Charity shook her head slowly. “Who are you? I think I’m going crazy. I fall in love with a man in the space of a week, then I marry him and become a widow on the same day. And now my husband comes back from the dead. It’s too much to take in.” She swallowed heavily. “I need the truth. Tell me what’s going on, Nick. Or is Nick even your real name?”

“Yeah, my name’s Nick. I’ll tell you everything, but first you’re going to clean up and then you’re going to sit down before you fall down.”

He held her hair back with one hand while she splashed cold water on her face. He put a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on the sink shelf and looked at her pointedly. She brushed her teeth, then rinsed her mouth with mouthwash. He put a comb in her hand and she combed her hair. Nick knew that these small grooming motions made her feel better, more in control.

A little color was returning to her face, but her hands were still shaking. He turned her toward him. “Okay now. We’ll have our talk, but not in here. It’s too important a conversation to have in a bathroom, so we’ll go to the living room. You’re going to walk to the couch or I’m going to carry you. Your choice, but you have to take it now.”

Charity blinked. He knew how to put command in his voice. She obeyed instinctively. She made for one of the armchairs, but he steered her to the couch and sat down next to her. She drew back, alarmed.

She wanted to avoid him. Tough shit. He was here and he was staying. He reached over for her hand. She gave a little halfhearted tug to try to get her hand back, but his grip was firm. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wasn’t letting her go. He needed to be touching her for this part.

She turned to him. “Okay,” she said quietly, hand still in his. “This is what I know about you. Your name is Nicholas Ames, you’re thirty-four years old, you are—were—a stockbroker in New York. You made some money and this year you retired from the office you’d worked in for twelve years. You want to open a business of your own. Your father was a banker, your mother was a lawyer. So tell me—how much of that is true?”

Nick was so goddamned proud of her. Any other woman would be screaming by now, but not Charity.

Her words echoed in his head. How much of that is true? “Basically none of it,” he confessed.

She lost what little color she’d acquired. Her hand slipped out of his to cover her mouth. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “You’re already married. That’s what this is about.”

“No!” He grabbed her hand back. “God no, I’m not married. Never have been, either. Or rather, yes, I am married. To you.”

“No, you’re not. My husband’s dead,” she whispered. “I buried him.”

“No, honey, you buried someone else. Someone who tried to kill me. I have no idea what his name was because he had no ID on him.”

Charity blinked back tears. “He might not have had ID, but he did have your wedding ring.”

“Yes, he did.” Nick looked her straight in the face. “And putting that ring on his finger was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But it had to be done. It identified the body as me, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her face drawn. “When the police officer gave me that ring, I thought my heart would stop.”

Nick bent forward slowly until his lips touched her hair. She held herself stiffly but she didn’t draw back. One small victory. “I know,” he said against her hair, his breath moving a silken strand.

He’d almost forgotten the smell of her. A mix of shampoo, some springlike scent, and her skin. He breathed it in and somehow it calmed him. He’d been running on adrenaline since he’d driven the man off the cliff, wound tighter than a drum, feeling as if someone had ripped a huge, gaping hole in his chest.

Touching Charity, breathing her in, calmed him down, cooled something inflamed in him. He’d been like some wounded creature in the forest, blasted by a hunter, stumbling around blindly, in pain, losing blood. Charity healed him, made him whole.

“Start with your name. I need to know your name.” Her head tilted as she studied him.

“Nick. Nick Ireland. But that’s not my family name. I have no idea what my real name is. I was left in the baby hatch of an orphanage in upstate New York. There was a note pinned to the blanket saying that the baby’s name was Nick. Later that day, a girl called, asking if I’d been found. She was crying. The secretary of the orphanage said she had an Irish accent, so they called me Ireland. No one has any idea who she was.”

Nick watched Charity’s eyes. He’d never told this story to a woman, ever. He was really good at making up fake legends. It never even occurred to him to tell the truth. He didn’t want to see pity or horror.

He wasn’t seeing them now.

Charity was listening quietly, watching him, face somber. “Go on,” she said.

“I was in the military for ten years. Army.” He didn’t say which part of the army. Actually, he couldn’t. Delta operators’ jackets were kept confidential for twenty years. “I was wounded on a mission and had to resign my commission. I’ve been working for the government for the past couple of years, on a special task force investigating international organized crime collaborating with terrorists. There’s more and more of that, and we’re there to stop it.”

He watched her process the information. He was sure she was filing away every piece of data he was giving her, putting it all together. He kept forgetting how smart Charity was. It was easy to forget, at times. She was so pretty, so gentle you could easily overlook the fact that she was as sharp as a tack.

“The army,” Charity mused. “So, I guess you didn’t fall on your aunt’s shower curtain rod, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” There was utter quiet in the room as she absorbed this news.

Charity was losing that shell-shocked look. She had no expression at all, like a porcelain doll. He didn’t like it, because more bad news was coming, as inevitable as a wave rolling in to shore.

“So—if your job is as an undercover cop—that is basically what you said, isn’t it?”

Nick nodded.

“So, what are you here for? Parker’s Ridge is a quiet little New England town. What could you possibly be looking for here?”

This was it. Nick had to walk carefully here, over hot coals. Barefoot.

He tightened his grip on her hand. “We’re here because of Vassily Worontzoff. He’s the head of one of the most powerful Russian mobs and there’s a lot of chatter that he’s about to get in touch with an al Qaeda cell. And that is highly classified information, Charity. I don’t have to tell you that it goes no farther than this room.”

She was staring at him. She gave a half laugh. “You’re investigating Vassily? Are you crazy? He’s a writer, what does he have to do with—wait a minute.” Nick could almost see the cogs in her head, spinning so hard they generated steam as she put the pieces together. “If you’re after Vassily—which is crazy—then that means that you were after me. Everyone knows I’m his best friend here.” Charity pulled her hand away and suddenly stood up. “Oh my God.” She put her hands on her head and spun around, as if finding it hard to be in the same place with what she was saying. “You came to me for information. I was—I was your mission. Oh God, oh God. You were sent here to seduce me. Like Mata Hari, only a male. I can’t believe this. I was your job.” Her voice was rising in agitation.

Nick opened his mouth, then shut it as a car braked sharply in front of her house and a man emerged fast, coming at a run toward the front door. A second later, the bell rang.

Well, this was getting interesting.

It was Di Stefano, and judging by the look on his face, he was furious. At Nick.

Here to join the rapidly growing I Hate Nick Club.