I woke the following Thursday to the sounds of power tools working around my house. Since I didn’t remember hiring any contractors, I was a little concerned as I jumped out of bed and grabbed my robe, cinching it around my waist as I marched down the stairs. A man I’d never seen before was on a ladder in my flowerbed drilling a hole into the eaves over the dining room window.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He didn’t even look down at me. “Installing a security system.”

“Who told you to do that?”

“My boss.”

“And that would be?”

“Jack Stone.”

I bit my lip, holding in a scream as I spun on my heel. I was set to call Aiden from the phone hanging on the wall in my kitchen when I spotted him through the sliding glass doors, standing in the middle of the yard talking to someone just out of my line of sight.

“Aiden!” I pulled open the doors and stepped onto the deck, my arms crossed over my chest. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Morning, babe,” he said, coming toward me at slow jog. “Did we wake you up?”

“You did.”

He grabbed my arms and half-dragged, half-pulled me back into the house. I smacked his chest with an open palm that made the smile that had been on his face since he saw me standing on the deck spread wider.

“What the hell? You can’t just drill holes in my house without telling me! When did we discuss a security system? And what kind of security system, anyway? What makes you think I want one?”

“Slow down. I can only answer one question at a time.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you spend ninety percent of your time inside this house.” He brushed the backs of his fingers over my jaw. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”

“I’ve been safe here for months. What makes you think that might change?”

He shrugged, but something in his expression changed. He tried to turn around, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back toward me.

“What’s going on, Aiden? Really?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just my brother.”

“Your brother is worried about my safety?”

“No. Mine.”

“Why?”

Fear suddenly ran down my spine in a trickle of ice water. I studied him, watching the war going on in his eyes. He tried to touch my face again, but I jerked away, refusing to allow him even that little bit of reassurance. He crossed his arms over his chest just as I had done, facing me with his massive arms made bigger by his position.

“Stone Security got into this beef with a local motorcycle gang a few months ago and they’ve come around recently, threatening everyone attached to the business. Jack just thought that because I spend more time here than at my place, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put up a security system.”

“This motorcycle gang…they’re after you?”

The thought scared the shit out of me. I’d had run-ins with several members of several different gangs. I knew how dangerous they could be.

“Not me, specifically. But they have been harassing members of the family.”

I tilted my head slightly. “I don’t like this.”

“It’s just a precaution, Carson. My brother is just taking small steps to make sure everyone’s okay.”

I moved around him and went to the sliding glass doors to look out at my own backyard. There were half a dozen guys out there, climbing up and down ladders, running wires and sliding the teeniest cameras I’d ever seen up against the eaves. Watching all this activity was a tall, dark-haired man in a suit.

Jack Stone. Had to be.

I jerked the door open and stepped out to the sound of Aiden calling after me. I marched across the lawn right up to Jack, my arms still crossed over my chest.

“This is your doing?”

He focused on me, something like amusement dancing in his eyes. The resemblance to Aiden was impressive, but there was a hardness about this man that Aiden lacked.

Thank God.

“It is.”

“How serious is this threat against Aiden?”

Jack jerked one shoulder. “About as serious as any threat that comes aimed at our employees.”

“Do you think he’s in danger?”

“Carson,” Aiden said in a low voice as he approached me from behind. I ignored him, refusing to let Jack wiggle out of telling me what I wanted to know.

“Do you think he’s in danger?” I repeated.

“That’s a difficult question to answer, Ms. Duncan.”

It was a little unnerving that he knew my name—even if it wasn’t technically my name. Aiden reached for me, his hand brushing my upper arm as I moved out of his way. I continued to stare down Jack Stone until he finally cleared his throat.

“Look, this is just a precaution. We’ll only run the cameras on the outside of the house to watch the perimeter. You won’t even know they’re there unless something happens, which is pretty unlikely. These people, they’re only interested in hurting me and Brent, no one else.”

“Okay.”

I spun around and marched back up to the house. Aiden didn’t follow immediately, but he caught up to me as I shed my robe in anticipation of getting dressed.

“What was that?” he asked.

I glanced at him as I dug through my dresser drawer, looking for a pair of panties. “What do you mean?”

“I mean why did you just make a fool of me in front of my brother?”

“I didn’t. I just asked what was going on seeing as how you allowed him to put holes in my house.”

“People pay thousands of dollars for these security systems. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“You should have asked me first.”

He was quiet as I moved around the room, tugging on a pair of panties followed by a pair of shorts. He continued to watch me as I slipped the straps of a bra up my arms, reaching back to tug the hooks into place. He came over, his fingers hot as he helped.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he was done, slipping his hands around my ribs to pull me close. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“I like my privacy, Aiden.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want some stranger watching me all day long. And I don’t want your brothers knowing everything about my comings and goings or whatever.”

“It’s only temporary.”

I turned in his arms, my hands moving slowly up the length of his impressive arms. “I love that you want to be with me so often that you felt this was necessary. I just…there is too much darkness around us. I just want to keep pretending it’s not out there, you know?”

He lifted my hair off my neck, his fingers caressing that place behind my ear that he knew was one of a handful of erotic zones on my body. I shivered against him, too weak to pull away.

“Nothing will ever hurt you as long as I’m here. I promise.”

“You can’t keep a promise like that.”

“Watch me.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that we could forever live in this cocoon of happiness. I wanted to believe that nothing would ever hurt us. But I knew better than that. If his brothers’ business didn’t get us first, then my past would. It was only a matter of time.

*

I’d fallen behind on my work. I sat at my computer until the early hours of morning that night, my shoulders aching and my brain mush by the time I’d finished the last report that needed attention. I turned the computer off and padded into the kitchen, pouring my last of a cup of tea that had grown cold down the kitchen sink. I paused at the dining room window on my way out, glancing out at the dark street that stretched out in front of the house.

My mom talked about growing up in an affluent neighborhood, of the expensive cars parked in front of massive houses, of kids who had such impressive toys that they never had a reason to play outside. I grew up in a third-story walk-up in a neighborhood where the kids were too poor to do anything but play out in the street with sticks and rocks they picked up in abandoned lots. But I used to sit in the rickety old window seat we had in the living room and stare down at the street, imagining the view I would one day have from my mansion in Beacon Hill. I planned on taking my mom there, too, and setting her up in a suite designed just for her.

I should have known dreams never come true.

I was about to turn and head upstairs when a car moved slowly down the block, moving even slower as it reached the front of my house. My heart jumped into my throat as I imagined the face that would be behind the wheel. I’d seen it far too often, that scar that ran down the left side of his face. But then the car pulled into a neighbor’s drive and disappeared behind the remote-controlled garage door.

False alarm. This time, anyway.

I climbed the stairs, exhaustion resting heavily on my shoulders. Aiden was there, asleep on one side of my bed, his hand tucked under his cheek like a child. I watched him for a minute, wishing it could always be like this. I wished I could always count on him being here when I was ready to crawl into bed.

What would happen if I told him the truth? Would he run away, put as much distance between the two of us that he could? Or would he be willing to stay by my side, to face whatever might happen together?

A part of me wanted to tell him everything about my past, my situation. There were so many things I wanted to share with him that I couldn’t because it would require giving away too much about my past. If I could just tell him what had happened to me on that night a lifetime ago, if I could tell him all the things that had happened since that night, the snowball effect that was still following me around, things would be so much simpler. But if I told him, he’d be part of it, too. I couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t put this life on him. I couldn’t force him to leave his family behind and go on the run, to face an uncertain future. It wasn’t fair.

If I’d had a choice, I never would have put myself in this position. I had no reason he would, either.

I went into the bathroom, careful to close the door so that I wouldn’t wake him. I showered, my thoughts moving down a darker path than they’d gone in a long time. I’d been thinking about my mom a lot lately. Meeting Aiden and spending these past few weeks with him had given me a new perspective on her. I’d always seen her as a sad woman, bordering on sadistic and maybe a little delusional. The way she talked about my father…that was the only time she showed any true emotion. Her face would change and she’d get this look that was almost dreamy, like she was sixteen again he was right there by her side.

Mom grew up in Tennessee on a horse ranch not too far outside of Memphis. They raised thoroughbred race horses. They even owned one that had run in one of the triple crown races—though I could never remember which. She talked about the horses a lot, more than she talked about her father or her older brother. My dad was a stablehand who came to work there one summer. When her father found out they were lovers, he kicked my dad off the ranch and told him to never come back. He did, of course, steal my mom away in the middle of the night. She told me over and over that she never regretted it. They traveled all over the country, finding work wherever they could, moving on when they had enough to survive for a while. It was a gypsy life, she said, the kind of life that shouldn’t have worked, but worked for them.

When she found out she was pregnant, they were in Chicago. He was thrilled, claiming he was ready to settle down and get steady work. They moved around for a while, searching for that perfect job. Boston was the end of the road, he told her. No more moving, no more uncertainty. They rented an apartment, sold their car, and settled into life.

How could she have known he’d be shot a month later while making an honest buck as a night clerk in a convenience store?

She could have come home to Memphis. She knew her father would take her back. He might even come to accept me one day. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

I stood under the spray of the shower, letting the heat bite into my flesh. Would I have done things differently? Before Aiden, I would have bet on it. But now? If that had been me and Aiden, I might have run off to the ends of the earth for him.

Is this how my mom felt about my dad?

I closed my eyes and stuck my head under the water, tears falling unchecked down my sodden cheeks. I wished I had known the truth when there was still time to tell her I understood. I wished…there were a lot of things I wished I could take back in my relationship with my mom. I know she tried to make me understand so many times, and I always rolled my eyes. I even told her once that she was stupid for making the choices she had. If she’d gone home, or if she simply hadn’t run off with him in the first place, then we would have had such a better life. Why couldn’t she just do that?

I was beginning to understand now. But it was too late.

I got out of the shower and finished my routine, rubbing lotion into my skin and combing out my hair, before I went to the bed and crawled in beside Aiden. I didn’t make a sound and was very careful not to move the bed too much, but he still sensed me. He rolled against my back and tugged me to his chest, his nakedness warm and reassuring against mine.

He kissed my shoulder and mumbled something that sounded like, “sleep good.”

How could I walk away from this?

How could I not?