LITMIR.BIZ

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think of herself. “I haven’t been with anyone in eight years. So I figured that pretty much qualifies me as a beginner if not born-again virgin altogether. So I figured…” She let her voice trail off as she shrugged.

      The sound of Matt’s laughter echoed around the room and brought a burst of sunshine into her soul. The way it always had in the past. There was something about the sound that lifted her spirits and coaxed a smile from her lips. Even on those occasions when she didn’t think there was anything to smile about.

      Matt laced his hands together around her shoulders, holding her close to him. Content to remain like that all night long. He didn’t have to be anywhere until nine the next morning, and there was nowhere else he wanted to be than here.

      “So where does this put us, other than the floor?”

      She drew in a breath. This was where she could reclaim her dignity. But the only thing she resorted to was the truth.

      “Nowhere,” she answered. “I’m assuming that whatever made you leave is still there, still a reality that you’re dealing with.”

      He thought of the phone call from his brother, the frantic one that demanded he “do something. Make it right.” Those were always Scott’s words when he asked—demanded really—that he come to his rescue. Pointing out that if Scott had behaved, if he’d kept his pants on to begin with, there’d be no need for his brother to put him on the spot and “make it right.”

      He’d resigned himself to the fact that Scott would always be Scott. A leopard whose spots didn’t change with time.

      But, like it or not, Scott was family. His family and he couldn’t just stand by and let something happen to Scott, no matter how tempted he was to hit his older brother upside the head in hopes of knocking some kind of sense into him.

      Not likely, Matt thought.

      Scott’s world revolved around Scott and no one else—until he feared retaliation because of some stupid transgression on his part. Like the time his brother bedded Candace.

      “Yes,” he told her quietly, “nothing changed.”

      She really was an idiot, wasn’t she? And now Matt knew it as well as she did. Doing her damndest to keep her tears in check, Natalie began to rise.

      She was surprised when he wouldn’t let her. Matt tightened his hold on her, making her stay put. She raised her arm to push him away when he stopped her cold with his words.

      It was time to tell her. He didn’t want her imagination conjuring up false, negative theories, didn’t want her believing something that wasn’t true. Believing that he didn’t love her. Natalie deserved to know the truth.

      “You want to know why I left that morning?”

      She stopped struggling. “Considering that I’ve asked you several times since yesterday, I’d say you just made a very clever leap to a conclusion.”

      Her sarcasm didn’t affect him. He knew it was her shield, her way of keeping the pain at bay. Hopefully what he had to tell her would minimize the pain. “I left for you.”

      So he kept trying to tell her. “Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. He was more clever than that. “You’re going to have to do better than that. That’s right up there with that old saw, ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

      “It was me,” he insisted, then amended. “Or more accurately, it was my family. And it still is my family. The morning I left, I’d gotten a call from Scott. He was in some kind of trouble—”

      “What kind?” she asked.

      “It doesn’t matter. What mattered was I realized that he and the rest of them would always keep pulling me back in. I’ve tried to separate myself from my family, to go my own way and just pretend they didn’t exist, but—”

      “They’re still your family,” Natalie supplied with a sigh. How well she knew that feeling. There’d been a time when she’d considered changing her last name. But that still wouldn’t change who she was, or that they were her family. “Welcome to my world.” She propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at him. Was it as simple as that? He’d pulled away from her because of his family? “Look, if you can put up with mine, I can put up with yours.”

      There was one basic flaw with that philosophy. “Yours doesn’t kill people. Doesn’t have people after them because they want to ‘even’ some score. I left you because I couldn’t put you in that kind of danger just because I couldn’t live without you.”

      “Too late,” she declared. “Candace’s murder just changed the rules of the game. There might be a very good chance that my sister was killed because someone was looking to get even—” Natalie abruptly stopped, her eyes widening as she just now recalled the end of his statement. “Did you just say you couldn’t live without me?”

      Maybe he shouldn’t have told her. But now that he had, he wasn’t about to say that he hadn’t meant what he’d said.

      “Yes.”

      Feeling her heart beginning to accelerate, Natalie struggled to sound calm. “And how long has this been going on?”

      He told her the simple truth. “Since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

      If she was smart, she wouldn’t believe him. But she’d already proven she wasn’t smart. Because she was lying on her kitchen floor, naked—and wanting more.

      Natalie laughed softly and shook her head as she moved closer to him. “You know, for a monk—” which was what he’d alluded his life was like “—you have a very smooth tongue.” Each word was separated by a small, flittering kiss as her lips lightly grazed different parts of his anatomy. She felt him stiffening against her and smiled. “Encore?”

      “I thought you’d never ask,” he told her just before he brought her up to his level and sealed his mouth to hers.

      Chapter 11

      She was getting nowhere.

      And the worst part about it, she was getting there in slow motion.

      Natalie could feel her frustration mounting, governing her every waking moment—and keeping her from finding sleep for more than a few fitful minutes at a time.

      Thanks to Matt’s connections, over the last week she had been able to question anyone at the party who might have seen her twin interact with people at the gala. The upshot of that had been that, other than posing for the cameras and exchanging a few words with reporters, Candace hadn’t really talked to anyone besides Luke Montgomery and Matt himself.

      Matt, at least, didn’t seem to have anything to hide. She wasn’t all that sure about Luke yet.

      Not only had Matt covertly gotten her a copy of the tapes that her own department had commandeered but he had also given her Montgomery’s guest list under the guise that it was public knowledge who had attended. For her part over this last week, Natalie had judiciously gone down that list, calling or going to see as many people on it as she physically could.

      All she had managed to garner over and over again was not information but condolences. For the most part, once she identified herself as Candace’s twin, the people she spoke with focused on the words “so sorry for your loss.” When it came to saying something kind or flattering about Candace, there was far less enthusiasm. The kindest thing that anyone could offer was that her sister was “a woman who knew how to have a good time.”

      Natalie sincerely doubted that. What Candace had actually done was try desperately to numb herself, to party to the point of exhaustion. She’d gone at an almost frenzied pace from man to man in hopes of finding the man, never realizing that relationships did not spring out of the ground fully formed but actually took work. Constant work. With luck, that work made the relationship better. Made it golden.

      Candace wasn’t the only one to be disappointed,

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