My head ached even attempting to wrap my brain around everything, but I tried to think. “I need to go home. Grab a few things. Then I can go into hiding for a while. Maybe I’ll go to Mexico or Brazil or—”
“No, that doesn’t work. They’ll find you.”
“But I have to talk to Anna. I have friends who’ll wonder where I am.”
Adam’s expression was tense. “It’s over, Sophie. Your life. The life you knew. You can’t ever go back to it. Not if you want to live another day.”
I just stared at him. “But I have to.”
“No, you don’t. The life you knew ended the moment that bus was supposed to hit you.” He rubbed his forehead. “Fuck. Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything. Maybe I should have let fate run its course. Dammit, I had to do something, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t think through all the repercussions.” His gaze was intense. He closed the distance between us and grabbed me by my shoulders. “But I just couldn’t let you die. Not like that.”
“Why not?” I struggled to breathe as the warmth of his touch sank into me. Despite my fear and this bizarre and dangerous situation, I found myself oddly attracted to this strange man who’d now saved my life twice. Being pressed up close against him didn’t help. “Maybe you should have. You don’t know me. Why would you screw your own life up to save somebody you don’t even know?”
“But I do know you.” Adam looked away and raked a hand through his black hair, his strained expression lit only by the moonlight.
“How?”
Adam reached into the inner chest pocket of his long black coat and pulled out a piece of yellowing folded paper. He handed it to me.
I took it with trembling hands and unfolded it. It was the sketch – the self portrait I’d done last week. The one the little boy had looked at and never returned to me before he’d disappeared. Only now it looked old and faded. The pencil marks were practically too light to see.
“Sorry for the shabby shape it’s in,” he said, a sardonic curl to his lips. “That’s what twenty years’ll do. And I must admit, someof them have been a bit cruel. But I still have it. I’ve kept it as safe as I could.”
I looked up at him. “How . . . How is this possible?”
“What part? How I’ve stared at that drawing of you for twenty years, imagining who you were, what you were like, what you wanted? How I’ve dreamed about you countless times?” He laughed, but it was humourless. “Funny how the mind can play tricks on you. One blonde lady who was nice to me all those years ago and I’ve never been able to forget her beautiful face. Funny how when nobody’s ever been nice to you, you remember the one who was – even if it was only for a minute. And a little boy’s gratitude can change to something else as he gets older. Something that makes him willing to fuck up his own life when hers is in danger.”
The realization hit me like a tidal wave.
It was him.
This handsome, dangerous man with the haunted blue eyes who stood before me in a dark alleyway – the one I couldn’t help but be attracted to even in the midst of running for my very life – he was the little boy from last week on the corner who was missing his dead mother.
“You . . .” But I couldn’t figure out what to say. I was utterly stunned.
Adam paced to the other side of the alley and then back. “I looked you up ten years ago, thinking stupidly that I’d find you and you’d fall madly in love with an eighteen-year-old kid like me,” he said, with a wry twist of his lips. “But . . . that’s how I found out you were already gone. That you’d died the week after I met you and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it because there were no details about the death of Sophie Shaw, the famous erotic artist. But when I found your name in the Books, I knew . . . I justknewI had to do something about that. And here we are.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “My paintings aren’t erotic.”
“Doesn’t bother you that you were dead, just that I’m labelling your art erotic.” He stared at me for a moment before he laughed. “This is not something you want to argue with me about. I know your work. I’ve studied every piece for hours. It’s incredibly erotic.”
My face warmed and I looked down at the sketch again. “I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it.” He drew closer to me until I could feel the warmth from his body shielding me from the cold night.
“So you did all this, you put your own life at risk, because—”
Adam blinked. “Because I’m in love with you.”
My mouth dropped open.
He grimaced and looked away. “I shouldn’t have said that. This is complicated enough without –”
I pulled him closer to me and kissed him, stroking my fingers through his black hair. He resisted for a moment before kissing me back, hard and deep and filled with need. He pulled me closer to him so my breasts flattened against his chest and I felt his arousal press against me. My hands slid down the sides of his face as his tongue slid between my lips to taste me deeper.
A sudden and uncontrollable wave of desire crashed over me. I’d never wanted anyone so much in my entire life. Or so fast. I’d only just met him.
Even though he’d known me for twenty years.
