He’s f**king spying on me.

I end the call and sit back in my chair. Well, that takes care of my movie-star crush. I’m so over that crush. He can kiss my ass, thinking he can have people follow me around and take pictures. It’s invasive. It’s degrading. It’s manipulative. It’s—

My email dings again and it’s another message from Vaughn. I click open and there’s a selfie picture of him standing in front of his view of LA holding a white daisy to his nose. He has the most adorable boyish smile on his face. This message says:

Now we’re even.

And then another one comes in as soon as I finish reading that one.

You can call it whatever you want, but I’m not going to stop. I like getting updated. I like knowing what you’re up to. I want to know more about you, Grace.

How much more?

Shit. What if he starts digging?

I call him back and he picks up on the first ring this time. "Miss Kinsella."

"Mr. Asher, I don’t want to be spied on. I don’t want you fishing around for information on me. I don’t want to get these creepy feelings everywhere I go, wondering if I’m being watched."

"You are being watched, and that condition is non-negotiable." He says this in his authoritative tone, but there’s an edge to it that causes me to hesitate in my retaliation. "Grace, if the media ever finds out about you, you will be a target. I’m being very careful, but they are relentless motherfuckers and I have a movie coming out in two weeks. They want dirt. They want filth. They want proof that I’m some abusive prick and they want nothing more than to plaster pictures of whatever they can find out all over the tabloids. This is a security issue for me and for you. I will not give in on this point. I won’t. And I don’t want to hear about how you’ll walk away, because Grace, I have a whole night of erotic spankings planned."

I laugh and then cover my mouth and try to compose myself so I can spar properly. "Mr. Asher, I will be polite and accommodating and call the spying ‘security’, but you have to stop looking in my past. If I want you to know personal things, I’ll tell you."

He’s silent for a few moments and my mind is spinning with thoughts and questions. Will he back off? Will that make him look harder? Will he demand answers? Will he send me to therapy?

Where the hell did that come from?

"OK," he finally says, letting out a sigh of resignation. "OK, no more digging. But the security stays."

"I accept that deal."

"But Grace" —he pauses for a moment—"is it bad? Your past? Is it bad?"

I have to sit down for that question. Because his voice is not filled with pity, he doesn’t know what happened to my parents, so that’s not it. But the sympathy catches me off-guard. And I’ve never told this story to anyone. Not anyone. Oh, Bebe pieced together most of it, but that just excused me from ever saying the words out loud.

"You can tell me, sweets. I can keep a secret too. And I don’t judge. I’m a good listener."

"It’s nothing, Asher," I say back, minus the melancholy threatening to take over. "Really, just back off and let it be. You’re getting your way about so many things, please just let me have my way about this."

Chapter Two

IT surprises me how affected I am by this turn of events with Grace. Plenty of submissives over the years have had personal problems, and while I would listen if they brought these troubles up, I never cared to understand what the issues were about or how they affected the woman I was f**king.

But Grace pleading with me to allow her some privacy about her past, in combination with the fact that it’s missing from all public record—that’s… odd. And troubling. And it makes me worry. Not about me. But about her.

What kind of indiscretion could it be? Should I allow her to keep that secret? Or should I go digging and break my promise? Will me not knowing affect her protection, should the media ever discover her?

Well, the good thing about that is if I’m having a hard time finding out about her past, so will they. But the bad thing is, what if they do find out and they take her by surprise?

I speed-dial Felicity. I know she’s in school and she hates me bothering her on the weekdays, but I need absolute discretion in this matter and she’s the only one I can trust.

It goes to voicemail, so I leave a message, hang up, and then access the picture the security team sent me from the Botanical Gardens.

Grace is so sweet in this image. And she is like a daisy surrounded by rows and rows of orchids. Because her beauty doesn’t need to be cultivated. She doesn’t need special conditions to thrive. She’s what people in the biz call a natural beauty. No makeup, no hair products, no fancy clothes required. Just her in whatever she throws on. Her straight honey-colored hair and her flawless peach skin.

But the tremble in her voice just now, when I asked her about her past and she retaliated by calling me Asher… that concerns me.

My phone buzzes in my hand and I feel relief when Felicity’s face appears on my screen. "I need you to dig up Grace Kinsella’s past."

"Oh, I totally forgot to tell you, V. I did, but all her juvenile records have been sealed. It’s very difficult to find those because they are expunged, and lots of places don’t have the juvenile records digitized after they are sealed."

"So you can’t do it?"

She laughs. "Please, I can do it. It’s just a big deal. How bad do you really want it? Because it will take a significant amount of time and planning. And probably bribes,” she adds.

"How long if you start now?"

"I dunno, weeks?"

"Start now. If it gets too difficult, let me know, but I think it’s very important that I know. And Felicity?"

"Yeah?"

"If someone knew about her sealed records—knew where to find them, for instance—how hard would they be to get?"

"Well, in LA, probably pretty hard. But in Colorado? Who knows how they run things out there. Could be really easy. Like maybe one person has complete access and there’s no paper trail when you go into the file room. Or it could be just as tight as here."

"OK." Yeah, that’s not good. "Please do this for me and make it a priority."

"No problem, V. I’m on it."

The line disconnects but I’m too deep in thought to bother putting my phone away, so I just stare out across the valley and suddenly wish I could fly back to Denver tonight. I speed-dial my office. "Janet, can I cancel my day tomorrow?"