“Because—because—”

She was almost strangling on the words, tears streaming from her eyes, and her whole body shaking helplessly, with some sort of combination of anger, outrage, and grief. “Because you made me—fall for you!” She choked out the last words like they were horrifying.

For a moment, the truth of her words washed over him, answering, soothing the trapped, wounded animal inside him.

But they didn’t seem to answer or soothe anything in Kelly. She was just as broken as before as she continued, “You made me want you to be—want you to be—”

“To be what?” he demanded.

This was the final straw—the cusp of the whole world changing. He knew it somehow. What would happen now would change him, would change everything.

It might break him more than he was already broken, but he was going to have the truth anyway.

Chapter 10

Kelly almost told him the truth. The whole truth. Everything.

She almost stood there in the bedroom and blurted it all out.

She’d never been so out of control in her life, enraged in a way she’d never experienced before. It was so unexpected, so out of the blue, and Caleb seemed so unrestrained—nothing but passion and fierce feeling. She couldn’t play her part. She couldn’t make up a convincing story or tell a believable lie.

She didn’t even want to. She wanted to be real—as real as she could sense Caleb himself was being right now.

But she’d come too far to throw away everything for no good reason, and a tiny thread of sanity held back the deepest part of the truth.

So her answer was true. Absolutely true. But modified slightly from what had originally started to come out.

“To be different,” she burst out. “To be better. And I know you never will be.”

She tried to pull away from him, her heart too exposed even by the altered response, but he wouldn’t let her. His grasp was no longer painful, but it was unbreakable.

So she gave up, slumping against his chest, feeling completely exhausted, completely defeated. She whispered, “I can’t fall for you, Caleb. I just can’t.”

His grip on her arms loosened, and he wrapped his arms around her. He was hard—so hard against her—and shuddering with a tension that felt more emotional than physical.

He was aroused. She could feel it against her. But he was more than that. The tension was also emotion. Emotion. Which she’d never felt in him like this before.

“Why can’t you fall for me, Kelly?” he asked, very softly, holding her so tightly she momentarily couldn’t breathe. “What’s so horrifying about that?”

And that was the pivotal question, the pivotal moment. If she ever wanted to continue her plan, or even get out of this room, she would need to give him a believable answer.

Her mind was blank, though. She couldn’t think of anything. She could only feel the protective fervor of his embrace, the vulnerability in his voice that she felt sure no one else had ever heard. She could only feel a pulsing of desire—both physical and more than that—as her body reflected back his own urgent arousal. As if, even in body, they’d always been two pieces of one whole.

She was about to give it up. Give everything up because it was so much easier than trying to hold her crumbling world together.

But she could still see her father’s body, blood soaking into the dirt with the brain matter and bone fragments and hair.

He had been killed—unjustly, without reason—and it couldn’t be for nothing. If she didn’t see this through, then maybe she hadn’t really loved him at all.

She heard herself saying, “Because I can’t fall for a guy like you again.”

She hadn’t planned the words out—they’d just come to her in some sort of flash of inspiration—but they were absolutely perfect. They answered everything.

She could feel the understanding as it eased through Caleb’s body, relaxing some of the unbearable tension. “Kelly.”

Burying her face in his shirt, she mumbled, “I can’t do it again.”

After a moment, he seemed to have controlled whatever he was feeling, and he loosened his arms slightly and lifted her head so he could see her face. “I’m not like him, Kelly. I’m not like that bastard.”

The bastard might be fictional, but everything about this conversation was real. Because Caleb was like him—at least in some ways. He could be a dangerous, ruthless bastard too.

“I know,” she said hoarsely, trying to pull herself together. “I know you’re not.”

“But you really think I am. You think I’m that kind of a monster.” It sounded like the idea really bothered him.

“Are you saying you didn’t ask your security to report on my activities? Are you saying you don’t try to control everyone around you? Are you saying you haven’t crossed lines, taken certain shortcuts, even when it meant hurting other people? Are you saying you didn’t extort some poor father by threatening his daughter’s scholarship, just to get a signature on a contract? Are you saying you haven’t done other things you can never admit to, that you hide away in the dark?” Her words got more and more passionate as the questions got increasingly closer to the deepest truth.

Caleb’s face twisted. “Yes. I’ve done all of those things. I’m not a good man. You must have known that from the beginning. But I’m not like him. I’m not. There’s more in me than that. I can change the things you need me to change.” He reached to take her head in both of his hands, holding it like it was precious. “I’m not like him, Kelly, blossom. I promise I’m not. I want to be with you for real. I want to be with you completely. I’m falling for you too.”

Her heart came alive at the words. She wanted so much to hear them said. She swayed toward him.

He leaned down, like he would kiss her, his face full of feeling and passion and a genuine need she’d never seen there before.

But then he pulled back, a question reflected in his eyes. “So, who was the guy you met this afternoon, and why were you sneaking around to meet him?”

This was Caleb Marshall, and even if he had real feelings, he would never be anyone’s fool.

She cleared her throat and stepped back, wiping a stray tear from her eyes. “He’s a private investigator.”

She didn’t have much time to think it through, but it would be better to tell him the truth. If he somehow found out Jack’s identity on his own, she didn’t want to be caught in such a little lie.

“Why are you working with an investigator?”

“He was helping me with—with my problem.”

Caleb’s face relaxed.

“Did he have any information for you?”

“Not enough to act on.”

“If you wanted a professional investigator, then why didn’t you just ask me? I could have—”

For some reason, his characteristic tone—intelligent, impatient, slightly arrogant—made her so mad her teeth almost snapped. She forgot about strategy and interrupted, “It doesn’t matter what you could have done. This is my thing, and I was dealing with it on my own.”

He frowned in surprise and annoyance. “I don’t care if it’s your thing. You know perfectly well why I want to help, and it’s just silly not to let me—”

“I don’t care if it’s silly or not. If I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”

“Okay then,” he said in a cool, clipped tone. “So why did you have to sneak off to meet with the guy.”

“Because I know how you are. Because I knew you’d do exactly this.”

“Do what exactly?” He was walking toward her as she was backing away, until her back connected to the wall next to the dresser.

“Do this! Be all Caleb Marshall, the boss of everyone. Act like you deserve answers. I don’t care if there are some feelings between us. We’re not in a committed relationship here, and I don’t owe you anything.”