“Will do,” she told him.

The key was still in the outside lock. Grady removed it and used it to lock the door from the inside. Vanessa smiled and held out her hand. “I’m guessing we won’t need this until the morning.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you here by yourself.” He walked into the living room, his jacket over one shoulder, his tie undone. “I can sleep down here.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” She met his eyes from the doorway. She wanted to put the events of the evening behind her. She’d had all she could handle of being afraid and being upset. Tomorrow, her shop would still be a mess and Grady’s rental car would still be smashed and there’d still be someone out there who was really angry with her for reasons she couldn’t know. But tonight…

“I don’t think Gus checked under the bed or any of the closets. What if someone’s hiding up there?”

“Good point.” He draped the jacket over the back of a chair. “I don’t want you lying awake all night worrying that someone will pop out from that closet. I’d better come up with you and check.”

She turned off the lamp and started toward the stairs.

“Do you have a basement?” he asked.

“What?” She frowned.

“A basement. You know, an excavated area under the first floor.”

“Yes, I have a basement.”

“Is the door inside or outside?”

“It’s right through there.” She stood on the bottom step, her hands on her hips, and watched him disappear into the kitchen.

He was back in less than a minute. “You could use a better lock on that door. It’s just a slide bolt. You should have dead bolts that require keys on it and the back door.”

“I have a dead bolt on the back door.”

“It has a latch that’s located right under the glass panes.”

She started up the steps slowly, glancing over her shoulder. He was following her, his eyes on her face.

“So?” she asked.

“So someone could break the glass, reach in, turn the latch, and just like that, they’re in.”

“Oh, thanks for that mood breaker.” She stopped midway up the stairwell and glared at him.

He came up behind her, chuckling softly. “If the mood is broken, we’ll just have to find a way to get it back again.”

“Think you’re up to it?” She tugged on both ends of his tie.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

She laughed and led him by the tie to her room facing the back of the house. Three arched windows framed a bay, and moonlight streamed in through the sheer curtains. She backed toward the bed, then stopped at the side and raised her hands to undo her dress.

“Are you sure you aren’t too rattled from the break-in and everything…?”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight. You’re here to protect me, right?” She dropped the dress and it puddled on the floor at her feet. “Besides, do I look rattled to you?”

“You look beautiful. In or out of that dress.”

He reached out for her and she walked into his arms. His hands slid up and down her back, and she unbuttoned his shirt, pulling the tails out from the waist. She pulled up the T-shirt and ran her hands over his bare chest, then fell back on the bed, taking him with her. His mouth met hers halfway to the pillow, and she parted her lips to his tongue that thrust inside and teased the corners of her mouth. His hand reached for her left breast, but she moved it, offering the right one instead. She felt crazed with wanting him, could not seem to get close enough. She felt as if she were on fire, inside and out, everywhere he touched seeming to burn. His mouth moved to her throat, and she all but purred as his lips made an agonizingly slow descent to her shoulder, then lower, and she arched her back, but when his mouth sought her breast, she moved slightly to offer the right one and he took it between eager lips. She moaned far back in her throat and reached down to tug on his waistband.

“As good as you look in this tux,” she gasped, “I think it’s time to retire it for the night.”

Later, she would wonder how he’d managed to undress without his mouth ever leaving her skin, she was so totally lost in sensations she barely recalled ever having had before. She wrapped her legs around his and drew him inside almost frantically while his mouth drove her to the edge of madness. Wordlessly, the rhythm natural, he began to move inside her, slowly at first. She took him in deeper, as the pace increased, until she could no longer tell her cries from his. He slowed for a moment and raised his head to look into her eyes, then drove them both to completion on waves of sensation that she thought would never end.

He nuzzled the left side of her face without speaking, and before she realized it, he’d run his hand from her neck to her breast. His hand stopped moving, then slowly, with one finger, he traced the jagged line that ran from the nipple to just under her collarbone.

“What happened here?” he asked.

“I, ah, walked into a knife.” She moved his hand away and pulled the blanket around her, but he pushed it down again.

“Who was holding it when you walked into it?” His voice was calm but she detected something disquieting below the surface.

She pushed him away and sat up.

“Ness?” He sat up with her. “Who did this to you?”

Her insides twisted and her stomach knotted and she couldn’t get any words out. She hadn’t wanted him to see, hadn’t wanted anyone to ever see the disfiguring scar that had kept her from wearing clothes that didn’t cover it, had kept her from getting naked those few times she’d almost let a guy get close. Why had she dropped her guard with Grady? Now that he saw, now that he knew, he’d be outta there.

Yeah, well, he was leaving anyway, she reminded herself.

“Vanessa, look at me.” He turned her face to his. “Tell me who did this to you. What’s this scar…?”

She wet her lips and took a breath.

“Just something I could have avoided if I’d been smarter and faster. It’s not a very interesting story.”

“Let’s say I’m interested.” When she didn’t respond, he reached over her to turn on the light on the bedside table.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

He sank down next to her.

“All right. But from what I can feel, I’m guessing it’s not a surgical scar. It’s too ragged. Any doctor who cuts like this should be behind bars.”

“He is behind bars but he wasn’t a doctor.” Vanessa sighed. It was clear Grady wasn’t going to give up.

“Who was he?”

“My second husband.”

“Why would he do something like this to you?”

“Why?” She laughed, her voice harsh. “Because he was angry with me, and because he could.”

Grady ran his finger along the scar very gently. “You loved him?”

“I thought I did.”

“That boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“You loved him, and he did this to you?”

“He was very angry because I told him I was leaving. He didn’t want me to. He picked up a knife, said that he’d make it so that no one would ever love me again, no one would want to make love to me again. He’d cut off both of them.” In a defensive motion, she raised her arms to cover her breasts.

He was so silent for so long she wasn’t sure he was still awake. Then he gathered her to his chest and stroked her back softly, but he still didn’t speak.

“Such a cliché, right?” She covered her face with her hands. “Woman wants to leave an abusive husband, he disfigures her.”

“How did you stop him from cutting the other one?”

“I kicked him straight up the middle, and he dropped the knife, and I ran outside, to a neighbor’s, and they called an ambulance and the police. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of blood-”

“Did you press charges?”

“I did. Yes, I did.” She twisted the end of the sheet into a point, first one way, then the other. How to tell him what that time had been like? Why even try? “And there was a trial. That was the worst part of it.”