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“Your dad will explain it to you sometime, Kitty Kat. Not my job. But I promise an ice cream will make you feel better. So?”

It wasn’t like him to change the subject. But even then, I trusted him to tell me what I needed to know. And if he said my dad wasn’t hurting Emily, then I accepted that as the truth.

“So,” I said, like I always did, in our little secret language. “Two scoops?”

Trent rolled off the bed, smiling that devastating smile. “Maybe even three.”

More cellophane pages, more years of memories. One of him at his senior prom, with a little blonde bombshell that looked like a Jazzercise instructor in the making. I hated her back then and a bubble of that hostility comes up now looking at the picture. He never really had girlfriends that I remember. He had girls asfriends,I guess, but nobody seemed to keep his attention. Or capture his heart.

Now the formal portrait of him when he joined the service, looking so sharp and so strong and so sure. Once he joined up, the girls gravitated toward him even more. He was a force of nature and there was never a shortage of girls waiting to take his arm.

But, he never looked at one of them the way he looked at me just a few minutes ago.

Glassy-eyed, lost forever, barely able to hold it in his pants.

I swallow my nerves and try to get my butterflies under control. I close the album and go find my purse in the kitchen,desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. Because knowing that he’s one floor above me, where he and I were just…

I can’t. I can’t do this. Be here, think this, imagine that.

I can’t.

I’ll explode if I stay. We need some space.

I do have somewhere to be—something to do. I got paid last night at the Velvet Touch and I slip my wallet from my purse and double-check that I’ve got the money for my rent which I assumed I’d deliver when I took Trent back to my place. Just the thought of seeing my landlord makes my stomach turn. But still. It’s something. It’s something to do, something else to focus on.

I step outside and find the limo driver, sitting on the patio beside the guest house, reading a James Michener book. The bright sunshine helps clear my mind, just a little. He looks military, more or less, with a clean-shaven honesty. He stands up when he sees me.

“Can I help? I’m Edward. At your service.”

“Yes. I need a ride to my apartment.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and gives me a playful but still respectful salute. “Trent told me your wish is my command. Let’s go.”

Seven

Kat

The Humvee limo slides out of the driveway, making me feel like I’m the Fresh Princess of Elmond Estates. I turn to look over my shoulder at the front door, halfway hoping, halfway dreading, that I’ll see Trent there, watching us pull away.

Chasing down the limo.

But he’s not there.

The window in the partition slides down. “Where to?”

“Corner of Cass and Central Boulevard.”

I watch the driver’s eyebrows furrow in the rear-view. “What’s a girl like you got to do in a place likethat?”

Good question, buddy.But times have been tough and it’s a long freaking story.

“That’s where I live. 450 Central Boulevard. TheTreemont.”

His blue eyes dart back at me in the mirror. “But Corporal Reynolds said you’re living here, with him, didn’t he?”

“Well, my landlord doesn’t know that. Yet,” I say, swallowing back the bile in my throat at the thought of him. “And rent won’t pay itself, whether Trent is home or not.”

The driver sniffs, nods. “I hear you. To the Treemont it is, then. Want me to close this window? Or do you want to be able to talk?”