“I can’t.”

The tears were still coming, rolling down her cheeks. She was absolutely horrified, wiping at them with one hand. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Tell me,” he commanded, making her take a breath.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to talk. Just talk. And then this happened.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t expect you to bail on me today. Maybe I should have known it was a possibility. But somehow I didn’t. And I think I’ve been crashing a little all day. I didn’t realize it. And then I come here and you’re mad at me, for God’s sake, making me feel even more abandoned and . . . like a child, Mick. Like when my dad died.”

Oh, God. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“Christ, Allie.” He pulled her into his body and she couldn’t fight him anymore. He stroked her hair, his chin resting on top of her head. “Baby. I didn’t mean to set off any of that stuff.”

“It’s not the first time,” she muttered, allowing herself the comfort of his touch.

“Fuck. You’d better come inside. We have shit to talk about.”

That didn’t sound good. But she let him pick up her purse and lead her up the narrow staircase to his flat anyway.

The place suited him, she saw right away, even through her upset and tears. All neutral colors, big furniture, plenty of wood. He sat her down on the leather couch and left her there for a moment, came back with a glass of water. She accepted it and took a few sips before he took it and set it on the coffee table. He sat down beside her and handed her some tissue. She wiped her eyes and nose while he waited quietly.

“Better?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I do think you’re crashing, Allie. That, and I didn’t come through for you today, and for that I apologize. To be honest, I was processing last night. And today. More than I thought I’d be. It’s a lot to think about.”

“For me, too.”

“Yeah, I know. Which probably contributed to your subdrop today.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“I wish you’d have come to me earlier. I know I should have been the one to initiate contact, but sometimes I can be pretty dumb when I’m caught up in my own head.”

“Marie Dawn sort of said the same thing.”

“Yeah, well, she’s had to live with my brother for a damn long time, so she’s familiar with the inherent stupidity of the Reid men.”

She sniffed. “She sort of said that, too.”

He pulled back and tilted her chin, watching her face, his dark brows drawn over his smoky gray eyes. “What do you need from me?”

It felt like a loaded question. “I don’t know.” That was as honest as she could be right now.

“Okay. Then how about this? We get undressed and climb into my bed and just curl up and watch some TV. We can talk when you feel like it. Or not. Come on.”

He pulled her to her feet and led her into the bedroom.

The furniture was all sleek, dark wood, the bed on a platform and covered in a charcoal gray duvet. Mick left her standing on the white faux-fur rug at the foot of the bed to pull the duvet down, exposing the smoky lilac sheets, only a few shades darker than the duvet on her own bed.

He came back to her and bent to slide her sandals off, drew her jeans down over her hips while she stood passively, her head spinning, a little numbed by too much emotion.

“Climb in. I’ll be right there.”

She got onto the bed, drew the sheets up to her waist. It felt a little odd, somehow, being in Mick’s bed. Maybe because this wasn’t about sex and seduction. It was just . . . them.

The sex and seduction was easier. There she knew herself. There she was on solid ground. Right now she wasn’t sure what to expect.

Calm down. He invited you here—to his home, to his bed.

She watched as he shucked off his T-shirt, and even in her emotional state she couldn’t help but admire his broad shoulders, the bulging biceps, the taut lines of his abs. She couldn’t help notice once more the long scar running over his ribs that still looked raw and angry, even after all these years. It still hurt her to see it, to know the anguish the accident had caused him. But somehow it just made him sexier. Why were scars so hot on a man?

He climbed in next to her in the dark blue sweats he’d been wearing when she’d arrived. He slid an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close, sitting back against the pillows piled against the wall behind them. It felt good to be close to him, to feel the reassuring strength of his big body next to hers. But it still felt a little strange, more intimate than the things they’d done at the club together. More real.

“Travel TV, still?” he asked.

“I can’t believe you remember.”

“I remember a lot, Allie.”

She let herself relax a little into him. He flicked on the flat screen television with the remote and found her channel. They watched in silence a piece on California’s Mendocino Coast, and as the narrator’s voice spoke about the rugged beauty of the cliffs, the sea lions swimming off the shore, her shoulders loosened and she leaned into Mick’s arm around her.

After a while Mick muted the volume and said quietly, “Tell me about your dad, Allie.”

Her body instinctively stiffened for a moment. It made sense that he’d ask after what she’d said, but she still hesitated. “My dad?”

Mick tugged her closer. “I’ve known you all these years and that’s the one thing you never really talked to me about. I know he died when you were a kid, I know he was a musician. I know your mom adored him, and still does. But you’ve never told me much more than that. Since it came up tonight, I thought this might be a good time to tell me.”

“Maybe.” She had to digest the idea for a few moments. “My dad was . . . I sort of idolized him, I guess,” she said, the words trying to stick in her throat. “He spent a lot of time with me growing up, but I think you already knew that. And I guess what you want to know is how his . . . death affected me.”

“Only because it obviously still does. And this is not just me being the Dom getting to know the psychology of his partner. This is me, Allie. And if we’re going to get closer . . . well, it seems we are.” He paused, and she looked up to see him blink a few times. “Yeah. We are. So we have to build trust.”

“I know.” She paused, swallowed the ache in her chest that was partly from thinking about her dad and partly from Mick caring about her and being willing to show it. Being willing to admit that the two of them being together was possibly going somewhere. But that was too much to think about and have this discussion at the same time.

“I don’t talk about this,” she said, her fingers picking at the edge of the cotton sheet, her gaze focused there. “Not with anyone. But you’re right. I have to. And it’s you. Even though we’re in kind of a scary place right now, I still understand we’ve known each other forever.

“So . . . you know that it was mostly Dad who got me ready in the mornings while Mama was at the bakery. He would play the piano for me sometimes while I was eating breakfast, or brushing my teeth—sometimes it would be a classical piece, sometimes jazz. Sometimes just silly stuff, cartoon music. That last morning . . . he was playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto number twenty-one. I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s a light piece. Supposed to be cheerful. Well.”

She stopped to draw in a long breath. She wasn’t sure how to say the words out loud. “That morning . . . the music stopped suddenly, and I came downstairs demanding that he play some ragtime for me, which I did a lot. I just skipped into the room and . . .” She stopped again, swallowed hard. “He was sort of slumped over the piano.” She had to close her eyes. She could see him there, his blue striped shirt, his dark hair shining in the morning sun streaming through her mother’s lace curtains, the pattern of light and shadow it made on the floor. She drew in another breath and went on. “Even in my ten-year-old brain I knew right away he was gone. That he wasn’t coming back. I started screaming. Apparently a neighbor heard me, because suddenly there were a lot of people in the house. I don’t remember much more after that.” She stopped and gulped past the hard lump in her throat, tightening her chest. “All I knew—all I believed—for a long time after was that he’d left me.”