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“I love you,” I sobbed, not sure why I was crying. “I love you, I love you.”

Tyler’s touch was gentle but firm. Still in the treacle of afterglow, he pulled out and rolled me over, looking at me.

“Hush,” he said, wiping the tears from my face. “That’s enough. You need to rest now. You’ve had a long day.”

“I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear it,” I said, trying to dry my eyes. “But I do. I love you.”

“Baby, I’ve seen so much,” Tyler said. “I’ve seen the very depraved depths of the human soul. I can’t—I can’t love anyone. I’m too damaged. People are too damaged.”

“Do you think I’m damaged?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Depraved?”

“Absolutely not. Where are you—”

“Then what?” I asked. “What’s to keep you from accepting my love? From admitting that you care for me, too?”

He shook his head. “I just can’t,” he said. “There’s too much at stake. That professional distance we talked about the first night we met?”

“There never was any,” I said. “Not even from the beginning.”

“I just can’t help myself around you,” he said, fascinated with some point around my lips, unable to meet my eyes. “I want you more and more with each passing day. But you’re in danger, and I have to make sure you’re protected.”

“I always feel safe when I’m with you,” I said.

“Then let me protect you,” he said. “I can’t afford distractions. A distraction might mean your life or, God forbid, that we lose a way in to get your son.”

“I’m not trying to distract you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Tyler heaved a sigh and drew me into his warm embrace, surrounding me on every side with muscles. He kissed the top of my head.

“Don’t be sorry for how you feel,” he said. “This is my problem, not yours. You’ll stay here as long as we need to. I’d like to have you here. I was just joking about the roommate thing. Mostly. You should know that I have disgusting habits, such as leaving dishes in the sink.”

“I think that’s something I can cope with,” I said, sniffling and smiling.

Over the next few weeks, Tyler escorted me to and from work and accompanied me while I ate. To stave off any suspicion, he encouraged me to tell anyone who asked that he was my boyfriend. It was a fun game to play, even if it wasn’t truthful. I had no idea what Tyler was to me. I’d hired him, so he was my employee. I trusted him, so he was my confidant. We shared a bed, so he was my lover. He was all that, and somehow more, even if we couldn’t admit it to each other.

While I was safely at work with plenty of customers around and my two assistants, Tyler worked. He spent long hours in his home office, poring over documents or scrolling through pages and pages of scowling faces on his computer.

When he was done for the day, or at least grudgingly satisfied with whatever point he’d reached, we’d make love, or go out to eat, or order in. We fell into an easy schedule, almost as if we’d been doing this all our lives. Tyler and I were completely compatible, and we made each other happy. It was almost as if we were really dating—even though, I had to constantly remind myself, he wasn’t capable of feeling anything for me beyond physical attraction.

      Sad as it was to admit, I was used to that kind of contact. It was exactly what I felt toward my customers at Mama’s nightclub. Even with the regulars, I never let myself feel more than physical attraction toward them, even if one of them said cute things or the other always tipped me incredibly well.

It was sad, but effective. I tried to close off my feelings toward Tyler and accept the fact that he could never feel anything for me. It was hard, but it felt necessary, even if it was messy and ugly and didn’t seem to do a damn thing about how attracted I was to him.

Besides that, everything was just fine. Tyler said we were building a case, my boutique was thriving so well that opening a second location was becoming less of a dream and more of a necessity, and I was spending every waking moment with a gorgeous man whose every part belonged to me … except his heart.

Yes, everything was fine until three months later, when my apartment burned down.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Shimmy. Oh, thank God.”

“Jazz?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m staying with a—with a friend,” I said, sitting up in bed and feeling groggy. Tyler had disappeared to parts unknown; his condo was silent. “What’s going on?”

“It’s your apartment,” Jasmine said. “It burned sometime last night. The firefighters—they said that if there had been somebody in the apartment at the time of the blaze, they wouldn’t have survived.”

“Shit,” I said, rubbing my curls and suddenly, nastily awake.

“You’ve got to introduce me to your friend,” Jasmine said. “I’m going to give him a big kiss on the lips for saving your life.”

“Did they say what started the fire?” I asked, getting out of bed and setting out my clothes.

“No,” Jasmine said, “but it was a total loss. Did you have anything important in there?”

“Just a good portion of my wardrobe,” I said, eyeing my clothes critically. I’d just been downsized. “Nothing that can’t be replaced.” As long as I had my evidence, the heart necklace around my neck, and Tyler, I was going to be okay. I knew that we were getting closer every day to getting my son. And then life really would be perfect.

“Are you going to come down here to see the damage?” Jasmine asked. “There’s an insurance lady here asking about you.”

“Lord, I bet she’s sick of me,” I said.

“Sick of you?”

“Well, about a month ago, somebody put a brick through the display window of my boutique. And now this. I hope she doesn’t think I’m trying to pull something.”

Jasmine was quiet for so long I was afraid I’d dropped the call.

“Shimmy, are you okay?”

I didn’t want to worry my friend. She had a lot on her plate already.

“Everything’s going to be just fine,” I assured her. “Don’t you concern yourself about it.”

“I can’t help but worry about you,” she said. “I know you’re doing everything you can to get your son back. I just want you to be safe. Take care of yourself so that your son has his mommy, okay?”

“It’s only a matter of time until that day, Jazz,” I said, smiling to myself. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

I got dressed and ready with still no sign of Tyler. Where was he? I punched his number into my phone and waited as it rang and rang.

Nothing. His voicemail popped on and I ended the call.

I couldn’t be expected to stay here if my apartment was a smoldering ruin, could I? There was business I had to attend to.

I caught a cab down at street level and directed it to my old apartment. Without all the twists and turns that Tyler had taken that night, it was practically a ten minute commute between our homes.

I was thankful to see that the apartment building was still standing. I would’ve felt incredibly guilty if anyone had been harmed because of what I had going on in my life.

I spoke to my insurance agent about what paperwork we’d have to complete in order to start recouping my losses.

“I’ve gotta tell you, Ms. Crosby,” she said. “You’re the unluckiest person I’ve ever met. First your store, then this. Are you sure someone’s not out to get you?”

The last statement was intended as a joke, but it made me shudder. Being here made it real, seeing the scorch marks out of my window in the building. I realized that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be here.

“Right?” I said, laughing. “I’m going to have to get a bodyguard or something.”

If my bodyguard knew where I was, I would be in big trouble.

I turned back to peer up at my scorched apartment and he was there, standing in front of me as if it had simply taken me this long to see him.

“I tried to call you,” I said as he glowered at me, trying to head off his ire.

“And I tried to return your call,” he said, pointing at my purse. I retrieved my phone and saw that it had four missed calls, three voicemails, and a text message—all from Tyler.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I guess you’ve heard about my apartment.”

“I guess I have,” he said, no less furious.

“And I guess we’d better be going.”

“You guess correctly,” he said, hustling me to his car, his eyes darting around the crowd of people milling about the crime scene. He got me into the passenger seat and shut the door before jogging around to the driver’s side and hopping in. His eyes never left the crowd, looking at faces even as we started driving.

“Were you followed here?” he demanded, glancing at me as we got onto the street.

“No—I mean, I don’t think so,” I said, cringing. “I took a cab. Nobody knows I’m staying at your place. Oh, except Jasmine, but she doesn’t know who you are or where you live.”

“It was stupid to come here,” he said, splitting his attention between the street in front of him and his rearview mirror. We started with the loopy driving, cutting down an alleyway at one point, to ensure we weren’t being followed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But Jasmine thought I was dead and I had to talk to the insurance lady again.”

“Are either of those things worth your life?” Tyler asked. “Are they?”

“No, I guess not,” I said, feeling a little petulant. He didn’t have to be angry with me. I was the one who’d just lost her home.

“Where were you, anyway?” I asked.

“Doing my job, Shimmy!” he exploded. “Investigating! Trying to keep you safe while you go to the very place your enemies want you to go to!”

I wouldn’t stand being talked down to by Tyler. I couldn’t stand it.

“Pull the car over.”

“No.”

“Stop the fucking car!”

“No fucking way!”

We glared at each other.

“You just missed your building,” I said, watching it vanish in our rearview mirror.

“We’re not going back to the condo,” Tyler said. “I’m going to show you something. I probably waited a little too long, but hopefully now you’ll understand the danger you’re in.”

I didn’t have long to wonder what he was talking about as we approached the street where the Paxton’s lived.

“Tyler,” I hissed. “The restraining order. If anyone sees me …”

“No one’s going to see you,” he said. “Lean your seat back so you can just barely look out the window. The glass is tinted.”

I did as he said, and he slowed down a little bit.

“Who’s that thug on the porch?” I asked, staring at the beefy man posted at the front door.

“Security,” Tyler said. “There’s another guy at the back of the house. Every ten minutes, they rotate, walking around the edges of the house to make sure there aren’t any shenanigans. There are ten different security guys that I’ve been able to count. Plus the camera at the front door. Plus the van full of thugs we’re passing right now. These guys are always here. When they think nobody’s watching, they’ll unload boxes from the moving truck we’re passing right now.

“Other cars come and pick up other boxes. Yesterday, I saw an interesting thing. Guy walking in, seems pretty important, surrounded by heavies. I took a couple of photos, started doing a face recognition program once I got back home. Guess who the Paxton’s have paired up with?”

I swallowed. “Who?”

“Guess,” Tyler said pleasantly. “You’ve gotten so good at it lately.”

“Please don’t be mean to me,” I said, tears springing up to my eyes. “I said I was sorry. I lost my apartment and I wanted to go see it. That was all. I understand now that it was a silly thing to do.”

“Silly?” Tyler repeated. “No. It was a goddamned stupid thing to do. The Paxton’s are in bed with one of the most violent cartels in Mexico, smuggling drugs throughout the United States. They’d kill you without so much as blinking.”

“What do you care?” I demanded, losing my temper even as the first tear rolled down my cheek. “You don’t give a damn about me. You could never love anyone, you said. Why do you give a fuck about what I do? Are you worried about getting paid? Would it help if I gave you an advance?”

Tyler sucked in air and clamped his jaw shut even as he ground his teeth together. I could plainly see that he was trying not to come unhinged on me. He drove off, going back on his looping journey back through the city until we finally arrived at his condo.

I moved to get out of the car, but he laid his hand on my thigh, stopping me.

“I do so give a damn about you,” he said. “More than I’d like to admit. But I can’t love you.”

“Why?” I said. “What can be so hard about loving me?”

Tyler stroked my cheek, traced my jaw line, and lost his fingers in my curls.

“Because if I lost you, it would kill me,” he said, his voice quiet.

It was then that I think both of us realized that he did love me. He did love me, and it terrified him.

“I have a plan for getting the final nail in the coffin,” Tyler said. “But I need another person.”

“I’ll do anything,” I said. “You know I will.”

“That’s what scares me,” he admitted.

“Tell me,” I said. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been willing to do, is for my son. Fucking grizzly bear mama, remember?”

“I remember,” Tyler said, smiling grimly. “There’s a tiny window just at basement level of the house, on the right side if you’re looking at it from the street. It’s obscured by a rose bush, but I’m guessing the basement is where they keep the cocaine—or whatever they’re smuggling. Cocaine’s where the money is, but it could be pot, meth, anything.”

“You need me to get the window open and get inside,” I said. “You’re too big to get into the window.”

“Yes,” Tyler said. “Are you sure you don’t want to quit the fashion business? You’d make a hell of a detective.”

“I could be your partner,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“You don’t have to get in the window,” he said. “If you can get some photos or audio of whatever operation they’re staging down there just by sticking the camera in a little bit, do that. I’ll be serving as your lookout, ready to kick ass should one of the security detail spot you.”

“This is the nail in the coffin,” I said. “If we get something good enough, this’ll be it. The courts can’t ignore this kind of evidence. Their lawyer will be powerless. And I’ll get Trevor back.”

“It’s going to be dangerous,” Tyler said. “I won’t lie to you.”

“Danger I’ve done before,” I said. “Danger I can do again. This is my son, Tyler. Everything for him. Anything for him.”

Tyler swallowed and traced my cheek as if he were trying to commit it to memory.

“We’ll wait until dark,” he said. “You have to do exactly what I say.”

I leaned forward and kissed him deeply, hoping I could convey everything in the one gesture. I loved Tyler. I was thankful for him. I knew that he was scared, but we were together. We could do this. We could make it. We had to make it.

Soon, the kissing had morphed into something else. Tyler pushed the driver’s seat back and I straddled his lap, kissing and kissing and kissing. The way we held each other, the way that we clawed at each other’s skin was desperate, carnal, needy, frightened. We wanted to take comfort in each other. It was all we had to lean on right now. It was everything.