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“I have an apartment and a job. I arranged those before I left Chicago. I’ve been providing for myself and others for years without your assistance, and I really don’t want it now, but I have no choice.”
    Screw this. Yes, her father hadn’t been a model citizen—unless it was a citizen of the Cook County DOC. But she wasn’t him. She’d left her Chicago neighborhood behind so she would no longer be tainted with the same “no-good Rana” brush. The lazy, shiftless, lying, using, check-for-your-watch-if-she-shakes-your-hand brush she’d worked damn hard for twenty-five years not to deserve.
    Damn if she’d let him— him —make her feel…dirty. Unworthy.
    She stalked forward, allowing anger and hurt—yes, damn it, hurt—to propel her forward when caution would’ve been prudent…safer.
    “Look, believe what you want. I could quote the damn Bible from Joseph to Jesus, and it wouldn’t change your opinion or erase your suspicions. But if you think coming to you and asking for help was easy, then all those millions have made you soft in the head.” She snorted, shaking her head. “At this moment, though, I need you to keep your promise to Caroline more than I care about offending your tender sensibilities with my presence. She wanted me to have the money. So how about this? Send the tuition payment directly to the university, and you don’t have to worry about seeing me again. You can go on pretending I don’t exist, and I can forego the pleasure of you staring at me like I’m something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe.”
    Giving him a tight smile, she pivoted and marched for the door, desperate to escape the room before she did something stupid…like allow the tears stinging her eyes to fall. Damn it! She’d been teased, bullied, and sneered at more times than she could remember, much less count. Yet none of those mean girls or leering guys who assumed she was an easy fuck just because of her last name had been able to drag one tear from her.
    Only Aiden possessed that power. Because for some insane, inexplicable reason, she actually cared what he thought of her, even knowing he couldn’t see past her father or brother to the real her. Even knowing he probably still blamed her for aiding and abetting her father’s larceny.
    Damn him.
    “Noelle, we’re not finished. Don’t you walk out that door.”
    Like hell she wouldn’t. She was a grown-ass woman. Self-sufficient. Mature.
    So she did the only thing a grown-ass, self-sufficient, mature woman could do in her situation…
    She flipped him off and walked out.

Chapter Four
    Dawn is God’s way of saying I love you .
    That had been one of his mother’s favorite sayings. Aiden snorted, staring out his home’s library window at the gray-and-purple sky as it reluctantly gave way to pink- and orange-tinged clouds. After witnessing his second dawn in two days without sleep, it felt less like I love you and more Screw you . Pressing his thumb and finger to his eyes, he rubbed, but nothing could ease the grit-and-sandpaper sensation that had set up behind his lids around hour thirty-five.
    Damn it, guilt was a bastard. And a merciless one at that.
    This early on a Sunday, he should be lying in bed, possibly with a cup of coffee, possibly still asleep, possibly wrapped around the warm, curvy length of a woman.
    By right, the only thing stirring this morning should be his dick as he slid into slick, tight, feminine heat. Instead, he sat in his office chair, staring at the same view he’d been studying since late Friday night after returning home from the auction, his only company an emergency bottle of Jack Daniels, anger, and guilt. The worse fucking ménage in history.
    Anger, because a pixie with long, wild black hair and pale-blue eyes had invaded his life, hauling a shitload of baggage along with her. Baggage that, until two days ago, he’d believed he’d successfully divorced himself from, if not forgotten. And guilt, because in spite of