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“I was going to do a little more work into researching our suspect before I called it quits for the day.” Florence tried to tug her hand free from his, but he only tightened his grip, and she finally gave up.

“We can do that in the morning,” Jake spoke up. “Callie asked me to be home by seven because her parents are coming over for dinner, if I leave now I can be there not much after.”

“Then I guess you’re leaving now,” he said with a grin.

“I guess,” Florence agreed but didn't look too happy about it. Whatever was running through her head right now was evidently something that was upsetting her.

“I’ll give you a ride home, do you need to get anything before we leave?” he asked Florence.

“My purse is upstairs on my desk.”

“I’ll wait down here while you go get it.”

She opened her mouth, her face troubled, but then snapped it closed, nodded, and disappeared off down the corridor.

“Did she tell you that she thought someone was watching her apartment this morning?” he asked Florence’s partner once they were alone.

Jake’s eyes grew wide. “No, she never said a thing.”

“I went to pick her up, and she pulled a gun on me, thought I was the one watching her.”

“Were you?” Jake arched a brow. “I know you’ve been sending her flowers, calling her, and hanging around ever since you saved her from getting hit by that car.”

Eli tried hard not to lose his temper at the insinuation. “I'm interested in her.”

“And she’s told you several times that I've heard, that she’s not interested.”

“She might say the words, but you know she doesn’t mean them.”

Jake studied him for a long moment. “Look, from what I know of her childhood, it was pretty messed up. She doesn’t trust easily. If you’re interested, you better be prepared to be patient. I have a feeling you're not a patient man.”

“I can be patient with her.”

“Thanks for telling me about someone watching her.”

“I told you so you can do something about it.”

“And I will.” Jake gave a nod then walked off.

While he waited for Florence, Eli debated the odds that he could convince her to come and stay with him until they found whoever had been outside her apartment.

His hotel was safe, and the apartment he would be moving into had excellent security, even though he hadn't officially moved in yet, he owned the penthouse, and he kind of liked the idea of staying there with Florence.

“I thought you had snuck out the back,” he teased when Florence finally returned.

That coaxed a smile out of her. “I thought about it.”

Instead of ordering her to give him a chance to prove to her that there could be something real between them, he took her hand again, pleased when she threaded their fingers together. “You hungry?” he asked as he led her outside to where his driver was waiting for them.

“Starving. Jake and I were so busy today we skipped lunch.”

Stamping down a flare of jealousy at the thought of her spending all day every day with a man who could be a model, he said, “How about we grab some takeout on the way to your apartment?”

“Yeah, okay, I guess we can do that.”

Pleasantly surprised by Florence’s acquiescence to what he considered to be a date—not that he was going to tell her that just yet, he didn't want to spook her—he opened the car door for her. “What do you want?”

“I'm easy, whatever you like is fine by me.”

“I'm in the mood of pizza.”

“Pizza is good, but I only like cheese on my pizza.”

“What?” He shot her a look like she was crazy, then pulled out his phone to order the pizzas from his favorite place. “No mushrooms? No ham? No olives? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” she echoed.

“You’re crazy, but cheese pizzas it is. So tell me what other foods you like and don’t like,” he said as the car took off.

“My favorite vegetable is carrots, I love to snack on them raw, but for some reason, I don’t like them grated in salads and things.”

“Actually, I get that. I love chicken, especially fried chicken, but for some reason I can't stand chicken nuggets. When I was a kid my mom was always trying to convince me to try them, they were her favorite easy to cook dinner, but she could never get me to like them.” Eli smiled at the memory, right up until the very end of her life it had been a running joke between the two of them.

“Are you and your mom close?”

“We were. She died about eighteen months ago. She had cancer.”

“I'm sorry.” Florence reached out and took his hand, squeezing it.

Keeping hold of her hand, he brushed his thumb backward and forward across her knuckles.

“It was hard losing her. We were close ever since I can remember. Even as a teenager I loved spending time with her. We traveled a lot, I lived in London, Paris, Rome, Sydney, and Geneva when I was growing up, my father worked a lot, and my brother was ten years older than me, so my mom and I would always go for lots of walks, taking in the atmosphere and the culture of each new city. Those times walking around, just the two of us, those are some of the best moments of my childhood.”

“It’s nice you have memories like that.” Florence gave a sad smile, and he wondered what her relationship with her parents was like. “What about your dad, were you close with him as well?”

“We had a different relationship than the one I had with my mom.

He was the disciplinarian, and I could be a bit of a wild kid.

He worked a lot, and my brother was the one who was supposed to take over his business, so he spent a lot of time grooming him, but he made time for me too.

I played soccer, and he always came to my games to cheer me on, at the time, I didn't realize it, but looking back I appreciate that he made that time for me. A lot of my friends’ parents didn't.”

“You lost your dad too, right?”

“About a year after my mom. He loved her so much he didn't want to live without her.”

“And your brother died too? Is that why you ended up running the business?”

“He died when I was twenty and in college. Anaphylaxis, he was allergic to bees and got stung while he was at the park. He was dead before the ambulance arrived, they tried to revive him, but he was already gone.”

“You’ve lost so many people, I'm so sorry.” Florence wiggled sideways across the back seat so she was sitting right up against his side.

“Makes you realize how fragile life is.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Something in Florence’s voice said she also knew something about life’s fragility, only perhaps for very different reasons than he did.

He wanted to ask about her childhood and her family but wasn't sure she’d tell him anything.

She had mentioned a brother, and it hadn't seemed like he was a sensitive topic.

The car stopped, and he decided that he might as well go for it. “You only have one brother?”

“Fletcher, he’s two years older than me.”

When she didn't offer more he pushed. “And your parents, are you close with either of them?”

“My dad took off before I was a year old, I know his name but nothing else about him. My mother was a mother in name only, she never really cared about me and Fletcher, we raised ourselves.”

Eli hated that she’d been without a loving family her whole life, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why she was hesitant to give him a chance. She’d never had a family who was there for her, and she had no reason to believe that happy families existed.

He would show her what a real family looked like, what it felt like to know that there were people who had your back, who were there to support you.

He wanted her to know what it felt like not to be all alone in the world.

A knock on his door signaled the arrival of the pizzas, and he opened it and took them from his driver. The smell of pizza permeated the car, and he handed Florence a takeaway cup of coffee and set the box on his lap, opening it, the steam filled the back of the car.

“You're not by yourself anymore, Florence,” he told her.

“Coffee, pizza, as far as I'm concerned this constitutes a date.

The first of many dates to come. I'm not looking for no-strings hot sex, there are any number of women I could find if that’s all I wanted.

I want what my parents had. I'm looking for someone to share my life with. I'm looking for you.”

With that, he curled a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss every bit as steamy as the pizza.