Avery didn’t want to hurt him. She honestly didn’t. She’d sensed from the beginning Luys wasn’t a person who slept with someone lightly. He seemed old-fashioned. It wasn’t the formal way he spoke, but something deeper.
“What’s wrong?”
She turned and found Luys on his side and propped up by an elbow. She smiled, then realized she didn’t look convincing and made the smile reach her eyes. “Nothing at all.”
Shifting to her side so she could fully face him, she skimmed a hand over his waist and hip. “Thank you.”
His brows arched. “I don’t think anyone’s ever thanked me before.”
She chuckled. “Then you’ve been meeting the wrong women.” She tweaked his chin, wanting to keep things light, safe. “You were perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
“Well, I thank you too.” His teeth flashed.
“Seriously.” She inched far enough away so she could get a good look at him. “I needed to feel alive, at least for a little while. You made that happen for me.”
Moonlight from the window deepened the angles of his face but caught against the light of his eyes. Something shifted in their depths and added a new intensity as he rubbed a thumb back and forth along the slope of her shoulder. Her breath caught in the back of her throat. He was truly a beautiful man and not because the lighting in the room masked his imperfections. She’d seen him beneath Arizona’s harsh rays. The prominent cheekbones, square chin, and long lashes added to a face she found breathtaking, particularly now when he was naked and mere inches away. A bit more frazzled than she liked to admit, she glanced away from those amazing eyes but took in the hard line of his jaw, the protrusion of his Adam's apple and collar bone, every nuance of muscle beneath his golden skin until her gaze landed on the disfigurement on his chest.
Suddenly she stilled. A vertical scar ran several inches down the middle of his chest, and another intersected it below his collarbone and above his nipples.
Images flashed inside her head. The dark and angry incisions between her breasts, her naked image in the bathroom mirror. Scars strangely healed as if they happened years and not days ago.
With her scars came her strange, amplified hearing that was beyond what was normal, and with it, no plausible explanation as to why. Those same scars looked exactly like Luys’.
Impossible, but his disfigurement glared back at her.
She scrambled into a sitting position and pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts. “What happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your chest.”
Still resting on an elbow, he lifted his free hand and briefly ran a thumb across the jagged marks. “It happened a long time ago.”
“When you were a child?”
“No. It was a time when I was naïve and had a very different vision of my future.”
“What do you mean by that?” What type of crazy answer was that?
He shifted to where shadows clung beneath his brows and shielded his expression. “It’s not important.”
“No. No, I think it is. I have the same type of scars.” This discussion was feeling surreal and far different from moments before. Any trust she’d held for Luys was quickly dissolving into moondust.
Luys pushed himself up until his back rested against the headboard. He dragged the sheet up over his waist. “That’s impossible.”
“Impossible? I don’t think so.” With the sheet bunched in her fist and up against her breasts, she reached over and turned on a bedside lamp with her other hand. She swiveled back around and dropped the sheet, making sure the light hit her chest. She fought back the temptation to cover herself, feeling shockingly exposed as if she’d landed naked in the middle of a university lecture hall. “I’ve got scars that look like yours. They might not be as faded, but that’s not the insane part of the whole story. This happened over a week ago. Some crazy person operated on me. The worse part of all this is that there’s no plausible reason to cut me open and stitch me back up. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me or why someone would do anything like this. I may have things wrong with me, but I know my heart’s perfectly fine. I had a battery of tests to make sure.”
She didn’t mention her amplified hearing. It was too strange for even her to say it aloud.
A muscle pulsed on the side of his jaw. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What? That someone did this to me or that we have the same scarring?”
“Both.” He drew back, shadows now fully obscuring his face.
Avery’s brow dipped. “Of course it doesn’t make sense. None of it does. Maybe it’s not one person but some sick cult.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course, I don’t!” She glanced down at her chest, and the marks on her skin blurred from the tears she couldn’t keep at bay. “I don’t understand any of it. Who or why? We have nothing in common that I can think of other than being neighbors. You said your scars happened a long time ago, right?”
“Yes—”
“What happened to you? I’ve looked at current and past heart surgeries on the internet. Our marks don’t look like anything I’ve seen in pictures or videos.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone about it.”
“Why?”
His mouth tightened. Then he finally admitted, “It’s painful, and I’ve never trusted anyone with the truth.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she asked, “That’s all you’re going to say?”
He opened his mouth but then snapped it shut and looked away.
She scrambled to the edge of the bed, dragging the sheet with her and covering her body up to her neck. “Did you do this to me?”
“No!”
He jerked his head back in her direction. He honestly looked horrified. She didn’t think he could be that big of an actor. “Can you prove it?”
“Prove it? I don’t have proof. But I would never hurt another human or living being. Not intentionally. I was raised to value all life.”
“Anyone can say that.”
He looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. Then he met and held her gaze. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then rolled his shoulders as if deliberating about what he was going to say next. The silence lengthened between them until he admitted, “I was once a priest.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “A priest?”
Clover jumped on the bed, trotted over, and rubbed against his thigh. Luys scooped up the kitten in one large hand. His touch was gentle as he caressed the animal behind her ears and cupped her against his chest. “Yes. For several years I was an ordained Catholic priest. Other than family, you’re the only one else I’ve admitted this to.”
Reading the uncertainty in his gaze, she could tell the admission was difficult for him. Maybe he expected her to judge him. Maybe he’d been judged before and found wanting? The idea of him as a priest was both shocking and made sense at the same time.
The way he’d made love to her had been different from any other man in her past. As if the act was more than sex. She couldn’t forget how he’d held her, how he’d trembled, or how the expression in his eyes had revealed absolute wonder. Never had she experienced such reverence. A man wouldn’t act that way if they were a deadly psychopath, would they?
She thought of the cross beneath the glass case in the other room. Instinct told her that a man like Luys would never succumb to such dark violence. But he could be protecting a killer, someone far more dangerous than himself. Still, the situation and him didn’t feel right. “You know something more. Something about the murder and what happened to me. Also, there’s a tie between the both of us you’re not willing to tell me about.”
“I didn’t say that.”
A shutter seemed to fall across his gaze. He was hiding something.
“What do you know? I deserve answers!”
He finally admitted, “If I tell you anything, I might be putting you in even more danger.”
She gaped at him, shocked he admitted to her being in danger. She was equally stunned at his unwillingness to explain himself or give her some—any—information. Obviously, she’d read more into his feelings.
She scrambled off the bed. Her clothes. Where the hell had she thrown them? She searched wildly on the floor for her underwear. After finding them tossed over in the corner, she got her bra and shirt on within seconds.
Luys set the kitten to one side, jumped from the bed, and hurried around the bed toward her. “I’m sorry you’re upset. I—”
“Upset? Seriously? I can’t believe you said that.” She backed away from his large and very naked body as she glared at him. “Don’t come near me.”
Yeah, he looked concerned, shaken even, but she wanted nothing to do with him. More importantly, she didn’t know what he was hiding.
“I want to protect you, but being with me endangers your life at the same time.”
“Great. You just admitted having sex with you can get me hurt.” With fumbling hands, she scrambled into her jeans and shirt and let sarcasm drip from her words. “This has been absolutely wonderful.”
Then she grabbed her socks and running shoes and rushed from the room while yelling over one shoulder, “And don’t do me any favors! I don’t want your protection.”
“Avery!”
She ignored Luys as she fled down the hall and into the living room, but by the sound of his heavier steps, he was rapidly narrowing the distance between them.
She whirled around and jabbed a shoe at him. “Keep away from me.”
He lifted both hands in the air and stopped advancing toward her. “Don’t leave.”
“Can you tell me who did this to me?”
When he didn’t answer, she bit out, “Then there’s no reason to stay.”
She stuffed her shoes and socks into the overnight bag she’d left by the sofa. She grabbed the strap to swing it around her shoulder. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but she’d use it on Luys or anyone else that got too close. When she reached the door, his next words made her hand pause on the doorknob.
“Stay away from Mayor.”
She whirled around. “What? Mayor?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Don’t trust her. She’s dangerous.”
“You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous.” She shook her head. “Why do you say that? Is she out to get me because she’s a crazy ex-lover? Is she the one that made those marks on your chest?”
“She hasn’t touched me, but she’s hurt others I have loved.”
He was saying half-truths and being deliberately ambiguous.
“Just how dangerous?” Avery made a noise of distress against the back of her throat. “She wouldn’t have the strength to overpower a man twice her size.”
Mayor couldn’t be the one who’d attacked her. It would have been too much of a struggle and taken too long to drag Avery into the condo without someone seeing her. Then Avery thought about her last conversation with the other woman. Mayor’s words, her whole crazy talk about being psychic and ‘knowing’ nothing would happen to Avery. She frowned. Maybe the woman was off her head and not eccentric as Avery had first thought? Maybe she was more than dangerous? Maybe she was a killer?
But why would an adult woman in her prime go after a man? Money? Revenge? It would have to be personal from what she’d heard about the killing. Avery had nothing in common with Mayor. What relationship they did have was a superficial friendship. Nothing deep or meaningful. Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag. That wasn’t necessarily true. There was a tie between both women.
Luys.
All this time, she’d thought their meeting had been random and with a shared addiction to coffee. But what if Mayor intentionally followed her to the coffee shop day after day, and nothing about their meeting was coincidental? But that was months before she’d even talked to Luys. That didn’t make any sense.
“Is it Mayor? Is she the one you’re protecting?”
“I can’t protect her anymore. She has gone too far.”
“Who is she?” Her stomach roiled with unease. “Are you married to each other?” She really didn’t want to know. If she walked out the door, she could pretend none of this conversation was happening. But did she dare do that? When not knowing could be dangerous, even deadly?
A muscle ticked along the edge of his jaw. “My sister.”
Avery took an involuntary step back and found herself saying inanely, “You don’t look anything alike.”
“And we’re nothing alike” Bitterness thickened his voice. “Maybe once a long time ago, but no longer. Each year we grow further apart to the point we have nothing in common other than the parents who sired us.”
“Then why are you protecting her?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I always thought I was a terrible liar, but you’re just as bad or worse.” She hugged her bag against her side and lifted a lip into a sneer. He wouldn’t tell her the truth about anything she asked. It was pointless to even try. She’d been stupid to ignore Ben’s warning to keep away from him. “I don’t want to see you again. You come near me, and I’ll call the police.”
She could call the police, but then she realized she had nothing—no proof, no motive—not one shred of evidence when it came to Luys or his sister and any involvement with Noah Harris or her attack. All she had were words and suspicions.
She didn’t wait around for a response but whipped around and slammed the door behind her.