It was a sobering thought.

I pulled on his discarded shirt since neither of us had thought to bring our luggage in last night-not that he had given me an opportunity to pack. I wasn't not quite sure what he expected me to wear for the next three days-and made my way to the kitchen. I was starving now.

The refrigerator was stuffed with everything from cheese to fresh fruit to expensive looking slices of prosciutto. I threw together a fruit salad and carried it out to the back deck, curling up in one of several chairs situated around a glass table. The water was calm this morning, just a bit of a breeze ruffled the collar of Conrad's shirt. It was cold, but the air felt good against my overheated skin. It crossed my mind to call Christy and check in on my grandmother, but I wasn't quite ready to allow reality to seep in.

I found myself hoping that wherever the Marshals Service sent me next would be somewhere warm and near water. Somewhere like this.

The uncertainty of everything was like this heavy stone wrapped around my heart, weighing everything down. I had thought the first time was the hardest. I watched them march my uncle out of the courtroom after his sentencing-ten to fifteen years-and was taken directly into the custody of the Marshals Service. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to my friends or explain what was happening. I didn't get the chance to have some sort of closure in the home where I had lived since I was a toddler, to touch my things one last time, or to put away the embarrassing diaries and pictures of boy band members that hung on the wall. I often lay awake the first few months after we left and wondered who cleared out my things, who emptied the house of all our belongings and handled the sale. I hoped it wasn't some stranger who didn't care about us or what those things meant to us. But, again, I hoped it was.

That should have been the hardest.

When we left California, we had only been there a little over a year. I'd made a few friends at school, but no one I counted as a best friend. It was still hard to leave the books I had begun to collect and the vintage t-shirts I scoured several secondhand stores to find. But it wasn't anything like leaving behind Amy, my best friend since kindergarten.

Arizona was a little harder. We were there three years. I had a good job working in a bookstore just off the university campus. There were good friends-Tamara and Mindy-and the professor who took a special interest in me, offering me an internship that allowed me to work one summer as his assistant at the advertising firm his wife owned. I was making a good life there, a life that could have led to so many wonderful things that might have been close to what I dreamed of as a teenager.

It hurt to have to leave there.

But none of it promised to be as painful as this.

"Happy Thanksgiving!" Conrad came out onto the deck in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that he wore as well as he did a suit and tie. He swept me out of my chair and took my place, settling me on his lap. "You sleep okay?"

"Like a baby."

He kissed my neck lightly before reaching over and stealing a big, ripe strawberry from my bowl. "Hey," I said, smacking his cheek lightly. "Go get your own."

"I'm starving, but I'm not sure it's strawberries I really want."

He nuzzled my neck again, his hand sliding up my thigh until he hooked his thumb under the edge of my panties. I sighed as his lips found mine and tasted the minty sweetness of his toothpaste. It hadn't occurred to me to brush my teeth. I pulled away and touched my lips with my own fingers.

"Sorry. My breath must be atrocious."

"You taste like strawberries and bananas."

"I'm sure." I dodged him as he tried to kiss me again. "We'll probably have to hit a store so I can get some toiletries."

"No. I had that nurse-Christy?-pack you a couple of things."

"You did?"

"I think of everything, love," he said, burying his face against my throat.

"I believe that."

He tugged at my panties, sliding them roughly over one hip as his mouth created a trail from my throat to the top edge of my breast. My nipples immediately stood in response, straining against the material of his linen shirt in a way that did very little to hide my arousal. He groaned, his own body beginning to respond. I could feel his erection press against my thigh as I shifted, allowing him to tug my panties farther down my thigh.

"I can't get enough of you," he said, his mouth moving back up my throat to nibble at the bottom corner of my ear. "You're all I want."

I ran my fingers through the mess of his hair and pressed my mouth against the rough stubble that dotted his chin. He shivered, but I didn't think it had much to do with the cold. And then he picked me up and carried me back into the house. If I had thought the luxury of his bed was something last night, I had quite a few surprises ahead of me.

He laid me in the mess of the bed covers and stretched out beside me, his kisses so gentle that they threatened to break every ounce of control I had ever possessed. His hands tugged at the buttons of his shirt, spreading it open so that when he pulled back, my body was there for his eyes to explore at length. And that's what he did, his hands acting like the polite southern boy they were attached to, refusing to touch until given permission. I so wanted that touch, but I lay still and let him take in every line, every curve, and every flaw that existed on my less-than-perfect frame. I had never wanted a man to see me in all my naked glory, but the appreciation I saw in his eyes warmed my soul and made me understand that he saw my flaws and he loved them just as much as he loved the curves and the swells that society taught me to accentuate.

When he finally did touch, his fingertips were as gentle as his kisses. I arched and twisted, begging for his touch in places other than the center of my belly, the peaks and valleys of my ribs. He was going to make me wait. He wanted to touch what his eyes had studied. He wanted to explore and learn what made me moan in pleasure and what made me burst into gales of laughter. And he found all those spots, taking the time most men wouldn't bother to indulge in.

I wanted to do the same to him. I wanted to remember every freckle, every scar. I wanted to know the story behind the funny, crescent moon-shaped mark on his left knee and the smooth, thin line just above his left nipple. But my touch did things to him that made conversation impossible.

He pinned me to the mattress, his hands pressing me flat against the pillows above my head. He pressed his lips to mine, his tongue asking for entrance at the same moment his cock pressed against my inner folds. And then he was inside of me, his body giving as much pleasure as it sought. Like with any good music, there were different tempos to the same rhythm. We had a rhythm, one that worked for both of us, and this time it was a slow crescendo that grew with each roll of his hips, each thrust, until it reached a climax that sent us both soaring.

We made amazing music together.

Chapter Twelve.

"That's the Grand Canyon below us."

I stared out the window and tried to imagine what it would be like to stand at the edge of that incredible canyon. Heights had never been one of my favorite things, and looking out the window of Conrad's jet wasn't any different than standing on the edge of a platform that jutted out into the middle of an abyss. But the sight of one of the world's most awesome natural sights was one that defied words.

"Have you ever been?"

"Until six years ago, I'd never been out of New Orleans."

"We'll have to change that," Conrad said.

A while later, we flew over Dallas. Conrad pointed out the neighborhood where he grew up, a collection of tiny boxes that I knew were houses whose design was broken up by the occasional park or high school athletic field. And then we were following the Mississippi River up through Arkansas into Tennessee. So many natural wonders, and it all looked so majestic from the air. I found myself wondering why it couldn't be this perfect when we were down there, walking among other awed tourists. Why couldn't life be as perfect as it looked from a distance?

We flew for hours, checking out so many things that I lost count of what we saw, what we talked about seeing, and what we planned on seeing one day. When we finally landed, my knees were weak, like the earth had lost some of its solidity for me.

"It's not turkey," Conrad apologized as we walked into a small restaurant in the Florida Keys he'd rented out for the two of us. "I hope you don't mind."

"Are you kidding? I haven't had crawfish since...not since before."

"I kind of thought so. I know it's not home, but this was as close as I thought it was safe to get."

We settled at a table near the water, a smiling waiter dropping a huge bucket of steamed crawfish on the table between us. The first bite melted in my mouth, the taste bringing back such a stream of memories that I almost couldn't swallow.

I missed my home.

"My uncle used to throw a block party every February. He'd drag out this huge caldron that he bought from some old woman in the French quarter, and he would set it on the gas-powered heater and fill it with water and rice and a dozen different spices that he would never allow anyone to know the particulars of. And then the neighbors would bring anything they happened to have in their freezers-crawfish, shrimp, sausage-and dump it in the pot. Instant gumbo."

I opened my eyes and smiled at Conrad. "It was an all-day party. Mrs. Johnson from down the street would bake loaves and loaves of bread, and Mrs. Lafayette would bring this amazing coconut pie. And, of course, Memaw would make her famous red beans."

"Sounds amazing."

"It was. The one day a year, no matter what else might be going on, everyone would sit together and gossip. Sometimes the men would get together and make repairs on someone's house. Or they would scare up a game of football. One year, my uncle broke a window in Mr. Townsend's house during a pretty heated game of softball. The next day, he and half a dozen men from down the street replaced the window before Mr. Townsend and his wife were out of bed."

"Talk about being neighborly."

"That was my uncle." I picked up another crawfish and studied the shell for a minute. "He was always doing things like that. I remember one year, a waitress in his bar lost her husband to a car accident. For months afterward, he would go to her house on Saturdays and cut her grass, cut her firewood...anything she needed, he did."

I looked up at him. "That's just the way it was there. Each quarter was like a small town, where everyone knew everyone else."

"It must have been hard when he was arrested."

I shook my head. "No, not really. Our neighbors, they refused to believe he was guilty of all the things they said he did. At first, they brought casseroles to the house and offered to help out where they could, even giving us money to help pay the lawyers. It wasn't until word got out that he had testified against Johnny that things began to shift. It was a little subtle at first. No one had any love lost for Johnny, but Uncle Mike turned on one of our own, even if he was a criminal almost everyone had lost something to."

Conrad settled back in his seat, a crawfish caught between his hands. "Did you always live in New Orleans?"

I shook my head, my eyes moving to the water that spread out crystal clear behind us. "My father grew up there, but he moved to Atlanta when he was in college. That's where he met my mom and where he chose to make his career."

"How did they die?"

"They never had a honeymoon." I picked up a napkin and wiped at my hands. "They married straight out of college and my dad started his job the Monday after, so they went to the justice of the peace and never had a honeymoon. So, three years later, my dad got a promotion, and with it, some vacation time. He wanted to give my mom a honeymoon she would never forget." I smiled softly. "At least, that's how Memaw always told it."

I glanced at the water again. "They came to Florida, and my dad lined up one of those scenic tours, you know, the ones where they fly you around the beaches on a small plane?"

Conrad groaned. "You're kidding."

"The company had some issues with the maintenance of their planes, but, of course, my dad wasn't aware of this. The plane went down almost immediately after takeoff, killing everyone on board."

"That...that's just irresponsibility on the part of the pilot."

I focused on him again. "I used to be afraid to fly."

"I can imagine." He reached over and took my hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"No, really, I'm glad you did all of this. It makes it easier to see what the draw was." I picked at a stain on the table, my nail rubbing deep into the soft wood. "I've always wondered why they would take such a stupid chance with their lives when they had me waiting for them at home. But, I think, I'm beginning to understand."

Conrad reached over and took my hand. I smiled at him.

"You don't know how good it is to finally be free to talk to someone about these things."

"You don't talk about yourself a lot?"

"I'm not allowed to. If I talk about my real past, someone might figure out who I am. So, either I don't talk about myself, or I tell lies. And I'm not very good at lying."

"Then, I'm glad you can talk to me about it." Conrad lifted my hand to his lips. "You can always talk to me about anything, Mellissa."

"Does that go both ways? Can I ask about your past?"

"I'm an open book."

I cocked an eyebrow, determined to test that theory.

"Are you an only child?"

"As far as I know." He smiled softly. "My mother insists that my father was a philandering bastard in his youth, but he swears the moment he met my mother all that went flying out the window."

"And you grew up in Dallas-"

"South Lake, actually."

"South Lake. Did you play football?"

"Of course. I'm a good Texan."

I laughed. "We're you good?"

He tilted his head slightly. "Not as good as my father would have liked, but I did well enough to follow the team to State two years in a row."

I inclined my head in a mock congratulatory salute. "And then college."

"College was pretty rocky. I discovered independence, and that can be a very dangerous thing for a young man with a trust fund."

"What kind of trouble did you get into? Girls? Drugs? Alcohol?"

"Take all that and add in a little bit of a gambling addiction, and you have all six years of my college experience." He smiled at the look on my face that must have shown some of my incredulity. "I'm telling you, I was a stupid, immature fool during that time."

"But then you met Aurora."

He inclined his head, his expression growing serious. "I met Aurora, and she was so aware of what it was she wanted out of life that I couldn't help but grow up a little bit."

"But the gambling continued," I said, recalling what Rawn had told me.

"No. I stopped it all when I met Aurora. Buckled down, finished my studies, and followed her to Portland, starting the PR firm mostly because I wanted to prove to her that I was as serious about my future as she was. We married a year later...shared three blissful years together."

Conrad pulled his hand from mine and shifted in his chair, dragging his butter and crawfish-covered fingers through his hair. "And then...she used to travel a lot for Cepheus, charming inventors into selling their wares to the company. During a few of those trips, she had flings. She didn't think anything of it, thought I would understand. I didn't."

I saw pain on his face, like it was all still fresh. It made me wonder how much of it he had allowed himself to deal with. Madison told me that they must have had a pretty amicable break-up because they still worked together and still got along rather well. But the pain that was playing in the shadows under his eyes made me wonder just how amicable it really was.

On Conrad's part, anyway.

"I fell apart," he admitted. "She didn't seem to care either way, whether I stayed or I left. And that indifference made it worse. To her, marriage was companionship. To me, it was trust and commitment, all the things she seemed to spit on with her little flings. So I left, went to Vegas, and made quite a fool of myself at the blackjack tables." He shook his head now as the memory played through his mind. "Rawn found me there and forced me to see what I was doing. He took me home and made me meet with this psychologist who specializes in addiction. For a month, he kept me a virtual prisoner in my parents' house, forced me to work the steps, and made me fix what she broke. That's why I owe-owed-him so much."

"Why did you go back to Portland?"

Conrad picked up another crawfish and picked at the tender meat of its belly. "My company was there. My friends. I was determined not to let Aurora ruin everything I had worked for in those few years we were together. And, over time, she and I were able to find a way to be friends."

"And then she got sick."

Conrad's shoulders stiffened. He nodded, but the expression on his face made it pretty clear he wasn't interested in talking about it.

But I had to push the issue.