Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“Did you have any proof? Something the cops would believe and give the district attorney enough to risk trying to prosecute a United States senator? One beloved? One in line to run for president?”
There was no challenge in his voice. If anything, his tone was mild. Gentle. But he was persuasive. She had never been believed, and she didn’t have proof. Her mother would have denied everything and concocted some story about Harlow’s mental health. Wilder had made a telling point. She had always been intelligent enough to know her parents had the upper hand.
“I left and made a life for myself apart from them, but I’ve always felt guilty, as if, like my mother, I covered up for my father.”
“That isn’t the case, though, Harlow.”
He swept an arm around her and pulled her beneath his shoulder protectively. Even as he did, she felt him wince. It was so minute, she doubted if anyone else would have caught it, but she was very attuned to him, especially after missing so much when he’d made his way to her in the middle of the night. She still felt guilty that she’d been so wrapped up in her own misery that she hadn’t realized just how hurt he really was. He’d nearly died because she had been neglectful.
“Woman.” There was amused exasperation in his tone. “You never cut yourself a break, do you?”
“Ha! I knew you were capable of reading minds. There is no way you saw my face and read my expression. That had to come straight from you invading my privacy! Believe me, you don’t want to be running around in my head. It’s a dangerous place.”
To her astonishment, Wilder laughed, the sound rich and low. Perfect. He looked younger and much more carefree. It didn’t last, but she knew that memory was locked in her mind for all time. “I have no idea why it’s so easy to be with you, especially because you scare the hell out of me.”
“Because you know you’re the one person in this world I would never hurt under any circumstances.”
“Even if we were in a relationship and I cheated on you?”
He laughed again, that low, male amusement that seemed to curl down her spine as pure heat. “You’re incapable of cheating. But we can pretend. If you cheated on me, Harlow, I’d have to take a good look at what I was doing to push you that far away from me.”
“You wouldn’t retaliate in any way?” That would be difficult to believe. She heard sincerity in his voice, but she doubted he could possibly foresee his reaction.
“Against you? No, I’d do my best to figure out the problem and get you to communicate. Now, the man you cheated with, he might be a different story. I don’t have a clue what I’d do to him. That’s me being honest.”
“How can you be so certain of your reaction to me cheating on you?” she persisted.
“Because I am very good at allowing logic to take over and push aside all emotion. I’ve been doing it all my life. Emotions can lead you down a very dark path. When I hunt, I try to do so without judgment. I hear the details of the assignment, do my own investigation, and then I go after my suspect or suspects. Most of the time, it is cut and dried. I go after drug cartels or terrorists who have killed American citizens and continue to plot against our innocent population. Sometimes it is an individual that, for some reason, law enforcement cannot apprehend.”
There was a lot to process, but she mainly heard how he could compartmentalize. She did that. She used logic to hide her emotions. From the time she was a child, she had learned never to show her true feelings to anyone, least of all her parents.
“I have a terrible feeling your childhood was just as ugly as mine or even worse.”
His eyes moved over her face, a brooding perusal that sent a chill down her spine. For the briefest of moments, there was hell in the depth of his gaze. “We’ll talk about that when you know for certain you want to commit to being with me. I wouldn’t want to scare you off when we just have this very fragile thread tying us together.”
Harlow was uncertain how fragile that thread actually was. She’d been thinking about Wilder for a good two years. Since she never looked at other men and only had envisioned herself—in her largest fantasies—with Wilder, she thought that thread between them was more like a chain.
“Just because I might want to be with you, Wilder, doesn’t mean we should be together or that a relationship would work. I told you, I’m a very bad risk. That’s me being as honest as I can.”