I left all of that behind. I liked Denver. I liked the laid-back vibe. I liked the monotony. I liked the predictability. I liked that I could walk to my car after my shift at the diner and not have to worry about taking a knife in the ribs or getting a revolver shoved in my back. I liked that I didn’t have to shake my ass or get naked to pay my bills. I liked that here, soccer dads were just that, and weren’t secretly banging hookers in the back room or gambling the family’s grocery money away at an illegal poker game. Most importantly I liked that I didn’t have to look my biggest addiction, my worst temptation, in the eye every single day and pretend like I didn’t want him. Here I didn’t have to deny that I had been infatuated with him for years. I was foolishly obsessed with this particular devil in a designer suit and I knew he was absolutely detrimental not only to my safety but to the thing I valued above all else . . . my independence.

After a childhood spent evading the hands of my mother’s overzealous and unhinged boyfriends and barely escaping the clutches of a sick and twisted stepfather, and too many years working my ass off—literally—to make a life for myself, I could never risk letting myself care for Nassir the way I wanted to because I knew that if I did, I would become nothing more than his, and I refused to be any man’s possession or accessory.

When the opportunity arose to take off without an explanation or without looking like I was running from him and the promise and future I saw so clearly in his eyes, I grabbed it. Ran away with both my heart and my tail tucked between my legs. But now he was here in this fragile and predictable paradise and I wanted to stab him with the broken pen and jump in his lap and put my mouth on his smirking lips all at the same time.

“You’re here, Key. Where else would I be?”

His inky-black hair was longer than I remembered, touching the collar of his shirt, and his voice was even smoother and more musical than I recalled. He spoke with just the barest hint of an accent, which no one could pin down the origins of, and Nassir wasn’t the kind of guy who offered up even the tiniest sliver of personal information. He was a beautiful tawny color no matter what time of the year, so I always assumed that with his dark hair and golden complexion, he had to have come from somewhere in the Middle East. He never confirmed or denied my suspicions. All I knew was that he’d landed in the Point when I had just started stripping, and from the second he stepped into the scene, he had been at the center of all the action. He had also always been the one danger I was smart enough to steer clear of. A task that grew harder and harder the older I got, and the more aware I became of him and the pull he had over me.

“You shouldn’t be here. I don’t want you here.” I hated that my voice dipped. I was never a very good liar and I never wanted him to know he was my greatest weakness even though he had never hidden the fact that I was his.

His dark eyebrows lowered over those golden eyes and the smirk fell off his too pretty mouth. Luckily, another table called me over and I had to run back to the kitchen. It gave me a much-needed minute to get my head back on straight. I should have known that just the sight of him after all these months would be enough to throw me totally off my stride. He was that impressive. That consuming. That hard to quit.

I was headed back toward his table with a mug and a pot of coffee when a light hand landed on my arm. I looked at the pretty redheaded cop that came in all the time. Sometimes with her partner or other cops, but more often than not with her boyfriend. They must have lived close by because she was often going to work when he was getting off. He ran a bar, or a couple of them, here in town, so their hours were opposite, but they seemed to be making it work. At first I couldn’t believe someone that looked like her carried a badge on purpose or that she seemed to be genuinely interested in being my friend. She mentioned that we had a mutual acquaintance that had asked her to check up on me when I first got to town, but now she seemed to be curious about me all on her own. She was so lovely and fun, plus her man was a charmer. Blond and way too handsome for his own good, he reminded me of an old flame I had back in the Point. I was intimately acquainted with men like him, only the pretty cop’s boyfriend didn’t have the same kind of ruthless edge the Point bred in the men I was familiar with. But the southern charmer had his own kind of dangerous and sexy aura that led me to believe his story would be an interesting one if he bothered to share it.

“Are you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.” She was sweet but she was looking at me with cop eyes, and there weren’t enough hours in a day to try to explain to her all the things that were wrong with Nassir sitting at that battered little table in this run-down diner in Colorado. He should be anywhere but here.

“Yeah, just busy.” I gave her a weak smile and stopped to fill up a few more cups of coffee before going back to Nassir’s table with resolve. I took the mug, set it in front of him and filled it up. I nudged it toward him with a scowl.

“Coffee’s on the house. Drink it and leave. I don’t have anything else to say to you.”

He looked at the coffee and then back up at me. His eyebrows shot up and the smirk returned to his mouth. It was such an arrogant look. I wanted to smack it off his beautiful face.

“Well, can you sit down for a minute? I have plenty to say to you.”

I shook my head before he was even done speaking. “No. My section is full. I’m working. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. The Point is dead to me. You’re dead to me.” My voice dropped again as I threw the words out. I really should be a better liar. I used to sell the illusion that I wanted sex, that I loved grabby hands and clawing fingers all over my body every single day, and I did it with a purpose. I could be whoever I needed to be as long as it benefited me in the long run. For a while I told myself that once I had enough money saved up, I would do something good with it, something that would help girls like myself that had no other options, but instead I took the coward’s way out and ran. I was so scared of losing me that I didn’t give a second thought to the good I could do or to the women that needed me back home. Convincing this man and myself that I hated him was a battle I had never been able to win. “I left Honor behind, Nassir. She’s six feet under.”

He leaned forward in the booth and that sexy, expensive scent that seemed to naturally be a part of him almost brought me to my knees. I wanted to inhale him, to absorb him . . . and that was the problem.