“I—yes. Of course.”

There is a pause, and when he speaks again, his tone is low and careful, as if he’s treading over broken glass. “I’ll leave right now. Where are you?”

I close my eyes, a little ashamed that I’m so relieved, and that he knows me so well.

“In my car, but I’ll meet you at the Stark suite at the Century Plaza hotel,” I say, referring to the suite that the company keeps open for visiting clients. I happen to know it’s currently unused. And while it’s foolish, I don’t want to show him those horrible pictures inside either of our homes.

I close my eyes and shudder as, once again, the memory of those images washes over me. “Actually, the bar,” I say, because right now, I really want a drink.

I hear him curse softly under his breath. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I admit. “But I will be when I see you.”

“What’s happened?”

But I can’t tell him. Not like this. And the truth is that I don’t want to have to tell him at all.

I sigh. “I’ll leave something for you at the front desk. Get it, then come find me.”

I know he wants to argue, but all he says is “I’m on my way.”

He clicks off, and I close my eyes, letting the relief wash over me.

I take a few moments to pull myself together and fix my makeup before I pull out of the garage and start the trek west from downtown to Century City.

There’s a wreck on the 10, so it takes me longer to get there than I’d planned, but Jackson is coming all the way from San Bernadino, so I know that he has not arrived before me. I get the key to the suite from the girl at the front desk, then leave the envelope for Jackson. I hesitate before handing it over to her, not liking the fact that it is out of my hands.

Somehow, that seems like a metaphor for the whole damn situation.

I consider going straight to the room, after all, but the lobby bar is too appealing to pass up. It’s not quite four, so the post-work crowd hasn’t yet arrived and there are tables to spare. Even so, I sit at the actual bar, my back to the main lobby area, and order a glass of pinot.

The bartender is not a chatty type, and I appreciate that. I have worked through panic and nausea, and now I am just drifting. Not in a happy place so much as an away place.

I’ll come back down to earth when Jackson gets here. Until then, I’ll drink wine and pretend like there’s nothing wrong in my world.

I finish my first glass and then another. I’ve just taken the first sip from the third glass the bartender slid in front of me when I realize that he’s there.

I haven’t seen him. Haven’t heard him.

I am simply aware of him. His heat. His intensity.

He is like a radio emitting a low, powerful frequency, and right now, I am completely tuned to him.

Slowly, I put down my glass, then look over my shoulder to find him. He is only standing at the edge of the carpet that separates the bar area from the marble flooring. He’d gone to work in casual dress, appropriate for spending the day in a manufacturer’s warehouse.

There is, however, nothing casual about him.

Even in jeans and a simple white button-down shirt, he projects power and ferocity. He holds the envelope with the photos and threatening note in his hand, and though it hangs loose at his side, the knuckles on the hand that hold it are white, and I can see the tension in his arms.

His face tells a similar story. His jaw is so firm that I am certain his teeth are clenched. As for his eyes—they burn with the heat of a man about to go to battle, and I am certain that a similar fire reflected in the eyes of ancient warriors before they went out to decimate a village.

In other words, Jackson is holding it together—but his composure comes at a price.

I open my mouth to say his name, but he shakes his head and holds up a finger. Then he steps to the bar and puts down a hundred-dollar bill. He takes my hand to help me from my stool, and the shock that runs through me from even such simple contact is enough that I must hold on to the edge of the bar for a moment in order to keep my knees from collapsing out from under me.

He is tight with contained energy, and the thought that I will be the woman in his arms when he lets himself go makes me wet with anticipation.

Dear god I want this. Want him. I want the release of abandonment. The safety of giving myself to him. I want the delirium of being swept out of myself.

And I want the hours of bliss in which the photographs and the threat and the horror that surround us are, if not forgotten, at least pushed aside. Diminished by the power of the explosion that will erupt between us.