He leans on the wall and pulls me against him, his hands gliding up my back and molding me to him. “I don’t want to leave.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said, and I meant it at the time. My irst instinct when you were in danger was to get you the hell away from anything and everything that could steal you away from me.”

“Including your past.”

“No, Sara. When I brought you here, I was all in, and I still am. My need to do things at my own speed isn’t about hesitation, it’s about how I have to deal with certain events in my life.

Wanting us to leave Paris was about keeping you safe. I don’t like this Neuville and Ella situation.”

“We need to stay and see through what we’ve started.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve spent the past two hours battling my need to protect you, and the many reasons I wanted us here now. Next week . . .” He looks away, his jaw tensing, before he turns back to me. “Nothing is as important as your safety.”

What happens next week? I open my mouth to ask, but his ingers snake into my hair, and his eyes glow with determination.

“I have people working on this Ella and Neuville situation, digging up information. If I ind out anything that I think puts you in danger, we’re leaving. Period.”

“Chris—”

He kisses me, hard and fast. “Nonnegotiable. And if you take unnecessary risks, or try to play investigator yourself, I swear to God, I’ll drug you and put you on a plane, if that’s what it takes to get you out of here.”

Storm clouds lurk in his eyes, threatening to consume him again; something about next week has set him of again. So we’ll deal with it next week. Right now I just want him to smile, so I smile and run my ingers over the newly forming stubble on his jaw. “Good thing you’re so sexy when you act like a caveman.”

He stares at me for a minute and then scoops me up and heads toward the door. “I’ll show you caveman.”

I bite my lip, pleased with his reaction. He’s not smiling, but I’m pretty sure we both will be soon.

Eighteen

Chris and I spend the rest of Friday in various ways of being na**d together, breaking only for food and conversation. Saturday starts just as wonderfully. Chris and I wake up together, eat together, laugh together. We dress casually and plan to hit some museums in the afternoon.

Midmorning, he heads to his studio to paint while I settle into my favorite chair in our bedroom, chatting with a worried Chantal while I watch the unending drizzle outside the window. Afterward, I have a chat with the business attorney about my venture. Though Chris set it up for me, he knows how important my own identity is to me, and that was the end of his involvement. I fall more in love with him every second.

When my call ends, I rush to Chris’s gallery to share my excitement over how easy it will be to ramp up my new business. I’ll need a name for it and already ideas are popping into my head.

I hear his murmured voice to the far right of the gallery and I follow the sound to a short, enclosed stairwell leading to another room. I head down and see Chris sitting behind a silver and gray desk. There’s a massive mural of a dragon behind him on the wall, and I gape at the amazing work he’s created. I can’t believe I haven’t asked to see the dragons he’d painted early in his career. He’d told me he keeps them here in Paris.

“I don’t care how it happened, as long as she’s not a suspect,” Chris says into the phone, glancing up and motioning me forward. “Just get her passport reissued.”

Chris falls into listening mode and I walk around the desk, leaning on the edge next to him as he says, “Of course, we’ll go to the embassy for the paperwork. Just tell us when.” He takes my hand and smiles up at me, and I smile back as I digest what I’ve just learned. I’m not a suspect in Rebecca’s murder, and my passport situation seems to be in the process of being resolved.

Add to that my business starting to take shape, and so far, today is a much better day than yesterday.

“I have another call coming in, Stephen,” Chris announces.

“Let me call you back—or better yet, call me back when you have Sara’s paperwork in order.”

He ends the call and glances at me. “Just one more minute. This will be fast.” I nod and he hits the button on his phone to answer his incoming call. He immediately says, “I hear Garner Neuville has been making a showing there on the weekends.”

I listen eagerly.

A female voice replies, “He might.”

Something about the voice sends unease through me.

“That’s a yes,” Chris replies, sounding irritated.

“Not a yes, but a ‘make it worth my while,’ ” the female replies, and my chest lutters with the suggestive comment.

Chris squeezes my hand, willing me to look at him. “I’m not in the mood for your games, Isabel.” His tone is biting in a way I never hear from him. “Call me when he shows up. And don’t tell him you did it.” He kisses my hand.

“It’s been weeks since he’s been in, Chris.” She sounds snappy now.

“Then he’s due a visit,” Chris replies, and hangs up. He reaches for me and pulls me in front of him. “She’s just a contact to try to get to Neuville. I’m making sure Neuville doesn’t get to screen me out. We have mutual acquaintances, and I’m putting them to use to get a one-on-one.”

I nod and settle my hand on his jaw. “Yes. I know, and I appreciate all you’re doing.” I let my ingers trail downward, his one-day stubble rasping against the softness of my ingers.

His eyes narrow. “But?”

“I’m not jealous, if that’s what you think. I just . . . I felt this pinch in my chest, hearing her taunt you like that. I’m not sure why.”

His hand settles on my upper thigh. “You’re in a strange country, and you’ve had a week of hell. I’d say that’s a pretty good reason.”

I lean in and kiss him, wondering why this is bothering me.

“I love that I can say anything to you.”

He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, warmth radiating in his voice when he says, “I love that you say what’s on your mind, rather than get upset. How was your call?”

I ease back fully onto the desk. “It was good. Really good.

I’ll tell you about it, but is there any news on Ella at all?”

“Not yet. I’m working every angle I can. I have people looking into everything, from any changes to Neuville’s inancial portfolio to any trips out of the country. Speaking of which, your passport situation should be in order in the next few days.

Stephen’s been assured it was an administrative error.”

“And yet the embassy questioned me and knew about Rebecca?”

“I said the same thing, but what matters is you’re not a suspect, and they’re clearing your passport.” His hands settle on my hips. “Tell me about your call with the attorney.” I relax and share all the details, and when I inish, he stands up and laces his ingers with mine. “I want to show you something.”

Our destination turns out to be an empty room on the same loor as his gallery. “You can use this as an oice.”

“It’s huge.” The size of three corner oices, with its own archway window.

“You can use it to display the art you buy and haven’t sold,”

he suggests.

The idea gets me excited all over again. “Only if you promise to paint me a dragon of my own. The one in your oice is amazing. When do I get to see the collection you said you store here?”

He pulls me close. “Next weekend. I want us to go to the place my parents left me, right outside the city. That’s where it’s at.”

I immediately think of how he’d started to say next week and stopped himself, when we’d been talking about his past.

This trip is about what he’d almost told me yesterday; I know it deep in my gut. There’s something about this trip that will reveal one of his dreaded secrets.

I step close and wrap my arms around him. “Next weekend it is,” I say, and I don’t miss the shadows in his eyes before he kisses me.

It’s near seven on Saturday evening when Chris and I inally break away from one of the staf members raving about his work at the Louvre. I tug my rain jacket closer and Chris tucks my hand in his as we step into the elevator leading to the parking garage.

“I still can’t believe I saw the Mona Lisa,” I say with a blissful sigh. “It’s much smaller than I imagined it to be.”

“It has a lot of hype,” Chris comments, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and turning me toward him.

“It’s the Mona Lisa.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmurs, acting as unimpressed as he had earlier. “Where do you want to go tomorrow?”

The elevator opens and our hands automatically meld together, as they have all day. “Back here,” I say. “I love this place.

There’s so much I haven’t seen yet, I could spend days here.”

“It’s a special place, and if you want to come back, then we’ll come back.”

I glance up at him, and my stomach lutters. The man has utterly charmed me today with his desire to be just another tourist, not the famous artist he is. Of course, it didn’t work.

People know him far too well in the Paris art community.

The Porsche 911 comes into view, and Chris has just clicked the locks open when his cell phone rings. He stops and digs it from his pocket, glancing at the number, and tension rolls across his features.

He answers the call. “Is he there?” he asks without pre-amble, and listens before saying, “I’ll be there in ifteen minutes.

Make sure he doesn’t leave.” He grimaces at whatever is said to him, and adds, “You’re resourceful. Figure it out.” Hanging up, he stufs his phone in his pocket.

“Neuville?” I ask immediately.

“Yes. Take the car home and I’ll meet you in an hour.” He tries to hand me the keys.

I refuse to take them. “I’m going with you.”

“Forget it, Sara.”

“I can’t drive in Paris traic. And even if I did, I can’t sit around at home and wait for answers,” I argue, pressing my hand to his chest. “I’ll go insane. You know I will. Besides, I’ll know things about Ella you won’t. I’ll catch lies you can’t.”

His lips thin. “Sara—”

“It’s not like this will put me on his radar, Chris. I’m already on it. I’ll be with you. I’ll be safe.”

He stares down at me for several intense seconds, his expression impassive while I hold my breath and wait for his reply.

Finally he scrubs a hand down his face and studies the ceiling above me. “You do exactly what I say, when I say it. It won’t be for no reason.”

Relief washes over me. “Yes. I’ll do whatever you say.”

He studies me, his eyes glinting steel. “You never do whatever I say.”

“I will this time.” And I really try to mean it.

Not far from the Louvre, we pull up to a parking meter on a street that looks like any other side street I’ve seen in Paris. The same white, concrete, stucco-looking buildings lined up side by side. The same intimate sidewalks line narrow two-way roads paved with oversized bricks.

I don’t see any retail shops or restaurants, but there seems to be a valet parking cars at a building across the street from us.

“Where are we?”

“A private dinner club,” he says. “We’re avoiding the valet because we need to talk before we go inside.”

My stomach lutters. “About what?”

“Isabel and I have a history.”

Despite expecting it, the announcement still rattles me.

“What does that mean?”

“It means she’s good with a whip and at one point in my life I spent far too much time appreciating that skill.” His tone is steady, unemotional.

I feel myself go pale. This is what I’d sensed when he’d been talking to her on the phone. It wasn’t the existence of Isabel herself that had bothered me, but something in Chris’s reaction to her. I desperately try to cut through the shadows, to read his expression, but fail. Finally, I say, “What does ‘far too much time’

mean?”

“It means it was an addiction and she was my drug dealer.”

Acid burns in my throat and I remember him once telling me there had been a time when the beatings were all that got him from one day to the next day. “You say that so non-chalantly.”

“Because it doesn’t matter, Sara, and neither does she. She was just the person holding the whip.”

“How often did you see her?” How often had she beaten him?

“It’s the past.”

But it’s not the past or Dylan wouldn’t have driven him to Mark’s club to get whipped again. “How often?”

“Too often and for about ive years. After that, I made the mistake of going back to her during my bad moments.” He leans close to me and his expression softens, and his voice turns tender. “Sara.” He runs a hand over my cheek and lets it fall away. “She didn’t do anything to me I didn’t ask her to do.”

And yet he’d called her his drug dealer. I don’t believe he’d call the random woman in Mark’s club who’d used a whip on him the same thing.

“We have to go inside before Neuville leaves. Isabel will try to push your buttons. I need to know you won’t let her.”