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“Why—” she began, but he cut her off.
“I’m seeing you safely home. Give the driver your address. I know the street from yesterday, but I don’t remember the number.”
She did so, and the cab pulled out of the forecourt onto Salisbury Road. Then she murmured to Dirk, “Last night—”
“I was an idiot last night,” he told her. “I let you leave without thinking.” His hand covered hers. “I was just...you took me by surprise, and I...”
Tenderness washed through her as she remembered exactly what he was talking about. The kiss they’d shared. The kisses.
And just like that she made a decision. She wasn’t going to let Dirk go back to his empty hotel suite. She wasn’t going to let him toss and turn in his lonely bed, wondering and worrying about his daughters...the kidnappers...Terrell Blackwood. No, she was going to make sure he slept peacefully tonight. Tomorrow? Tomorrow would come soon enough, and she couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Couldn’t do anything to make tomorrow easier for Dirk to bear. But tonight...
Tonight he needs me, she told herself. He might not know it, but tonight he needs me.
When the cab pulled up in front of Mei-li’s apartment building, she looked at the meter, handed the driver a bill she’d already pulled from her wallet and murmured in Cantonese, “No change.”
“Wait,” Dirk said, reaching for her arm.
“Walk me up?” It was dark in the cab, but when her eyes met his she knew her intentions were unmistakable.
“This isn’t a good idea.” His words were decisive, his tone sure. But she heard an underlying note in his voice that admitted he wanted this as much as she did...if he could let himself. She didn’t know what was stopping him, but she was going to find out.
“Please.” She twined her fingers with his. “Please.”
* * *
Mei-li didn’t like walking into a dark apartment, so she had tiny night-lights in every room. High-tech ones that changed color every thirty seconds, casting a red, blue, green or white glow through each room. So when she and Dirk walked through her front door hand in hand, she didn’t have to turn on the overhead light to see.
But when she started for her bedroom, Dirk tugged his hand free from hers and repeated the same words he’d uttered in the cab. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not?” A breath of a sound as she moved to stand right in front of him. She removed the ball cap so she could see his eyes in the shadows, and she sensed the iron control he was exerting on himself.
“Because you don’t know anything about me.”
She heard the desperate edge in his voice and pitched hers to be calming. Reassuring. “I know everything I need to know.”
“No, you don’t.” His words rasped in the darkness.
She knew this was the moment. She’d maneuvered him here, absolutely sure there was a secret he needed to confess. A secret he needed to get past. They both did. She reached up and cradled his face in her hands. “Then tell me.”
He dragged her hands away from his face and put distance between them, then paced her small living room restlessly. When he reached the lamp on the end table he switched it on, and the warm glow dispelled the intimate atmosphere.
He turned a ravaged face to her. “You don’t want to know.”
Oh, but she did. “Yes, I do. You’ve told me almost everything, but you’ve always held something back. I know it, and so do you. So just tell me. Whatever it is, it won’t affect how I feel about you, Dirk. It won’t affect my determination to rescue your daughters.”
“We’re not going to find them.” The despair of his words echoed in his tone. “I let myself forget...”
“Forget what?”
“That God won’t let me rescue them. Terrell Blackwood has his revenge, and I’m left in hell...where I belong.”
“I won’t accept that.”
Torment slashed across his face. “You don’t know. You don’t understand. This kidnapping is my punishment, just like Bree’s death was my punishment—from God. It will always be my punishment...for killing Lyon.”
“Why?” She was so close. All she needed to do was... “Why do you believe God is punishing you?”
His expression turned bitter, self-mocking. “Because I lied. Yes, Lyon tried to rape Bree at knifepoint. And, yes, he turned that knife on me when I pulled him off her, and he did his best to kill me. But the truth is, he was a dead man from the moment I heard her scream and found him on top of her. I saw him...them... I saw the blood on Bree’s throat and I went crazy. There was no way he was walking away from that. No way Bree was ever going to have to face him in court. No way she was ever going to have to see him alive again.”
