CHAPTER FOUR

      SAM HAD HER. He always knew when a subject he was interviewing was going to give him what he wanted. It was some kind of sixth sense he’d been given.

      Sick sense, his ex-wife used to say. After she’d fallen out of love with him.

      Whatever. He hadn’t asked for it. And he used it for good.

      This wasn’t about having her. It had been. But now that he’d crossed that hurdle, he faced another.

      How to make her think capitulation was her idea? How to make it her idea? Because the second he’d seen the spark of fear return to her eyes he’d known what he didn’t want to have to do. Control her. Manipulate her. Scare her back into the woman he’d met in that hospital emergency room.

      “First, I have a place you can stay that will cost you nothing...”

      “I’m not a charity case,” she interrupted, and he swore silently, giving her time to add, “I can afford to pay my own way. And then some.”

      “I expect you can afford to pay my way, too,” he told her with complete honesty. “And then some. This isn’t about what you can afford. It’s about not letting that bastard take another thing from you. Or cost you more than the thousands you already spent on legal fees and counseling...”

      She knew he knew the intimate details. So why did he feel as though he’d just knocked on the bathroom door while she was inside?

      “And you think leaving my home won’t do that?”

      He didn’t like feeling like a failure in an interview. Had no practice at it. “It also has to do with making you less easy to trace,” he said. “Hear me out, please?” Demanding was going to defeat his purpose.

      The one where she was the one in charge and still chose his course of action.

      “The place I have, it’s everything you told me you love about your house. It’s right on the ocean—closer than your house actually. It’s not as big—you’d said that you always thought that house was too much space just for you and the bastard. It’s higher up so you have the view you’d said was most important to you. And...it’s more private.”

      She’d pictured a more peaceful setting for their beach home, but Ken had needed people around him. Rich people. All the time. At least that was what she’d told him close to three years before when he’d asked her permission to search her home without a warrant.

      “You remember every word I ever said? Or have you been reading my case file?”

      “My notes aren’t that good. Did you catch the part about this place being private, Bloom? It’s set up on a cliff, on private property. Fenced property. There’s a small trail down to the ocean. One that can be easily guarded. You’ll be safe there.”

      Her expression softened. Everything in him pushed for the close. He gritted his teeth and sat there.

      “I don’t like how easily you can play me,” she told him. And he started to look for angles again. Was much more comfortable doing so.

      So...his angle was to get her to agree without losing any sense of the control she’d gained over her life.

      “Are you telling me it doesn’t sound good to you?”

      “It sounds heavenly.”

      Good. Hopefully he could get her to agree before she actually saw the place.

      “But I need to be right here in the city. I’ve got early morning appointments and sometimes I don’t get home until nine o’clock at night as it is...”

      Hours he could relate to. And didn’t like to hear her keeping. As if she had no life...

      “It is right here in the city.”

      “A place like that, here in the city, and it’s available?” Her tone had lightened. He took that as a win.

      “Yes.”

      “That’s hard to believe.”

      Not as hard as she thought. As she’d soon find out. He’d gotten the place for a steal, on foreclosure, after years of neglect and abuse.

      The toilets had been replaced. And the faucets. Structurally it was fine. He’d added braces beneath the porch. Done some painting—so far only on the inside. And covered holes in the walls with cheap prints...

      “So, do you think it’s a good idea for you to stay there where it’ll be easier to keep you safe? At least for the time being?”

      The way she stuck her out lower lip, as though she was considering, that was new. Drew attention to how full that lip was...

      “So that’s your plan?” Her disapproving tone didn’t coincide with his thoughts at all. “To have me move to a safer place? Be guarded? Held hostage for the unforeseeable future, in case someday Ken decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?”

      He’d made it. Sam was 100 percent certain of that.

      He just had no proof. Yet.

      “You honestly expect me to believe if you aren’t guarded that you won’t be looking over your shoulder every second of every day, living in fear, in case someday the bastard decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?” The words burst from him. He’d rather scare her than have her beat up again. Or worse.

      She had to move. Within the next twenty-four hours. Period.

      He’d made a promise to her to keep her safe and he was damn well going to keep it.

      * * *

      HER INSIDES MIGHT be clenching to the point of pain, but Bloom was not going to give in. Fear would not rule her life. Ever again.

      Sure, she’d experience the emotion now and then. It was an inevitable part of the human experience. But that didn’t mean she had to live it.

      Feel it. Breathe. Move on. And it would pass. Fact. Not just theory. Or wishful thinking.

      Nor was she going to dumb herself down by refusing to see, or to think about, the fearful challenges that could be in front of her. Having once been robbed of that chance against her will, without even knowing that it was happening to her, she now cherished her ability to face situations and make her own choices in how to deal with them.

      “I