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“It was a family tradition.” Her voice was an agonized breath. “I was supposed to put my future in that locket. When I met the man I planned to marry, when I had children, they were supposed to go inside.” Silent tears fell from eyes that held such depths of pain. “They took my future.”
He shook his head. “No, they didn’t. Your future’s standing right in front of you. They didn’t take anything from you. Nothing. Because you’re too strong. You hold it all tight inside of you, where they can’t get any of it.”
“I was part of a tradition…” Her eyes begged him to understand, to recognize all that had been stolen from her, and his heart broke all over again. “One that ended with me.”
“We’ll start a new tradition. One that we can pass down to our kids.”
Her hand fluttered to her throat. “I can still feel it there.”
“I swear, it’s gone. You got it off, and you’ll never see it again.”
“Feel so dirty,” she mumbled, mostly to herself.
“Don’t you feel me washing it all away, Rachel?” He ran the cloth down her back and over her hip. “Concentrate on how it feels. Can you smell the shower gel? It’s like flowers in the spring. Daffodils. Take a deep breath; let it fill you. It smells good, doesn’t it? Fresh. New. Do you feel my touch, Rachel? My touch. Not theirs. Not anyone else’s. It’s just you and me here. Concentrate on that. On me washing all the memories away for you.”
He added more soap to the cloth before making sure he wiped it over every inch of her. Head to toe. “When we get out of here, all the bad memories will be gone. Everything will be clean and fresh and new. But underneath it all, there will still be you. The you nobody can change or damage because you’re strong and smart, and so courageous that you scare me half to death. All the rest of it, what they did, that’s just on the surface, and we’re washing it away. All that will be left is Rachel. The amazing, difficult, gorgeous woman I love so damn much.”
She pressed her forehead to his chest, her fingers curling into his hips as she cried herself raw. “Michael,” was all she said.
“Yeah, I’m your Michael.” He kissed her head before rinsing away the soapsuds and wrapping her in a thick white towel.
Once he’d dried her off, he carried her to the bed, where he climbed in and sat with his back against the headboard, Rachel cradled in his lap. He shut off the lights with the remote and held her close, protecting her in his arms as she cried herself to sleep.
A creak from the hallway had Harvard’s head snapping to the open door. Elle appeared, giving him a sad little smile. It was clear she’d been crying, which meant Harry must have let the team into the apartment. They would have found the evidence and realized what had taken place.
Harvard held up a hand and signaled that Rachel was asleep.
“We’ve cleaned up,” Elle whispered. “The rug’s ruined, so we’ve taken it out of the apartment. Harry and I have the thumb drive, and we’ll go through the video in detail. Hopefully, it will give us more to go on than the photos did.” She looked on Rachel with love and pity, and Harvard was glad she wasn’t awake to see it. “What do you want us to do with the necklace?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“I’ll bag it up and put it in the safe at Benson Security; that way, Rachel can deal with it when she’s ready.” She grimaced. “If ever.”
Harvard nodded as he
stroked the hair of the woman who’d become his life.
Elle watched him, her lips trembling. “We’ll lock up. You’ll call if you need us?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Go find something for me, Elle. Some direction to point me in, so I can take these bastards out.”
“You’ve got it,” she promised before disappearing.
“It’s going to be okay,” Harvard whispered to a sleeping Rachel. “We’ll get them.”
If it was the last thing he did, he’d hunt down the people tormenting Rachel and wipe them off the face of the earth.
For her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Rachel opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Harvard sitting in the armchair facing her bed. He was decadence personified, wearing nothing but a pair of faded blue jeans that rode his hips, the top button undone. His knees spread, and his hands resting on the arms of the chair, he stared straight at her.
For a few minutes, they stayed like that, quietly watching one another. Her gaze caressed the planes and curves of his body, taking in the strength in his shoulders and the definition in his abs. The soft light from the pool made him seem as though he’d been staged for a fashion photoshoot. The kind where they bring in rugby players to give the clothes an edge.
“Is your father still handsome?” Rachel asked hesitantly, reluctant to break the peace of their silence.
His full lips quirked. “Don’t think I’m the best judge of that.”
