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“I doubt it.”

She arched her brows. “How can you be so sure?”

“Simple.” His hand shifted to catch hers, dragging it to his mouth and holding it there. He pressed a kiss to her fingertips. “I like my life just the way it is. I like the freedom. I like the control. I have no need to convolute that with a relationship.”

Sparks seemed to travel from where his lips were all the way to her chest. She blinked quickly.

“Does that bother you?”

“It would have, once upon a time. Back when I used to believe that love was the answer to everything, and finding your soulmate was the whole point to being on earth. Now? I think your approach is perfect. Relationships are for suckers.”

Relationships are for suckers. Even the next day, as he worked in his office, her words were heavy in his thoughts, running around and around, reminding him of the tone of ice in her voice as she’d said them. A curse, an epithet. And with little wonder.

She’d spoken with such compassion for her ex-fiancé, and the fact he’d felt he needed to live a lie; and Dimitrios didn’t disagree. He found it hard to understand anyone fighting against who they were—it wasn’t his way. But it was a story he’d heard before. He just hated that it had had such an impact on Chloe. Her life had been torn apart at the seams by Jaxon’s choice to lie to her. She seemed to think the effects would be permanent.

He hoped she was wrong.

For all that he had no intention of the sort of rosy relationship picture she’d once hoped for, it somehow seemed right for Chloe. Right for her to love and be loved, to build a home, filled with heart, to have a family.

Out of nowhere, an image of her and Ellie talking came to mind and a smile tugged at his lips. Without really making any extraordinary effort, Chloe had managed to get the teen to open up to her, to want to spend time with her. It was a far cry from the girl who went straight to her room when she got home on weekends, appearing only for the scheduled meals, making polite conversation before asking to be excused to do her homework.

Was Chloe right? Was that because Ellie was scared to have the rug pulled out from under her? Was she proactively protecting herself from being hurt all over again?

How could he make her feel safe here?

And what if he couldn’t? What if she wasn’t? Cancer had taken Ben, and a car crash Laura. Dimitrios wasn’t arrogant enough to presume nothing would ever happen to him. Life was uncertain—he had proof of that. So what would happen to Ellie then?

His frown deepened as he realized, for the first time since Laura died, that Ellie was indeed still vulnerable. There was no contingency plan in place, no back up, and that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

He reached for a post-it note and scrawled in dark black pen: CONTINGENCY. He unstuck the top page and adhered it to the bottom edge of his computer screen, his gaze glowering on the word, tracing the shape of the letters as he contemplated that carefully.

The rule was that they wouldn’t see each other during the day. It was a simple one to follow, generally, and he knew why it mattered. To see Chloe was to want to touch, and once they touched, sex was an inevitability. Particularly here, in his home, where privacy was assured.

But after hours in his office, staring at the word ‘contingency’ and trying to focus on his actual work tasks, he found himself standing and reaching for his car keys in one swift movement, striding out of his office door in search of Chloe.

He found her in the observatory, on almost the top rung of a double-height ladder.

He cursed under his breath and stalked across the room, hands gripping the sides. “What the hell are you doing?”

She glanced down at him and his heart leapt into his throat. Not just because from this angle he had a view of her perfect, rounded ass in figure hugging jeans, but because she looked so, so perilously close to falling.

“What does it look like?” she asked, an easy smile on her face showing that she had no idea why this should bother him. “This is my second last room—not including Ellie’s. I’m almost done.”

He swore again. “You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

A bemused expression overtook the smile. “Why not, exactly?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

She laughed, shaking her head, and to his chagrin, she moved one rung higher, lifting a hand to the wall and hooking one end of the garland over an adhesive hook.

“Chloe, I’m serious. Get down. I’ll do that.”

She threw him a disbelieving look. “You think you’d be better at this?” she asked, obviously sceptical.

“I think I’m taller.”

“And therefore more likely to topple. You must weigh almost twice what I do—besides, I’m used to scaling ladders, walls, you name it. This is part of the job.”