The shadows were still there the day she’d run away to Europe. They still darkened her brother’s stare whenever they talked about their dad, letting her know Brian was still running from the man’s death.
What was Dare running from—his bloodline? His mother’s death?
Or something more?
And why did she care?
Abby told herself it was because Dare was her neighbor. One day he might be Brian’s neighbor. For that reason alone, she should at least make an attempt to—Abby flinched as the phone pierced her reverie for the fourth time that night. She didn’t bother checking the caller ID—she knew it was Stuart.
She snapped her gaze back to the magazine. To the envelope she’d used to mark the article on her new neighbor and his fellow billionaire bachelors. The envelope she’d been too chicken to deliver along with the man’s shoes. That settled it. Anything was preferable to sitting here and listening to that phone ring. Even heading upstairs.
Dare stared at the glass door to his shower, desperate for the promised surcease a mere pace and a half away. And yet, as utterly drained as he was, he also knew he wouldn’t be stepping inside. He couldn’t.
Abby.
Dare closed his eyes as her essence swirled up into the penthouse, mingling with his as it had so often this past month whenever she’d stopped by to check on the progress of the remodeling of her apartment below. Only this time, Abby was headed up along with it. He could feel her stepping into the stairwell at the eighteenth level and slowly ascending to his, her hesitance growing stronger with every step. Usually he needed to touch someone to read their emotions this deeply. That he could feel hers so strongly without physical contact still amazed him. It also had him wondering what it would be like to press his fingers to her flesh.
To truly touch her, inside and out.
Yes, Abby had tended to his latest wound in her kitchen three night ago. But his sense had been deliberately dulled at the time from the blessed numbing that came as a result of the adrenaline and the exertion of scaling a cliff or a mountain…or even a twenty-story turn-of-the-century apartment building without the aid and security of a rope. Had he known Abby would be moving into her place early, he still would have made the climb, though he’d have taken more care with his route. Specifically, he’d have chosen one that took him well around her bedroom window instead of straight through it.
Either way, the respite from the climb had lasted only so long. Which was why he’d left her apartment so abruptly.
By the time she’d finished her ministrations, his empathic sense had returned. He’d begun to feel the simmering emotions of those around him again, especially hers. Unfortunately, the endless procession of hands he’d been forced to shake at the party he’d recently left—and the utter onslaught of feeling that came with them—had left him drained. Vulnerable. So he’d retreated up here and into his shower, shielding himself behind the one and only material he’d discovered could completely block out the crushing emotions of the city, so long as he remained entirely encased within it.
Glass.
If he was smart, he would seek out that same respite now, before Abby recovered her resolve and knocked on his door. Before he felt compelled to answer it. Despite her need to right things between them, he was once again in no shape to greet the one woman who could affect him this deeply without even trying. Dare sighed as he tugged his T-shirt off and dumped the dark blue cotton at his feet.
The night he’d entered Abby’s window he’d caved in to his assistant’s pleas and spent the evening attending yet another of those excruciating torture sessions Charlotte liked to call a fund-raiser. Unfortunately, Charlotte was right; they were also necessary. The reason the two of them were so effective at their calling—that of locating and assisting the battered women of the city—was threefold. The first involved his skill at locating those who truly needed them, women who for whatever reason could or would not seek help through the police or the city’s more conventional programs and shelters. The second involved Charlotte’s determination to see to the details of creating an entirely new identity, preferably one as far removed from the old as possible. And the third consisted of his own unerring ability to greet the potential benefactors Charlotte introduced him to and immediately discern who possessed the financial means and the conscience to donate what was needed—as well as the ability and desire to keep his or her assistance quiet indefinitely.
Unfortunately, this evening’s task had fallen into the first phase of assistance—determining need. Specifically, Charlotte had needed him to vet a story. One that involved a child. An innocent slip of a girl.
The results had been unbearable.
So much so, he’d been compelled to embrace the girl.
He still wondered if he should have done it. It was always a risk. Though the mother hadn’t argued, she hadn’t understood either. Not really. He drew comfort from the fact that by the time Charlotte ensured that both mother and child were far away from the city, and safe, the mother would already have decided that what she thought she’d seen had really been her imagination. In time she would write off the results to repressed memory. If only he could repress his own memory—that unspeakable torment—as easily. Embracing anyone, much less a child, took so damned much out of him, there were days when he wondered why he chanced it. Why he didn’t leave this damned city and its roiling emotions behind. Move to some remote corner of the earth and stay there forever.
But he knew.
For better or worse, he was as committed to helping the women they assisted as Charlotte was.
Dare also knew, even before he bent low to scoop his shirt off the floor and hook it about his neck, that he could no more resist the woman standing outside his apartment than he’d been able to deny that child. Especially since she’d finally strengthened her resolve enough to step up to his door to press the bell. Dare clamped his fingers about the ends of his shirt and turned his back on the utter peace the shower promised. He crossed his bedroom, then traveled the length of the apartment, surprised by the strength of her aura. Her inner essence was far easier to read now than it had been the day he’d first felt her in the lobby, and it continued to intensify with each step he took.
Was it her—or him? Or the evening’s events?
He reached the door before he could decide, and opened it. A split second later Dare realized his mistake. Abby had changed her mind again and started to leave. Unfortunately, he’d been either too drained and distracted by the night’s events or too consumed by her proximity to read the fluctuation in her emotions correctly. And now it was too late.
She turned back. “Oh, I thought—”
He waited.
She took in his partial state of undress and shook her head. “Never mind what I thought.”
He stared at her fingers, mesmerized, as she tucked a stray dark brown curl into the loose braid that hung halfway down her back. Just as he’d wondered all too often of late what it would be like to reach out and touch her, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have those slender fingers soothing his flesh, as well. He must have stared too long, because her fingers trembled slightly as she lowered them. He didn’t need to see her teeth nip at the corner of her bottom lip to know she was nervous. Nor did he need his sense.
Tension had already begun to clog the air between them, thickening it. She lowered her gaze and he finally noticed the contents of her left hand.
