I bolted out of my chair and got into his face. He didn’t even try to move. “You think this shit is scaring me off?” I snarled. My hand curled into a fist.

Temper sparked in his eyes, but his voice was calm and easy. “Well, you’re the one who had your bags packed. What happened earlier? You decided you needed a quick fuck before you hit the road?”

Carly’s sound of outrage didn’t even penetrate.

Ryan took the first punch, but when I swung again, he caught my arm, trapped it and spun, slamming me face first against the desk. “You still let that temper of yours control you, kid,” Ryan said tonelessly. “Now I’m going to let you up and we’re going to talk.”

He let me go, and I would have gone after him again, except Carly caught my arm. “Bobby.”

I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t care that my shoulder joint was on fire from where he’d wrenched it, and I didn’t care that my face felt bruised from where he’d slammed me into the polished stone surface of his desk. I cared about the shit he’d been insinuating about how I’d treated Carly.

But she was tugging on my hand, so I let her pull me back. I didn’t want to look at her though. I couldn’t see on her face that she believed what he’d said. It would kill me.

No sooner had she gotten me away than she stepped between us, her cheeks flushed and her eyes snapping. “You are not going to nose around my private life, you ass!” she shouted. Ryan was on the receiving end of her sharp fingernail, and he took it without comment. “What I do and who I do it with is none of your fucking business! You and Jake acted like you always knew what was best for me, but I’m not some fucking princess in a tower! I’m going to have the life I want, whether you like it or not!”

After a moment of silence following her proclamation, he asked mildly, “Are you done?”

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m tired and hungry and pissed, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something else to yell at you about in a few minutes.”

She glanced at me.

My heart squeezed in my chest as I moved to her, cupping her face in my hands. “It wasn’t...he’s wrong, Carly. It wasn’t like that, I swear.” I kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Don’t stay mad at me, please baby.”

“You deserve to have me mad at you,” she said, a mulish note threading into her voice.

But she turned her face into my neck and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I curled my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in closer. She snuggled against me, and I marveled for a moment at how perfectly her body fit against mine.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Ryan settle his hips against his desk. He reached up to touch his eye. A glorious bruise was already spreading, and it gave me more than a little pleasure to see it. I liked the guy, but what he’d said about me and Carly...he deserved a black eye. As soon as he was aware that I was looking, he lowered his hand.

Carly pulled away, studied Ryan for a minute, and then reached down, lifting my right hand. “You hit him pretty hard,” she said after a second. “Your knuckles are bruising.”

“My eye’s going to be swollen shut, and you’re worried about his hand?” Ryan asked. He almost sounded amused.

“You were being an asshole.” Carly gave him a dirty look, and then brushed her lips across my knuckles.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel any pain.

“And lover-boy wasn’t being an asshole, sleeping with you when he plans on quitting?”

“I’m not quitting,” I said before Carly could respond. “I already told her that. I changed my mind.” I sighed. “Hell, I probably couldn’t leave even if I tried.”

I stared at Ryan, daring him to say anything else.

But he smiled. A slow, cocky smile that made me want to punch him again. “It looks like you actually do have a functioning brainstem somewhere among all those hormones after all, Bobby.” He shoved off the desk and moved toward the door. “You two need to talk. Use my office.” His eyes narrowed. “But if you two have sex in here, I’m going to make you both clean the entire place. With bleach.”

Then he paused and looked back at us, watching as I stroked my hand down Carly’s cheek.

“We’re going to have to let it slip to the media.”

We both turned to look at him. I could feel Carly tensing and I reached for her again, sliding my arm around her waist.

He held up his hands. “Nothing to be done for it. You two couldn’t hide this if you tried.” He shrugged and reached for the doorknob. “To be honest, it’s a miracle nobody’s figured it out before now. Since the two of you hadn’t been seen in public much since that kiss in Kentucky, people have been speculating, a bit, but it’s gone way off track. Now...well, one look at the two of you and it will be clear to everyone that something’s going on.”

Before he could go, I had to know one thing. “What are we going to do about the letters, Ryan?”

“Same thing we’ve been doing.” He met my gaze, his grim. “Keep waiting for the shit-head to mess up so we can nail his ass.”

Then he was gone and it was just Carly and me, alone.

To be fair, we did talk. Or rather Carly talked, and I argued. Then I argued, and Carly talked. We talked about the letters, and about how I almost left.

We didn’t, however, talk about what I’d said to her, and the words hovered between us, unmentioned, like a ghost. I could almost pretend she hadn’t heard what I said, but I knew she had. But I didn’t push the subject. Instead, I let other matters take precedence.

“If I let fear control my life, Bobby, I would have locked myself behind a stone wall when I was eight. Hell, six. I never would have come out from behind that wall, and I never would have met Ryan. I never would have learned to ride a horse, had a dog or even taken a walk down the beach.” She threw a leg over my thighs and straddled me so that our faces were level. “I don’t live a life where I can just be ignored. I wish I did, but it’s not going to happen.”

She was right. I knew she was. Didn’t mean I had to like it. I rested my head on her chest, breathing in the warm, soft scent of her.

“I can’t change who I am. You can’t change who you are, and I wouldn’t want you to,” she said quietly, her breath tickling my ear. There was a pause, and then she spoke again, her voice strangely vulnerable. “Do you want me to change?”

I answered immediately, “Not for anything.”

She laced her hands together behind my neck. “Then we make it work. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed.

She shivered a little and I could see her skin roughening as goosebumps broke out. She ran her fingers through my hair, tugging on it as whatever blood I’d had left in my head rushed south.

“I like your hair like this,” she murmured. “It’s longer than it was...before.”

“I was just thinking of getting it cut.”

“Oh.”

I met her eyes. “I’ll grow it out longer than Samson’s if that’s what you want.”

A smile bowed her lips. “Maybe not that long. So...we talked. Now what...?”

“We leave this room.”

“Why?”

I looked up at her as I slid my hands under the shirt she wore. My shirt. Mine. The possessiveness I felt took me by surprise. My fingers flexed against the small of her back. The depth of emotion I felt for this woman unnerved me, but I was through fighting it. The alternative was too bleak to even consider.

I leaned forward and kissed her chin. If I’d gone for her mouth, I wouldn’t have cared what Ryan said about having sex in his office. “I want you naked and I don’t really want to have to clean the office after.”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “Let’s go.”

She climbed off my lap and held out a hand. I took it and let her pull me after her. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. As long as she was with me, it didn’t matter.

After a minute, I recognized where I was. The one time I’d been in the section of the house that was hers and hers alone, I’d almost staggered in shock. Right then, I was too busy dealing with the ache in my balls to care.