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“You’ll come to New York with me,” she said, her voice cracking. “We’ll spend a few extra days in Manhattan.”

“And I’ll see you in between filming and publicity events,” he said quietly.

She didn’t bother to deny it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, staring into his face for some sign of softness, forgiveness, patience.

“I understand,” he said.

She feared he understood too much.

Gabe paced Reggie’s living room like a caged tiger. This was but one of the practical problems that came with getting personally involved with a client: no escape.

With the freaky pervert still at large, he couldn’t possibly leave her alone. A solitary, head-clearing run or beer at the bar around the corner was out of the question.

Sometimes working on his own really sucked the big one.

Reggie had tried to cheer them both up on the walk back to her place, brightly listing all of the fun things they could do in and around New York at Christmastime.

He’d managed some semienthusiastic grunts.

She’d looked at him with big, sad brown eyes, chewing on that plump lower lip of hers. “Try to understand,” she’d said for about the fifteenth time.

“I do,” he’d responded every time.

“Then stop looking at me like that.”

He’d schooled his face into an impassive mask, but that only seemed to upset her more.

Truth was, he did understand. Completely. Her career was on a slingshot trajectory, and if she could hang on and capitalize on all the opportunities thrown her way, she’d be set.

For a while anyway.

Then she would have to go into career maintenance mode, make sure her face was out there enough, get involved in other ventures to expand her “brand.”

In the short time he’d worked with her and around others making careers out of food television, he’d learned plenty about how this business worked. How demanding, competitive, and thankless it could be.

For those who wanted to achieve great success, they had to work at it, one hundred percent of the time.

And Reggie wanted that success. He didn’t fault her for it. He knew how hard she’d worked to achieve this level of fame. Though hailed as Cuisine Network’s “overnight success,” he knew how much she’d struggled for the first five years, scraping by, listening to the harsh doubts of family and friends. She deserved every bit of fame and fortune she received.

And he was acting like a chick, pouting because she had to cancel plans they hadn’t even really confirmed.

How many times had he done that to women when he was in the forces? Granted, when a mission came up, he’d had no choice but to go. At the time, if a woman had uttered a single word of complaint, it was grounds for immediate dumping.

Shit. He of all people should understand how work commitments get in the way of romance.

Funny how things worked out. For his entire adult life, marriage and family had loomed amorphously off in the horizon, like someplace he wanted to get to someday, but was in no particular hurry to do so. It wasn’t that he had commitment issues, as many of his past girlfriends had accused, it was simply that he hadn’t met a woman he could imagine spending forever with.

Until now. A woman so busy and committed to her own career, she probably wouldn’t be able to pencil in a wedding for the next five years. But, he acknowledged, he loved Reggie enough to wait twice that long.

He had no choice but to suck it up and apologize, and after that, wait patiently on the sidelines for whatever scraps of time she could devote to him.

Something niggled at his consciousness—an interview he’d read of an entrepreneur who’d started several successful businesses from the ground up. His advice to other aspiring entrepreneurs? “Don’t do it, unless you literally can’t imagine being happy doing anything else.”

Right now, loving Reggie felt about like that. Part of him wondered if he was setting himself up for misery, even as he faced the terrifying knowledge that he’d never be happy without her.

He started down the hallway to her office, interrupted halfway by his cell phone.

Malcolm.

Gabe greeted him curtly, eager to get off the phone and apologize to Reggie before his sulk had the chance to inflict too much damage.

But Malcolm’s next words had his immediate attention. “I’ve got news on the e-mails. You’re not going to like it.”

Reggie’s office door swung open so hard it smashed into the wall, making her jump in surprise. Spinning in her chair, she saw Gabe looming in the doorway, and one look told her his mood hadn’t improved since they’d come home.

If anything, it was worse. His jaw was tight, an angry tendon pulsing near his ear. His dark eyes were icy obsidian chips, chilling her.

Her own temper boiled in response. What right did he have to be so angry with her? Didn’t he understand how important the holiday special was to her? If he really loved her, wouldn’t he be happy for her success?

She never would have guessed he could be so selfish. A creeping, sick feeling of doubt consumed her as she wondered whether she’d actually fallen in love with the real man or a heroic fantasy lover she’d created in her head.

She opened her mouth to tell him off, but his flat, almost toneless voice pierced the air.

“I know about the e-mails.”

Relief flooded her. He wasn’t mad at her! He was mad at whoever sent them. Then that sick feeling doubled in force as she wondered which of her friends or acquaintances had stooped to sending her creepy and threatening communications over the past two months. “Who—” she licked her lips nervously, almost afraid to hear the answer—“Who is it?”

His harsh grin didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, he wasn’t grinning at all, but snarling whitely against his tan skin. “Like you don’t know.”

Shaking her head mutely, she watched as he advanced. Instinctively, she pushed her chair back on its rollers, halting with a thud as she came up against her desk.

He was big and tough and burly and intimidating, and right now, Gabe looked downright scary. Every sinew coiled with rage. The muscles of his arms and shoulders actually strained against the cotton broadcloth of his shirt, and a vein pounded so fiercely in his neck she feared he was at risk for an aneurysm.

Most frightening of all was that his fury appeared to be inexplicably aimed at
her.

“What I can’t figure out,” he spat the words as though they were poisonous, “is why you would bother hiring me in the first place.”

What was he talking about? “Natalie made me hire you,” she stuttered.

“Did you think I would give more validity to your story?” His Southern drawl thickened, and for once she didn’t find it sexy. He reached her chair and leaned over her, effectively pinning her in with his arms braced on either side of the desk. “Hiring me cost you a lot of money.” His cold whisper sent a shiver through her core. “But I suppose you’d do anything to buy publicity.”

Struck speechless, Reggie could only stare. He’d lost his mind. That was the only explanation. He said he had intense emotions. Maybe that was his code way of saying emotionally unstable. As in schizophrenic. Or manic-depressive. Or otherwise certifiable.

“And I bet when the two of you got tired of this whole stalker thing, Natalie could oh so conveniently dig up my past and you could ride the scandal of having hired a brutal thug as your personal security guard.”

“What do you mean, stalker
thing
?”

“I talked to Malcolm. The jig is up,” he growled. “I should have known when you weren’t even scared, when all you could talk about was all the press and the boost to your sales.” His eyes raked her with such caustic contempt, she thought she smelled her skin burn. “But you swung your sweet little ass in my face and I fell for every single bit of it.”

The soundtrack from
Psycho
rang in her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she choked around the lump of anxiety clogging her throat.

“I know everything, Reggie. I know you faked the whole thing.”

It was so ludicrous, so patently ridiculous, for a moment the words didn’t even register. Then reality slowly sunk in.

Gabe, the man she’d fallen in love with, who claimed to be in love with her, was accusing her of faking being stalked to gain more publicity. Whatever Malcolm had told him had convinced him, and based on his cold expression, he didn’t doubt his friend for a minute.

“I don’t know what you think you know,” she said, her voice shaking, “but I would never lie about something like this just to get attention.”

He straightened up to his full imposing height and pointed an accusing finger at her computer screen. “Then explain how every single e-mail you’ve received in the last week was generated from this computer.”

“We didn’t get back until three days ago!”

“Natalie should have covered her tracks a little better,” he snapped. “What about Tyler? Was he in on it too?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Am I? Then how come Malcolm can trace every other e-mail to the exact Internet cafés in the exact cities where you were working on the road?”

Her heart stopped, then throbbed painfully in her chest. The stalker had been closer more often than she’d even realized, and they’d had no idea. Which meant he could be anywhere, anytime, undetected. Was he somehow able to get into her apartment when she wasn’t here to send e-mails? God, her brain couldn’t even wrap itself around that right now.

“I don’t know, Gabe. Maybe he’s some kind of computer wiz, and this is a way to get your experts”—she couldn’t resist adding sarcastic air quotes—“off his trail.”

Massive arms folded across his chest, the hard lines of his face so cold and imposing, he was almost unrecognizable as the passionate lover who’d just this morning whispered he loved her as he buried himself in her. “Or maybe,” he replied, his voice once again void of any emotion, “the most obvious answer is the correct one. Except for the initial mailing, every single communication is easily traced back to you.”

“What about the phone call?” Reggie said, desperately reaching for any shred of evidence that might help him realize the sheer insanity of his accusations. “How could I have faked that?”

“Easy,” he scoffed. “You or your sister easily could have put some sap of an intern or production assistant up to playing a tape.” He reached over her shoulder for her computer mouse so quickly she flinched.

“Don’t worry,” he sneered, “I don’t stoop to beating women.”

The sound of the mouse click echoed like a gunshot in the room, and she craned her neck to see what he was doing. “Adobe Photoshop. How convenient.”

“I got it for designing my personal chef menus,” she protested. This was unreal. Obviously, he thought she’d used it to doctor up her own obscene photos! Her stomach felt like she’d eaten about ten pounds of rotten meat.

He leaned over her once again, and now she could see through the icy blackness of his eyes underneath to the raging storm of grief, pain, and betrayal. “I wanted to believe in you so bad.” Tears burned in her eyes at the slight quiver in his voice. “If you had just told me the truth, I could have overlooked everything.

“But what really kills me,” he said almost casually, as though she hadn’t said anything, “is that you were stupid enough to admit your scheme in an e-mail to Natalie.” He made a scolding sound. “Really, you should know better in this day and age to leave any kind of electronic trail.”

What on earth was he talking about?

“You’re a great little actress, Reggie, I’ll give you that, and your fake look of confusion is almost convincing.” He ground his palms against his eyes for a moment. “Or who knows. Maybe you were so sure I’d never figure it out that you don’t even remember what I’m talking about.”

He clicked on her screen once more, this time logging into Natalie’s e-mail account and quickly pulling up a message. One Reggie had sent from Santa Fe.

He read her message back to her:

Galvanized by rage, Reggie practically exploded from her desk chair. “That is your big piece of evidence? A sarcastic e-mail I wrote to my sister when I thought you were going to leave?” This was too much. She knew he had trust and intimacy issues, but this was ridiculous. “If I was so intent on keeping you around, why would I encourage you to take Malcolm’s offer? Why would I tell Natalie to start calling other security firms?”

“I don’t know, Reggie, and I really don’t care.”

He started to turn away.

“How can you do this?” she demanded, her voice cracking. “How can you tell me that you love me and think I’d be capable of this?”

“I fell in love with a lie. I was just too stupid to see it.”

Reggie stood, shaking, as Gabe walked slowly to the door. He’d almost made it to the front door before she caught him. “Gabe, don’t.” She grabbed his arm, her heart bursting in her chest. “If you just listen you’ll see there’s another explanation.”

His eyes killed her, cold once again, looking through her as though she were dead. “I’ll have Marjorie send you a final invoice.”

T
wo hours later, Gabe found himself at his sister’s apartment. After he left Reggie’s he’d started walking aimlessly, with no idea where he was going. Eventually he ended up here, at the flat his sister and brother-in-law kept in Pacific Heights.

Ironically, it was less than half a mile away from Reggie’s place.

Brian, a partner at a venture capital firm, had made an ass-load of money before the Internet went bust, and he and Adrienne spent most of the time in their huge house in Woodside. But they kept the three-bedroom apartment in the city for the times they craved a more cosmopolitan pace.

Back when he was still in the military, he’d often stayed here when he was on leave, and in the year he’d worked for Malcolm, he’d used it when he was in San Francisco on business.

He fumbled for the spare key he always kept on his keychain and let himself in, breathing a slow sigh of relief when it appeared Adrienne and Brian weren’t in residence.

Not that he didn’t love his sister, or even his brother-in-law, for that matter. But right now he couldn’t face their probing questions. Fortunately, he’d kept several changes of clothes and a full array of toiletries here, since he hadn’t had the presence of mind to pack up his stuff before he left Reggie’s apartment.

An image invaded his brain, one of Reggie smiling shyly as she shoved aside a pile of underwear to make room for his boxers and socks.

Slumping down in an overstuffed armchair, Gabe fought the onslaught of tears threatening to choke him. Ridiculous that the memory of his boxer briefs nestled against her delicate, lacy panties made him want to bawl like a baby.

God had he ever fucked up.

Once again he’d thrown his career away over a woman. He’d been taken in and let his emotions get involved; now he was suffering the consequences.

He scrambled to hold on to the icy numbness that had settled in as he wandered aimlessly around the city. He didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to face the fact that he’d fallen, fallen completely, stupidly, balls out in love with a liar.

She’d
lied
to him.

Even now part of him struggled to find a way not to believe it.

But what choice did he have?

The evidence was all there, in black and white, no matter that his heart screamed that she couldn’t be that big a liar.

Hadn’t he learned the hard way not to be led by his heart or other interested organs? He was a hothead, he knew that, knew he had to be more careful than most to evaluate a situation coolly, calmly, rationally.

And though it felt like swallowing glass to admit it, the evidence Malcolm presented had only one rational conclusion.

If he hadn’t been so blinded by lust, he would have seen it sooner. The pattern of escalation was all off. The timing of incidents was just too perfect. And the way the stalker seemed to know just enough, but not too much, about Reggie’s whereabouts stunk of Natalie’s involvement.

What if there’s someone else, someone who could get the information, someone you never suspected?

No. He could drive himself crazy tilting at windmills, but Malcolm had presented the facts in indisputable detail. Gabe knew his friend was one of the best at gathering intelligence, and Gabe knew he wouldn’t have come to the conclusion that Reggie and her sister were behind everything if he hadn’t been completely certain. Even so, Gabe had protested, questioned every piece of evidence his friend had presented, desperately searching for another explanation.

In the end, Malcolm had informed him with deep regret that there was no other viable explanation.

He didn’t know how long he sat there in the fading November light, staring at the ceiling as tears burned like acid down his cheeks.

“Reggie, you have to calm down,” Natalie frantically met Tyler’s anxious gaze.

Cupping her hand over the receiver, she whispered, “She’s hysterical. I can’t figure out what’s going on. Something really bad is happening.” Tears welled as all she heard from the other end were Reggie’s garbled sobs. “She never gets like this, not even when the stalker killed Rex.”

As Tyler pressed a soft kiss to her forehead and left the office to give her privacy, Natalie felt her breathing accelerate dangerously and scolded herself to keep it together. She might have been the more dramatic of the two, but it would do Reggie no good at all if Natalie lost her shit too.

By focusing really, really hard, Natalie was able to make out about one word in five. “He’s gone,” “left,” “liar,” “e-mails.” Nothing made any sense.

It didn’t sound like anyone had died, and the stalker hadn’t attacked or injured her in any way. From what Natalie could understand, this had something to do with Gabe. The only course of action was to listen patiently and make appropriate noises to assure Reggie that she was listening, even if she couldn’t understand a damn thing through Reggie’s uncharacteristic hysteria.

Finally, after about ten minutes, the sobs had faded to hiccupping gulps, and Reggie seemed capable of stringing more than two intelligible words together at a time.

As she finally pieced together what had happened, Natalie felt her blood begin to boil. “He thinks we faked it?” Tyler shuffled back into the office, setting a diet soda in front of her with an inquiring look.

“Yes,” Reggie gasped. For a second, Natalie feared her sister would dissolve again. But Reggie took a deep, fortifying breath and blew her nose. “To get publicity. He thinks we took the initial mailing and decided to run with it. He said if the stalker was real, he would have escalated by now and tried to approach me in person or attack me or something.” Reggie’s wet swallow was audible through the phone. “Like he wanted me to be hurt or something.”

Natalie slumped back into her chair, hating the sensation of helplessness that gripped her. Reggie was always the strong one. Whether struggling with a new career, facing a bad breakup, or dealing with their mother’s incessant criticism, Reggie seemed to have an unending capacity to pick herself up, dust herself off, and get on with her life.

But now she sounded…broken.

A trickle of panic crept up her spine as she realized their roles had reversed. For her entire life she’d relied on Reggie to help her out of any number of tight spots, had always known that when she got in a jam, big sister would bail her out, no matter how much Natalie acted like an ungrateful bitch.

As she listened to her sister on the other line, struggling not to fall apart and failing miserably, Natalie realized what a huge burden she’d placed on Reggie’s shoulders for all these years.

“It’s okay, Reg,” Natalie said in a soothing, nurturing tone she’d never known she possessed, “I’m coming over and we’ll figure out how to get through this.”

By the time Natalie arrived with shopping bags full of Ben and Jerry’s, Mallomars, and red wine, Reggie had momentarily set aside her grief and was indulging in a fit of raging, healthy temper.

“Can you fucking believe him?” she cried as she opened the door at Natalie’s knock.

Natalie’s eyes widened at the abruptness of her greeting or at her unusual use of profanity, or perhaps both.

Reggie didn’t fucking care. It felt good to say that word, even in her head. And other words too. Like asshole. Or better yet, fucking asshole.

“Why would anyone make up a stalker?” she ranted as Natalie rummaged around in her kitchen and returned bearing two pints of ice cream, a spoon stuck in each. She passed Reggie the Chubby Hubby and set chocolate low-fat yogurt down for herself. Natalie made another trip, returning with an open bottle of cabernet, two tumblers, and the Mallomars.

Reggie poured almost half the bottle into her glass and gulped it like soda. She chased it with a bite of ice cream, but the rich vanilla mixed with chocolate-covered pretzels congealed on her tongue, nearly making her gag.

But the wine, she discovered, went down silky smooth.

Her rage continued through the first glass, egged on by Natalie as they called Gabe every foul name they could think of and labeled him a paranoid nut job.

But midway through the next glass she started to get maudlin, and by the third she was close to weeping and berating herself for ever thinking she and Gabe could have worked. “It’s better this way,” she said sullenly, “him ending it before I could mess it up.”

She shook off Natalie’s protests. “I can’t have a boyfriend right now. I have too many obli…obla…” Her wine-thick tongue tripped over the word and she gave up. “I have too much to do. And Gabe, it’s like he sucks up all my energy. He never would have been cool with waiting around until I had time to spend with him. So it’s good this way,” she said with drunken optimism, determined to see a bright side if it killed her. “Now I can be pissed at him because it’s his fault, and I won’t have to blame myself later for screwing things up with the guy I wanted to marry.”

Natalie leaned over and caught her in a tight hug. Reggie buried her face in her slender shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Reg.” The heartfelt sympathy in her sister’s voice was enough to send her right back into the pit of despair.

“How could he think I would lie like that?” she sobbed. “What kind of person does he think I am?”

That was the real kicker. That even after she’d opened herself up to him, let him see the hopes and fears that really drove her, he turned around and twisted it all against her in his mind until somehow she was the villain. A woman capable of deceit, the kind of woman who would use anyone and any situation to get ahead.

Her insides shattered into a million tiny fragments.

She sent Natalie back to Tyler’s shortly after, assuring her she’d be fine and needed to be alone. Natalie protested, reminding her that the stalker was still out there somewhere.

Emotionally wasted, Reggie couldn’t summon the least smidgeon of fear. “I changed the alarm code. I’ll be fine.”

Besides, maybe the pervert will break in and put me out of my misery.

After Natalie left, Reggie flipped on the TV in a vain attempt to drown out the lonely echo in her head and worked her way steadily through another bottle of wine. If only Gabe would listen, really listen to her, he would see that he was wrong, she was incapable of the things he’d accused.

Before she knew it, the phone was in her hand and her last sober brain cell was screaming at her that drunk dialing was never a good idea. Ignoring it, she summoned up her considerable liquor courage and entered the number for Gabe’s emergency cell.

“This is Bankovic,” he muttered as though she’d woken him out of a deep sleep or he’d had indulged in a few cocktails himself.

“Is everything all right?” his voice cracked over the line, startling her out of her frozen silence.

“Gabe, it’s me,” she whispered feebly. “I just want to talk to you.”

“Are you in immediate physical danger?”

Goosebumps formed on her bare arms at his icy tone. “No,” she whispered, barely audible.

“Don’t contact me again.”