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Unknown Sender:

Last chance. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Unknown Sender:

I know what Gemma did to get you this job. Do you?

Unknown Sender:

Meet me in the lobby. Your friend’s job is on the line.

That gasping, panicked monster of terror deep in my heart burst through the surface of my emotions like a zombie hand in a horror movie. It clutched at my lungs, pinching them so tightly, I couldn’t draw a full breath.

Vaughn was here. He’d called the actual event center to get my attention, and now he was threatening Gemma. I had to put an end to this.

With the awards ceremony well underway, I found myself alone as I exited the packed ballroom and headed back to the grand foyer at the front of the building. Deserted as it was, it felt like traversing a haunted castle on my own, with art decoaccents in the arched doorways and an aged patina to the sandy brick walls and copper inlay veins that ran through the floors. My high heels clacked loudly as I walked at a fast clip, and as I rounded a corner, I found myself in the domed entranceway.

Entirely alone, Vaughn leaned against one of the brick walls with his hands in his khaki pockets. Above him, the rounded ceiling stood in stark, contrasting grandeur to his casual appearance with a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painted along its curved surface. Vaughn pushed off the wall, walking past polished walnut tables and meeting me near the arched entrance. “You got my message.”

Behind him, the two-story-high entryway spanned four doors across and up to the Sistine Chapel painting like they were bending to heaven. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of feeling smug about his stunt. I went to the heart of the matter instead, folding my arms as I stood in front of him. “You’re blackmailing me into taking a job?”

“Absolutely,” Vaughn said with easy confidence. He fixed a lock of brown hair that had escaped his side-gelled hairdo. “And as I’ve clearly shown, I’ll follow you anywhere and doanythingto make sure you see some sense.” He still wore one of those tropical, short-sleeved, button-down shirts he seemed to prefer, and it made him look like a tourist in a turn-of-the-century museum. “You aren’t thinking this through logically, Ruth. You’re thinking about perceived insults from me to you—”

“Perceived?” I asked incredulously. “You think ditching me with no job after begging me to get a hyper-specific PhD is aperceivedinsult?”

“You’re thinking with your emotions, not your head,” Vaughn insisted calmly. His rectangular glasses glinted from the muted lights overhead as he looked away, clearly agitated. When he returned his gaze to mine, it was agate hard. “You will take this position. You’ll sign the papers, come back to Denver with me, and we’ll go to Italy together in two months. You’ll be paid well for your work, and you’ll further your career the way you were always meant to. This,” he said with a gesture toward the ballroom down the hall and behind me, “is not you. You are not meant to be some doctor’s housewife, and you’re certainly not a matchmaker, for God’s sake. You’re a scientist.”

“A housewife?” I echoed. “Is that what this is about? Cal?”

“He’s clouding your judgment,” Vaughn snapped. The lights around the domed ceiling were meant to give it an ethereal glow, but they cast sharp shadows and angry, slashing lines over Vaughn’s time-softened features. “You are more than this.”

“I am whoever I choose to be,” I seethed, tightening my folded arms. “And you don’t get to dictate what that is.”

Footsteps echoed through the hallways softly, and I looked over my shoulder in alarm. A tall, blond-haired man in a navy-blue suit walked by, and his gaze swiveled around like he might be looking for the bathrooms. Then he looked down at his phone and tapped away at it, apparently sending a message as he paused just beyond the foyer. It was Rook, my fake doctor. I turned back to Vaughn and whispered, “You need to leave.”

Vaughn glared. “I’m not leaving unless you’re coming withme. I have the resume yourfriendsubmitted to your boss to get you this mockery of a job. I have proof that would get her fired, but more importantly, would end your tenure with this circus.”

My heart sank. Gemma hadn’t told me she’d lied to get me this job. But, oh, that wasso Gemma.It was absolutely what she would do to protect her best friend—she’d put anything and everything on the line for the people she loved. It was why she had lied about me having a husband, too, and I could justthrottleher for all of it. Except she’d done it out of love for me, and now she was in danger because of my past. I couldn’t formulate a response to the idea that Vaughn might ruin everything Gemma had worked so hard to build. It was too unfair. Too cruel.

Vaughn sensed my fear. His brow fell over his dark eyes, and he took a step nearer to me. Frozen with terror, I couldn’t even find the will to back away from him as the scent of his cologne washed over me in a burning wave. He grasped my arm and pulled me against his soft body. “I will burn all your bridges, Ruth. I’ll destroy everything you think you’ve built here if it means you have only one place left to go.”

My lips trembled, despite my earlier resolve to end this lunacy. “You sound insane right now. You know that right?” Rook glanced up from his phone as he started walking again. Blue eyes danced over me like he might recognize me, and then he was past the foyer and down the hallway toward the restrooms. I turned my focus back to Vaughn again, whose flaccid features were growing red with frustration. “You can’t ruin Gemma’s job over this. I won’t let you.”

Vaughn released me and held up his phone with Kiss-Met’s website pulled up on the browser. His thumb hovered over Janice’s phone number. “I can leave a message for your boss. How do you think that will go over? I’ll start with Gemma, and when she’s lost her job, and you’ve lost yourfakeposition there, I’ll move on to your new boyfriend.”

My face blanched. “Empty threats. You have nothing on him.”

He paused, thick eyebrows raising. “How confident are you in that? Should we test it?”

Every stubborn nerve in my body seized up in rebellion. I wouldn’t allow this reeking asshole to dictate what I did or didn’t do withmylife. I stared at him, my brows falling slowly into a scowl. My brain raced through my options, thumbing through a catalog of probabilities.

I knew Vaughn, and I knew he didn’t bluff. Lie? Yes. Cheat? Clearly. But bluff? I didn’t think so. There was no reason for him tonotget me fired, especially because kindness obviously was not something he held in any kind of esteem. Also, the grant for this research was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Vaughn’s salary alone was well into the six-figure range, which for our field, was coveted. It was worth taking risks if he met the criteria for the grant and received the money he thought he deserved.

So, all the facts considered, he would absolutely do everything in his power to get me fired. That meant he was more than willing to make that phone call right now. And if I allowedhim to do that, Gemma would get fired. Janice wouldn’t have a choice, ethically, but to hold her responsible for lying. That would logically lead to my termination as well, and that would leave us both jobless. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I’d lost Gemma the one job she had truly loved and excelled at.

If I went with Vaughn right now, Gemma would be safe. I would be indentured into five years of a working relationship with him, which felt impossible to comprehend. Even now, my heart wanted to beat out of my chest and my breaths were growing thin and strained. The idea of battling panic attacks every single day—out of the country no less—weighed on me like a stack of medieval tomes on my chest.

But Gemma.