When he opened the limo door for her, a shaking had started deep in his belly and moved out to his arm, affecting the hand he extended to her. The episode came on him so suddenly, his body was drenched with sweat in a blink. He was about to jerk back, close the door in her face, try to pull his shit together. Hell, forget that, he was going to radio Wade and tell him they needed to send over another driver. He’d just lean on the door until his replacement got there, no Noaher how much she beat on the window. Before he could do anything as absurd as that, Dana had reached out, looking for his hand. Her fingertips brushed his thigh, an intimate touch that might have sent another woman recoiling with a stammered apology. Instead her palm flattened on him, registering how he was shaking. In the next blink, she’d slipped out of the car. He caught her arm by reflex, keeping her inside the shelter of the door and his body. To anyone loo

That seemed important to her. She closed her eyes, her fingers stilling on the glass a long moment before she continued. “He’d brought his own vehicle, no driver. I remember him driving twenty miles without either of us saying a word. I looked at all the empty, flat land around us, nothing significant, but all of it U.S. soil. I looked down at my hands, and saw I still had blood under the nails, staining the cuticles. “It wasn’t until he pulled the car off to the side of the road and put his arms around me that I realized I’d started crying. It took me a couple hours to stop trembling.” She lifted a shoulder. “Shock.” She rose then. “I want you to go home now, Max.” What the hell? “No.” “Yes.” She met his gaze. “It’s not a request. I need the space. You wanted to get a sense of what’s going on betwee

“Will you come visit my sister with me this week? I’d like for her to meet you, if she’s up to it.” She lifted her head, studied him. His expression said he wasn’t sure what had made him go down that road at this exact moment, but she had a distinct feeling he’d been thinking about offering her the invitation for a while. And that made her feel a variety of ways, not unpleasant. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’d love to.” All in all, it was a perfect morning.  Eleven They’d showered at his place, which he’d warned her wasn’t much more than a hole in the wall, but the small size of the shower had proven to be a benefit beyond measure. For one thing, he knocked another pin out of the challenge she’d issued about impressing her. He’d taken her up against the wall, driving them both to orgasm.

He held her gaze as if she’d said the words out loud. Lifting her hands, he pressed his mouth to them. Then he gave them one more squeeze and stepped out the door. After he was about ten paces down the garden path, Janet slipped out as well. She picked a bench set on a concrete pad encircled by a lovely rainbow of flowers and sculpted dwarf shrubs. As she settled, she watched him move toward a young woman in a blue dress, her dark hair cut to her shoulders. When she turned, Janet saw the curious vacancy in the gray eyes turn to a different kind of light. The way she walked toward Max, jerky and somewhat unbalanced when she got too fast, the listlessness of her left arm, showed the evidence of the brain damage, but the enthusiasm in her face was like a lit candle in darkness. “Max,” she said. “Max Max Max.” The tightening in her throat was unexpected, the sting of tears in her eyes. He’