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left the chair because she couldn’t on her own.  Unable to walk, she didn’t want her wheelchair or walker beside her.”
    “Vanity perhaps.” 
    “No.  She wanted to pretend for one night that she was better.  The exhaustion took her earlier than expected.”  He inhaled carefully.  “She begged Hudson to send her home and return to his celebration.  He refused as did Natalia.”  More to himself, he murmured, “She’s desperate to be well again.” 
    “Elijah.”  He met silver eyes.  “Do you love her?” 
    “I’ve never loved a woman.  I’m unsure.”  Facing the window again, he wondered.  “I meant to play for her but then she cried for me, hugged me, when she saw my scars.” 
    “Gabriella cried for you?” 
    He nodded.  “I hugged her back and held her until she went to sleep.  I made sure she was safely in her bed and locked the door before I returned here.” 
    There was a long silence.  “You’d play for her?”  Elijah nodded again.  “You’ve never played for a woman.”  The silence drew out between them and he didn’t fill it.  “You love her.” 
    “In the past two months, I’ve learned everything there is to know about Brie.  What I discovered surprised me, pleased me.  It didn’t prepare me for interacting with her face to face.”  He turned fully to face Harper.  “I love her.  You’ll love her.”
    “I refuse , Elijah.” 
    “Then you’re a fool.” 
    Elijah walked around him to pick up his jacket.  Harper grabbed his upper arm roughly when they were side by side. 
    It was a move they both recognized as dangerous. 
    They stared at one another with decades of history, shared experiences, and loss between them. 
    Harper hissed, “She’s just a woman .” 
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.  Brie has the capacity to save us, we have the capacity to destroy her.  I crave the former, I will protect her as well as I can from the latter.”  He pulled his arm free.  “Ready when you are.” 
    Whipping his jacket off the chair, he shrugged it over his shoulder holster.  At the front door, he waited at attention for his boss to approach.  As Harper stood in front of him, he kept his gaze slightly over his shoulder as he’d been trained. 
    “Elijah…” 
    “You’ll be late for your first meeting if we don’t leave now.” 
    He opened the door of the apartment and led the man he’d always sworn to protect through it.  He cleared the elevator, the lobby, the sidewalk, and nodded to the driver who was as well-armed, if not as well-trained, as Harper Delkin’s longtime head of security.
    When they were inside the limo, Harper tried to return the conversation to Brie.  He shut it down.
    “We’re outside the confines of secure space.  You have several meetings today; in places I’ve never cleared.  Place your additional commentary about Gabriella on hold until we’re once again in secure space.  I have a job to do.” 
    “We’re not done.  Know that, Elijah.” 
    * * *
    Harper stared at the man he knew as well as he knew himself. 
    In all the years they’d known one another, all the women they’d shared between them, Elijah hadn’t loved any of them. 
    He involved himself physically but never emotionally. 
    Looking back, he wondered if he’d joined Harper in ménage pursuits out of loyalty, duty, rather than independent will.
    Gabriella Hernandez was the first woman to affect him.  She made Elijah think differently.  She had him rattled, twisted up inside, and acting out of character. 
    Harper didn’t like it. 
    Elijah was careful to keep his gaze averted, in full bodyguard mode as they crossed Manhattan for meetings that would consume the entire day. 
    For now, Harper allowed him the distance he required to do a job he’d never truly enjoyed, despite being the most highly trained and dangerous man in the world.
    It was impossible to shake him when he was like this but in the end, Elijah