It’s been nearly a week, and I’m still upset.

Only, I’m upset for all the wrong reasons.

I should be mad at Gabe for turning that mess around on me. For making me look and feel like a petty child for getting even with him when he was just trying to do what I wanted.

I...okay, let's be real. Maybe I owe him an apology for that.

Maybe I was being spiteful because I hate this whole situation and this messy tangle inside me. Maybe I don't understand this weird feeling of camaraderie I get around him and how gentle he is and how screwed up I get knowing I hurt him.

And knowing he hurt me, when for just a second, I was terrified. Trembling because I know that all he saw of me was this vicious, spiteful little monster.

Just this heinous thing brutal desperation turned me into.

I don't hate Gabe.

I hate this.

Hate going on about everyday life while Joannie could be hurt or in danger or just miserable with that demon man who’s nothing but a sperm donor. Nothing like a father. Nothing like family.

I get up every day, go to work, do my job, come home, spend all night digging for leads, and never take any action. I work myself raw like a zombie, digging, chasing loose ends. All under Gabe’s watchful eye.

I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to have a normal life until our little girl comes home. My own helplessness is eating me alive from the inside out.

It makes me cruel, but I’m trying not to be.

It makes me a bad person, and I don't want to be.

Especially not to Gabe. Though all week, I’ve wanted to lash out at him for being too nice.

It makes no sense after the verbal lashing I handed down.

I don’t understand this game he’s playing. Every day, he shows up like clockwork.

All smiles, all warmth and pleasantry, though it never goes past the surface. He's a mask of civility, but I wonder if deep down, I've firebombed his soul.

Doesn’t change how he’s always waiting with a coffee and my breakfast special in a paper bag every morning. Every afternoon, he's got another coffee.

When I go running, he’s there with mineral water. Or sometimes a strawberry diet slush the big lug knows I can't resist.

He knows my life inside and out, my habits, and he’s quietly squeezing himself in. Purely just so he can be there without challenging me. Without setting me off and turning me into walking napalm and witchfire all over again.

And it’s shallow and empty and amazing he doesn't crack, but I hate it.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but...I want the old Gabe back.

The sweet-talking, easy going Louisiana giant in all his too friendly, too personal, too intimate glory.

I want to see those hazel sunlit eyes of his piercing into me like he’s trying to find every soft bit I buried and stroke those places until I purr.

I guess even Gabe has his walls, though. And me being me, I managed to push him to the other side of them.

It’s probably for the best. Maybe?

Or maybe not.

There’s a moment, as I come back from a run on Thursday evening. He’s just pulling into my drive.

I’m a sweaty mess, barely dressed, my hair coming loose when I can barely keep it in a tail to start with, sticking to my face and jaw.

My knees hurt. I throttled them. I ache all over, really, and there’s an adrenaline rush running through me, heightening my senses until my entire body is aware of the thick, heady, masculine bulk of him sitting in that truck, so muscular and heavy, he makes it dip low on its tires on the driver’s side.

I can’t not feel him, as I stop on the curve of the lane, just looking at him across the stretch of asphalt. It’s like he’s hardwired into me.

A real connection. A mysterious, scary, indescribably wonderful one.

And across the wavelength we're sharing, there's this kind of low and quiet melancholy. It sinks deep in my chest.

For the first time this week, I feel like he’s really looking at me and showing me more than his polite, professional face, this haunted quiet beast who won’t ask but can’t help but want. His entire soul is in those tawny eyes. My already heated skin turns to fire as that gaze tears me open.

I can’t let him see the wanting starting to build inside me, too. No freaking way.

Talk about disastrous. Talk about distraction.

So I turn my back on him, and shut myself in my house, shuttering the blinds to pretend I'm alone again. All so I can keep chasing leads to anything but this horribly kind, handsome man's big sky embrace.

I never do this.

This brooding. This wanting.

I learned early on that men can’t be trusted, and wanting men just gives them power over you.

Or maybe I’ve got abandonment issues with my parents being dead and my father letting me down, I don’t know.

I just know very few men I’ve known have ever proved me wrong, and the only ones I can stand to trust are the ones who have the good sense not to want me.

Wanting me is a dangerous thing. Maybe it always was before the Navy stripped me raw, and sanded me down into something sharp-edged, defensive, and cruel.

I still remember being sixteen and crushing on Casey Hicks.

He was this big brawling jock who had a sensitive side, supposedly – a tyrant on the football field but suddenly poetic, sweet, and soft-eyed in art class, where he drew these French silhouette portraits and made self-deprecating murmurs when the girls fawned on him over them.

I want to say I didn’t fawn, but I’d be lying.

I was sixteen.

I just did my dreamy wanting in a really quiet, awkward way. I never really fit into any group in school. Not the popular kids, not the preppy kids, not the band kids, the nerds, the theater kids, the jocks, nobody.

I was on my own. A world unto myself.

People didn’t even notice me enough to pick on me. I just skulked around the edges, too angry to be lonely, not even sure how to make my puzzle pieces fit into this weird human scheme.

And if I liked a boy, I wouldn’t admit it to myself, even when I couldn’t stop looking at him from across the room and watching his paint-tipped hands work over a brush, his broad shoulders moving slow and quiet and calm as he stood before the canvas.

I thought for sure I was invisible. I hadn’t realized he’d noticed me. Not until the day he asked me out. Not until he stood before me with that calm, easy smile and those steady eyes and laughed like my wide-eyed stammering and scowling was charming, cute, instead of just me being a frazzled mess.

I’m still not sure how he got me to say yes.

And I’m not sure how he got me to relax, smile, or laugh as we went for walks in the park, and fed each other corn dogs, and he wiped mustard off the tip of my nose.

We hung out on the beach together. Chasing shadows across the sun-warmed sand, bright summer light shining off his bronzed shoulders. We kissed in the back rows of movie theaters, and had no idea what we were watching because we were so wrapped up in each other. He made moves, and I was afraid if I made a sound, someone in the darkened room would catch us and kick us out.

He made me feel wanted. He made me feel pretty.

He made me feel safe enough that one night when he toyed with the button of my jeans and whispered “Sky, do you wanna?” I wrapped myself up in him and whispered yes.

You know the story from here.

Maybe there’s no pig’s blood and hysterical screaming and rampant wholesale slaughter, but if I’d had psychic powers there would've been. One fumbling night in the back of his car, a sporty Camaro that he borrowed from his Dad.

There was pain, but it was okay.

It was awkward and he didn’t quite know what he was doing, but neither did I. When he climbed out to smoke a cigarette after and left me to get dressed, I told myself it was beautiful and special. Not cold and stiff and embarrassing. I thought it had to be okay, because it brought us closer to each other.

The next day he told our entire sophomore class I was a really bad lay.

Boasted how it had only taken him two weeks to break me down, bag me, and take my virginity. He'd broken the infamous class 'ice queen,' and we were done.

Yeah. That was me.

Every high school cautionary tale of mortification ever.

I’d been a dare, a joke, an experiment.

Just to see if he could get the quiet angry girl to defrost. Casey Hicks made me a mark on his scorecard, and taught me right out of the gate that men don’t change. Boys like Casey grow into men like Casey, and I feel sorry for anyone who ever actually believes an asshole loves them.

But Gabe makes me think of Casey Hicks – if Casey hadn’t been a bitter lie. A façade. A prick.

Thing is, after Casey told the whole world I was a cold fish in bed?

I left a whole lot of cold fish in the back of his Dad’s Camaro.

Cold, gutted fish. Catfish, to be precise.

It was messy, and it stank like a latrine. It got him grounded for a week.

Speak softly, but carry a big fish. That’s my motto.

I may be small, but I’m vindictive – and Harmon Ketchum's about to find out the hard way.

That’s why I don’t have time to be wondering if Gabe’s really honest. If he’s really a good man, someone I can trust. Someone I can learn not to hurt the way I’m so good at hurting people, because I don’t know how to do anything else.

Maybe I’ve been stabbed so many times it’s all I know. All I’ve learned.

And all I’m able to do is stab back.

That’s not fair to him. Not when he’s so strong, but so gentle.

It’s for his own good, I tell myself. His own good, and mine.

Yet, every night I check out the window, just to make sure he’s still there.

My car’s out of the shop by Friday afternoon. Finally some good news.

Not having my car felt like missing a limb, and it’s a breath of relief to have the freedom to drive myself around again. It’s weird not having Gabe waiting for me after work, though.

I know that wasn’t really part of the security patrols, but it really hits me, knowing he was driving me around as a courtesy. Not just to keep an eye on me. I never asked him to, never thanked him.

He just did it because it was there to be done.

I...damn.

I can’t go soft on that oversized moron, but I should go see him.

I know he’s staying at the boss' place. Probably catching up on his sleep since he doesn’t have to babysit me while I’m at the office. I could just swing by, make nice, get out the second it starts to get awkward – and it will get awkward. But it’s the right thing to do.

I stop by a fast food joint on my way out and grab a bacon double cheeseburger with fries and a strawberry shake. Then on impulse, as a peace offering, make it a double.

If that’s his favorite, too, I might even laugh.

Though I can never let Grandma find out.

Matching combo meals? Jesus, she’ll think we’re soulmates.

It’s only about a twenty-minute drive from the office to Sausalito, where the boss' house nestles in a little curving tree-shrouded crescent of private beach, the sprawling space separated from the beach house by a stretch of grass. I know my way around pretty well; I’ve been out here several times for meetings, barbeques, even impromptu scenario training sessions.

The house looks empty, shut up and locked, the Impala gone, the lights dark. Guess Landon and Kenna aren’t home.

The windows are open in the beach house, though, and I see Gabe’s Dodge parked on the lane leading up to the sand.

I stop my Buick a few feet behind it and just sit there for a minute. My palms are sweaty, and my face and neck feel hot. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I’m being ridiculous. The burgers are going to get cold, plus I’m not a coward.

Even if I left the Navy years ago, I’m still a soldier.

And I’m still that little girl who peered through the blinds and dared the shadow men to try to get to her sister.

Let's do this, I tell myself, biting my lip.

Then I grab the food bag, let myself out of the car, and march right up to the front door of the beach house. I’m prepared to have to wake Gabe up, but I’m surprised to see motion through the window inset into the door. He’s up and moving around, hauling and taping up boxes.

There aren’t many, but it makes me wonder. Did he bring all those things from home?

Does he even have a home back in Louisiana, or does he just drift around with his life in the back of his truck?

I shouldn’t be wondering these things about him. I start to lift my hand to knock, but before I strike the door he glances up, locks eyes with me, then sets the box he’s holding down in a strain and flex of muscle against his sweat-dampened, clinging shirt.

He crosses to the door and opens it, looking down at me with a puzzled knit to his brows. “Sky? Everything okay?”

My tongue feels thick. Suddenly the reasons for coming out to see him feel flimsy, almost embarrassing, and I hold up the fast food in its thin, crinkly bag like a shield.

“Burgers,” I blurt out. “You know...in case you're hungry.”

He arches a brow, then steps back. “Well, then come on in, darlin’.”

“Don’t call me that,” I retort without thinking.

“Right,” he says, his back to me as he leads the way inside. “Old habits. Sorry.”

There’s an airy little atrium where the dining area was set up, and he holds a chair out for me at a little glass-topped table. I stare for a moment, trying to figure it out.

It’s not quite registering, this chivalry, until I remember that Southern courtesy is part of his makeup. Then I awkwardly settle myself in the chair.

My heart’s thumping when he leans over me, heavy bulk shrouding me for a moment, wrapping me up in heat as he gently pushes my chair in.

Then he’s gone, leaving me breathless as he pulls away and rounds the table to settle in the chair opposite me. “So what’s for dinner?”

“Bacon double cheeseburgers, fries, and strawberry milkshakes.” I deposit the bag on the table and just tear it down the side to expose the wrapped burgers and a pair of cup holders stuffed inside; fries spill over the paper. “Don’t tell me it’s your favorite.”

“Depends. Pickles or no pickles?”

I wrinkle my nose. “Ew. No pickles.”

“Then it’s not my favorite.” He chuckles and reaches for one of the burgers, unwrapping it before taking a hefty bite, chewing, and swallowing. “Still good, though.”

“Perfect,” I say. “You mean perfect. Pickles are just embalmed cucumbers, and that’s disgusting.”

“Now see, I’m gonna be a gentleman and keep letting you be wrong.”

I tilt my nose up, trying not to smile.

“Saying that isn’t a very gentlemanly thing to do,” I point out, then glance around the beach house as I drag my fries closer and pick up a clump of them, biting the tips off all of them at once and swallowing. “You’re packing?”

“Moving out,” he says.

Moving?

There’s a weird leap of fear in my chest that he’s leaving for good before he continues, “Checking into one of those extended stay AirBnBs real soon. Think I’ve worn out my welcome here, since Landon can’t trust me not to fuck his employees.”

Ugh. It just hits me like a baseball bat upside the head.

Hiding my wince in another huge bite of my fries, I duck my head, mumbling around the mouthful. “Well, I don’t get why that would be a big deal, anyway. It’s not Landon's business who I'm sleeping with, or who you're sleeping with either. It’s just sex. People do it all the time.”

Something dark and heated flashes in Gabe’s eyes. It's so intense I have to look away.

Obviously, I wasn’t saying I want to fuck him, but it sure as hell sounded like it – in the most awkward way possible. Lucky me.

Whatever. Maybe I can’t deny that the idea has more appeal than I’ve been willing to admit.

But a moment later, that heat is replaced by gentle amusement, and he points out softly, “He’s not just your boss. He’s your friend. He cares about keeping you safe and happy, and he’s not going to take it kindly if another friend he trusted with that is careless enough to jeopardize you. He thinks if I’m distracted, I’ll get you killed – and even if I don’t, he doesn’t want me to break your heart when I roll out of town like the gigolo he thinks I am.”

I roll my eyes. “Losing a man could never hurt worse than losing a child.”

Jesus Christ.

I have got to learn to check my mouth. Everything I say is practically rationalizing why we should fuck. Any other man would probably take the bait, jump at the chance.

But Gabe just watches me with that maddening gentleness, that patience, that icy calm – and worse, that understanding.

I'm so, so screwed.

I don’t like being understood.

It makes me feel too vulnerable.

Especially when he says, “You’re in no place to be thinking about that, Sky. I’ve been watching you this week. The lights are going off later and later. Your leads are going cold, and you’re frantic and scared and not making good decisions.”

The anger that slashes through me is white-hot, like a lightning strike. Suddenly the awkwardness between us is, instead, all static and charged fury. I bristle, opening my mouth, a retort on my lips, but he holds a hand up to stall me. It’s less that huge wall of a hand and more the sheer gall of it that silences me, leaves me sputtering that he'd even dare.

But in the split second’s reprieve, he’s managed to retrieve that weird little black book of his. He flips it open and rips out a page near the back.

Without a word, he pushes it across the table. When I reach out to pick it up, he nods.

I scan it quickly, feeling my face heat.

At first, I don't understand the words and numbers. They don't compute.

The instant they do, though, the anger drains, leaves me swaying, vertigo striking hard, and I grasp at the table, struggling to breathe.

Jesus. It can't be!

But it is.

It’s a license plate number. The address of one of the dive bars on my list of leads. A set of GPS coordinates.

My informants have repeatedly spotted Harmon there in the past, but he’s been absent for a while, completely off the radar. There’s a time scribbled on the page in Gabe’s slashing handwriting.

11:00 p.m.

Je-sus. Again.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, rocking unsteadily to my feet. I shove the page in my pocket and stagger for the door. “I gotta go, Gabe. I have to –”

Gabe’s not a lion. He’s a cheetah in a hulking body, and I'm shocked how fast he moves to intercept me.

He cuts me off, angling his wall of a body in front of me, and gently grips my shoulders to stop me. That gentle gaze is cutting me open with warmth, concern, kindness.

“No, Sunbeam. You can’t,” he says, quietly but firmly. “Tomorrow’s the VIP job with your Duke, remember?”

Crap, no, I hadn’t remembered. I’d forgotten everything but my chance. Everything but Joannie.

“Tonight, you need to sleep,” Gabe continues. “Take care of yourself. I’ll take care of this. I’m not gonna be the fool who hands you a roadmap straight to the trouble I’m supposed to keep you from.”

I crumple inside, pushing at his chest – though I can’t muster much strength behind it.

I’m tired, so tired. Feel like I’m going to shatter. “No, I can’t – I can’t quit now! I’m so close, if this could lead us right to Joannie –”

“Not if you’re falling apart. Ain't close to anywhere, Sky.” He curls his knuckles against my cheek.

The tenderness, the intimacy in the gesture, in his smile, nearly push me over the edge into breaking.

“Let me take care of it. Please, woman. You've got my word I’ll kick Harmon up one side of the California coast and down the other, then bring him to you in handcuffs. But only if you stay home, get some rest, and go to work like usual tomorrow. This ain’t exactly a legal apprehension, and you need an alibi. Then tomorrow night I’ll wait for you, and you and me? We’re gonna have a heart to heart with that old bastard. Sound good?”

Not a chance.

No, it doesn’t sound good. It sounds insane. It sounds like both the worst and best thing ever, when this crazy man just found me a miracle and won’t even let me be part of it.

It’s bittersweet, so bittersweet, and I can barely fight the lump in my throat as I look away. “Fine. Sure. Sounds good.”

“Come on, then.”

He takes my hand. His fingers are coarse, thick, and strong, and I hate to admit that his grip is comforting. He leads me to settle at the table again, then gently rests his hand on the top of my head.

“Finish your dinner,” he murmurs. “I’ll load up the truck, then follow you home before heading to my place. I’ll be back later tonight to stand watch.” He pauses then, his hand falling away. “You really just came by to bring me burgers?”

I feel like a doll, sitting here and staring at the cooling combo meal remnants spread out in front of me. It's the most ordinary thing in the world when the world suddenly twists sideways and surreal.

I don’t have it in me to lie, or to feign pride.

Not when I’m this torn between hope, despair, and frustration.

“No,” I admit. “I...I was going to apologize. I know. I know you’re here for a job, and this wasn’t your idea, and I’m just…I’m making it harder, and you’re being so nice and going out of your way for me. Gabe, I’m sorry. Sorry I said what I did to Landon. I’m sorry he’s mad at you because of me. I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to him, I’ll fix it, I swear, I just...damn it, I’m sorry.”

He blinks like he’s never heard those words in his life

Then his smile returns like a winter sunrise. That big, boyish, gentle, warm, and wonderful smile I haven’t seen in a week. That smile I didn't know how bad I was missing until now.

His fingers curl against my cheek again, and he laughs softly.

“You didn’t have to do that, darlin’, but I do appreciate it. I don’t need your apologies. Just need you to stay safe for me tonight.” His thumb grazes under my chin. Vivid hazel eyes search me so deep, it’s like I can feel him touching all the trembling, scared places inside of me.

Then he leans in close, and I smell a hint of strawberries and sweetness on warm breaths that curl against my cheeks before he brushes his mouth to mine.

Holy, holy hell.

It’s slow and soft and chaste, and I don’t think anyone’s ever kissed me so gently, but so powerfully.

Who knew a gentle, steady, slow moving storm would be the thing to hit with enough force to shatter me?

Who knew I’d be trembling, close to breaking, frozen and stunned and ready to burst out sobbing, just because he kisses me like he doesn’t want to fight me? Just because he touches me like I just might mean something to him? Because, more than anything, he damn well doesn’t want to break me?

I’m scared. So scared.

For Joannie, for myself, for these feelings I shouldn’t be having right now – and I can’t move, as he carefully plies my lips apart and tastes me for one hot second. The force, the gravity, the feral heat of his breath and the contact of his tongue...God.

It jolts right through my heart. It turns me upside down. It levels my knees. I'm shaking in his behemoth grasp before he finally pulls back, looking down at me with those warm eyes that see far, far too much.

“Can you do that? Can you stay safe for me, Sky?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I whisper, even though I’m not quite sure what I’m saying when I’m so dazed, completely shaken inside. “For you.”