was what they’d been hired to do, she’d been informed the first night they’d come to spirit him away. Which meant Rafael had decreed it—and in this great house, what Rafael decreed was law. That took some getting used to.
“You always loved this room.”
Lily jumped at the sound of his voice. It was as if she’d summoned him out of thin air with a single thought, and it took everything she had not to whirl around and face him, the way a guilty person who remembered exactly how much she’d loved this room might do.
“I do like libraries,” she said, trying to sound vague. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“You like this one because you said it felt like a tree house,” Rafael said, and it was only when she heard how calm and even his voice was that she realized she’d been much too close to snapping at him.
Lily heard him move farther into the cozy room, all dark woods and packed bookshelves and the bay window that sat out amid the leafy green treetops in summer. This time of year the bare branches scratched at the glass and made her think about all the ghosts that stood in this room with them, none of whom she wanted to contend with just then.
She turned to find Rafael much closer than she’d expected. He stood there in casual trousers and a sleek sweater that made her palms itch to touch it—him—and she told herself the way her heart leaped inside her chest was anxiety. Panic at this awful role she had to play, when she’d never been any good at pretending much of anything.
But the heat that washed over her told a much different story, especially as it settled low and deep and heavy in her belly. And then began to pulse.
It was then that she realized that she hadn’t been alone with Rafael since that cold street back in Charlottesville. Not truly alone. Not like this—closed off in a faraway room in a rambling old house where no one could hear them and no one was likely to intervene even if they could.
Lily’s heart began to drum against her ribs, so loud that for a moment she was genuinely afraid he could hear it.
“A tree house?” she asked now. She frowned at him, then out the window and into the darkness, where the December trees were skeletal at best. Someone who had never been here before would certainly not make the summertime connection. It required having whiled away hours in the window seat, surrounded by all of those leaves. “I don’t get it.”
His dark gaze was intent on hers, as if he was parsing it—her—for lies, though he still stood a few feet away, his hands thrust in his pockets. She supposed that was meant to be a safe distance. But this was Rafael. Nothing about him was safe and there was no distance in the world that cut off that electricity that bloomed in the air between them. Even now, as if nothing had happened. As if it was five years ago and no time had passed.
No car accidents. No Arlo. Just this thing that had stalked them both for years.
“How have you enjoyed your week here?” Rafael asked. So mildly, as if he had nothing on his mind save the duties of a host and this was a mere holiday for the both of them.
Lily didn’t believe that tone of voice at all.
“It’s very pretty here,” she said, the way a first-time guest might have. “If a bit bleak this time of year. And obviously, the house itself is amazing. But that doesn’t make it feel like any less of a prison.”
“You are not in prison, Lily.”
“That’s not—” She cut herself off. “I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“I can’t call you anything else,” he said, a dark fire in his voice, his eyes, and it stirred up that dangerous matching blaze inside her. “It sits on my tongue like lead.”
She didn’t really want to think about his tongue. “If this isn’t a prison, when can I leave?”
“Don’t.”
“I don’t know you. I don’t know this place. The fact that you remember this life you think I had doesn’t change the fact that I don’t remember living it. A blood test doesn’t change how I feel.”
She thought if she kept saying that, over and over again, it might make it true.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Rafael said, in a remarkably calm tone that was completely at odds with that harsh look on his dark, beautiful face. “But things are complicated. I can’t simply let you go and hope you’ll be kind enough to stay in touch. You are somewhat more than a mere flight risk.”
Lily thought better of showing him her reaction to that. She might not have been truly alone with him since they’d arrived here, but she’d certainly suffered through too many of these sorts of seemingly innocuous barbs that she worried were actually tests. At the various meals they’d taken together with Arlo, because, she’d been informed, hiding away with a tray in her room was not allowed. Every time Rafael encountered her, in fact.
Was she responding as Lily? Or as someone who didn’t know who Lily was? Having to worry over every single word she said or expression she let show on her face was like talking through a stone wall, and she was beginning to feel the weight of it inside her, dragging her down.
“And why not?” she asked crisply. “When you know that’s what I want?”
“Because,” he said softly, “I am a father.”
“Arlo doesn’t know you from a can of paint,” she snapped at him.
“And whose fault is that?”
The silky rejoinder stopped her short. She could feel her temper pounding in her temples, her throat, down in her gut, goading her on. When she knew the very last thing she could be around Rafael was out of control in any way. Temper would take her down as fast as passion. Faster. At least if she was kissing him, she couldn’t run her mouth at the same time.
Lily blinked. Where had that come from?
But of course, she knew. She was in a small room, alone with Rafael. Five years ago he would already have been inside her. There would have been no hesitation, no hands thrust into his pockets and that wary distance. He’d once hitched her up on the back of the deep leather sofa to her right and had her biting her own hand within seconds of closing the door behind them.
She went and sat on that same sofa now and saw a gleam of something edgy and very male in his gaze as she did, telling her he was remembering the same thing. She toed off the short boots she wore, pulled her legs in their warm leggings beneath her where she sat and wrapped her arms around her middle and the oversize tunic of a sweater she wore, with the great big cowl neck that was perfect for drafty old European halls like this one.
“So, tell me your theories,” she said, with a calm she didn’t feel at all.
Rafael stood where she’d left him, over near the wall of books. He didn’t cross over and sit down in the chair across from her. He only studied her.
Looking for weaknesses, she thought, and tried to steel herself.
Because she was well aware that Rafael didn’t buy her amnesia story for an instant.
“What theory would you prefer to hear?” he asked after a moment. “I have so many.”
This angle, staring up at him from below, was unsettling. It was impossible not to be entirely too aware of every hard plane of his perfect chest, or that ridged abdomen of his. It was hard not to lose herself in the stark male lines of his fine, athletic form, much less that ruthlessness he’d always exuded. But where it had been purely sexual five years ago, now it was tempered. Steelier. Harder. More focused and intent. It made him that much more devastating.
And Lily had to find a way to ignore it. All of it. When she’d never managed to do so before.
You’re an addict like any other, she told herself now. Like her mother. Hadn’t she sat in those meetings from time to time in those