Getting out, he whistled at the view of the city spread out around them in every direction, thousands of lights glinting against the silky black of the night. “Damn. It’s three hundred and sixty degrees.”

His pleasure fed hers. “It’s one of my favorite places in the city.” Sliding her hand into Fox’s when he held it out, she walked with him along the path that led to another vantage point on the other side of the crater.

And in his touch, she found her courage. “My mother,” she began into the silence broken only by the whispering of the long grasses moving in the slight breeze, “loved my father.” It had been a toxic love that meant Karen Webster couldn’t walk away, even when loving Patrick Buchanan was a cancer on her soul.

“After the scandal broke,” Molly continued, Fox’s hand strong and warm around her own, “she resigned her board positions with various charitable organizations and stayed home with my father. I think she was waiting for him to dust himself off as he’d always done before.” Patrick Buchanan had been like the proverbial cat with nine lives. “She didn’t seem to understand how serious the charges were, that he’d certainly end up in prison.”

Arriving at the vantage point, the spot otherwise empty tonight, Molly gave herself a break and pointed out the glittering lights of the cars snaking over the Harbour Bridge, Auckland a city surrounded by water.

Fox wrapped his arms around her from behind, a tall, strong wall of protective heat. “Nice view, but you know the view I like better.” He bent to kiss her throat.

Shivering, she angled her neck for another.

“You figure people are making out in those cars where we parked?” Fox asked after fulfilling her silent request.

“I saw steam on the windows of the hatchback.” A long, quiet minute as she luxuriated in the feel of being held under a starlit sky while the city sparkled like a jewel-bright carpet below them. “Do you want to hear the rest?” she asked when she felt strong enough to face the past again. “It’s not particularly unique.”

“It’s about you.” Fox spread his legs, drew her even closer. “I want to know.”

Holding on to his forearms where they crossed her chest, Molly drew in a trembling breath. “When they granted him bail, my father came home and literally never left again until the day he died. He became an apathetic shadow of the brilliant, manipulative, controlling person I’d always known.”

To this day, Molly didn’t know if his withdrawal had been driven by shame, or simply disbelief that he, Patrick Buchanan, had been caught and held to account. “My mother… it was like she couldn’t function on any level without his orders.” Molly could still remember the bewildered look in her mother’s sky-blue eyes.

“After I came home and found her passed out drunk every day for a week”—Molly’s stomach churned at the remembered smell of alcohol drenching the air—“while my father sat staring at his computer, I began opening the mail that had piled up. That’s when I saw what he’d been doing.”

“Drugs?”

“Close.” Her hands had begun to shake as she looked at the bank statements and final notices for bills. “Online gambling. He’d bankrupted us in a matter of weeks.” Worse, he hadn’t paid any of the insurance premiums since the day of his arrest, invalidating all the policies.

Fox’s voice was harsh when he spoke. “No man has the right to do that to his family.”

“I confronted him—I think part of me was hoping I’d misunderstood.” Like a child wanting to be assured the bogeyman wasn’t real. “When he stirred enough to yell at me to get the hell out, I waited for one of my mother’s sober days and showed her the papers. The way she looked at me… I broke her heart into a million pieces that day.” Molly would never forget that instant, never forget the unvarnished agony that had sent Karen Webster to the floor in a fetal curl.

Molly had begged for her mother to talk to her, said sorry a hundred times, but she’d continued to lie there, mute and fractured. “I don’t think she was ever sober again.”

“That is not on you.” A ruthless declaration as Fox turned her to face him. “Baby, you have to know that.” He crushed her against the strong planes of his chest and only then did she realize she was crying.

Wrapped tight in the protective circle of his arms, she felt so safe that she couldn’t fight the crashing wave of shattering emotion—feelings she’d hidden away for so long that she’d almost convinced herself they no longer existed. That none of it had the power to hurt her any longer.

Her nose was stuffy, her throat scratchy, and her eyes wrung dry when Fox spoke against her ear, the whiskey and sin of his voice an addiction—and that was the greatest irony of her life.

“You’re telling me this so I’ll know how bad you’re messed up?”

Molly leaned back enough to meet his gaze, the smoky green black in the darkness. “Yes.” He’d read the newspaper reports, knew what had happened next—the loss of their family home and everything else not already consumed by escalating legal costs, her parents’ deaths in a car crash on the way to a court appearance, her mother later discovered to have been five times over the legal limit.

The only miracle was that Karen Webster had taken only her husband with her, her car smashing not into another vehicle but into a concrete pylon. When it came out that there had been no skid marks on the road, the media had called it a murder-suicide. Molly wasn’t sure they were wrong.

 “I’ve worn the coat of being a well-balanced, ‘normal’ person for so long that I almost believe it myself most days,” she confessed, “but I’m not. I have stuff inside me that chokes me up until I can’t breathe. I’m really messed up.”

Fox rubbed his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping away the remnants of her tears. “I got plenty of fucked-up parts inside me, too. Yeah, they kick my ass sometimes, but I wouldn’t be me without those parts, and you wouldn’t be you.” His voice dropping, holding her captive. “That’s the Molly I want, the messed up, smart, sexy one standing right in front of me.”

Passionate and edgy and starkly romantic, his words kissed the torn-up places inside her. “This,” she said, her voice husky, “us. It’s not working.”

Molten fury, Fox’s skin pulling taut over his cheekbones. “Hell it’s not.”

“Wait.” Molly pressed her fingers to his lips. “That didn’t come out right.” She swallowed, blurted out the words that had been building inside her since the moment he asked her if she wanted to change the rules. “I don’t want a deadline.” Her heart ripping open, the exposure terrifying. “I don’t want to pretend like my mother did, that my life—our relationship—is something other than what it is.”

Fox’s heart staggered at hearing the words he’d been waiting for since the instant he’d first realized she was his. Parting his lips to speak, he suddenly became aware of a large group of energetic and giggly teens racing down to the lookout. “Shit.”

Grabbing Molly’s hand, he led her back up the rise, head angled to avoid being recognized, and drove home as fast as legally possible. This was one night he definitely did not need to be pulled over. Backing Molly against the closed door of her apartment the instant they were inside, one hand on her hip, his other arm braced over her head, he said, “Let me get this right.” His heart ricocheted inside his ribcage. “You’re saying you want us to go on for longer than a month? No limits?”

Molly nodded.

When he simply watched her, she wet her lips, spoke in a throaty whisper. “Yes. I want to change the rules.”

“You sure?” No doubts, there could be no doubts in her mind. “Because once you take that step, I won’t allow you to back away.”

“Yes.” The single word was potent with emotion. “I’m sure. I want to be with you in every way… I want to see who we’ll become together.”