He barked out a laugh. A nervous one. Because damn. “What makes you think I’m going to fall in love with you?”

“Because that’s what you do.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t get my heart broken. I’m a wine-’em-and-dine-’em guy.”

“Who reads romance novels and is so desperate for a woman, he spent a thousand bucks on a cupcake.”

“Am I ever going to live that down?”

“Face it, Mack. You’re a walking Hallmark hero.”

That one stung. “Explain,” he growled.

She gestured at his bedroom. “You live in a castle that you built for a princess who doesn’t exist. You’re a softy inside . . . I don’t want to be the one who breaks that tender heart.”

This time, the observation was so sharply on point that he felt the sting of it all the way through him. She was joking of course. But for one freakish moment, he worried that she could actually see right through him. “You’re not kidding, are you? You’re actually leaving?”

“I am.”

She bent and kissed him again. And just like that, she walked out on him. Because that’s what she did.

Mack listened to her feet on the stairs, the door as it opened and shut. He flopped down on his pillow. This woman was suddenly blowing his cover in every way. And he didn’t fucking like it.

His phone rang five minutes after she left, and he answered without checking the name. “Change your mind?”

“Huh?”

Shit. Mack sat up straight. It wasn’t Liv. It was Sonia. “What’s up?”

“I need you and Liv to get over here. There’s some girl here named Jessica.”

Mack whipped the blanket off his legs, hung up, and quickly dialed Liv’s number. She answered with forced flippancy. “Jeez, I just left. Miss me already?”

“Come pick me up. Jessica just showed up at the bar.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mack shut the door to his office as Jessica sat down with wobbly knees in one of the chairs in front of his desk. She clutched the flaps of her coat together across her chest, and her teeth gnawed at her bottom lip.

Liv took the seat next to her and spoke softly. “Are you okay?”

Mack leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. Jessica glanced up at him nervously. “Do you want me to go?” he asked. Maybe something had happened that Jessica didn’t want to talk about in front of a man. The thought made his stomach churn.

But Jessica shook her head with a quick swallow. “No, I . . . I’m just not sure what to do.”

“Start at the beginning,” Liv said quietly.

“I just can’t do it anymore. He’s so mean right now, and . . . it was bad tonight.”

Mack’s hands reflexively curled into fists. “Bad how?”

“Did he—” Liv stopped, as if trying to think of the right way to ask the question that hung in the air. “Did he try to harass you again like before?”

“No. Not like that.”

Mack let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“He yelled, though,” Jessica said. “He glares at me every time he sees me. And he’ s . . .” She paused with another nervous glance at Mack. “He’s trying to ruin you.”

“Trying to ruin who? Liv?”

“Both of you.”

Mack heard a knuckle crack and realized belatedly it was his own. “Ruin us how?”

“He’s making sure that Liv can’t get a job anywhere else. And I—I don’t know about you. But he hates you because he knows you two are together. He has people keeping tabs on you.”

In the one part of his brain that wasn’t laser focused on hatred for Royce Preston and concern for Jessica, Mack waited for Liv to make some crack about them not being together, but she didn’t, and that same part of his brain was irrationally happy given the circumstances.

“How do you know that?” Liv prodded.

“He told me,” Jessica said. “He said people who crossed him always regretted it. I think . . . I think he wanted to intimidate me.”

Mack had to clear his throat before speaking. “This was today?”

Jessica nodded. “I worked the afternoon shift, and when it was over, he made Geoff drive me home. To make sure I didn’t come here, I guess. I don’t know why he won’t just fire me.”

“You can’t go back there,” Mack said in a harsher voice than he intended.

Jessica’s lower lip trembled. “I know. But I don’t know what to do.”

“Jessica, just quit,” Liv said, taking the girl’s hand. “Just don’t go back. We will stop him.”

They drove Jessica home. When they pulled into a parking spot in front of her student apartment building, Mack gave her both his and Liv’s phone numbers. “Liv and I are going to figure this out,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “Call us if Royce or Geoff and the other one try to contact you or do anything to intimidate you, okay? When you’re ready, there’s a job waiting for you at my club.”

Jessica nodded, her face downtrodden. “Thank you for helping me,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch before.”

“Hey. No. You have nothing to apologize for.”

She shrugged, lower lip trembling again. “But none of this would be happening if I had just—”

Liv turned around in the driver’s seat. “None of this would be happening if Royce wasn’t a piece of shit who preyed on women. That’s it. End of story. None of this is your fault in any way.”

Jessica’s eyes fell to her lap as she bit her lip.

“Mack and I will take care of this,” Liv said. “He’s not going to hurt you or anyone else ever again.”

This time, when Jessica nodded, she looked like she actually believed them.

Liv pulled back onto the freeway and headed toward Mack’s house. He stewed silently for ten full minutes before speaking again. “Royce is becoming unhinged.”

“He was always unhinged.”

“But he’s obviously getting worse, and if Jessica quits, he’s going to lose his shit.”

Liv took the exit for his subdivision. Mack studied her in the low lights of the dashboard. Even ninety minutes after leaving his bed, she still had a freshly sexed look about her that made his pants tighten and his heart beat faster.

Fuck the role-playing. Fuck her need for space. He needed her safe. “Maybe you should stay with me until this is over.”

Liv’s head whipped his way so fast he was afraid she’d crash the car. “What?”

“I’m worried about how Royce is ramping this thing up. Making Geoff drive Jessica home? Keeping tabs on me? He’s dangerous, Liv.”

She laughed and turned onto his street. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“I’d like to be sure.”

She gave him a look that said he’d violated one of the central rules of the manuals. He’d gone too far. Said too much. And now her walls were officially back up.

She pulled into his driveway. “I can take care of myself, Mack.”

“I know you can, but I’d feel better if—”

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’ll call you.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “Couple of days.”

He gaped, heart thudding. “A couple of days?”

She sucked in a quick breath, the only sign that this was all bullshit. But what the hell was he supposed to do? Refuse to get out? Mack threw open his door. He’d barely had time to shut the door before she shoved the car in reverse. Mack stood in the driveway and watched her drive away.

He was left alone, once again, with the question that always seemed to follow in her wake.

What had just happened? But this time, a new question immediately followed. How the hell was he going to make sure it happened again?

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two nights later, Liv lay awake, clutching her phone to her chest, calling herself every name in the book for her own stubborn fear of falling, when a sound outside brought her upright.

Probably just a raccoon.

Or maybe one of the goats got loose.

Or Hop had decided to come back to work on the tractor some more.

But at the unmistakable scuff of shoes on gravel, she bolted out of bed, secure in the knowledge that someone was sneaking around outside her apartment. Probably a more well-adjusted person would worry first and foremost about their safety, but Liv’s first thought was how annoying Mack was going to be when he was proven right that Royce was ramping things up.

Goddammit. She hated it when he was right.

Walking on tiptoe, she crept down the short hallway to the living room—just as a footstep thudded lightly on the staircase outside.

Maybe it was Rosie. It had to be, right? She just needed . . . something. At eleven o’clock at night.

Another footstep on the stairs made the hair on her arms stand erect. That was way too heavy of a footstep to be Rosie. Panting now, Liv looked at her phone and tried to calculate how long it would take the police to arrive if she called 911. Ten minutes? What if the intruder went to the main house and attacked Rosie?

Liv hit the emergency call button and dropped to the floor. A dispatcher answered almost immediately and asked her to state her emergency.

“I think someone is trying to break into my apartment.”

“Okay, ma’am. Can you give me an address?”

She rattled it off.

“Where are you right now, ma’am?”

“On the floor of my living room.”

“And you can see someone?”

“I hear him. I think he’s coming up the stairs.”

“Is he inside the house?”

“What? No. I—I live in an apartment above the garage. The staircase is outside.”

“I am sending officers to your residence. Can you tell me your name?”