The From Paris With Love And Regency Season Of Secrets Ultimate Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

herself. He was the one man on earth she could trust with the deepest part of herself and not be braced for a rejection because she wasn’t good enough.

      He was the only one who could get her to stay because for the first time in her life, staying was better than leaving.

       Ten

      Moonlight poured through the panes of glass in the bedroom. Evangeline eased out from under Matt’s arm and pulled the covers over his gorgeously muscled torso. He shifted but didn’t wake up.

      She watched him breathe, unable to tear her eyes away. Sooty lashes brushed his cheeks, and underneath those lids lay the most amazing depths. No matter how many mornings she woke wound up in his long limbs, it wouldn’t be enough. She could stand here forever and bask in his presence.

      But the words were flowing, calling her with their siren song, begging her to commit the emotion to paper. She couldn’t ignore the first stirring of inspiration.

      The piano had unwound something inside her, and Matt patiently drew it out, helping her examine it in his clearheaded, logical way.

      Downstairs, she plopped onto the couch with the back of a take-out menu and a pen. Fifteen minutes later, lyrics covered every blank space on the menu. Good lyrics. For the first time in months, she’d tapped into her center and captured the music.

      She rummaged around for more paper and came up empty-handed. Matt’s iPad sat on the coffee table and though under normal circumstances she’d never use a digital page, she couldn’t lose momentum.

      When she hit the power button, one of the squares with the logo WFP caught her attention. It hadn’t been there before.

      She touched it and the website popped up. Wheeler Family Partners. The header contained the profiles of four men and she recognized Matt’s instantly. The chiseled good-looking face next to Matt must be his brother, Lucas. A total player. She could see the look in his eye a mile away and hoped his wife kept that one on a short leash.

      The other men must be their dad and grandfather. Andrew and Robert, according to the About page. Matt favored his grandfather. They both had the same piercing gaze and straightforwardness. She could tell neither of them would ever lie, cheat or steal.

      Her eye wandered down the paragraph. Geez. Wheeler Family Partners had done eighty million dollars of business in the last quarter of the previous year alone, largely owing to the sale of a communications complex in North Dallas.

      And Matt had been the spearhead of his firm. Like she’d assumed, he’d been successful at everything he’d tried. Business. Marriage. Getting her to stay.

      He was far more special than she’d imagined.

      She tapped the website closed and brought up a free-text application, more than a little concerned she’d stemmed the fountain of words with her side foray into Matt’s domain.

      A blank page materialized. It didn’t scare her.

      But the words she typed did. She couldn’t stop, didn’t even pause as the song fell from her fingers, fully formed. Whereas the first round had taken shape in bits and pieces, this one had structure. Order. And it would be a guaranteed hit. She knew it. All four of her Grammys had been for songwriting, not singing.

      The piano hovered in the corner of her peripheral vision, and she glanced up at it, then up the stairs to where Matt lay sleeping. No piano this time. She didn’t want to wake him.

      The fortune teller had predicted she’d conceive. And this felt like birth, like the beginning of something wonderful and amazing. A metamorphosis.

      As the last word appeared, she finally removed her fingers from the screen and read over the song again, hearing the tune in her head as she internalized the words. With the right voice, like Sara Lear’s, it would climb the charts instantly.

      She saved the file to her cloud account and powered off the tablet, staring out the window at the quiet canal.

      The right voice. It wouldn’t be hers. She wasn’t ready to let the song go to another home, but for the first time, it didn’t sting so badly to envision it. Thanks to Matt.

      Here in the dark, it didn’t seem so frightening to admit she was falling for him. He was so genuine and real, and her stupid heart hungrily latched onto those qualities. She knew better. Knew that nothing could crumble the monument to Amber in his chest. But her heart had its fingers in its ears, refusing to hear the message from her brain.

      Matt was a heartbreak waiting to happen.

      She should go before it was too late. Nicola had a place in Monte Carlo. Vincenzo had been making noises about shoving off in that direction in a few days and had texted her the address with an open invitation to join the group. Her stomach rolled. It had been off since the reporter incident.

      Matt still needed her. His turmoil churned below the surface, popping up in his faraway gaze at odd moments. She’d give anything to ease that note of sheer anguish in his voice when he talked about his family and the life he’d lost.

      She didn’t want to leave.

      Her head fell back against the couch cushion. The riot of colors splashed across the ceiling was dim with only the outside canal lights to illuminate it. The paintings depicted domestic vignettes; men and women sleeping, eating, playing with children. This had been someone’s refuge, built to escape a harsh climate.

      She and Matt had both done the same. And despite what she told herself about the reasons she stayed, she needed him as much as he needed her. How much longer could they hide away here before Venice became a stumbling block to healing instead of a sanctuary?

      * * *

      Matt’s gentle hands in her hair woke her. Daylight streamed through the panes leading to the balcony and beyond the glass, Venice was awash with the morning.

      “You okay?” Matt asked from behind her. “Why didn’t you come back to bed?”

      “Meant to. But I fell asleep.” She yawned. The mist of sleep would not clear her mind, like she’d dunked her head in a vat of Jell-O.

      “I’ll make you some breakfast.”

      Food did not sound appealing in the least. “You go ahead. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll grab something later.”

      He leaned to plant an upside-down kiss on her lips. “Want me to scrub your back?”

      Which was code for Very-Little-Bathing-To-Occur. “Normally I’d be all over that. But I’m just wiped out. The shower is to wake me up.” She smiled to soften the blow.

      “If you’re sure.” He brushed a thumb tenderly across her temple and disappeared into the kitchen. Thumps of cabinets opening and dishes clinking drifted out. Comforting sounds. Sounds of home.

      How would she know? She’d never had the kind of home the noises had evoked. Never wanted one.

      Until now.

      Oh, God, where had that come from? This wasn’t her home. It wasn’t even Matt’s home. Home was for people who wanted to stay together, who implicitly trusted each other and never spent all their energy looking for the exit.

      She didn’t do the domestic thing for a reason. And her subconscious argued that the reason was because she hadn’t done it with the right person yet.

      Heavy with fatigue, she wandered upstairs to take a long hot shower and get dressed. Somewhere along the way, she began to feel human again. By the time she returned to the lower level, Matt was watching cable news with the crinkle in his forehead that meant he was bored.

      When he caught sight of her, he lit up, his expression radiant, and he was absolutely the most gorgeous man on earth. Her heart squished. Out of nowhere, lines of a new song popped into her head. A sappy, sugary love song.

      She wasn’t just