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my life with you.”
    “All fifteen minutes of it? If you’re lucky.”
    “You could get lucky,” he drawled. “Right now.”
    “You’re starting to sound like your brother,” she snapped. “Except his marriage proposal had some romantic trappings to it.”
    He smiled. His off-the-cuff proposal had the desired effect of cracking her shell. That she was hurt made her a hypocrite, considering she was the one who’d broken off their relationship, but he wasn’t going to point that out.
    “Them’s fightin’ words,” he said instead.
    She gave a careless wave over her shoulder. “I don’t want to fight with you. That’s why I’m walking away.”
    Navigating through the boxes in the living room, she reached the foyer and made a beeline for the stairs.
    “Turn left,” he said.
    Eve turned right towards the stairs.
    “If you don’t turn left,” he warned, “I’ll toss you over my shoulder and haul you where I want you.”
    Exhaling harshly, she turned left and entered the family room. She drew to an abrupt halt on the threshold. Alec deliberately crowded behind her, pressing the length of his body against her back.
    He’d scoped out every room in the house before deciding on this one. He guessed it would be her favourite, décor-wise. An overstuffed sectional sofa in soft brown and accent pieces in red and gold made the space warm and inviting, which was the way he saw her. He’d added the fire in the fireplace and the white satin duvet on the floor in front of it, which he had covered in red rose petals. Their first night together had been on white satin, and when he had returned to her ten years later, he had used white satin again. He’d found the sheets in her linen closet, and knew she would have bought them with memories of him in mind. She had haunted him the same way. He fell in love with her the moment he saw her and every day that passed, even the ones when they’d been apart, he’d grown to love her more.
    Eve stared at the makeshift bed in front of the fireplace and felt tears sting her eyes.
    This is Alec , she thought, swallowing past a lump in her throat. She saw now that his proposal in the kitchen had just been a way to bait her into revealing more than she wanted to. He now knew that she’d wanted him to ask her at least enough to get upset about the way he got around to doing it.
    She should have known better. Alec wasn’t the kind of guy who jumped without looking, especially into something as monumental as marriage. He was a tender romantic, a man of grand gestures and thoughtful considerations. Reed was the one who had knee-jerk reactions to unexpected events and his idea of seduction was pinning a woman to the nearest flat surface and banging her to oblivion.
    “I can nail you to a wall,” Alec whispered, nuzzling the spot below her ear. “Any time you want.”
    She choked. “Stay out of my head.”
    “I don’t need to be in there to know that you’ve been comparing me and Abel since you met him. You and I both know he’s too self-absorbed to be what you need, but being with him comes with less pressure and expectations. He doesn’t let anyone in, so there’s no chance of a real future, which means less risk for you.”
    “Don’t analyse me.”
    “I’m just saying what you thought the moment you saw that ring in your wineglass. I was in your head then.” He wrapped his arms around her and caught up her left hand. With a gentle tug, he removed Reed’s ring from her finger. “I’m a huge risk, because committing to me is forever and it means sticking with the Mark for the long haul.”
    “Alec . . .” Turning in his embrace, she hugged him tightly and listened to his heartbeat. “We have so many fundamental differences between us. You’re devout, and I’m . . . not. You’re an archangel and I’m hoping to get out of this mess and have kids one day. I want baseball games and sleepovers and Girl Scout cookie sales and family vacations—”
    “And I want you