulders.

“Damn you, Price,” she groaned.

Nothing about that deterred me. Her passion and her anger only fueled me. I smiled and thrust harder. I owned her pleasure. Only I could take her where we both needed to go—to another world where the past year hadn’t come between us.

I held our bodies together and pumped into her like a piston, fucking her with abandon toward an orgasm I now desperately needed. She sliced her fingernails across my skin, cursing me and moaning my name. I retaliated by fucking her harder.

“You’re so deep. So hard. It’s so good.”

I used all my strength to lift and slam her down onto my cock over and over. My muscles burned. My cock throbbed. I couldn’t be inside her more completely. The pressure was dizzying. But the way she trembled against me told me she felt it too. All of it. Every solid inch of my possession.

“Are you going to come for me, sweetness?”

“Yes,” she whimpered. “So close.”

“Who do you come for?”

“You, Price. God, only you.”

“That’s right. Come for me now. Just like that. Show me how good I make you feel.”

In an instant, she was there, coming apart in my arms. Her pussy locked around me until I was certain she couldn’t be any tighter. The helpless cries that left her lips pushed me over. My lover. My wife. My everything. I found the deepest part of her and let go, releasing with a satisfied groan against her skin.

I didn’t want to let her go, but my legs were growing weak in this position. I slipped from her and lowered her to the ground, holding her steady as we transitioned from one person back into two. When my brain cells started firing normally again, I remembered what had brought us here. My face didn’t hurt anymore, but my heart would be in serious trouble if Kate tried to run off on me. Hopefully we’d closed that conversation down for now, though.

I caressed her cheek, thumbing over her freckles and following the defined angle of her jawline. So beautiful. I bent and kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Hit me again like that, Kate, and I’ll fuck you so hard, you’ll feel me for a week.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.” She sagged against the door with a sigh, her eyes fluttering open and then closing again. “And anyway, you had it coming.”