The back passenger door of the sedan opened, and a beautiful woman got out. With a seductive smile, she walked straight toward the driver’s side of our car as a man, almost as muscular as Vance, came down the stairs of the private jet.

  “Wait, love.” Grabbing my laptop, Vance got out of the car and shut the door behind him.

  As he spoke to the woman, the man approached them.

  Vance handed the handsome but austere-looking man my laptop, and he retreated back onto the plane without acknowledging the woman.

  The woman barely glanced at the man before looking back at Vance with her flirtatious smile as she touched his arm.

  Vance said something else.

  The woman threw her head back and laughed.

  A pang of jealousy I was not expecting broadsided me, and I had to look away. Before I could process the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, Vance was opening my door with a serious expression. “This way, love. Let’s get you on the plane.”

  I glanced between him and the woman still standing on the other side of the car. I wanted to ask who she was, and I wanted to know what he had said that had made her laugh. I wanted to tell him to not let her on the plane. But mostly, I wanted this awful, stomach-turning, sudden nausea to go away, right along with the woman, because I had never felt like this and I hated it. I hated the other woman touching him and laughing, but I could not say anything about it because I had no right to, which was a worse thought than her touching him.

  My mind unraveling, I grasped at the only solid thing I had left of my life. “My bags?” The mere few possessions that, until a moment ago, I had no attachments to because they were all props purchased by a horrible, cruel, dishonorable man who was trying to blame me for crimes I did not commit. But now those bags represented the last tangible part of my life that I had.

  “I’ll get them.” His tone gentle, his hand held out, Vance gave me the full weight of his attentive gaze.

  All at once, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake.

  I should have trusted this man from the very beginning, but it was too late for that now, and I had to follow this through. Joseph may or may not keep his word about letting me walk away free and clear, but I kept holding on to the one thing that he had not done yet. Joseph had not yet broken his original promise. At least, not that I knew of. But that was the crux of all of this.

  I would not know if he had.

  All I knew was that time was running out—for me, for the deal I made, maybe for the promise Joseph said he would keep.

  Slipping my purse on my arm with the injured wrist, I hesitantly took Vance’s offered hand.

  Vance’s gaze briefly cut to my wrist, and his eyes narrowed.

  Except I barely noticed it because the moment my hand landed in his, a wave of a thousand tiny shivers raced across the back of my neck and down my arms, electrifying all of my senses. And just like when he had tucked my hair behind my ear, my stomach dipped. It was everything I could do not to audibly catch my breath.

  I needed distance from him.

  But Vance Conlon did not step back.

  Towering over me, ignoring the woman and the busy airport all around us, he lowered his head and locked his gaze on me. Warm and intimate, his breath touched my face a second before his quietly concerned voice erased the tangible space between us. “Your wrist?”

  I was not thinking about my wrist.

  I was not even thinking about Joseph or Miami or the laptop or how much trouble I was in if this all fell apart.

  I was drowning in this man and his masculine scent that smelled more like home than my best memories.

  I should have told him I was fine. I should have stepped back. I should have insisted he take me to Westchester.

  But I did none of that.

  I looked into his amber-green eyes, and I gave away a piece of me I did not have to give by showing a side of me I could not afford to show. “Who is that beautiful woman?”

  As if unconcerned by my question or that I was asking it at all, he answered immediately. “Her name is Gigi, her fiancé is Gerard, and the only beautiful woman I’m looking at is you.”

  The dip in my stomach turned into a fluttering storm as he called me beautiful, but that storm did not stop the tightness in my chest. “You made her laugh,” I accused.

  The back of his fingers barely coasted across my cheek before he brushed my hair from my face like we were intimate lovers and he touched me all the time. “Would you like me to make you laugh?”

  Would I? Did I know how anymore? If I said yes, would he think I trusted him? There was no good answer to his question, but the woman I used to be wanted to give him the carefree response.

  As if reading every vulnerable thought going through my mind, he cupped my cheek and gave me a smile I had not seen on him before. Unassuming, wary, it barely crested his beautifully full lips. “How about I start small?”

  “Meaning?”

  “I make you smile first.” With a wink, he released my cheek and grabbed my two suitcases before tossing the car key to the pretty woman. “Thank you, Gigi.”

  She caught it midair and smiled at both of us. “Anytime, Mr. Conlon.” She nodded at me. “Mrs. Bertrand.”

  One hand on the bags, his other on my back, Vance paused and glanced at me as his eyebrows drew together. “Since you asked me who she was, I’m assuming you’ve never met Gigi before?”

  “No.” I would have remembered her.

  “Right.” His frown deepened before he glanced behind us and called out to the other woman. “Gigi.”

  About to get into the sports car, she stopped and walked toward us instead as the black sedan pulled away. “Yes?”

  “How do you know Miss Malcher?” Vance demanded.

  The woman’s smile dropped, and she blanched as she looked at me. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I just, I mean, I assumed because….” She glanced at the ring on my left hand. “Well, my apologies. It’s a lovely piece of jewelry by the way.” She smiled sheepishly. “Anyway, I’ve seen you lunch frequently with Mr. Bertrand at the Gramercy. My office isn’t far from there. I’ve also caught a few auctions at Harrington’s and saw you with him. I’m sorry again for the assumption.”

  When Vance said nothing, I answered her. “There is nothing to apologize for.”

  The woman smiled. “Do either of you need anything else?”

  Still frowning, but now looking angry, Vance ignored the woman and turned me back toward the private jet. “Let’s go, love.”

  I walked up the airstairs.

  Vance

  I didn’t know if I was more pissed that a woman who rents cars who’d never met Sabine knew her as that fuck’s wife, or the fact that we missed her existence in the first place. More than that, shit was adding up, and every new piece of the puzzle was pissing me off worse.

  Following Sabine’s sweet ass up the airstairs not helping with my mood, I issued her orders like she was my goddamn subordinate the second she stepped onto the plane. “Through the galley and take a seat. Buckle in.” I stowed her bags as she wordlessly did as I said, taking the closest seat.

  His gaze on Sabine as she adjusted her seat belt, Zulu stepped out of the cockpit. “Hey.”

  I lowered my voice. “How much lead time do we have over a flight leaving Westchester for Miami at oh four hundred?”

  Zulu glanced at his watch. “Couple hours, maybe.” He looked back at Sabine. “Why?”

  “Just wondering how long I have before I commit murder.” That fucking prick Bertrand.

  Zulu focused on me. “What’s going on?”

  Instead of reining my shit in, I stupidly kept talking. “Not one goddamn person at AES knew Sabine existed, but a single glance and Gigi not only knew her, she called her Mrs. Bertrand. Gigi,” I repeated, my hands going to my hips.

  “So? Everyone knows Harrington’s, and Gigi knows everyone because she fucks everyone.”

  “Exactly,” I bit out.

  Zulu stared at me a beat. Then he grinned. “You think Gigi fucked Bertrand.”

  “How the hell else would she know about Sabine, and wipe that goddamn smile off your face or I’ll do it for you.”

  Zulu laughed. “I’m writing this shit down. The great Vance Conlon falls for a married woman and is pissed that her husband cheated on her. Wait. That is why you’re angry, right? Not the other way around, that Bertrand fucked your Gigi?”

  “Gigi’s not my goddamn anything, and now I’m planning two murders.”

  Zulu laughed harder as he slapped me on the shoulder. “Tell November to get his ass up here. Echo’s one minute out and we need to be wheels up.”

  “I need November to work on her laptop. I’ll take second chair.”

  “Negative, handle your client.” Zulu tipped his chin toward Sabine. “You may not currently notice the tension radiating off her like she’s about to toss her cookies because you’re too damn busy being a jealous dick, but I do. Go calm her down. I don’t need some woman puking at thirty thousand feet, no matter how beautiful she is.” He retreated into the cockpit.

  Echo took the airstairs two at a time before stepping aboard. “We all here?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced back at Sabine as she studiously looked out the window.

  “Good, closing her up.” He secured the hatch, then knocked against the open door to the cockpit twice. “Zulu, cabin secure.”

  “Copy that.” Zulu started the engines. “Get November up here.”

  “Ten-four,” Echo replied before glancing at Sabine and lowering his voice. “No movement. Bertrand was still in his office when I left, but something’s up.”

  Dragging my attention away from her, I looked at Echo. “What kind of something?” Did she put two and two together about Gigi and her fucking piece of shit husband?

  “The kind that had a dozen private security rent-a-cop dicks coming and going, doing perimeter checks and not letting anyone use the valet service after you left.”

  I mentally went back over the event list Bertrand had rattled off to me in his office. “He told me to get her down to Miami for the preview party. There was no mention of an event in New York tonight. Why would he need extra security there?”

  “Don’t know. Delusional paranoia?”

  His sarcasm wasn’t that far off the mark. “You’re sure it was for Harrington’s?”

  Echo leveled me with a look. “For the record, this is me giving you one fucking pass, but this will be the last time I put up with you questioning my shit. I’m not the one picking fights for sport so I can take a beating. It’s Harrington’s. I watched the elevators. The dicks were coming and going from the top floor, and before you ask that next question, the answer is no.”

  Fucking prick. “I didn’t ask anything else.” Not yet, but if someone noticed him, he would be useless to me tonight at the preview party.

  “I’m telling you anyway. No, no one noticed me. That’s what I mean when I said rent-a-cop dicks. They weren’t trained. They weren’t watching their backs. They had one objective with myopic vision, and not one of them looked twice at me. When I tell you something, listen to what I’m saying.”

  Fucking Teams guys. “You mean learn to speak Echo?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “Hey,” Zulu interrupted as he backed the plane up. “Was I talking to myself? Get November up here. We’re cleared to taxi.”

  “Take second chair,” I ordered Echo. “I need November.”

  “No fucking way. I’m not a flyboy.”

  “Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Adapt and overcome,” I quipped, spouting SEAL mottos as I moved past Echo, giving zero fucks that it was known throughout AES he hated to be in the cockpit. “And for the record, flyboys are Air Force. The Navy has aviators.”

  “Conlon,” Echo barked.

  Christ. “What?”

  “I know what a pilot is called, asshole, and you fucking owe me for this.”

  “Right. I’ll be sure to remember that.” I walked to Sabine. “Can I get you anything?”

  Turning away from the window, she glanced up at me, then looked away again. “You lied to me.”

  I sat. “About?”

  “He wasn’t a car enthusiast.”

  Ah. “No, he isn’t. Echo works for AES.”

  “Echo?”

  “Yes.” All of us at AES went by our call signs, some leftover from our service, others inherited along the way. I had no fucking idea why I’d given her my real name, except that it’d felt like the right thing to do, and I didn’t regret it. “Echo was my backup. Zulu’s the pilot, and November’s working on your laptop.”

  “My laptop,” she repeated, still staring out the window.

  “Yes. Bertrand indicated all the security breaches originated from your laptop.” The clock ticking until we touched down in Miami, I needed to talk with November.

  Her right hand covering her left wrist, she pulled her arms closer toward herself. “And Alpha, who is he?”

  So she’d been listening to my conversation with Trefor. “The owner of AES.”

  “Alpha, Echo, November, Victor, Zulu,” she quietly listed. “All the phonetic alphabet.”

  And the military alphabet. “It would appear so,” I answered vaguely.

  “You were angry when that woman recognized me.”

  Zulu taxied to the runway, and the engines whined as he gave them more thrust.

  Sitting in the seat facing her, I used the time to secure my seat belt to formulate my response. “I was angry, but not at you.”

  “You were mad at Joseph.”

  With no intonation in her voice and her eyes directed toward the window, I didn’t know if I wanted to shake the fuck out of her or grab her and kiss her until she gave me a goddamn reaction that wasn’t as tight as her dress.

  Tired of this bullshit, I turned the tables. “Why do you think I’d be angry with a man who provokes your fear, abuses his dominance and will over you, and uses physical force with intent to harm?”

  Zulu lined up the Gulfstream for takeoff.

  She didn’t so much as blink at what I’d accused Bertrand of. “That is not why you were angry with him in that moment.”

  Right. “Isn’t it?”

  “No.” She turned and met my gaze. “You think Joseph slept with that woman, and I think you slept with her.”

  The Gulfstream’s engines came to life and the plane took off.

  Sabine

  I turned to face Vance exactly like he had said he preferred, and I said something I never, ever would have said to Joseph, not unless I wanted to pay for it. “You think Joseph slept with that woman, and I think you slept with her.”

  The private jet’s engines roared, and I was pushed back in my seat as the plane took off.

  His eyes, still more amber than green in the muted light of the plane’s cabin, held me captive in his intense gaze.

  Afraid of what he might say, terrified he would confirm my suspicions about him and that woman, angry that I was so jealous I wanted to cry, I bottled everything up and turned toward the window because that was what I did.

  I hid.

  I let everything important go.

  I never spoke my mind.

  I pretended. I compartmentalized. I survived, and I did it to feel as safe as I could.

  But this didn’t feel safe.

  I saw Vance’s anger, and it felt a thousand times worse than when Joseph was angry, and yet, it was not fear I was feeling. It was hurt.

  Horrible hurt.

  “Sabine.”

  My heart skipped a beat, but then it came alive at the way he said my name. Like I was something to be cherished, someone to be valued and taken care of—someone he respected.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean forward, and I wanted to lean back to protect myself from something that I could not stop from happening, but it was already too late. My heart was reaching for him, and he was reaching for me.

  Two of his fingers gently touched my chin, but he did not apply pressure, not like Joseph would have. “I’d like you to look at me, love. I want to see your eyes when I speak to you.”

  In the intimacy of the private jet’s cabin, I could almost imagine we were alone, but we were not. There were three other imposing, large, muscular men on board who looked nothing like the men Joseph hired as security. These men were all intimidating, and they had an air about them that said they were as lethal as they were handsome, especially the tallest one he called Echo. But he was not who I was nervous about.

  The man with the unusual eyes who had taken my laptop and who was now sitting behind us—there was something about the way he had looked at me when I had walked aboard. Staring directly at me like he saw things I could not see, he had made me nervous.

  I did not want him to hear this conversation.

  And I knew he could hear us. As sure as I could hear some of what the pilot had been saying to Vance before we had taken off. I knew it before the man he had called Zulu had said it. I had suspected right away when the young, beautiful woman had called me Mrs. Bertrand that she knew Joseph. Not only was she his type, but I’d had seven years of fielding those exact same scenarios.

  The accidental meeting of women Joseph had slept with.

  I had crossed paths with dozens of women like her, and maybe I should have been upset by it, or even ashamed, but I told myself the same thing I had been telling myself since the first time it had happened. It took the pressure off me.

  It gave me a brief reprieve.

  And sometimes, on a very rare occasion, those women had put Joseph in a good mood, and I had benefitted. A quiet evening, a nonconfrontational conversation, a surprise gift, a moment to breathe without fear, I had selfishly taken every one of them.

  If Vance wanted me to look at him and show him any kind of remorse or anger over it, I could not do it. But maybe, this once, I could look at a man and give him the truth.

  Except it would not be without consequence.

  Nothing about this Marine turned mercenary would leave me without consequences. The cost would be my heart, and the penalty would be a life I could never have.