Page 40

I nod once and wonder how long I gazed at the sofa getting lost in my memories. “Sure.” I walk ahead of him to the garage and jump into the passenger seat of the Mercedes.

Once he’s backed out and heading for 470, I follow the thread that’s been weaving in my head. “If I didn’t trip, you think there was foul play.” It’s a statement, not a question.

He takes the onramp onto the highway and bites his lip.

“You’re never reticent. ”

“The last time we discussed this, you shut down on me.”

“In all fairness, you’d casually mentioned someone nearly murdered me.”

“Where’s this calm demeanor coming from?”

“I want to be taken seriously. And I want all the facts. I’m tired of being protected from myself.” My temper is rising and the hornets are swarming again. I take a deep breath and try to center myself.

He hands me a Nalgene and nods for me to drink.

“You don’t need protection from yourself. You aren’t a danger.” Very quietly, he adds, “Except perhaps to me.”

I twist in my seat as we cruise north to stare at his profile. “Why am I a danger to you?”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “A thousand reasons, Ayla.” He extends a palm in invitation, and I place a hand in his.

He lifts it quickly to his lips, kissing my knuckles, before setting our joined hands on the center console.

“Because you’re my weakness. Because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.

Because anyone who wants to get to me only has to look at you to know that you’re my Achilles’ heel.

I’m not protecting you from yourself, but fuck if I won’t protect you from anything—no, everything—that threatens you. ”

Hmm. “The people who want to get to you… Could one of them have something to do with my fall?”

He pauses longer than I’m comfortable with.

I fight with everything in me not to shift in my seat simply to break the tension.

He clears traffic and changes lanes to merge onto I-70.

“Yes and yes. Fitz and I have been sorting through any existing and all potential threats for months now. The idea that my business or I could have put you in danger—” He pauses his thought, but his hand squeezes mine.

“It keeps me up at night. I promise you, Princess, and hear me on this, no one will ever hurt you again.”

I hear what he doesn’t say. No one will get close enough to. I sigh. “So we’re back to control. Again.”

“Not control. Protection. And if you’re annoyed by it, I’m afraid you’ll live in a perpetual state of exasperation because I’m not going to allow you to be vulnerable by being any less protective.”

“Great.” The sarcasm is evident in my tone.

I slip my hand from his and reach for the coffee he was making when I came back from the studio.

I pop the top, but say before taking a sip, “Please park where my car was on the day of the accident. I want to recreate as much as I can to trigger my brain into remembering.” Then I pull deeply on what turns out to be a delicious peppermint mocha.

We wind up the mountain away from Denver until he finds the turnoff and heads for the trailhead.

“Is this where I parked?”

“That’s where you were parked.” He points to a forest green Subaru two spots away.

I take another sip of my mocha and tighten the top. It’ll be waiting for me upon my return. I grab my water bottle and my camera bag and step out of the SUV and wander to the driver’s side of the Subaru as if I’d just alighted.

I take tentative steps toward the trailhead, hoping something—anything really—illuminates a shadowed corner in my brain. Christian slides the camera bag down my arm, before I stop him. “No. I want it. Please.”

He slides it back up my shoulder, patting it, before following quietly beside me.

“I don’t know where I was, so I’ll need you to guide me.”

“All right, Princess. You lead. When I need to step in and course correct, I will. That work?”

I feel small, almost like a child who tugs a parent’s hand not knowing where to go, just knowing they want to lead and already be at their destination.

We walk in silence, the birds chittering announcing spring is close.

Technically it’s already here, but somehow Colorado is always slow to get the memo.

The leaves rustle underfoot, and the wind sings a song of warmth not far away.

I finally remove my jacket once we’re three quarters of a mile into the hike.

This part of the path is open to the sun with little cover and the huge blue of the Colorado sky reminds me, yet again, why it’s so easy to do my job here.

Around the mile mark or so, I continue straight, only to have a hand low on my back urge me to take a small trail up and to the left. It’s in the press of his fingers, guiding me while letting me lead that forces my brain to relax.

Is my husband dangerous? Certainly in business and perhaps personally as well.

Is he sinister? I suspect with others, but he’s never been with me.

And he’s intelligent and shrewd. Attempting to hurt me in the same place I was hurt before would put him squarely in the public eye, not to mention in the crosshairs of a focused investigation.

One hurts him professionally and the other personally.

He won’t court trouble in either, not when he’s mentioned staying under the radar.

Another nudge low on my back guides me further up and into the brush on a lesser used trail.

I push up the path, feeling the burn and tug in the back of my thighs and in my butt.

I love the physical release, but it’s obvious I’m out of practice.

Breaths saw in and out of my lungs while I hear little from the man behind me.

We walk this way until I’m yanked back into a firm chest, arms banded tightly around me. “Don’t move.” The whisper is earnest, if not ominous.

“Wha—”

A strong hand clamps over my mouth, as he hisses in my ear, “Shhh.”

Oh, I think the fuck not. I open my mouth to bite Christian’s fingers, my mind racing and my adrenaline ready to fight, when I see it.

A tall lean black bear. He’s thin, with light brown fur that’s fuzzy like he got left out in the humidity.

He reaches to the sky and stretches like he’s just woken from a nap before falling back to all fours and trudging through the brush, carving a way through the limbs and the detritus on the forest floor.

My heart pounds, the blood pumping so strongly I can feel it in my ears and in my throat. The tang of fear sits on my tongue.

His mouth still at my ear, he says, “Wait one more minute. Okay? ”

I nod. He removes his hand from my mouth but keeps me wrapped in his arms. I twist my neck to look him in the face. He swallows hard, and he kisses my temple, before looking back over my head, focused on our surroundings.

I stand there long enough to relax. We’ve stopped moving long enough that the burn in my muscles has cooled and the cloud cover has noticeably dropped the temperature. I burrow into his warmth.

His head drops once again. “Do you want to go on or head back?”

“I want to keep going, but I didn’t pack bear spray. I… forgot.”

“I’ve got us covered. Let’s go. Mind if I lead?”

I gesture for him to go forward and the warm arms around me fall away just as a kiss lands below my ear. Holy hell that does it for me.

Christian replaces me in the lead position and picks his way across the thinning trail, all the while watching. His right hand stays near his body as his left moves limbs aside. Only once does the trail require a hand to get me to the next level.

“How did I get up here in September?”

He shrugs, but adds, “In the pitch-black pre-dawn and this far in. I can’t say I like it.”

He comes to a stopping point, and I get it.

I know why I was here. I can feel the spirit of the pioneers, the way they must’ve quaked before these mountains if they arrived in the winter, how out of breath they must’ve been if they managed to climb one, only to see the deadly range stretched out ahead.

Like the sails and spines of a sleeping dinosaur stretched across farther than the eye can see.

But it’s the mountains that call to me. The peaks, the valleys, the white caps shining proud as if not allowing the sun to steal their snow.

And I know.