“Dessert before dinner?” she said, forcefully ignoring the horrible sense of loss that continued to grow within her. “I’m in.”

Ice creams in hand an easy stroll later, they decided to sit on the wide, shallow steps near the ornate ferry building that was a piece of history amongst the steel and glass so prevalent in this section of the city. Hand-holding couples on dates, businesspeople on their way home, night runners with their earbuds in, the surrounding area was electric with activity.

“So,” Charlotte said after they’d taken their seats, “what’s the matter?”

Molly looked out over the harbor, the dark slick of water colored by the lights of nearby businesses. Even now, she could get on a ferry and be on the island in under forty minutes. “Why do you think anything’s the matter?” she asked, quashing the dangerous impulse that could destroy her.

A shoulder bump. “How long have we been friends? Spill. Are you still worrying about what Thea said?”

“No. But… there was a reason I had that conversation with Thea.” Taking a deep breath, Molly told Charlotte what had happened after the party.

Her best friend’s mouth fell open. “You—with Zachary Fox—” Throwing one arm around Molly with a cry of wild glee, she smacked a big kiss on Molly’s cheek. “My hero!” She pulled back her arm a second before her ice cream would’ve toppled over. “At least one of us will have outrageous stories with which to shock any grandchildren we might or might not have.”

Startled into a giggle, Molly leaned against her petite friend and shared the rest. Not the private memories, the ones that meant the most, but the reason why she’d be alone in her bed tonight. “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” she said at the end. “About not being caught by the media with Fox?”

“Of course not.” Charlotte finished off her cone, balled up the napkin it had been wrapped in, and took Molly’s to the trash as well before coming back. “I was there, remember?” She closed her small-boned hand over Molly’s. “Did you tell Fox about what happened? So he knows it has nothing to do with him?”

Shaking her head, Molly pointed out the gleaming super yacht that had appeared in the distance. “I’m falling for him,” she whispered, admitting the truth to the one person she knew would never betray her trust. “I can hardly bear to think about the end of our month together.” If Fox even wanted to continue their affair after today’s fight. “If I let him in any further… it’ll be agony.”

Charlotte didn’t respond for a long time, the two of them watching the sleek progress of the yacht built to be a dream on water, golden light pouring through every window. Someone had also put up tiny colored lights along the railings, adding a sense of mischief and whimsy to the regal craft, the colors pretty against the silky deep blue of the night.

“I’m scared, Molly,” Charlotte said at last, her voice quiet. “All the time. You know why.”

Molly hugged her close. “We don’t have to talk about it.” It hurt her friend to discuss the events that had devastated her first year of university, causing internal scars that had never faded. Because while Charlie had been shy her whole life, she’d also always had a sparkling fire inside her, which that brutal year had all but doused.

“No, it’s okay.” Her friend turned to face her, soft blonde curls escaping the knot at the nape of her neck. “I miss out on so much because I’m scared—and the thing is, I’m intelligent enough to know it. That just makes it worse.”

“You’re selling yourself short.” Molly wouldn’t allow it. “You said I was brave, but I wouldn’t have made it through high school and foster care without you.” She didn’t know how many times she’d cried in Charlotte’s arms, or turned toward her for silent moral support when the taunts threatened to break her down. “You were my rock.”

“You were mine, too.” Charlotte shook her head, her eyes full of quiet power behind the transparent shield of her glasses. “Don’t let that tough, strong, fifteen-year-old girl down, Molly. Don’t shortchange yourself like I do.”

Heart breaking for what her friend had been through, Molly turned back to face the water before she started crying. “Is it worth it,” she said when she could speak without her voice cracking, “for a single month?”

“That’s for you to decide—but I vote for breaking the bed with Mr. Kissable.” Charlotte fanned her face.

Molly burst out laughing, grateful once again for her best friend. She only wished she could help Charlotte conquer her own fears, convince her to put away the shapeless, unflattering clothes that swamped her tiny frame and let down those pretty curls. But if Molly’s rules were her security blanket, Charlotte’s clothes were hers. “Maybe you need a rock star of your own.”

“No way. I’d rather go to bed with T-Rex.”

Molly’s antennae shot up. That was the second time Charlotte had mentioned her new boss—and she’d linked him to sex, however tenuously. “What’s he look like?” she asked casually.

Scowling, her best friend shrugged. “What most carnivorous monsters look like.”

“Charlie.”

A sigh, pointed chin propped up in fine-boned hands. “The name Gabriel Bishop sound familiar?”

Molly gasped. “No?” Gabriel Bishop, known on the field as “the Bishop,” was a former pro rugby player turned corporate genius. Tall, with wide shoulders and heavily muscled, he was certifiably hot in a hard-sex-and-hard-play kind of way. “Hey! Didn’t you once say you wanted to rip off his shirt and sink your teeth into his pecs?”

Charlotte spluttered at the reminder of her cocktail-induced sigh at the TV screen during a game where Gabriel Bishop had been roped in as a guest commentator. “I swear,” she said, “you have the memory of an elephant!”

“So?” Molly waggled her eyebrows, fingers discreetly crossed and hope a bright, bright flame in her heart.

“That was before I realized he wasn’t human.” With that pert comment, her friend shifted her attention toward the restaurant section of the Viaduct. “I’m starving.”

Luck was with them and they snagged an outdoor table with an amazing view of the water, yachts and other pleasure craft berthed in neat rows in the marina. As they ate, Molly thought of everything her friend had said, everything she herself had decided about stepping out of the box in which she’d lived for so long, and sent Fox a message: Search for Patrick Buchanan and scandal.

Fox narrowed his eyes at the phone screen when Molly’s name flashed up. He was still pissed at her for hanging up on him, enough that he needed to wait a bit longer—get his boiling temper down to a smolder—before he went after her and got to the bottom of this. Stubborn as he was learning his Molly could be, he hadn’t expected a capitulation.

Tapping to open the message, he frowned, then did the search. “Fuck!” He barely controlled the urge to throw his phone.

Noah, who was sitting on the steps leading down to the sandy beach, while Fox was on the porch above, stopped strumming his guitar. “Care to elaborate, oh articulate one?”

“You know how I said Molly was mine?” He dropped his legs off the railing to hit the deck. “That I planned to convince her to enter into a real relationship?”

“Tough thing to forget.”

“Yeah, well, I was an arrogant prick.” Not just then, but today, when he’d told her it wouldn’t matter if she was snapped. He’d had no fucking idea who and what he was dealing with; what he’d just learned told him Molly was the last person in the world who’d ever want to be in a relationship with a man whose life was dogged by the prying lens of paparazzi cameras.

Checking her phone again as she entered the apartment after dropping Charlotte off at her town house, Molly felt her stomach drop at the continued lack of a return message from Fox. He was likely busy with his bandmates, she told herself, not the kind of man who’d have bothered to go immediately online to follow a cryptic message from a woman he’d known less than a week.