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She kept her fingers away from his body and tightened her clench around his hips. “You’ve never held anyone this close before.”

He was stiff, he knew, but was he that obvious? Maybe she’d gathered that from his no touching rule.

Her breath circled around his ear. “Your heart’s knocking against your chest.”

It sped up. “I might be nervous.” As in a thrashing maniacal ball of nerves.

“I think there’s a little of that happening on both sides right now.”

The misery-loves-company thing didn’t usually work for him, but he knew without a doubt his misery loved Charlee.

His friends stared at him with their mouths and eyes gaping as he left the dining room full of echoes and broken glass and strode to the bedroom in long urgent steps. He kicked the door closed behind them, and instead of releasing her, he pulled her legs tighter around him.

The hopelessness piled on his shoulders weighed so much more than she did. Now she’d seen him at his worst. “You thought I was made of steel. Now you know.”

There was a pause as if she were debating the answer. She was probably glaring at the back of his head.

She dropped her cheek on his shoulder. “No, it’s still in there. You just haven’t found it yet.”

His hands curled into the flesh belonging to the woman who strengthened him by merely opening her mouth. She was his ghost of dreams, his backbone, his everything.

He realized she was struggling to get down, and he released her immediately. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

She smoothed the borrowed shirt over her bare thighs and stepped back. “We have a lot to talk about.”

In a strolling circuit around the room, she traced the curvature of the King Louis furniture, fidgeted with the knick-knacks, and sniffed the bouquets of fresh flowers. How extraordinary it felt to have her there, in the same room, sharing the same air. He could watch her for hours, the graceful way she moved, the elegant arch of her throat, the flicker in her eyes when she looked at him.

She paused in front of the sheer ivory curtains. He could tell by the way she stared out at the gray-stone architecture of Fifth Avenue that her mind was in another place. Her words confirmed it.

“Three years ago, you walked into my tattoo shop. An hour after you left, my lover and dearest friend, Noah Winslow, was killed.” She turned to face him. “And I was kidnapped by his murderer.”

He reached out for the bed and sat, his pulse at full throttle. “Who took you?”

“I’ll get to that, but first you need to understand Nathan’s role in this.”

Noah Winslow had been the boyfriend. There was a worn card in his wallet with the contact info for Winslow Investigations…for Nathan Winslow. A brother? “He’s the fucker who told me you were murdered.”

She snapped up her chin, her eyes hard as aquamarine glass. “Insult him again and I’m out of here. Do you understand?”

He needed to know who abducted her and what the soon-to-be dead motherfucker did to her, so he focused on that instead of the man she so vehemently defended. He nodded.

“Good.” She took a deep breath. “Noah and Nathan were brothers, and I’m the reason Nathan lost him. The fact that he hasn’t killed me himself speaks volumes.”

“How—”

She held up a stiff finger, but it was her glare that shushed him.

“Nathan saved your life by lying about my death. The man who enslaved me put hits on anyone looking for me. Though there was no one. Friends or family, that is.” She paused as if to let that set in.

Yeah, he had definitely stopped looking for her.

“I think you’re beginning to see, but here’s the big one, Jay. Nathan sabotaged his mission, at a great financial cost to himself, and risked his life to carry me out of a prison where I was shackled, beaten, and raped by a man. The man I’ve been running from since I was eighteen. The man I’m still running from.”

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Charlee watched as the gravity of her situation settled over Jay, contorting his face and tightening the muscles in his neck and arms. That was the moment she realized he’d fully perceived she was in danger.

She didn’t regret telling him truth, but worry slid through her and knotted in her stomach. Would he reject her? Would he compare her to the piano girls? Or would he go ballistic again? “What I tell you cannot be repeated. You could endanger my life, and yours.”