Victor glanced over, watched her staring out the window.

“I’m just now waking up.”

Victor reached out his free hand and placed it on her arm.

She offered a soft smile.

“You think they were there for your friends Trina and Wade?”

“Undoubtedly. When Trina visits on her own, the cameras are harder to find. When Wade is here, there is a pretty good chance someone is hiding in the bushes.”

Victor turned off the freeway and kept heading west.

“That can’t be easy.” He couldn’t imagine his life under a microscope.

“It takes a strong disposition, and someone without secrets.”

He hadn’t thought of that angle.

“Do you have any?” she asked out of the blue.

“Secrets?”

“Yeah.” She watched from the corner of her eye.

He thought of the question and searched his mental database. Page after blank page came up.

“Never mind. You don’t have to answer that.” Shannon’s voice deflated.

He raised a hand in the air. “No, no . . .” He paused. “Damn, I’m boring,” he finally said.

He heard a small laugh from her side of the car. “Everyone has something.”

No . . . high school didn’t count, college . . . he studied, he worked, did the typical things kids did who were actually trying to finish school in four years. Then decided four years was too long and left after two. Nothing newsworthy. His business was clean. Really boring.

Shannon shifted in her seat, waiting.

“There was that time in the Bolivian jail with that little cartel situation . . .” He lifted a hand from the steering wheel. “But the name change and plastic surgery seem to have gotten them off my scent.”

Shannon’s shoulders started to shake until finally her laughter broke.

He turned into his driveway lined with palm trees and parked in front of his garage doors.

“Where are we?” Shannon asked.

Victor had driven on autopilot. Not really considering the moment when he pulled up to his house.

“My home,” he told her. “But I’m not expecting anything. Let’s have a nightcap, talk about my drug selling days, and count the stars in the sky.”

If she was nervous, she didn’t show it. “We should introduce your friends to my ex bookie . . . I bet they’d get along.”

And she pushed out of the car.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Her cell phone was ringing.

Shannon reached out toward the phone jack on her nightstand and found her hand colliding with a lamp.

Her eyes blinked open. Sun from the corner of the room invaded her senses.

The bed was softer, the sheets didn’t feel right, and her phone kept ringing.

Victor’s.

The memory of crashing in Victor’s spare room late in the night surfaced. Her hand landed on her phone. “Hello?”

“Someone is sleeping in.” Avery’s voice shook some of the cobwebs from her brain.

Shannon swung her feet over the edge of the bed, looked down at herself. She wore an oversize T-shirt that didn’t belong to her. “Good morning,” Shannon said to her friend. “What time is it?”

“After nine.”

Shannon looked around the room to find a clock . . . didn’t see one.

“I need some coffee,” she said more to herself than Avery.

“I won’t keep you. I’m just checking to make sure you’re okay.”

She wiggled her toes on the carpet covering the dark wooden floors of the room. “I’m fine.”

“You left pretty abruptly last night.”

“Victor convinced me to sneak away.” She offered a tiny white lie to keep the questions at bay.

She heard footsteps from outside the room and then a knock at her door. “Shannon?” Victor called through the wood.

“Just a minute,” she said, covering the phone with her hand in an attempt to keep Avery from knowing she was talking with someone.

It didn’t work. “Oh my God, he’s with you.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I need to hear all about this.”

Shannon didn’t believe for a second she’d escape the dozen questions her friend would ask.

“It was late, we’d both had another drink. I slept over. Nothing happened.”

Avery laughed. “That isn’t a good enough explanation. But I’ll let you go for now.”

“I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“Okay. But before you hang up, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

Shannon stood and stretched. “About what?”

“You and Victor made the tabloids last night. A small shot on the front page leading to a full-page spread on the tenth.”

Any dust in Shannon’s head blew away with the news. “Whatever could they possibly say about me on a full page?”

“It’s never flattering.”

“Did they photoshop thirty pounds on me and say I was suicidal?” Which had happened a year after the split with Paul.

“No. But I wanted to warn you if you hadn’t seen it. And since you’re obviously still with Victor . . .”

“Got it.” She knew the drill. “I’ll call you later.”

They said their goodbyes, and Shannon tossed her cell phone on the bed.

In the bathroom, she found a bathrobe and made use of the brush and the extra toothbrush on the counter. She considered putting her jumpsuit on from the night before but couldn’t bring herself to start her day without coffee.

One last glance in the mirror . . . no makeup, sleep in the corners of her eyes, a borrowed shirt and bathrobe. This was the-day-after Shannon. If Victor didn’t like this look, they had no business spending serious time together. With a shrug, she padded, barefoot, out of her room and toward Victor’s kitchen.

He wore jeans. His back was to her when she entered the room, his hands busy pulling cups from a cupboard.

“Is that coffee?” she asked to get his attention.

He turned, his jaw slacked slightly, and his eyes did a slow crawl down her frame.

Shannon shifted her feet under his microscope.

“I might not wash that bathrobe.”

She took his words as a compliment and grinned. Her morning look must not have offended him. “Good morning.”

He shook his head with a slight groan, turned back to his task. “Coffee with sugar, right?”

“How did you know?”

He poured her a cup. “Every morning on the beach you were huddled over a cup, reading.”

“I’ll take the coffee, but I’m fresh out of reading material.” She took the cup he offered and doctored it with the sugar he had sitting out.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I did. You?”

He sighed. “Do I offer the lie or tell the truth?”

She leaned against the counter, brought the cup to her lips. “Is this like the game of truth or dare?” The java splashed against her tongue, waking her fully.

“Knowing you were across the hall kept me up until three.”

She lowered her cup. “I should have gone home.”

“No, no, no . . . I wouldn’t have slept at all, then.”

She doubted that. She sipped her coffee again. “This is really good.”

“You’ve found my hidden talent.”

“Making coffee?”

“We all have one thing.” He led her out of the kitchen and into his informal dining room. There was a newspaper spread out on the table, evidence that he’d been sitting there for a while.

“How long have you been up?”

“Since six thirty.”

“That’s not a lot of sleep.”

They sat opposite each other, and Victor brushed the paper away. “My internal clock wakes me with the sun. It’s a curse.”

“It makes you productive.” She set her cup down, glanced at the paper. “About last night . . .”

“Yes?”

“Avery called this morning. It appears the paparazzi found something worthy of their magazines last night when you and I walked outside.”

He picked up his cup, shrugged. “Like I said, I have nothing to hide. Besides, they won’t know who I am.”

Shannon shook her head. “They will know your name, your business, and your net worth, if they think it will sell papers. They’re not called gossip magazines for nothing.”

Victor reached over, placed a hand over hers. “Don’t spend one more minute worrying about me.”

“I’m not worried, just warning you. We should come up with a statement we both stick to if we’re cornered by the media.” At least that’s how she’d approached them in the past. Scripted lines delivered and repeated to avoid the unfortunate slip of the truth.

Victor drank his coffee and regarded her with a tilt of his head. “What kind of statement do you suggest?”

She hadn’t thought about that. Shannon leaned back in her chair and processed the situation aloud. “We need to stay as close to the truth as possible. We met in Tulum.”

“That’s easy.”

She continued. “They will find out about our connection and about Corrie running off.”

“I can’t imagine they’d care about that.”