True, his concerns now were not finding food and shelter, and they hadn’t been for a long time. Now he ran an empire, single-handedly. He kept vast amounts of information in his head at all times, an enormous array of data that kept shifting and recombining. In his world, things moved fast and so did he.

Nothing like that, now. Now his head was filled with peace, a still, golden, calm pond of it, a welcome silence that allowed him to savor this moment, a moment so rare as to be almost incomprehensible. No busy buzz of business, harsh hum of calculations, whirr of thoughts. Just silence and warmth.

He looked down. Grace was watching him with calm blue-green eyes, lips slightly uptilted at the corners. As if wanting to smile, but uncertain of his mood.

His mood was great. He smiled down at her, feeling unused muscles moving in his face, delighted to see her smile fully in return.

He’d never had this before—this slow calm moment, skin to skin, heart to heart. If he held a woman in his arms, he was fucking her. The other moments were undressing or dressing. He rarely lingered after sex.

Why not? Why had he always been in such a rush? There was something so delicious about this, calm yet exciting at the same time. Not better than sex, not worse, just…different. And good.

She wiggled slightly, right over his enormous hard-on. “You, um, you seem to be—”

“Yes, I am.” His smile broadened. It felt so odd to be smiling. “But it’s okay. We’ll make love soon, you can count on it.” She turned pink. Such a pretty color, like a rosy dawn over a white mountaintop. He leaned down to kiss her jawline, then put his lips against her ear. “Once I get in you, I’m not going to stop for a long, long time.”

She was stoplight red now.

He shifted her gently so she could lie against him more comfortably, pleased when she moved with him, into him. She rested her head on his uninjured shoulder and looped an arm around his neck, careful of the wound. Every time she touched him, she was careful, he’d noted.

What an odd sensation, a woman looking after him.

Drake tucked a lock of bronze hair behind her ear and bent until his mouth touched her ear. “Are you cold, love? Do you want a blanket?”

He could feel her lips curve up. “No, you’re a furnace. And the fire is still burning high, so no, I don’t feel cold at all.” She sighed. “Drake…how long is this going to last?”

He didn’t have to ask what “this” was. Men gunning for him, the danger spilling over onto her.

The rest of our lives. That was how long this was going to last. But she wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

His arms tightened. “Are you so very eager to get away from here, then? Are you not comfortable? Is there anything you need?”

Silence. He looked down at her, expecting…he didn’t know what he was expecting. Anger, maybe. Impatience. Sorrow. But she only looked thoughtful.

“I’m fine, Drake. And thanks to your generosity, I have everything I need and more.”

He waved away the thanks, watching her carefully. “But?”

Her narrow shoulders lifted on a sigh. “But…however huge your home is, however comfortable, we can’t stay holed up here forever, can we? When do you think we can venture out? If only to get some fresh air.”

He was tempted to say that he’d take her up on the roof if she wanted fresh air. Maybe tomorrow, if he could get rid of the helo. His pilots had been making noises lately about taking the helo away for a day of maintenance. Maybe tomorrow would be a good day. If he took Grace up on the rooftop, she might not be ready to know he kept an evacuation helicopter at the ready at all times.

But the rooftop wouldn’t be enough. She was asking when she could walk the streets freely.

The answer was never. Not the streets of Manhattan, anyway. She wasn’t ready for that info yet.

“As soon as I have a handle on the situation, I promise I’ll find a way out. You’ll be free to walk around at some point. You have my word.” She’d be free to walk around, just not in New York. And not in the United States.

For the moment, Drake wasn’t setting foot outside this building—and more important, wasn’t going to let her set foot outside—until he had finalized his plans and knew where they were going and how.

Grace watched his eyes carefully. “And you always keep your word, don’t you?” she asked quietly. “That’s important to you, to be a man of your word.”

She could read him so well. It was frightening.

It was true, he was a man of his word. Even in the business he was in, his word was his bond. There’d been a goodly chunk of his life in which the only thing he had in this world was his personal dignity. His word. He’d die before he let that go.

“Yes, I keep my promises. So you’ll see the day again. And when you do, where do you want to go? What do you want to do?”

“Take a walk in Central Park,” she said promptly. “Go down to the farmers’ market. See some new galleries.”

Shit, how tied was she to Manhattan? Was she going to suffer if she never saw it again? The thought lay there, heavy in his chest.

“What about outside New York? What do you want to see outside the city?”

She looked up at him. “The world,” she said simply. “I’ve always wanted to travel. I told you, my dream is to see Rome. Paris, London. And the East. I love reading travel guides and imagining myself in a Tibetan temple or a Hindu mandir. I never had the money before.”

“I hate to say it, but I’m glad you didn’t take off this past year.” He nodded his head at the overspill of her paintings from his study, simply glowing on the library’s walls. Just like she glowed in his arms. He ran the back of his fingers down the side of her face, slowly, just enjoying the feel of her. “I’m the richer for it.”

She moved into his hand, smiling. “I hate to contradict you, but I’m the richer for it. You paid me an almost obscene amount of money. I made more last year, thanks to you, than I did in the last ten years.”

“Worth it,” he said.

“Do you know, you could have had my paintings for half of what you paid?”

“Worth it,” he repeated.

She turned in his arms, smiling, then settled with her face against his neck, breasts brushing full against his chest.

His cock pulsed hopefully. Maybe now…

“I’m glad you—” she began, then her eyes opened, fixed on something over his shoulder. “Oh! Just look at that!”

Drake stiffened, ready to push her to the floor and whirl to face a new danger, when he saw her face. Relaxed. Smiling. Whatever it was she was seeing, it wasn’t a danger to them. He followed her gaze, turning his head.

Snow.

Night had fallen while he’d held her in his arms. He hadn’t thought to pull the curtains and the entire wall showed a nighttime Manhattan skyline softened by falling snow.

He factored that into the equation of how to make the next few days work. Snow made everything slower. People arrived later for work, some didn’t arrive at all. His master forger, Yannick Zigo, was scheduled to deliver new passports tomorrow, together with backup documents. He traveled from Upstate New York. If there was a big snowstorm, he wouldn’t venture out. He often complained that his bones were too brittle for bad weather.

Grace rolled off Drake’s lap and walked toward the windows, keeping well back from the glass itself. Drake watched her every step of the way, admiring the look of her back, the slim line of her glowing in the penumbra, that glorious multicolored hair that fell past her shoulders swaying gently with each step. She’d only just left him and his hands already missed her, missed the soft skin, the deep indentation of her waist, missed cupping her breasts and touching her where she was soft and wet, just for him.

He stood up and followed, like a chunk of iron to a lodestone.

She’d stopped halfway to the window, watching, a half smile on her face.