“I don’t want anyone getting that close to my family, Agozi,” Saint had warned.

  “We get that,” Remi had said evenly. “We go to great lengths to keep our own family as safe and secure as possible. But Leah has adopted Rae as part of our family, and I wasn’t going to have her be left in the dark. Rae may be your girlfriend”—a hint of doubt colored his use of the word—“but she’s our responsibility too.”

  Saint wanted to protest, but though the Agozis made him uncomfortable, he was grateful to Leah for taking care of Rae when he couldn’t. Still… “And my family? My responsibilities? How will you safeguard them now that you’ve broken my protection?” Because it would have taken a serious hacker to get through JCL’s security, and that put every one of Saint’s siblings, not to mention each precious niece and nephew, at risk.

  “Eli put everything back exactly as he found it,” Remi assured him, then narrowed his eyes. “You told us Rae didn’t share much about her background.”

  Saint shrugged. He could have made something up, but anything he’d said could be checked easily enough. So he’d gone with being in the dark himself—again, more truth than not.

  “Eli has been searching for Rae’s identity.”

  “Do you think I haven’t been? And don’t tell me her name isn’t pulling up anything; I already know.” Dain had pointed out a couple of weeks ago that Rae’s name might not be her actual name. Saint thought he was right. Of course, the Agozis had to be aware by now that the last name Saint had given them wasn’t Rae’s either. “I’m no idiot—she obviously had something to hide. That didn’t matter to me before all of this, but now, whatever she was hiding, it could be the key to whoever is after her.”

  “I admit, I had my doubts,” Remi said. “You could easily be hiding intel to keep Rae under your control—in our world, that’s a distinct possibility. But nothing we’ve found indicates you would do that, or that your team would support you in it.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Saint fought the instinct to flip Remi the bird.

  Remi smirked, obviously catching the vibe without the gesture. “But…let’s face it. If you’re acting honorably with Rae, you’re likely also following the rules at work too. Eli isn’t bound by any ethical standards, which makes him the perfect person to be digging into Rae’s past.”

  Saint just bet he was.

  Remi ignored his eye roll. “So he’s been digging hard, but he hasn’t found a thing. No birth certificate, no social security number, nothing so far on any variation of her name.”

  Saint simply cocked his brow. He hadn’t known what Rae’s job was, so he’d told her—and her entourage—that she’d been between jobs and that was one of the reasons they’d moved in together a few short weeks before her accident.

  “NCIC has no record of her name either, but it does have thousands of hits for missing persons fitting Rae’s description. None of them are her.”

  “Eli can’t have been through all of them,” Saint pointed out. He and King had been working their way through and making little headway. The National Crime Information Center was the clearinghouse for nationwide information on criminal activity as well as missing and unidentified persons. Over 600,000 individuals went missing in the US alone every year. Every day NCIC contained over 80,000 open missing persons cases. There was no way to search by image, but narrowing even by a basic description wasn’t going to help much.

  And that was assuming Rae had been reported missing.

  “He couldn’t, not manually,” Remi agreed, “but a computer coded to sort the photos from the NCIC entries could, and trust me, she’s not there.”

  Handy. “She hasn’t been reported missing,” Saint confirmed to himself.

  “Not that we can find, at least not in the US. No foreign accent, so limiting to the States made the most sense for now. We’re still combing DMV records country-wide—figured that would be our most likely place to find a match since we can’t find a social security number under her name either—but that will take significantly more time.”

  Saint’s patience hit its end. “You’re assuming I haven’t been following leads as well, Agozi. My team is already searching, which means we’re all just spinning our wheels covering mostly the same territory.”

  “You’re right, we are covering too much of the same ground. And none of us can be in two places at once. By default, you’ll be with Rae from here on out.” Remi looked more resigned than accepting of that fact. “Why not let us take on the search? Keep us updated on anything she remembers, and we’ll keep you updated on our end of the deal.”

  It was a safe bet, Saint realized. He had the more valuable intel, Rae herself. Remi had nothing to gain by keeping anything from Saint and his team. He stared the man down a moment longer before he nodded. Remi nodded back, and the two of them had returned to Rae’s room.

  Now here Saint was, once again with Rae in the front seat of the company Escalade, driving to his home. Only this time he wasn’t taking her to his apartment. It was too likely their enemy knew, at minimum, which building he lived in—they couldn’t risk taking Rae back there. So the house it was. And though everything in him usually balked at the idea of strangers in his home, with Rae, it felt natural.

  “Where are we going?” Rae asked him now.

  “Home.” He couldn’t hide the satisfaction saturating the word.

  Rae’s fingers twisted in her lap, a sure sign of agitation. She did that a lot. Saint fought the need to cover her hands with his, to calm her with his touch. The need was getting harder to ignore, harder to hide every second he was with her.

  “So… I might remember living there.”

  If it had been someplace familiar, which neither his apartment nor home was, yeah, but no such luck. “We lived in my apartment, Rae,” he told her, the lie leaving his lips reluctantly. “With the situation as it is, I’m taking you to my home.”

  “You have two places to live?”

  He chuckled. “Sounds fancy, huh?” Given the fact that he was only two generations along from the first of his family members to start over in this country, he was often amazed by it himself. “My grandparents immigrated from Spain just after they married. They both worked in factories up north until my grandmother became pregnant with Mamá. Wanting to raise their family someplace better than what they had, they moved down here, rebuilt their life from the ground up a second time.” His admiration for his grandparents and all they’d been through expanded his chest. “My parents married young too. Five kids.”

  “Big family.” Rae sounded shocked.

  “You have no idea. All four of my sisters are married, and all of them have kids.”

  “You love every one of them too.”

  “To absolute pieces,” he agreed, then shrugged. “I’m lucky, that’s all—what I do pays very well. And I don’t have anything to spend my money on but a dozen little angels. The apartment is for convenience, to be near work, but the house, that’s for family.”

  She glanced out her window, where downtown Atlanta had given way to the lush green suburbs despite the continued heavy traffic. “Sounds wonderful.”

  Was that a wistful tone? “Have you thought about your family, Rae?”

  He caught her shrug from the corner of his eye. “I think about them all the time.” Her tone was absent, though the tension he felt emanating from her belied it. “Or want to think about them. There’s just…nothing there.”

  He couldn’t imagine, especially with the close ties his family had, being untethered in the way Rae was. In that moment he couldn’t help himself—he reached for those twisting hands, clasped them in one of his own, stilling their restless movements. “We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

  He glanced her way to find her staring down at their joined hands. “From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like I was close to anyone. Maybe I don’t have any family.”

  Or maybe she wasn’t in contact with them for a specific reason, if she’d been on the run. He debated mentioning that but hesitated for the same reason he had every day for the past two weeks—what if she wasn’t ready? Instead he squeezed down, willing his warmth into her cold fingers. “We’ll find out one way or another. You’re not alone, Rae.”

  “Aren’t I?” Her mouth twisted. “I know what you’ve told me about our relationship, Saint, but I don’t remember you. I don’t remember any of this.” She extricated a hand to wave toward the window. “How can I not be alone?”

  “Because I won’t let you be.” It was a promise, whether she knew it or not, accepted it or not. He wasn’t walking away, no matter what she remembered.

  The rest of the drive was quiet. Traffic snarled on I-85 with construction, delaying them a good half hour but also giving King and Elliot the chance for a thorough look at the cars around them. There was no way to hide a tail in close quarters like that, and Saint breathed a sigh of relief when he finally exited the interstate toward Peachtree City, then onto the rural highway leading to his house. Rae dozed beside him, stirring only when he slowed for the gate that blocked access to his driveway. He pulled through, stopped to make certain the gate closed behind them, then proceeded through a wood-canopied section of the drive before entering the clearing that surrounded the house.

  “Wow.”

  Ridiculous male pride puffed his chest as Rae surveyed the rustic-yet-contemporary structure rising before them. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted her to like it until this moment, wanted her approval. He’d built the home a couple of years ago after a visit to the Colorado Rockies had him salivating over the contemporary mansion his team had stayed in while protecting a client. His version was greatly scaled down from that ten-thousand-square-foot mountain house, but every time he drove down the driveway and the trees parted to reveal the view, he got a swell of satisfaction. He loved this place, and not only because his entire family could visit and not feel cramped.

  “Like it?”

  Rae stared as they pulled into the circular drive in front. Black board-and-batten siding gave the three-thousand-square-foot building an imposing feel, softened by cedar and stone accents and the winter-subdued landscaping. A cedar covered porch ran the length of the front, with a recessed entry that framed massive dark oak doors. Rae leaned forward, keeping her wide gaze on the house as he parked. “Wow,” she said again.

  He couldn’t help grinning. “Wait there.”

  He was out of the truck and around to her door before Rae could blink. She allowed him to grip her waist and lower her down from the tall cab, bypassing the running boards in favor of getting his hands on her rounded hips. Her lush breasts skimmed his chest along the way, and his attention centered sharply on her lips as she licked them. Had her mouth gone dry just like his had? Did being this close to him affect her the same way? He’d forced himself not to push her to react to him, keeping things teasing and light, but sometimes that restraint was hard.

  And so was he.

  The arrival of King and Elliot interrupted the moment. Saint released Rae and stepped back, allowing her to move so he could close the door. While she rounded the truck, he opened the back door and grabbed the overnighter he’d packed with her things from the hospital. They mounted the front steps up to the porch, and then he was ushering her inside the great room with its massive wall of windows along the back that framed the valley behind his home. Rae beelined for the view.

  “Want these in your room?” King asked, pulling Saint’s attention away from Rae’s figure at the window.

  “Yeah.” King took the bag from him, adding it to the three he already carried, and headed down the hall.

  Rae turned as Saint stopped beside her. “We’re staying in the master bedroom?”

  Her obvious nerves rankled. “You’re staying in the master,” he reassured her. “It’s easier to protect you if we’re all on one level. I’ll bunk on the couch.”

  “I can’t kick you out of your bedroom, Saint.”

  “And you think I’m such a prick that I’d make you share it with a stranger?” Emotion sharpened his words—anger, he realized. He wanted her thinking the best of him, not the worst. “I’m not forcing you to sleep with me, Rae. The bedroom is yours.”

  Rae stared at him for the longest moment. An apology hovered on his lips, but she cut him off. “I’m sorry, Saint. This is probably as hard on you as it is me.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He sighed. “Don’t apologize because I’m impatient.”

  Something flickered briefly in her eyes. “I—”

  “What?” he asked, softer than before.

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. Saint held her gaze, refusing to look away. Whatever she saw, he wanted her to see. Know me, Rae. Trust me. It was all he could give her.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. When she turned to trail King down the hall, he stayed where he was, staring hard out at the land in front of him, willing the ache in his chest to go away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Raegan!”

  “Raegan!”

  A scream escaped as Rae came awake, shooting up in the bed, her body covered in sweat and shivering. Saint rushed through the door, panic clear on his face. He dropped to the mattress and snatched her into his arms, his breath almost as fast as hers. “What is it? Bad dream?”

  Sobs choked her. Raegan!

  Saint rocked her against him. “It’s okay, cariño. Bad dream?” he asked again. “Memories?”

  She rubbed her forehead against the soft cotton of his T-shirt, struggling to catch her breath. “I don’t know.”

  A lie, but she couldn’t get past something in the back of her mind that screamed not to tell.

  They’d been coming more frequently the past few days—faces, places, bits of conversation she couldn’t tie down in time. But this had been different, a voice in the dark, frightened, urgent. Calling.

  Raegan!

  A shiver shook her, and Saint dragged her closer against him. An unexpected shot of awareness sharpened her already rapid-fire senses, filling her nose with the scent of warm male and rich coffee. Saint’s skin felt like a furnace, hot beneath her desperately grasping hands. Was he hot everywhere? What would it be like to have that heat slide inside her? And for God’s sake, why, if she had to remember anything, couldn’t she remember that?

  Big hands splayed across her back, their up-and-down sliding soothing the shaking from the nightmare, but rather than relaxing, she found herself snuggling closer, pressing her breasts to Saint’s rock-solid chest, her face into the crook of his neck. Sudden need roared down her spine, and if the clench of Saint’s hands on her back was any indication, she wasn’t the only one.

  “Rae?”

  His voice had gone gravel rough. Rae’s nipples peaked at the sound. And holy hell, it felt good, maybe the first truly good thing she’d felt since she’d been hit by that car.

  She wanted more.

  “Saint.” It was a statement, not a question—she wasn’t asking. She was feeling. She arched her back, pressing her aching breasts against the resistance of his pecs. A moan rose in the back of her throat.

  And the next second, Saint was gone, so fast she fell forward into the void where his body had been. Shock jolted through her. “What the hell?”

  Saint’s back was to her as he paced the length of the room. His dark sweatpants hugged his firm ass, and she couldn’t help willing him to turn around, to let her see if he’d been just as affected as she had been. But he stayed stubbornly turned away from her, one hand on his hip and the other rubbing over the stubble on his face. His message couldn’t be clearer: she’d stepped over a line she hadn’t even realized was there.

  Willing her breath to calm, Rae pulled her knees up to rest against her chest, hiding the evidence of her own arousal, but she couldn’t hide the way her hand shook as she shoved it through the heavy fall of her hair. She should apologize, even opened her mouth to do so, but when nothing came out, she snapped it shut with a clack of her teeth. To hell with it. If he wasn’t interested in her any longer, it wasn’t her problem. She’d gotten the message loud and clear.

  Suddenly she couldn’t stand just sitting there, waiting for him to turn around and look at her with pity in his eyes. She slid out of the bed.

  “Where are you going?” Saint asked as she hurried past him.

  “Bathroom.”

  She shut the door firmly in his face and gave herself a minute to get steady on her feet, then crossed to the shower. The blast of hot water swept away the cobwebs of her dreams and the stench of sweat from her fear, but nothing could erase the embarrassment of forcing herself on a man who obviously didn’t want her, so she thought about her nightmare instead. That voice. That name—Raegan. Was Raegan her? It made sense. Rae, Raegan. But why had the person been calling her? And why had the sound of her own name filled her with such terror?

  As suds washed her body clean, she felt a piece of herself click into place—her first name. Raegan. But Raegan what? And why couldn’t she remember? Oh, she knew what Leah had told her, all about swelling and physical healing and give it time, but the more flashes she got, the more she wondered if it wasn’t something other than a massive TBI that had her brain locking away memories.

  The bedroom was empty when she stepped out in the thick robe that had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The fabric smelled like Saint, and she let herself breathe in the scent as she retrieved yoga pants and a long-sleeved tee of the softest cotton, and underwear. She abandoned her slippers in favor of a pair of socks with the words I Heard You and I Don’t Care written down the sides. Apparently she had a thing for snarky-ass socks. She wasn’t sure why, but the feeling that they suited her personality, that the sarcasm felt “right” made her smile. She was still smiling when she sauntered into Saint’s massive kitchen.

  The room was full of natural light from the French doors and long windows along the back wall that looked out onto a patio all set for a party, it looked like—a huge built-in grill and pizza oven, a wide table built for a horde of people, an enormous circular firepit that could toast fifty marshmallows at once. She bet the spot was perfect for sunsets along the horizon at the end of the field beyond the house, watching the sun go down and the stars come out. For now, though, she turned away in favor of the black oak cabinets and warm butcher-block counters of the eat-in kitchen. Saint stood on the other side of the enormous island, his back to her—again—as he flipped something that sizzled in the skillet. Bacon. Ah, lovely bacon. She salivated at the smell of frying pork as she rounded the island to pour a cup of rich black coffee from the half-full pot.