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to…talk. And then I saw his car.” His breath eased out. “I was at your front door when I heard you scream.” He’d broken that damn door and rushed inside. Gone straight to the bedroom. He’d kicked in that door, too, and when he’d see Gwen in bed and that bastard Ethan looming over her…
    “I’d never seen you like that.” Now her voice was soft. Her eyes slid over his face. “You just…erupted. I had to pull you off him.”
    Because he’d wanted to destroy the bastard. “He broke into your home.”
    She nodded. “I sure didn’t invite the guy back. After what you’d told me, did you believe for a second that I had?”
    With her scream ringing in his ears, he hadn’t exactly been thinking straight. Just feeling. Following a primitive instinct to protect.
    “Ethan said he came here that night to talk with me. Because I’d been ignoring his phone calls. He wanted to tell me the truth about his past.”
    Fuck that. “The truth is that he’s a criminal. A bastard who beat his ex-girlfriend up so badly that she wound up in the hospital. I wasn’t going to let him do that to you.” A simple fact. “I wasn’t—”
    “You were doing your job. Protecting the boss’s daughter. That was your thing, right? Your assignment. To eliminate all possible threats.”
    It had been one hell of a lot more than an assignment.
    “I can’t help but wonder…are you doing your job now, too?”
    If he said that her father had come to his office, Chance had no doubt that she would kick him out of her home right then. He didn’t want that to happen and he also didn’t want to lie to her. So, very carefully, he said, “I will do anything necessary to protect you. Always. From any threat.” He held her gaze. “Now I think you’re the one who needs to start sharing your secrets. That man tonight…was that the first time you’ve had an encounter like that? Is something else going on? Is—”
    She paced toward her window. Stared out. “I’ve gotten…phone calls, okay? Late night phone calls from numbers that I don’t recognize. Numbers that I can’t trace. The callers would never say anything. Just silence. I turned the phones off but…” One shoulder lifted and fell. “When I’d turn them back on, there would be dozens of messages. Messages made of nothing but silence and the occasional whisper that I couldn’t even understand.” She looked back at him. “It was probably just some kids playing games, but it made me nervous, so I got a new number.”
    He waited.
    “I got a new number a few times,” she confessed. “But…but I haven’t seen anyone. No one has been in my house or at my gallery.” The gallery…
her
gallery. The place she’d built from the ground up. She didn’t just showcase her work there. She showed the work of up and coming artists. She gave them a chance to shine in D.C. She loved that damn gallery.
But lately…I’ve been nervous there. I hate to work alone at the gallery late at night. My spine tingles and I wonder…am I really alone?
Gwen cleared her throat. “I just…I’ve had some kids prank calling me.” She rubbed her arms. “I can’t go running for help every time my phone rings.”
    He crossed to her side. Stood close, but didn’t touch her. His control was already a near thing and one touch might push him over the line. “You can run to me any time you want.”
    He heard her breath catch. “Months pass,” she whispered, “and I don’t see you. Now, suddenly, you’re back in my life?”
    “You’re the one who told me to leave.” Shit. He hadn’t meant to say those words. But they were right there. Right between them. When he’d burst into her apartment, when he’d put Ethan in the hospital, she’d stared at him as if Chance had been a stranger.
    Stay away from me.
Her desperate whisper had haunted him for too many nights.
    Until he couldn’t stay away any longer.
    “I was kind of in the middle of a break down right then. My ex had just broken