You never walked out of that prison.
She didn’t understand. She couldn’t.
But that didn’t change the fact that he felt like he’d been breathing around a knife for the past two weeks. Faith—his Faith—had left a hole in his life he couldn’t imagine would ever be filled. But that was...how it had to be.
He had his path, she had hers.
There was nothing to be done about it. His fate had been set long before he’d ever met her. And there was no changing it now.
He had gone out to the building site today, just to look around at everything. The groundwork was going well, as was the excavation over where he wanted to put the stables. She had been right about Jonathan Bear. He was the best.
Jonathan had assembled a crew in what seemed to be record time, especially considering that this particular project was so large. It looked like a small army working on the property. Jonathan was also quick and efficient at acquiring materials and speeding through permits and inspections. He also seemed to know every subcontractor in the state, and had gotten them out to bid right away.
Levi had already built on a property where money was no object, but this was somewhere beyond that.
He turned in a circle, watching all the commotion around him, then stopped and frowned when he saw a Mercedes coming up the drive. Bright red, sporty. Not a car that he recognized.
The car stopped, and he saw a woman inside, large sunglasses on her face, hair long and loose.
Flames licked at the edge of his gut as a sense of understanding began to dawn on him.
The blonde got out of the car, and that was when recognition hit him with full force.
Alicia.
His ex-wife.
She was wearing a tight black dress that looked ludicrous out here, and she at least had the good sense to wear a pair of pointed flats, rather than the spiked stilettos she usually favored. Still, the dress was tight, and it forced her entire body into a shimmy with each and every step as she walked over to meet him.
He’d loved her. For so many years. And then he’d hated her.
And now... His whole chest was full of Faith. His whole body. His whole soul. And he looked at Alicia and he didn’t feel much of anything anymore.
“Are you really here?” he asked, not quite sure why those were the words that had come out of his mouth. But... It was damn incredulous. That she would dare show her face.
“I am,” she said, looking down and back up at him, her blue eyes innocent and bright. “I wasn’t sure you would be willing to see me if I called ahead. I took a chance, hoping I would find you here. All that publicity for your new build... It wasn’t hard to find out where it was happening.”
“You’re either a very brave woman or a very stupid one.”
She tilted her chin upward. “Or a woman with a concealed-carry permit.”
Suddenly, the little black handbag she was carrying seemed a lot less innocuous.
“Did you come to shoot me?”
She lifted a shoulder. “No. But I’m not opposed to it.”
“Why the hell do you have the right to be angry at me?”
“I’m not here to be angry at you,” she said. “But I didn’t know how you would receive me, so self-defense was definitely on my mind.”
He shook his head. “I never laid a hand on you. I never gave you a reason to think you would have to protect yourself around me. Any fear you feel standing in front of me? That’s all on you.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I didn’t really mean for them to think you killed me.”
“Didn’t you? You knew I went to prison. Hell, babe, you siphoned money off me for a couple of years to fund the lifestyle you knew you wanted to live out in the French Riviera, and you only got back on police radar when you had to dip into my funds. So I’d say you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Yes, Levi, I meant to steal money from you. But I didn’t want you to go to jail. I wanted to disappear. And I needed the money to live how I wanted. When you got arrested, I didn’t know what to do. At that point, there was such a circus around my disappearance that I couldn’t come back.”
