Not only that, but in the time we’d been outside I’d utterly forgotten my surroundings. I’d neglected to peer into the shadows, or look behind me, or hold onto even a tenuous awareness of my surroundings. I’d forgotten to sniff at the air for something foul or putrid, or about demonic faces leering at me in candlelight, or even that I’d been warned to survive the night.

What can I say? There was only Ben, his skin scenting the air, his touch turning the storm-ridden November evening into a humid, tropical night. Years of training melted away under the heat of his flesh. If I had an Achilles’ heel, I thought, Ben was it.

“Come home with me, Jo-Jo,” he whispered.

I moaned against his throat. Oh, how I wanted to. In his home, in his arms, in his bed, finishing what we’d started here. It was where I wanted to be. And where I belonged.

“I can’t,” I said, then repeated it to myself. I couldn’t just let myself pretend the last ten years had never happened. I wouldn’t lose sight of the woman I’d become. That was the woman I needed to be.

“Too soon?” he asked, then sighed—regretful, frustrated, understanding—at my answering nod. “Better than too late, I suppose.”

“I’m meeting Olivia in…” God, was it already eleven? “Half an hour. We have some things we need to discuss.”

He didn’t ask what, and I didn’t offer. Instead he leaned back and peered into my face, arms still linked around my waist. “And I suppose making plans with her was a way to keep you from spending the night with me?”

“Don’t be arrogant,” I said. “Yes.”

He smiled, looking satisfied as a milk-fed cat, and lifted a hand to graze my cheek. “Are you always so practical, Ms. Archer?”

“Hmm.” I kissed his throat, my tongue a tickling trail just below his earlobe. Barely suppressing a shudder, he ran his fingertips up my spine, letting them linger and play along the lines of my bare shoulders and neck. Or I thought it was his fingertips. Pulling away, I reached up and touched cool, slim metal, brought it back in my hand and peered at it in the dim light. “What is this?”

But I knew before I’d even finished the question. The slender silver chain, a double-stranded braid, was simple and inexpensive, and had been given to me by Ben on my fifteenth birthday. But I hadn’t seen it since shortly after that. I thought it’d been lost in the desert.

“You left it at my house,” he said, his voice softer, more hoarse. “On that last night.”

Our last night, I corrected silently as he reached out and gently plucked it from my fingertips. I bent my head and he draped it around my neck, fastening it there. Closing that circle. I let out a deep breath, felt tension I didn’t even know I was carrying drain from my body just as the first raindrop fell to my skin.

I fingered the chain, already warming around my neck. “Thank you.”

He bowed closer, bending to me so we were forehead-to-forehead in the thickening rain. Each other’s umbrella. “Sure you won’t come with me?”

I shook my head, rolling it softly along his, because I knew if I opened my mouth the answer would be yes.

“So practical,” Ben whispered, dropping a kiss on my cheek. “What if, for once, you didn’t worry about consequences? What if you just did what you wanted?”

I pulled away to look at him, my eyes traveling down to his lips, then back up again. “I just did.”

“Do it again.”

So I did. I leaned forward, took his face in my hands, and the sky above us exploded with light. We pressed against each other, body and bone, and he lifted me so my legs were wrapped at his waist, fused at his hips, anchoring me against him. I nearly didn’t make it to Olivia’s at all.

6

“Come.”

The word, the last Ben said to me before we parted ways, hummed through my mind as I drove to Olivia’s, like a bee addicted to the pollen of the same sweet flower, refusing to settle and be silent. Come.

I was holding the card he’d pressed into my palm before I drove away…and before I returned for one last kiss and drove away again. He’d printed his home address on the back of it, with a message saying he’d leave the door open for me. Just in case. I almost put the card in my purse before deciding against it. It was very schoolgirlish of me, but I wanted it close and instead tucked it into the hollow of my back as I headed into Olivia’s building.

Unlike me, Olivia lived in the center of town, buying a condo in a chic residential high-rise that came with its own valet, dry-cleaning service, and a twenty-four-hour concierge. Though it wasn’t my style, I had to admit the place was stunning, and convenient for those who wished easy access to the six mile stretch of neon playground a mere block away. Gleaming plate-glass windows bowed high into the sky, reflecting the polished wood interior in its shimmering sheets. Discreet lighting dotted the complex’s foyer in artful little niches, and the design was duplicated in Olivia’s apartment nine floors above.

I stepped from the elevator and was poised to knock when the door flew open to reveal my sister, clad in bright coral sweats, an even brighter smile lighting her expectant face. There were some things only a sister could understand. A giggle escaped me, surprising us both, and that was all the encouragement she needed. She squealed, her high-pitched voice shattering the sound barrier, and wheeled me inside before the dogs came running.

“You look fabulous, brilliant, stunning!” she rattled in quick succession, before pressing a finger to my swollen lips. “And you’ve been kissing! Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“Can I get a drink first?”

“Martinis are already prepped,” she said, and disappeared with a skip into the adjoining kitchen. “I’ll bring them to the living room.”

I grinned at this sign of her excitement and headed into the core of the apartment.

The kitchen, where Olivia could be heard happily singing to herself, lay to the left. The bedroom was tucked around a slip of an alcove off to the right. I crossed the penthouse foyer, stepped down into the sunken Italian-marbled living room, and found myself facing a sheer wall of glass revealing the un-real estate of the Las Vegas Strip. It was a block so densely lit it could be seen from the stars. Tossing my coat over an overstuffed armchair, I positioned myself in front of the window to wait.

I felt framed, a statue displayed on a very high shelf, out of reach, and almost eye level with storm clouds so thick they reflected the city’s lights back on itself. Strange. The effect was one of condensed power, like electricity boxed between concrete and cloud, the light in between magnified to manic proportion. As the storm’s muffled rumble signaled its approach from the west, I turned my back on the wild city and relaxed in the bright and feminine luxury of Olivia’s home.

Olivia—again, unlike me—had surrounded herself with things. Beautiful, numerous things. There was a collection of fine crystal on a floor-to-ceiling sweep of built-in shelves. She had a preference for Scandinavian designs; the clean lines of Orrefors mixing with the bright, whimsical creations of Kosta Boda. Next to that was a marble fireplace, unlit and unused except as a holding place for some of the trees and plants that seemed to sprout from nearly every corner and niche in the room. I rubbed the leaf of a wildly trailing spider plant, wondering how she did it. The things absolutely thrived under her care.

Instead of a sofa, she’d placed an oversized daybed with high scrolled sides in the middle of the room, piling it high with bright chenille pillows. A large tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl and onyx sat in the middle of the bed and was used in place of a coffee table. Candles burned everywhere—colored ones, scented ones, tea lights and tapers—and a television unit, rarely used, was tucked inconspicuously off to the side.