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pure instinct, moving closer to her so he could place an arm around
her shoulder. “It’s all right. You’re safe here.”
    She
sucked in a huge, long breath. “I know,” she whispered.
    He
waited, knowing to push her to explain or finish the thought was the wrong
thing to do, but hating the feeling of powerlessness. He wanted to make it all
better for her. His instincts had been spot on. Someone had hurt this girl
before she met the ex. Had hurt her badly.
    She
moved away from him and stood. “I think it’s time I go home.”
    Oliver
searched his mind for anything to say to keep her here, but she was already
moving away. He caught up to her and offered his arm. She wrapped her hand
around it, but her touch wasn’t the same as it had been earlier when she’d held
his hand while they walked. She was stiff now, as if she’d only taken his arm
to be polite.
    “I’m
sorry to have upset you.”
    “You
didn’t. Honestly.”
    “I
meant what I said in the restaurant. When you’re ready to talk, I’m here.”
    She
stopped walking, removed her hand from his arm, and faced him. The look of pain
and desperation on her face nearly tore him apart. What the hell was going on?
Why couldn’t he figure out how to help her?
    “Oliver,
I enjoy working for you so much. The job is fabulous. And I like you, too. I
like you a lot. You’re so different from the other men I’ve dated. I don’t want
to hurt you.”
    He
forced a smile to his face. This was a brush-off if ever he’d heard one, and it
had been a very long time since a woman had done that to him. “You won’t hurt
me.”
    “You
know what I mean. I’m pretty fucked up. You’ve likely figured that out by now.
I never should have had dinner with you. I don’t want to lead you on.”
    He
took a deep breath and tried to focus his thoughts. “First of all, I will never
regret this evening. I’ve had a very nice time. Secondly, you haven’t led me
on. Not even close. And as for you being fucked up, we all are. I mean let’s
face it, Blair. Anyone living underground is pretty fucked up. We all went through
hell and back before we got here.”
    “Some
of us went through things we can’t talk about.”
    And
there it was. Confirmation he was right. There was more to her past than a
short-lived marriage to a jerk.
    “Yes,
that is true,” he said, forcing his voice to remain neutral.
    “You
don’t want to be involved with me. You date women who look good in pictures
online, and who don’t mind being photographed with you everywhere you go.”
    “Most
of the women I date only go out with me because of that reason. Because they know
we’ll have our picture taken, and they’ll get their faces and names on the
tabloid websites, linked with mine. They go out with me because I’m stinking
rich and they think I’ll take care of them for life. They go out with me
because they want expensive things. I can count the number who have cared about me —the person inside—on one hand.”
    Oliver
stopped to gauge her reaction. She looked sympathetic, so he kept going.
    “That’s
why I’ve wanted to go out with you for two years. You’re not like that. You’re genuine
and unaffected. Plus you’re one of the most intelligent women I’ve ever met and
I admire that. It attracts me to you, as much as your looks do. More, in fact,
because I know I can carry on a conversation with you that has nothing to do
with designer clothes or rare gems. I know you won’t be glancing around to find
the paparazzi waiting to snap a picture.”
    This
time, she smiled, and his heart soared. “Not many of them hanging around Dirty
Harry’s, I imagine.”
    “Nor
do I, which is why I enjoyed myself so much tonight.”
    “Why
would you want to date a woman who can’t even talk about her past?”
    “Why
should that matter to me? It’s your past. I have no right to demand to know about anything in it. That’s your
decision, not mine. If and when you’re ready to talk about it, whether