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didn’t you tell me this last night? We could have been waiting…we could have caught the son of a bitch before he got his hands on what was inside.”
    She turned before he could see the quick twist of frustration. “I didn’t know,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot and carrying it to the bathroom sink. If she’d had any idea the man who’d stolen her laptop was going to go after the safe-deposit box, she would have taken precautions. But she’d thought he’d only meant to stop her. Scare her. “If I could change—”
    “Son of a bitch.”
    It was his voice, low, hoarse, more than the actual words, that stopped her. Slowly, she looked into the mirror and saw him, saw Jack, standing next to the nightstand between the two beds. He looked taller than he had moments before, his broad frame dominating the small, warm room. But it was his eyes that got her. They were flat and coldly furious—and before she even looked at his hands, she knew what she would see.

Chapter 4
    W ords. That’s all they were. Black, crudely printed, carefully chosen. Insidiously clear.
     
    Stop while you still can
     
    Slowly Jack looked up to find Camille watching him in the bathroom mirror. She stood there in an oversize T-shirt, her hair falling against her face, looking so much like the girl she’d been.
    But it was a stranger’s eyes that met his, dark and secretive. Aware.
    He moved toward her, kept his eyes on the mirror. On her. She should have been afraid. She should have been terrified. Someone had threatened her. Someone wanted her gone.
    Questions twisted through him, but he kept his steps steady, measured. He didn’t want to—
    Didn’t want to frighten her.
    The absurdity of the thought burned.
    Nothing frightened Camille Rose Fontenot—even when it should. Once her fondness for doing the unexpected had been cute, innocent, nothing more harmful than curtains in an all boys’ fort.
    Then the innocence had died, and her stunts had spun out of control.
    “You weren’t going to tell me about this, were you?” Over the skies of Iraq, he’d learned to shut out emotion. To focus or die. He used that now, used it to strip all those hot boiling edges from his voice.
    She closed her eyes, opened them a heartbeat later. “Jack, I need you to trust me—”
    “How?” The question tore out of him. “Tell me how I’m supposed to do that, when it’s been nothing but secrets and lies from the moment I found you sneaking around Whispering Oaks.”
    “You know me,” she whispered.
    He did. That was the problem. He knew her. He knew her penchant for keeping secrets—and rocking the boat. He knew the desperation, the completely fearless determination that drove her.
    “Jack,” she said into the deliberate silence. “This is me, Camille. I’m the same person—”
    “Trust me, I know who you are.” With cold efficiency he reached around her to turn off the water. “That’s why we’re standing here right now.” Why she wasn’t downtown, in jail. “That’s why you didn’t bother to call me, why you sneaked back into town without so much as one single damn thought about what you might be walking into.”
    Turning, she looked at him with wounded eyes.
    “That’s why you’re so scared,” he added silkily. Not because of the man who’d broken into her rental, not because of the threatening note.
    Because of him. Because he knew her.
    He always had.
    “Saura was right,” she whispered, wedged between his body and the tacky little vanity. “You’ve changed.”
    He stood without moving, even as the disappointment in her voice sliced—and the smell of lavender taunted. “Time’s supposed to move forward, cher… not backward.”
    The glow in her eyes dimmed. “Unless it’s just one big nasty circle.”
    His smile was slow, easy. “Then let’s try this again.” He returned to the bed, picked up the note. “I’m listening.”
    Blond hair fell against her face. “Of course.” With a briskness that