Greg still didn’t like leaving town with everything unresolved.

  She greeted him at the door like a long-lost lover, and he hauled her into his arms like she was one. It had been six days since he’d kissed her. It seemed like a lot longer than that.

  A lifetime longer.

  There was so much he knew now. Nothing that he could ethically tell her. Or help her to understand. He could only hope that when her brother was presented with the truth, he’d do the right thing for his family.

  Perhaps a domestic violence admission would hurt his professional reputation. Greg was well aware that there were scores of kids who benefited from Josh Taylor’s programs. But if they were run right, surely the Play for the Win board would be able to do enough damage control to keep the nonprofit healthy. Of course, how many of those programs were supported by Josh’s personal investors? Some could dry up when it became known that the great defender was an abuser himself...

  One taste of Jasmine’s lips, and he couldn’t think about any of it. She was sweet and pure and hungry power all wrapped up in one very caring and compelling package.

  She broke away from him long enough to shut the front door and lead him to the room in which he’d first kissed her. Over to the sectional couch.

  “So what’s this function in Seattle?” she asked, picking up a throw pillow and holding it as she sat down on the couch. In leggings and a thigh-length red sweatshirt, with her hair up in the ponytail she’d already told him she’d been wearing all week, she looked innocent and so sexy to him. His jeans were pinching him again, and he dropped down beside her, determined to control himself. They weren’t going to have sex until after Josh’s case was over. Hopefully that just meant seven more days. One week.

  “Some celebrity client thank-you dinner given by the company my parents are overhauling. A football player I used to follow as a kid is going to be there, and so they asked me to come up.”

  Any other time, he’d have been pretty psyched to go. At the moment, he really did not want to get on that plane in the morning. He told her what he knew about the company. Talked for a second about the two years he’d spent playing football in Colorado as a kid, and then leaned over, hands on his thighs, to kiss her again.

  He’d keep them to himself. He was just going to kiss her.

  She moaned, moved closer, seeming to understand that the kiss was it. Her hands, which had taunted and tantalized him the week before, were still holding her pillow. Her tongue met his. Her lips suckled his just as he’d been remembering with sweet agony all week long.

  For the past few nights, she hadn’t even mentioned Josh. Or the case. Neither had he. They were separate and apart from the charges pending against her brother.

  “I thought I was imagining how great this feels,” she murmured in between kisses, her lips tickling his as she spoke. “How right.”

  Her words were like an aphrodisiac. “I’ve missed you this week,” he told her, words coming naturally from a guy who didn’t talk—or hadn’t ever liked talk—during sex.

  He kissed her again, deeply, his tongue doing more than just playing with hers. It was like they were mating with their clothes on. With no other body parts engaged. And yet...the connection was so intimate. So...

  Jasmine groaned. Stuck her tongue in his mouth again.

  And her hand landed on top of the bulge in his jeans.

  * * *

  She understood his wanting to wait. Appreciated it. She couldn’t wait anymore, though. With a boldness she’d never known herself to have, she caressed Greg’s rock-hard penis through his zipped fly, needing nothing in that moment more than she needed to have him be free of the constraints.

  He’d stopped kissing her the second she’d touched him. He’d pretty much frozen in general. Until her hand started moving. She glanced up at him. Saw the intense gaze in his eye as he watched her, and then she glanced down to her hand over his jeans, paying acute attention to what she was doing. He moved against her. Raising his hips. Moving them slightly from side to side. Filling her hand.

  When the jeans were just too frustrating to deal with anymore, she went for the zipper, pulling it down carefully.

  She got about a quarter of an inch before his hand fell on top of hers. Holding everything in place. Then he gently readjusted himself, back inside his pants.

  “It’s just another week,” he said, his tone soft—and hoarse.

  “I’m no longer sure why we’re waiting,” she answered back immediately. “This has nothing to do with anything but you and me. I want to show you I trust you before any court decision.”

  “It might not go your way.”

  “But I know you’re doing your best, Greg. That you want the exact same thing I want. The truth. I want to show you that I trust you to find it.”

  He moved her hand off from him. Sat up.

  “What’s wrong?” What had she said?

  “What if Josh loses? What if he’s found guilty? Or decides that taking a plea deal is better than going to trial?”

  “You think I’m using you? That I’d do this...have sex with you to ensure that you help Josh?”

  She could kind of see it. If she was Heidi. Or someone else. But...she was hurt. Disappointed. Getting ready to cry, which was plumb dumb. If he thought... He didn’t deserve...

  He touched her hand, and the emotional turbulence gearing up inside her subsided. She’d just told him she trusted him, and yet she thought he’d accuse her of...

  “If I thought you were using me, I’d never have kissed you to begin with.”

  “I kissed you first.” They were looking each other right in the eye now, and that place...the space they occupied together like that...she never wanted to leave it.

  “If Josh loses, you might hold me responsible,” he said, still holding her gaze. “And if you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t slept with me.”

  He was thinking of her. Thinking rationally.

  “And I know that if you ever think that, I’ll wish it, too.” He kissed her lightly. “Once we make love, I don’t want you to ever regret doing so.”

  “I won’t regret it. No matter what. We...this that’s happening between us...it’s completely separate and apart from Josh’s case. Please, Greg. I need to be able to trust my own mind. To make love to you without knowing if Josh wins or loses. I don’t want it to be mixed up with some kind of gratitude feelings for helping us. I want it to be this...” She pointed between their two faces. “You and me. Period.”

  Standing, she moved over to the double French doors closing the living room off from the rest of the house. Increased the volume on the child monitor over by the television set. Pulled her top over her head, and dropped it on the floor, feeling sexy as hell as she headed slowly back toward him.

  * * *

  Greg relived their lovemaking all the way to Seattle. Through the fancy dinner. He was distracted for a short time, meeting one of his childhood heroes, a man who was bigger than he was—not an ounce overweight even at fifty—and was also now a lawyer. And then it was right back to thoughts of Jasmine on top of him on the couch, her body sliding down on his, taking in every inch of him, those breasts, firm and responsive as he splayed both hands over them as she moved with him inside her. That hair—he’d pulled it down and loved how it tangled around her shoulders, getting sweaty around her temples and at her nape.

  And the look on her face, pure confidence and pleasure as she’d come all over him.

  Yeah, it had been one hell of a good hour. Best lovemaking he’d ever had.

  And he hoped to God she didn’t regret it. She’d needed him to give her the chance to be right about trusting herself. About trusting her own mind.

  And he knew that when she found out what he knew—what his investigative abilities had managed to dredge up, when she found out what he’d known before they’d made love—she wasn’t going to trust him, or maybe even herself, again.

  Unless Josh pleaded guilty. Everything rested on that plea. If Jasmine’s younger brother would own up to his problem, he’d set them all free.

  And she’d know, once and for all, that she could trust herself, because she’d chosen to make love to Greg, to partner herself with him, over staying loyal to Josh’s case. She’d sensed that Greg could be trusted.

  Either way it went, he couldn’t have said no when she’d told him that she was exercising her belief in herself. It would be like telling a child that he knew better than the child did—like a pat on the head.

  And maybe...just maybe...he hoped that she’d see that her trust in him, no matter Josh’s outcome, was not misplaced. Maybe...just maybe...he hoped that she really did trust him. Because they were right for each other.

  Because their friendship was legitimate.

  The evening soiree was nice, but he was ready to get back to his folks’ place and excuse himself to bed long before they were ready to leave. They were in the process of getting to know all the key players in the company, seeing how they interacted and with whom. They’d invited Greg so that he could enjoy himself, but they were working.

  He ended up sitting out in the lobby texting with Jasmine. It was the only fun thing he could think of to do alone in Seattle on a Friday night.

  His folks were talking business five minutes after they were in the car. Greg was sitting in the front passenger due to his long legs, his mother in the back seat. She’d made the decision to switch seats with him when he’d hit puberty and shot up over a foot in six months, and the arrangement had been that way ever since. While his mother discussed what she’d noticed that night, Greg almost nodded off. The car’s motion, the darkness, the normality of his parents discussing people he didn’t know, people they’d be leaving within the next eighteen months, all relaxed him.

  He barely noticed the other car when it came careening around a corner, running a light and speeding straight toward them. His father, glancing in the rearview mirror as he spoke to Greg’s mother, didn’t see the hit coming right at him.

  “Dad!” he yelled, grabbing the wheel and swerving the car. The hit wasn’t head-on, but it was crushing. Loud. Throwing them all sideways as the oncoming vehicle drove into the driver’s side front fender.

  It all happened so fast Greg wasn’t even sure he was okay. He saw his father slumped over his airbag. Heard his mother’s screams. And pulled out his phone.

  * * *

  He remembered making the 911 call. He didn’t remember the conversation. His father wasn’t bleeding profusely from what he could see. Greg was more concerned about his mother. He’d never seen her cry before—except maybe in the movie theater.

  She’d gotten out of the car okay. Standing beside her husband’s door, she jerked on the handle but was unable to open it because of the front fender that was now smashed up into it. “Come on!” she cried as Greg reached her side, looking as best he could in the streetlight, to see that she wasn’t bleeding.

  “Mom.” He spoke firmly. “The ambulance is coming,” he told her, trying to lead her away from the car. His father was unconscious. He’d felt a strong pulse, though. He knew better than to move him. “Are you hurt?” he asked as she yanked once again on the door.

  Taking a hold of her hand, he pried her fingers from the handle and pulled her just a few inches away. Enough that he could get her attention. “Look at me,” he said, hating the shakiness he could hear in his voice. It would only alarm her further.

  It got her to look at him. “Are you okay?” he asked again. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  She rubbed her forehead. Shook her head. “I... No. I don’t think so,” she said. “Oh God, Greg, your father! Is he going to be okay? Is he?” Her voice rose as she clutched the lapel of Greg’s dress coat. Her other hand grabbed hold as well and she was clinging to him. Pulling on him. “Is he going to be okay?” she almost squealed.

  “I think so.” He couldn’t lie to her. But the pulse had been strong. He told her so. And as sirens sounded in the distance, she slumped against him, sobbing, and he wished Jasmine, with her seemingly endless emotional strength, was there to help him get through whatever was coming.

  Holding his mother, rubbing the back of her head, he choked up, too. Hardly aware when a couple of tears slid down his cheeks. Seeing his father like that...

  The man was in perfect health.

  A rock.

  Greg’s rock.

  Chapter 19

  Jasmine couldn’t fall asleep Friday night. She’d been texting with Greg until he’d said his parents were ready to head home. She’d thought he’d message her when he got there, but she didn’t hear from him. And didn’t know if their friendship had room for her to get nervous and follow up. Or if she’d seem like some kind of clinging ninny.

  Josh had been quiet that night during his call with Bella. He’d read to her. Kissed her good-night. Told her he loved her. But there’d been none of the playfulness that usually accompanied the ritual. Once Bella had been tucked in, he’d explained why.

  He’d heard from his lawyer, who wanted to meet with him on Monday to go over disclosures from the prosecutor’s office and talk about settlement.

  “He wants me to accept a plea, Jas,” he’d said. “He’s really putting on the pressure, and I just can’t do it.”

  “Then don’t.” Her reply had been instantaneous, because she understood. After all they’d been through, to admit to being an abuser when you weren’t one...her heart broke at even the thought of him doing that.

  He’d told her that his attorney thought there’d be less fallout in terms of his professional life if he settled things quietly, got counseling and moved on. He said he couldn’t lie about something so vile, though.

  And he couldn’t bear the thought of a DV conviction tied to his name for a minute, let alone for the rest of his life. The only way to have that charge go away was to win at trial.

  She wanted to tell him to stay strong and go to trial. She knew they’d win. But she didn’t. She did, however, fully support his stance, which she told him as strongly as she could. He’d met with the attorney who handled family law that day, someone Ryder had referred to them, and had a lot to talk to her about there, too. Different options. She didn’t even want him thinking about giving up his daughter.

  The whole idea of it was just too cruel.

  And then she didn’t hear from Greg when he got back to his parents’ place Friday night.

  He hadn’t said he’d text again. Or call.

  But it was the first night since their first kiss that he hadn’t done so.

  The first night since they’d made love.

  Sometime after two, she finally settled down. She’d told him she trusted him. She had to do so. For him. But for herself, and her family, too.

  She was going to get this one right.

  * * *

  Two hours of pacing later, of watching his mother go back and forth between the calm, contained woman he’d always known and a panicked, fear-filled, helpless near-invalid, Greg saw the doctor come toward them in the emergency waiting room.

  They were the only ones there at that hour of the morning.

  “He’s going to be all right,” the man said before the door to the room had even closed behind him. Both Greg and his mother had been checked out and cleared shortly after they’d arrived. “He’s awake and talking. Asking to see you both. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him that you’re both fine.” The man spoke with barely a breath, and Greg was intent on catching every word, while he held his mother up at his side.

  The second she heard the news, she’d slumped against him, burying her face in his rib cage.

  “He doesn’t remember the accident, and he’s got one hell of a headache,” Dr. Miller added. “He’s concussed, so we’re going to hold him overnight, but you can stay with him if you’d like. We’ll have him up in a room in about fifteen minutes or so. Someone will come get you.”

  “So...other than the concussion he’s fine?” Greg asked as his mother stood up, still looking elegant in her black lace dress and silk shawl as she looked at the doctor.

  “He’s bruised, going to be sore, maybe a bit whiplashed, but everything else checks out fine. His vitals are great.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Greg said, seeing the tears roll down his mother’s cheeks again. With a nod, Dr. Miller turned to go.

  “Doctor?” Greg’s mother called out. And when the man turned, she said, “Thank you,” in as regal a voice, albeit laced with sincerity and gratitude, as Greg had ever heard.

  * * *

  The night was long. Surreal. The three of them dozed intermittently in his father’s private room. They’d brought in a second hospital bed, and Greg had insisted his mother use it. He took the reclining chair. She adjusted the head of her bed to a sitting position. And Greg didn’t recline.

  Events from the accident on kept replaying in his mind. His mother’s lack of control. Not that he blamed her—at all—but he just never would have believed...

  His own shakiness.

  The way he’d been right there with his mother the whole time. Needing to be right there. Holding her. Dealing with the emotion, not just the facts.

  “What?” she asked, causing his father to look at him, too. It had to be three in the morning.

  “What, what?” he asked her.

  “You’re sitting over there, shaking your head.”

  Any other night he’d have come up with some generic yet truthful response. That night he couldn’t find one.

  “I just...the whole night...us, here now. We don’t do this,” he said.

  “Your father and I both stayed in the hospital with you the night you had your tonsils out,” his mother said.