I gulp, a delicious tremor working its way through me. “So you would…”
“I would.”
He finishes dressing and moves to my side. Wrapping his hand around my neck, he tips my head back and takes my mouth in a toe-curling kiss. “There are no boundaries I wouldn’t cross, no limits I wouldn’t shatter to have you.”
I consider delaying this discussion until I return to Chicago, but this moment feels appropriate. “Do you hate my maiden name?”
His eyes narrow, his entire posture tightening. “What did my uncle say?” he grits out, his voice clipped.
I remain perfectly still, torn between not wishing to betray a dying man who I know has his back one hundred percent and my husband, whom I don’t want to give even a smidgeon of doubt that I would betray him.
“What, Zara?” he insists, tone urgent.
“Bossy.” I poke out my tongue, drawing a tiny grin from him, but he remains stoic.
My man is in business mode. Kind of sexy.
Focus, damn it.
“He needed to speak his mind. While it was about you, it doesn’t concern you.”
“Everything that concerns you concerns me.”
My fingers curl in his shirt, pulling him down to me. “He loves you, Vian, and he would never betray you.”
“Good,” he says above my lips, kissing me with a searing ardor matching the midday sun on summer’s hottest day.
I fall on my back, inhaling deeply, his heady scent lingering in the air, synonymous with pure madness and fiery passion––a love unbound.
Even high on him, it doesn’t escape me that he is hiding something, and that is the reason I can’t trust him wholeheartedly.
I toss and turn in bed all night. My restlessness is partly due to the fact that I sleep better with him by my side, and everything to do with my appointment with the therapist.
The only thing is that no one knows.
While Conrad thinks I have a meeting with a client, when in reality I am heading to this world-renowned therapist. The fact that she is a woman makes me trust her instinctively. Sadly, I know how much a woman has to endure and sacrifice to become widely respected.
Two men escort me, and once we land in Washington, I provide a new address and they exchange contrite looks, and I pin them with a serious stare. “Where were we today?”
Without even blinking, they reply, “Landed in Washington to meet with a client.”
“Good. No one will know.”
They nod.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Of course, ma’am,” both say.
In the car, I play with my ring, my anxiety reaching a new level when my phone rings.
I debate whether to answer my husband, but I decide to ease his mind. A worried Vian would scour the world searching for me. That is not even metaphorical.
Omission is better than outright lying to him.
“Wife,” he says, his voice neutral. That inscrutable tone already makes me nervous, since I can’t discern the reason for it.
“Husband,” I say, adding a cheer to my tone to disarm him.
