She shrugged. “The ratings dipped, and the feature he’d done over the season break wasn’t getting good buzz. I didn’t blame him for being moody—it’s a bitch. Then I found out he was sleeping with his costar from that feature, and had been for months.”

After winding more pasta, she wagged her fork. “Which, when confronted, he blamed on me. I hadn’t been there for him, I wasn’t supportive enough. I didn’t like sex enough, name it. Toss in, it’s only sex, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, you’re not doing it right. You dumped him.”

“I did, but made the mistake of agreeing to keep it private while he was dealing with the series. It just didn’t matter to me, but it did to him. It mattered enough that my mother got wind, talked him into taking some whacks in the press. Getting ahead of things by claiming he dumped me because I was jealous, demanding, crazy, and so on.”

She picked up her wine. “So, three strikes.”

“Not from where I’m sitting. The first guy—Noah, right? It wasn’t your fault or his. You didn’t cause what happened to him; he couldn’t handle what happened to him. I’m giving him a pass on that, since he was young and it seems like it was all too much at the time. The second son of a bitch? A lot of women get fooled by men who’ll hit women. A lot of men manage to hide that long enough to cement a bond. And you walked away, you took action. You did it all right. Not on you. The last guy? A lot of people end up with people who turn out to be cheaters and liars. And again, you walked.”

“It’s a crappy track record, Dillon.”

“Two out of three turned out to be fucking bastards, and you walked away. You said you ran into the first one and resolved things. Is he a fucking bastard?”

“No, the opposite.”

“Is there more of this?”

“Yes.”

“I can get it,” he said when she started to get up.

“Presentation.” She rose, went to plate him a second helping.

“Do you want my track record?”

She looked over at him as she arranged the pasta. He sat so relaxed—and confident, she realized—at her pretty table.

“It’s not required, but of course I do.”

“Not going into details because there’ve been more than three women I’ve slept with.”

She tried a Lily Morrow arch of eyebrows. “How many more?”

“What are numbers anyway? I’ve dumped, been dumped. There was one I came close with, but I never tripped over the line into really loving her. They mattered, every one of them. Maybe I screwed up, maybe she screwed up. Mostly, it just didn’t stick, and we parted ways. I never cheated, because that’s weak. If you want somebody else, you say so, you don’t cheat. I’ve never hit a woman, and I hope to Christ I’ve never mistreated one, because there are other ways to hurt somebody than with your fist.”

“Yes, there are.”

“I’ll make mistakes with you. Bound to. You’ll make mistakes with me.”

“Bound to,” she agreed, and brought over his second helping.

“But I don’t hurt people, not deliberately. Not true,” he said as he rolled another forkful. “I’ve punched a few guys along the way, and that was deliberate. But things happen.”

She remembered the way he’d rushed through her door when he’d heard her scream. Yes, she imagined he’d punched a few guys along the way.

“I suppose they do.”

“Anyway, I’ll make you that promise because you need it. Whatever happens between us, you’re part of our family. That’s not going to change. And if you ever manage to shake me off, especially now that I’ve eaten this, I’m still coming to hang with Hugh and flirt with Consuela and Lily.”

“You smooth me out, Dillon.”

“That’s fine. At the dinner table.”

Laughing, she sat back with her wine. “I’ll give you a chance to stir me back up, but I think two helpings of pasta equals a walk on the beach.”

“It’s damn good pasta. When we get married I’m going to expect it once a week.”

“So noted. It’s cooled off a bit. I’m going to get a sweater for that walk.” She rose. “After the walk we can have dessert in bed.”

“That schedule works fine for me.”

“Be right back.”

When she went upstairs, he rose to clear as his ladies would have expected.

And he thought of Cate and the three men who’d had the chance to love and treasure her. The three men who’d blown that chance.

He wouldn’t blow that chance. He’d give her a little time to understand he wouldn’t.

If someone out there killed to cause her grief and pain and trouble, if someone threatened her, well, he’d find a way to take care of that. To take care of her.

He knew no other way to be.

The first thing Michaela noticed when they brought Sparks into the interrogation room was he’d kept his looks.

An older version, yes, but Sparks retained that movie star aura, the middle-aged leading man type. Character lines fanned from his eyes, gray threaded through his hair, but he’d found a way to maintain both his face and his gym-rat build.

No shackles, she noted, as he wasn’t considered dangerous.

The hell he wasn’t, she thought. The cop in her smelled dangerous the instant he came into the room.

He sat down across from her, acknowledged Red with a nod, then looked straight into her eyes.

“I didn’t expect to see either of you again.”

“Our time’s limited, so we’ll get right to it. What do Frank Denby and Charles Scarpetti have in common?”

His brows drew together, a thoughtful yet puzzled look. “Obviously I know Denby, but the other doesn’t ring right off. Denby was a stupid mistake inside a colossal one for me, but—”

He broke off, held up a finger. “I got it. That’s the high-priced, fancy lawyer Charlotte hired to get her off. Didn’t work out like she wanted, but she got off pretty light for somebody who arranged her own kid’s snatch.”

“They’re both dead.”

“I heard about Denby. The guy always was an asshole, and from what I heard didn’t make any friends inside. Ended up shanked.”

“Did you have contact with Denby inside?” As Red spoke, Sparks shifted his attention. “Talk about old times?”

“Hell no. You know how big this place is. We weren’t in the same building.”

“I know how big this place is, and I know there are ways.”

“Why would I want to talk to that asshole? At first I was just pissed, so yeah, if it had been easy, I might’ve had some words for him. Look, I did what I did, I’m not excusing it, but like I said, stupid mistake. Denby’s a bigmouthed junkie. Hang with somebody like that in here, you get your ass kicked, or worse. You’ve got to get through it, and you need to be alive to get out when your time’s done. What happened to the lawyer?”

“Murdered.”

“I don’t get it. Denby gets shanked inside, some fancy lawyer gets killed outside. What’s it have to do with me?”