Page 102 of Untouchable

“Do you have any idea how crazy I am about you?” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her again.

She did know—a truth that made everything worse.

She was under no delusions in this. One day he would find out about her. If he wasn’t guilty, he would never forgive her. If he was, then he might kill her.

But this was the road she was on.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking concerned when she couldn’t quite pull out of her brooding. “Was I too rough?”

She smiled, shook her head, and told him the truth. “Of course not. I know what I’m in for when it comes to you.”

VOLUME TWO

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly?—

And praised be rashness for it; let us know,

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do pall; and that should learnus

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will?—

Hamlet, 5.2.4-11

21

Kelly was getting annoyedbecause Caleb wouldn’t hang up the phone.

She’d come over to his big estate outside DC for the weekend. She wasn’t living with him all the time anymore the way she had in the beginning, but she’d spent the past three weekends with him. Now it was Friday at almost seven in the evening, and he was still on a work call.

He was also wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

Caleb didn’t have the luxury of working only on weekdays. She didn’t expect him not to work. Or not to take calls on any day or at any hour they came in.

But still, they were scheduled to leave for a black-tie event in ten minutes. The cocktail party was his thing. It was only because of him that she was going to this party at all. She’d gotten out of the shower, dried her hair, and done her makeup in the bathroom, and she’d expected him to be dressed when she reentered his bedroom.

But he was sitting in a leather chair near the window, talking on the phone, naked except for the towel.

And he didn’t even appear aware of her presence.

It worried her.

They were supposed to be in a real relationship. They’d never said the wordsI love you. Given both their pasts as commitment-phobes, that would have been far beyond the comfort zone for either of them. But they’d admitted that the feelings between them were real, and they’d agreed to try to make the relationship work.

He was supposed to care about her, be fully into her, feel for her more than he’d ever felt for anyone else. That was what he’d said, at least.

Which was why it was concerning that he hadn’t noticed that she’d walked into the bedroom wearing nothing but her underwear. He hadn’t even glanced over at her.

She only had a limited amount of time to uncover the truth before her mother died.

If Caleb was losing his interest, if she wasn’t as attractive to him as she used to be, then she could never do what she needed to do.