His grin faded and the atmosphere in the room went electric. I’d been relaxed even though I was crying; my body was using his for strength and warmth. I tensed when the room changed because he’d tensed in fact he went solid as a rock.

His arms went from around me and he pulled the ponytail holder out of the mess of hair at the top of my head and then twisted, tossing it on the nightstand.

The he came back to me.

When he did even in the dim light I saw his eyes were intense, more intense than usual, burning into me. His hands slid through my hair at the sides of my head, his fingers combing through it all the way down my back. His hands came up again, to either side of my head, holding it in position to look at him, his thumbs coming forward and wiping away my tears. I got the impression he did all this as an effort at control. What he was trying to control, I did not know but I was about to find out.

“You’re a woman who lost her family, all of her family, and did what she had to do to keep going. There’s not one f**kin’ thing stupid or clueless about that.”

“Crowe –”

He interrupted me. “I hear you call yourself that again, it’s gonna piss me off.”

Um.

Yikes.

He already sounded pissed off.

“Are you angry with me?” I whispered.

He ignored my question and carried on. “If you’d given yourself to someone else, you wouldn’t be mine. And that would seriously piss me off.”

Okay, now he sounded seriously pissed off.

“Crowe –” I tried again.

“Far as I can see with the time she had, your aunt did a f**kin’ great job with you and left you in the hands of a man who handled you with care. I can understand you miss her but if she was alive, she’d be proud of who you’ve become.”

Oh my God.

That velvet feeling was back and it wasn’t only enshrouding me, it had Vance wrapped up in it too.

“Crowe, stop talking,” I whispered.

“You want to know more about me?” he offered and at that moment I didn’t. I couldn’t take anymore.

I didn’t have the choice.

“My life has been shit. I’d never been touched with gentleness, never understood it until I saw you handle Roam in Fortnum’s. Then that night watchin’ football with Nick, you showed it to me by runnin’ your fingers along my jaw after I told you the worst in me. I was once Roam, Jules. You might not think it but it isn’t the kids who have two parents and a stable home who are the luckiest ones. It’s the kids who know the taste of shit because they’ve been eatin’ it all their lives and then someone finds them and offers them a taste of somethin’ sweeter and they learn that life can be good. They learn to trust. They learn that if you care about someone you put your ass on the line to keep them safe. They learn that love doesn’t come with conditions. Roam and Sniff are the luckiest kids alive. I never had that. No one gave a shit enough to see it through. No one ever offered me that, until you.”

It was my turn to hold his face. I put both hands up and kept them there.

“Vance –” I started but he interrupted me again.

“I’ve been playin’ this cool so I wouldn’t scare the shit out of you because you’re jumpy as a f**kin’ jackrabbit but I’m done with that now. I won’t listen to you call yourself a freak and I’ll let you know something else and I don’t give a f**k if it flips you out. If you ever think of takin’ off, if you ever get scared enough at what I do for a living that you decide you can’t hack it, then you best think again because unless what we have turns shit like everything else in my life, I’m not ever letting you go.”

“Listen to me –”

“Do you understand what I just said to you?”

“Vance, please listen –”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said softly.

He stared at me or more to the point glared at me.

I decided it was time to come clean too. “Well then, maybe you should also be aware of the fact that I know you have a reputation as a player and I know a lot of other people know that. If any woman tries to cut into my action, I’m taking her down.”

I thought I sounded relatively badass and super-cool, for a girl.

Vance just kept staring at me a beat, still tense then his body relaxed and his lips turned up at the ends in an amused mini-smile.

Um.

No.

“This isn’t funny. I’m serious. I’m a head crackin’ mamma jamma. You’re too handsome for your own good. I’ll have to deck most of the single female population of Denver.”

Even though I was, indeed, being perfectly serious, his body started moving and it felt a lot like laughter. He twisted and we went down, me on my back, him on top of me. By the time he came over me, I knew it was laughter mainly because it had become audible.

I was offended.

“Excuse me! This is not funny. How come you can make intense, macho man statements and I can’t?”

His lips touched mine. He was still laughing.

“Shut up, Jules,” he said there.

“Do not tell me to shut up,” I snapped.

So he didn’t. Using hands, mouth, tongue and other parts of his anatomy, he shut me up a different way.

* * * * *

Vance made love to me, he did it slow, took his time and it was beyond beautiful.

We took a quick shower, got dressed and went back into town.

In a morning of significant moments, two more were still to come.

First, he told me to leave my stuff in the bathroom.

“I can’t, I need it,” I told him.

“Buy more,” he replied then walked into the kitchen to make toast (or, remake toast, I’d had a go and I’d burned it, twice).

I added a trip to the mall on my mental agenda for the day and I had no problem with it whatsoever. In fact my pug had never been to the mall and he was all excited to go (something else about my pug, his fur and face and little wet nose felt like velvet too).

Second, Vance followed me on his Harley all the way into Denver. I saw him in my rearview mirror and I didn’t lose sight of him until I turned my car into the garage behind the duplex. I knew this took him out of his way. His offices were in LoDo (lower downtown). He’d gone ten, fifteen minutes out of his way.

I could not explain why this was significant but it was. I’d been on my own a long time and knowing someone had my back as it were, was just, plain nice.