Memories of that day crash down on me as I speak. All my life, I’ve shut them out, banished them to a dark corner of my mind if only so I could survive. So as not to let them own me. But, now, I let them flood in. The dam is breaking and I need Nick to understand.
“I couldn’t get away that day. He . . . he raped me.”
Nick stares at me. “And then your mother killed him.”
“Yes. She shot him.” I swallow the regret—and the guilt—that’s lodged in my throat. “She killed him to protect me.”
Although it’s my personal horror, Nick looks stricken by what he’s heard. “I didn’t know, Avery. I’m sorry.” He slowly shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. “I told you that you could trust me. I told you that the only way this would work—the only way we could work—was without barriers or inhibitions. But if I’d known about this—”
“That’s right,” I say softly. “If you’d known about this, you would’ve looked at me differently. You would’ve been different with me. Or worse, you would’ve stayed away.”
He doesn’t deny it, and strangely, that gives me strength.
“There’s more I haven’t told you, Nick. I’ve been lying to you about a lot of things these past three and a half months.”
I tell him how Claire Prentice isn’t a friend of mine at all, that she hired me to housesit. I tell him how my ‘public relations’ job was actually bartending with Tasha at Vendange, and how I’d been two weeks away from being homeless because my apartment had been sold out from under me and I couldn’t afford to move somewhere else.
He listens, stoic, silent. Giving me no indication whether he forgives me or despises me.
“Nick, please say something.”
He blinks, then glances away from me, staring at the rain-sluiced windshield. “Has anything you’ve told me the past hundred days been true?”
“Yes.” The word cracks in my throat, thick with emotion. I’m desperate to make him understand, to make him believe me now. “Everything I’ve said about us, about the way you make me feel . . . about what I feel for you . . . Nick, it’s all been true. Every word. Except I didn’t tell you everything.”
His gaze locks on me, hard with suspicion. It twists my heart to see the edge of rawness in his eyes when he’s looking at me now.
I lick my lips. “I should have told you something else before now. Nick, I’m falling in love with you.”
I’ve caught him off guard completely. I see the telling flicker of surprise in his expression. But then it’s gone, replaced with something steely, something stronger than denial.
I smile nervously. “Is this the part where you cut me loose because I’ve been fool enough to get too close to you?”
“Is that what you think I’ll do?”
“I don’t know. Other women—”
“Never compare yourself to other women.” His reply is clipped, firm. “I’ve never compared you to anyone. This is about us. There’s no room for anyone else.”
I nod, swallowing thickly. “Then where do we go from here? Tell me what I can do to make this right between us again.”
I watch him contemplate, a tendon pulsing in the side of his cheek. When he looks at me, his blue gaze is steady, unyielding. “One hundred nights.”
“What?”
“One hundred nights in my bed.” He leans toward me, those arresting eyes refusing to let me go. “You’ve had a hundred days on your terms, Ms. Ross, now I want the same on mine.”
My breath catches, and while part of me fears the kind of control he’s about to demand, there’s another part of me that can think of nothing I want more. “What are your terms, Mr. Baine?”
“For the next one hundred nights, I want you open to me—anywhere I want, whatever I ask of you. No limits, no barriers, no hiding any part of yourself from me. And, Avery, I will demand more from you than I ever have.”
“That’s it?” I shake my head, hope and elation streaking through me like licks of fire. “That’s all you’ll require of me?”
He leans forward and cups my face in his strong hands. “That’s a good beginning.”
“Yes,” I agree, as he pulls me into a sensual kiss. “That is a good beginning.”
~ ~ ~
Nick arranges to have my rental car picked up from the prison lot and we decide to stay overnight in Pennsylvania rather than make the long drive back to the city. Besides, I’ve just entered into an agreement with a formidable negotiator, and both of us are eager to get started hammering out the fine points as quickly as possible.