He stared at the scabbed-up scrapes on his knuckles, flexed them so they wouldn’t stiffen. “So? It’s her decision.”

“It’s madness to go into theater! You have to talk sense into her!”

He glanced toward the corridor, out of which his problematic sexy siren would issue. Check him out. No longer the poster boy for doing the sensible thing. Even so, he didn’t want to get into it with his mother today. “I’ll talk to her, if you want,” he offered.

“Oh, thank you, darling. She’ll listen to you. It’s not too late to change her major back.” His mother’s voice was relieved.

“Okay, Mom.” He hung up, and dove back into the fridge again.

Nell appeared in the doorway just as he was laying out French toast, grilled ham, and orange juice on the table. She looked damp and rosy and fragrant. She gazed at the food-laden table, her eyes big.

“Hope you’re hungry,” he said.

She sat down with a murmur of appreciation and tucked in a gratifying amount of what he’d cooked. After breakfast, they sipped their coffee and stared at each other across the table. Neither of them were able to hold the other’s gaze for more than a few seconds without looking away, or laughing. Jesus. Look at him. Giggling. Touching her toes under the table, with his own bare feet. Acting like a goofy kid.

But it was getting on toward ten-thirty, and he had to get his shit together. “I have to get down to the office,” he said reluctantly.

She glanced at the clock. “Me, too. I’m going to be late for the lunch prep, as it is.” She let out a gasp when his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She stared at it.

He did not let go. “You are going where?”

Her eyes got big and wary. “Duncan. Let go of my arm.”

“Just answer my question.”

“Isn’t it obvious? To work! At the Sunset Grill! Remember?” She yanked at her wrist again. “Hello! I work there six days a week!”

“After what happened to you last night, you think I’ll let you walk out onto the streets? Just like that? Like nothing even happened?”

“Let me?” She straightened up. “You aren’t going to ‘let me’ do anything. I do not have to ask your permission. For anything I do.”

“Wrong,” he said.

She stared at him, outraged. “Excuse me?”

“If I hadn’t been there last night, you’d be dead, or God knows what else. I changed the course of things. That gives me responsibility. That gives me a say. So deal with me, Nell. You don’t have any choice.”

Her eyes were wide. “Let go of my arm. You’re scaring me.”

“Fine,” he said. “You should be scared. It’s about fucking time.”

He slowly let go of her wrist. She rubbed it, avoiding his eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I am flat broke. The Fiend situation ate up all my savings. I’m already a month behind on my rent. I don’t even have money for cab fare if I don’t get out there and go to work.”

“I’ll give you money, if you need some,” he said.

Her face tightened. “That’s not a solution, Duncan.”

“No? And having you waltz out into the street, you call that a solution? They picked you up off a main thoroughfare, Nell. In downtown Manhattan, in front of multiple witnesses! By now, they know who I am, and where I live. They’ll nail you down. Count on it.”

She shut her eyes, looking exhausted and lost. “Duncan, I don’t have any choice but to work. I have to pay my rent, and I—”

“Oh, yeah. You mean that place with the bugged phone, the compromised alarm, and the hostile vidcams?”

“I still have to pay for it, and find some other place to—”

“Here,” he cut in rashly. “Stay here. With me.”

She gazed at him for a few moments, blankly.

“There’s plenty of room,” he urged her. “The security’s excellent.”

Nell tossed up her hands. “Duncan,” she said helplessly. “That’s very sweet, but it’s premature, and in any case, I still have to work.”

“No, you don’t. And it’s not premature, after last night. Work on game texts, if you have to work on something.” He stared at her back for a moment. “I don’t need help with the rent or the groceries, Nell.”

“I noticed that.” Her voice was acid. “So what does this mean?”

He shrugged. “What does it sound like?”

She swiveled her head, fixed him with a piercing gaze. “It sounds to me like I’d be kept.”

“It sounds to me like you’d be safe,” he countered.

“Safe, and sexually available to you, twenty-four hours a day?”

That made him angry. “Would that be so terrible?” he demanded.

She shook his words away with an angry flip of her hand. “The sex is not the problem.”

“Oh? Then what is your fucking problem, Nell? Is it money? Yeah, I’ve got a lot of it. Big fucking deal. I worked for it. You want to punish me for having it? Fuck that! That’s not fair!”

“No,” she snapped. “It’s not that.”

“Then why are you so uptight about accepting any help from me?” he snarled. “Because it is starting to mortally piss me off!”

She held her hand over her mouth for a moment and cleared her throat. “My mother was a prostitute,” she said.

Of all the things she could have said, that was the very last one he expected. “Huh?” he floundered. “You don’t mean…the lady who…”

“No. That was Lucia, my adoptive mother.” Nell’s voice was colorless. “I’m talking about my birth mother. Her name was Elena Pisani. She wasn’t a streetwalking kind of prostitute. She was always kept in style by her lovers. Nice apartments, beautiful clothes, jewels, spas. But in the end, that part’s just window dressing.”

A heavy silence followed her words, and Duncan struggled for something intelligent to say. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

She fixed him with her blazing look, the one that took his breath away, scared him and aroused him, all at once. “I remember her hammering out the details of each new mutually beneficial arrangement. As soon as she was done, off I’d go to another boarding school. Until the guy got bored. Or she found a richer client.”

He searched for a place to put this new and extremely dangerous information, but it wouldn’t stick to anything. “Ah. Oh. I, uh, see.”

“Do you?” She looked away. “It looked all right on the surface, I guess. She handpicked her lovers. They were always rich. She lived in beautiful places. But her whole existence was in function of her patrons. Their egos, their convenience, their tempers. She didn’t have energy to spare for me. Being beautiful, charming, seductive, and entertaining is hard work. Doesn’t leave much time for a kid.”

“I…ah—” He floundered for something to say that was not either stupid or offensive, but he couldn’t think of anything.

“I don’t want that,” she said. “I don’t want a man to be in the center of my life, and me circling around him, anxiously scrambling to please him. Hell with that. I’ve got plans. I have ambitions of my own.”

“I never meant to imply that,” he said, helplessly.

“I’m sorry this embarrasses you,” she said. “It embarrasses me. But I want you to know why I feel so strongly about this. I am not for sale. Not to anyone, for any reason. Not even for protection from the Fiend. Now, or ever. Because that mutually beneficial arrangement you were talking about last night? It’s not a good bargain, whatever it might look like. Not even if the sex is great. It wouldn’t benefit me. On the contrary. Eventually, I’d start to feel about two inches tall.”

He pondered what she said for several moments. Then he walked slowly around her, pried her clasped hands apart, and held them tightly.

“You misunderstood,” he said. “It was just semantics.”

She stared into his eyes, trying to peer inside his brain. “Was it?”

“I would never dream that you were for sale.” His fantasy of the sexy secret affair with the juvenile waitress flashed guiltily through his mind, but the point was moot, because Nell was not that girl.

Nell was infinitely more than that girl. More complicated, more fascinating, more trouble. And she never needed to know about his politically incorrect horn-dog fantasies. He lifted her hands to his lips. “What happened between us can’t be bought,” he said. “For any money.”