Or maybe he was finally just recognizing all of who she was.

She still looked lost and confused and beautiful. Her breasts swayed slightly as she moved, and her hair cascaded down around her body as she leaned over him.

She pushed the covers down, slid her hand under his waistband, wrapped her fingers around his cock, and started pumping it steadily, her breasts jiggling slightly with her motion.

Caleb stared at her, feeling just as lost and confused as she looked. But he could sense some of the pulsing ache inside him transform to a building climax.

She was giving him something, but he wanted to give her something too. So he nudged at her thighs with his hand until she parted them further, and he slipped his fingers in between until he’d found her pussy.

She gasped when he maneuvered one finger and then two inside her. He started to move them.

So in breathless, fumbling silence, they brought each other to orgasm with their hands. It should have been embarrassing—like two groping teenagers instead of experienced adults. It was awkward, almost childish.

But Caleb couldn’t bring himself to care.

He felt Kelly’s hand on his cock as she built up the coiled tension in his body. He pumped and curled his fingers inside her. He stared at her twisted face, almost hidden by her hair, and at her tensing body.

Soon Caleb’s body was tensing too, and his pelvis was bucking a little.

He heard Kelly suck in a breath and freeze abruptly. Then whimper as she moved clumsily over his hand.

Her fingers clenched around his cock spasmodically until Caleb came too, with a grunt and an upward thrust.

Afterward Kelly fell asleep, his arm around her, her head resting against his chest.

Caleb didn’t sleep at all.

He stayed awake and brooded all night.

He wasn’t thinking about his business. He wasn’t thinking about Sean Moore and the secrets that could never come out. He wasn’t thinking about sins he could never atone for. He wasn’t thinking about Kelly’s ex-lover and the trauma from her past that she would never tell him.

He wasn’t even thinking explicitly about Kelly, although she was underlying every one of his thoughts.

As he lay in the dark until dawn, Caleb tried to remember all the women he’d fucked. All of the call girls, one-night stands, other men’s wives and girlfriends. Tried to remember their names, their faces, the color of their eyes.

And couldn’t.

He tried to remember the name of the last woman he’d fucked before Kelly. Only a couple of months ago, before Kelly had entered his life. She had been brunette—that one-night stand. Her name had been one of those silly diminutives, but he couldn’t even remember what it was.

Caleb wondered what she’d been like—for real, beyond the sex they’d had—what she might have really wanted. He wondered if she’d cried like Kelly had after he’d fucked her.

And the woman before her had been a call girl, a woman with a full history that had brought her to that place. And the one before that…he didn’t know.

An endless stretch of empty experiences.

Every one of the women Caleb had ever fucked had chosen it, had consciously agreed to it. They’d seduced him, asked him, begged him, accepted the money he’d offered them.

But Caleb wondered, as he lay beside Kelly that night and didn’t sleep at all, about every one of them—all of the women over all of the years who had somehow ended up in his bed.

They’d said yes. Every one.

But Caleb wondered how many of them had been silently saying no.

Chapter 4

Kelly woke up alone.

She felt strange and heavy before she was fully conscious, before she could fully open her eyes. Then she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, remembering the long night before.

She felt different this morning—like she was a different person, like Caleb was a different person too.

But when she turned her head to look over at his side of the bed, she realized it was empty.

He was gone. It was Saturday, but that never stopped him from working. He was probably in his office even now, burying himself in work, remembering the man he’d always been.

He’d been vulnerable last night. Uncertain. Almost broken.

He wasn’t the kind of man who would allow that to continue.

It was good. It was just as well. It was hard enough for Kelly to do what needed to be done as it was. If Caleb became even softer, more human, then she might never be able to accomplish it.

The distance he needed this morning would serve her well too, and the twisting feeling in her gut—like she felt let down, betrayed, because he’d left without talking to her after what had happened last night—didn’t matter at all.

She rolled over and reached into her purse, which was on the floor next to the bed, for her phone.

It was habit, really. She wasn’t expecting there to be any messages—not coming in between two and seven on a Saturday morning.

But there was a message—from the unlisted phone number that Jack Martin, her private investigator, always used to contact her.

She glanced at the closed door of the bedroom, assuring herself that Caleb wasn’t around, and listened to the message.

“Hey,” Jack’s pleasant, lazy voice said in the message. “Call me when you get a chance. Progress.”

She stared down at her phone for a minute, her heartbeat picking up.

He wouldn’t have said there was a lead like that if he hadn’t found more evidence. And the evidence they were really waiting for was going to point them either toward Sean Moore’s guilt in her father’s death…or toward Caleb’s.

She never called Jack from Caleb’s house. He had all kinds of security measures set up, and it felt too dangerous to risk a call where she might be overheard or observed.

But she wouldn’t be able to get out of the house until the middle of the day—not without it looking suspicious—and she really wanted to know what Jack knew.

It would change things. It might change everything.

She couldn’t imagine the tender, uncertain man from last night actually killing her father. Caleb was cold and ambitious, but he wasn’t heartless, and her father had been innocent.

Surely—surely—she wouldn’t be feeling like this toward Caleb if he were actually that kind of monster. What she’d overheard last night could have meant something else. Kelly wasn’t naive, and she wasn’t weak. She wouldn’t have fallen for the man if he’d really killed her father.

She just wouldn’t have done it.

So, nearly shaking with anxiety and expectation, she took her phone into the bathroom.

She locked the door and triple-checked to make sure it was locked. Then she turned on the shower, figuring if Caleb or Breah, his housekeeper, came into the bedroom, they’d only hear the shower running.

She scanned the room carefully, but she knew there wouldn’t be a security camera in Caleb’s bathroom. There would be limits to even his paranoia.

Satisfied that she was as safe as it was possible for her to be in this house, she pulled up Jack’s number and connected the call.

She normally wouldn’t have called anyone this early on a Saturday morning, but he’d left the message less than an hour ago, so he must be up himself.

“Hey,” he said, picking up on the second ring. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I woke up early. Why aren’t you in bed?” She fell naturally into the light banter that was characteristic of her interactions with Jack, but her hands were shaking as the nerves coursed through her. He’d found something. Something she needed to know.

“One of my guys woke me up an hour ago. They have no respect for my beauty sleep.”