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“He comes to poker night sometimes, too,” he explained to me.

“Well, anyway, it’s a great show, and I have seats for it tonight for you if you want them,” Stephan finished.

I looked up at Carter. “Please, please, please, can we go?”

He gave me a certain look he had, one that told me he was about to give in even though he didn’t really want to. “Okay,” he said with a sigh.

I hugged Javier and Stephan goodbye. I was amused to watch Javier give Carter a hug as well. Carter was fist bumping Stephan as the other man pulled away.

I watched them go with a smile. “They’re really nice,” I said, a little dazzled by it all.

“They are,” Carter agreed, guiding me in the opposite direction with a hand at the small of my back.

I was so excited suddenly I could hardly contain myself. “I’ve always wanted to see this show! They really hooked us up with this.”

“They did,” Carter agreed, unfazed.

“Have you ever seen it before? I guess you know him so you can probably go any time.”

“I’ve seen it, but it’s the sort of thing that you want to see again. The band plays different set lists all the time.”

I did wonder how many other women he’d taken to this exact show.

I managed not to ask him, though. It was a near perfect day for us and I didn’t want to ruin it for any reason.

Whatever our tickets were they let us enter the theatre early, leading us to box seats with a perfect view of the stage.

“These seats are amazing,” I said with wonder.

“They are,” Carter agreed. “This is actually the family box, shared with only his closest friends. Sometimes his wife and kids come to watch the show, and when they do these are their seats.”

“Will they be here tonight?”

“I don’t think so. They have a ton of kids, so there’s usually something going on every Saturday. Also, I think Stephan would have said so.”

I glanced around, wanting to rub my hands together with glee. I’d never done VIP anything but from the pool, to the boutique, to the salon, to this, it’d been a lifetime’s worth of special treatment for me.

We were the only ones there, but the box was big enough to fit dozens. We even had our own bartender—though of course Carter wouldn’t let me have a drink.

“Will more join us in the box? Are we just the first ones?”

“I really don’t know for sure. I haven’t heard about anyone else coming, so I’m thinking we might have it all to ourselves.”

I gazed at him meaningfully. “Privacy.”

He gave me a stern professor look and I shivered.

“Tell me about your aunt and uncle,” he said, catching me off guard. “I know there’s more to the story. You didn’t just leave because they ran out of room.”

I considered that for a long time, debating what to tell him.

I decided to be open with him. If not him, who else? “That really was a big part of it,” I told him, because it was true. “But you’re right. There was more to it. Things were getting . . . bad.”

“Tell me what bad means,” he said, a world of understanding in his voice.

It was very hard not to pour my whole heart out to him when he sounded like that, when he looked at me with such soft eyes.

“My aunt’s brother, the one that moved in with his family, is a bit of a creep.”