Not his little one, as much as it hurt to know I’d never hear those softly spoken words again.

By the time Luca and Ivan would regain consciousness in the morning, we are already four hundred miles away. We change clothes and hair colors and accents. Even knowing we’ve made it safely away, I continue looking over my shoulder. There’s both trepidation and hope in those backward glances, but it doesn’t matter.

Ivan doesn’t find me.

We took the one surefire way I know to disappear—those anonymous gray buses.

And Ivan himself told me where to go.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Don’t,” I say, taking the basket away. Beth sticks her tongue out at me but lets me take it from her. She knows she isn’t supposed to be lifting heavy things at this point, but she likes to stay active.

“Fine,” she says. “If you insist on being a worrywart, I’ll go turn that last batch into a pie. They’re already going soft.”

“Yes, please.” I love this girl’s baking. Sarah Elizabeth goes by Beth now. She’s a happy, playful young woman who bears little resemblance to the timid girl we spirited away all those months ago. However, one thing that remains from her old life is her love of all things domestic. Especially baking. And I can’t say that I’ve complained.

Meanwhile I’m better suited to hard labor, whether that’s working a pole or picking peaches from trees. Both leave me exhausted and sore, but the peaches have the added bonus of producing pie.

The ground around the cottage is hard-packed dirt, cool against my bare soles. No hand-sewn linen shoes for me. No stilettos either.

Sarah Elizabeth and I made it all the way to the coast, to the little countryside town where a boy was abused and neglected. Where he fought with everyone he met. Of course no one knows our connection to this place. Ivan’s grandmother passed away a long time ago, her only presence an empty house outside of town.

We rented a little cottage six months ago, servant’s lodging for the main house. The landowner never comes here, the local agent told us. I already knew that. This is the one place Ivan will never look for us. The one place he’ll never return.

I’m lost to him, but in another way, I’m found. I learn that I can survive on my own. I learn that I miss the relentless, almost reckless passion of a man. And I learn that as much as I miss it, I don’t need it after all.

We tell people we’re sisters. Picking peaches pays most of the rent. Sarah Elizabeth sells what she bakes to pay for food and other necessities.

It’s a good life, a quiet life.

A lonely life.

Physical work means I can fall asleep at night, instead of remembering. Remembering Leader Allen and his last words to me, his revelation. Or was it a confession? Whether he is or isn’t my father, he’s gone now, forever.

I remember the Grand too, more than I’d like. And Ivan.

So it seems like a mirage when I see him.

I notice the silhouette immediately, a rare break in the sideways sunlight. The shadow turns into a man. And the man turns into…him.

The basket turns to lead and slips out of my hand. Peaches tumble to the ground and roll toward him.

I can’t see his face, but I recognize the breadth of his shoulders and the lean lines of his hips. I recognize the cut of his suit and the elegant shape of his shoes. I even recognize his hair, the way he forces it down, as if he can control every single strand—but a few in the back always point up if he’s had a long day. Like now.

It’s a relief to see that he’s stayed the same. I feel so different than what I was before. My hair is cut to my shoulders, shorter than it’s ever been, and dyed auburn. The sun has brought out freckles on my shoulders, on my chest. The dress I’m wearing is modest and feminine, the ruffle hemline just below my ankles. I am not the girl who cowered in Harmony Hills. I am not the stripper who danced in the Grand.

I am a different person now, a different woman—standing in front of the man I still love.

His eyes are a clear grey, like a winter sky. “Here?” he asks.

In this place where he was tortured and abandoned.

In the place he found beauty and peace.

“Here,” I answer.

He nods, just once. “I’d like to have a word with you.”

A word. He wants more than a word. He wants to bring me back like I’m a wayward child to be led by the hand. For years I hoped my mother would somehow find me, that she would care enough to come after me. Now Ivan wants to do that for me, wants to be the caretaker I didn’t have, but it’s too late. I grew up in between the flashing stage lights and daily spankings. Or maybe I only grew up when I left.

His voice is the one that sounds different. He’s still dominant. That is part of his core, not a skin he can slough off. But all the same he sounds…careful. As if this is important.

As if I’m important.

It makes me feel somehow formal. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He steps forward, and the light breaks over him, illuminating the patrician nose and high cheekbones, the firm lips and pale eyes. His face still flashes in my mind in the seconds before I come, rubbing myself with my fingers, desperately trying to think of something else—someone else.

He looks exactly as I remembered him. Except for his suit, which is more rumpled and less starched than I’ve ever seen it, as if he’s slept in it overnight. It makes me think of how he would have looked when he first put it on, crisp and handsome. Then he might have thought about our conversations, about the place he swore never to go, and realized where I’d come. Would he have placed a call to the local agent to find out there were two girls renting the cottage on his land? Maybe, but he wouldn’t have stopped to confirm. He clearly came straight away, rushed over, desperate.

Something inside me warms at the thought of him hungry to see me.

The door isn’t locked. I give it a small nudge, and it swings forward.

At least Sarah Elizabeth is around back. I suppose I should be sending her some kind of warning to run, to hide. I’m in some kind of trance—seeing him here doesn’t feel real. I could almost be rubbing myself, in bed, alone, climaxing to the thought of him. That seems more likely.

At least until he brushes by me—solid, warm, with that faint Ivan musk.

Real.

I bring him into the cottage. So much for a warning signal. He obviously found us. If he had planned a smash-and-grab job, he’d already have done so.

The cottage has exposed rafters and whitewashed walls. Lavender dries on the wall, upside down, scenting the air and calming me. This place may be small, but it’s mine in a way no place has ever been. Not Harmony Hills. And definitely not the Grand. Those places had belonged to men, and I’d belonged to them too.

Ivan’s gray eyes take in every inch of the space, from the overturned crates serving as chairs around a rustic table to the gingham curtain hanging in the middle of the room, half hiding a daybed. At first Sarah Elizabeth and I shared the bedroom, but I moved out so that she could be more comfortable in her final months—and to give her more room when the baby is born.

Nerves flutter in my stomach. What will Ivan think of this house?

His voice is quiet when he speaks. “It’s beautiful.”

More than quiet, he sounds almost reverent. And I know he doesn’t just mean the cottage. He means the life I’ve built here. He means me.

“Thanks,” I say softly, feeling shy.

He clears his throat. “Candace—”

“How is Lola? And the girls?” I have to interrupt him. I can’t let him finish. I’m afraid of what he’ll say, what he’ll ask me. I’m dreading saying no.

A slight nod tells me he knows exactly why I stopped him, but he’s letting it go. For now. “Good. We found Bianca.”