“You covered up,” Grams remarked in a voice flavored with disapproval.

She had. Darcy could have walked in, tats—and tits—blazing, but frankly she was over it. So she had worn an LBD, though the L stood for long, the B stood for boring, and she looked like she was auditioning for Morticia in the Addams Family musical. Masking every inch of her offensive skin, the dress and matching jacket made her invisible, which was just how her father liked her.

Two tables over, Sam Cochrane sat glad-handing the governor, but raised his head when the low murmur of moneyed voices went from a burble to a babble toward the back of the room.

Darcy turned in the direction of the commotion, and her heart stuttered, stalled, and stopped. Striding toward her in full firefighter regalia, and looking so hot she half expected the sprinklers to go off any second, was Beck. His expression blazed a path of fire to her table, sizzling all the way up her spine. The clucking of the well-heeled crowd increased with every sure step.

He halted, huge and potent above her, and the smell of smoke and man hit her hard.

“Darcy.”

“Beck.” Using the edge of the table, she hauled her wilting body upright. “You shaved.”

“Had to. Back to work.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Clean and smooth-jawed, he stared at her for interminable moments. This infuriating man!

“What are you doing here?”

“You said you needed a date. Sorry I’m late. Had to save Christmas first.”

“Nice suit, Pancho Dempsey,” Grams chimed in, her voice echoing in the now eerily quiet room. The clucking had stopped, only to be replaced with silence ten times as deafening.

“Thanks, Mrs. C.” He turned back to Darcy. “I had a big speech planned. Something about fighting for you and claiming what’s mine.” He frowned. “But this is all wrong.”

Panic flared in Darcy’s chest. “It is?”

“What the hell are you wearing?”

“Um, a dress.”

“You look like someone died.” He curved his blunt hands around her hips. “This isn’t you, Darcy. This isn’t the woman I love.”

“I . . .” She slid a sidelong glance to her grandmother, who was not paying attention to her, but had her beady eyes trained on Beck. Unsurprisingly, no demographic was unaffected by his particular brand of sexy.

And he had just said he loved her. Not only in the past, but in the present. Right here, right now.

“I don’t want to make a fuss,” she said, trying to make that sound like it was a good thing.

“Why not?”

He had a point. Why was she lying low until she could slink away unseen into the cold, starless night? This was not the girl who had waited tables in a Boston diner and pulled pints in a Covent Garden pub when her father cut her off. This was not the woman she had worked so hard to become.

She was Darcy Fucking Cochrane, kick-ass body artist, and lover of the brave man who was currently eating her alive with his eyes.

With shaky fingers, she reached for the button on her high-necked jacket and unfastened it. The fabric’s silky slide against her skin as she slipped it off her shoulders felt sensual. Liberating. It floated to the table behind her, likely smack dab in the middle of her five-thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner.

Not a problem. The only sustenance she needed stood before her. In Beck’s eyes, she saw appreciation for her body, respect for her choices. She saw . . . everything.

He laid a soft kiss on the sleeve of ink she had revealed, blessing it and her. “Darcy, I’ve loved you from the first day you distracted me in that boxing ring.” He switched his talented mouth to her other shoulder, cutting a path of sweet devastation along her newly bared collarbone on the way. “The result? A broken nose and the crap beaten out of your brother. Which I know you wanted me to do, by the way.”

“I did not—”

“Yes, you did.” Unwavering, unflinching, those blue-on-blue eyes held her captive. “From that first minute you were in my corner, Darcy, and I’m sorry I wasn’t always in yours. I was careless with your heart and I didn’t trust you to make the important decisions for yourself. No más.” No more.

No more hiding.

No more running.

No more denying.

“I’m yours, mi reina. Always have been, always will be.”

Her apparent promotion from princess to queen sent a surge of power through Darcy, making her so heady she white-knuckled the table’s edge.

“Then I guess you’d better kneel, Beck Rivera.”

A brief flash of fuck, really? tweaked his mouth before it curved up into that do-me grin. He jackknifed to his knees before her, his hands coasting down her thighs over the acre of fabric as he felt a path to her ankles. Checking for injuries just like the first night he rescued her outside Dempsey’s. Only this time, he would find her strong and whole.

Girl walked into a bar, hooked up with her destiny.

Gently, he raised her foot and kissed the visible skin with hot, purposeful lips, transferring his intimate heat to her body. The sight of him in supplication unraveled her like a loose thread on a sweater.

Lifting his head, he held her gaze boldly. “You’re strong and sexy and I love you. I need you to breathe, but I need to make sure my woman can breathe first. What do you say, querida?”

He delivered the Rivera smile, the same crooked one he wooed her with that day in the ring after he had taken down one Cochrane and set his sights on conquering another. He captured her heart then, and had held it in his iron fist ever since. Beck saw her. He truly did. She could spend the rest of her life looking at him looking at her.

There was only one thing she could say.

“Rip it, Beck.”

A quicker-than-the-human-eye move, and he tore her dress from the hem all the way to midthigh. Gasps hissed though the stultifying air at the sight of her skin shining in glorious Technicolor under the harsh ballroom lights.

Unfolding to his full, staggering height, he stood back, an expression of plain relish on his face at what he had created.

“Now give me your mouth, Darcy.”

She launched like a heat-seeking missile and kissed him with everything she had.

“About time,” Grams muttered, though she sounded a little choked up, the old softie.

“Right on, Mrs. C,” Beck said, once he broke their kiss. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to take my girl away from all this. Think you can hold down the fort here?”

“Go, go!” Grams flapped her birdlike hands. “I need to do the rounds and squeeze more money out of these clam-fisted tightwads.”

On ramshackle legs, Darcy leaned down and kissed Grams on the cheek. “You sure you can manage?” She motioned to her ripped dress and bared shoulders. “I might look like a walking middle finger to your donors, but I can stay if you need me.”

“Be gone, girl. Someone else can put in the work for a change.” Grams curved her regal gaze behind Darcy. “Tori! Get your plastic butt over here and push.”

Beck was already half carrying, half dragging Darcy to the exit. Past Chicago’s glitterati. Past a parade of shocked, pursed mouths. Past her stone-faced father.

She stopped and pivoted. “Just a second.”

“You sure?” Beck asked, concern bracketing his mouth.

Her father stood, age and disappointment sketched in craggy lines on his face. “Darcy.”

Looping her arms around his neck, she hugged him for the first time in so long it brought tears to her eyes.

“Thank you, Dad. Thank you for pissing me off so much that it made me strong and beautiful.” She smiled up at his flinty gaze. “Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

Sometimes you forgive people simply because you still want them in your life, but if her father wanted more, he would need to meet her halfway. She refused to allow another bead of toxicity to burn her skin. Taking Beck’s hand, she led him from the ballroom and didn’t look back.