The Locked Door

Rain hit the windows like it had a grudge.

Not the polite rain that came through Deliverance in spring and made the fields smell green. This was late October rain, cold and mean, slanting sideways off the prairie and hammering the glass hard enough that I half expected a crack to spider across it. The oil lamp on my desk guttered every time the wind found a gap in the frame. I'd been meaning to fix that gap for three weeks.

I hadn't fixed it. I'd been busy.

I turned the page of the letter I wasn't really reading. Some client in Amarillo complaining about a cattle dispute he'd already lost twice. The words blurred. I read the same sentence four times and still couldn't tell you what it said.

My mind was elsewhere.

It had been elsewhere for two months now, and I was getting damned tired of pretending otherwise.

The fire in the hearth had burned down to red coals. I should have added another log. I didn't. I just stood there beside the desk in my shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned, spectacles slipping down my nose, listening to the rain and telling myself I'd go to bed soon.

I didn't believe me either.

When the door opened behind me, I didn't turn around.

I knew the sound of her footsteps. Soft, deliberate, the heel of a boot placed just so on the floorboards. I'd learned that sound the way a man learns the sound of his own heartbeat. Without thinking. Without wanting to.

"You ought to lock that," Scarlett said.

Her voice cut through the rain like a blade through wet paper.

I kept my eyes on the letter.

"You ought not enter a gentleman's house without knocking."

"I did knock."

"And?"

"You ignored me."

That made me smile. I couldn't help it. I set the letter down on the desk, flattened it with my palm, and took my time turning around.

She stood just inside the doorway with the door still open behind her, and the cold air came in around her like it belonged to her. Rain glistened on the shoulders of her black trench coat. Her hair, that sharp raven bob she wore like armor, was damp at the ends and stuck to her jaw in dark little curls. Her emerald eyes found mine and held them.

She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I'd spent two months trying to convince myself I hadn't noticed.

"You're dripping on my floor," I said.

"I'll mop it up."

"With what?"

She glanced around the room, at the cluttered shelves, the stacks of books, the papers piled on every flat surface.

"Your shirt, probably."

I laughed. It came out quieter than I meant it to. I walked to the sideboard and poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass, then a second glass, because my hands needed something to do.

"You shouldn't be here," I said.

"You've told me that before."

"And yet you continue appearing."

"Perhaps you aren't particularly convincing."

I turned with both glasses and crossed the room to her. She'd stepped farther in and closed the door behind her. The latch clicked. She didn't lock it. Neither did I.

I handed her the glass. Her fingers brushed mine when she took it, and neither of us moved. We just stood there in the lamplight with our hands touching around a piece of cut glass, and the rain kept hammering the window, and I could hear my own pulse in my ears.

I released the glass first. She took a sip. Her throat moved when she swallowed, and I watched it like a man watching a storm roll in across open country, knowing he ought to get to shelter and knowing he wouldn't.

"Do I make you nervous?" she asked.

I picked up my own glass.

"Very little makes me nervous."

"You didn't answer my question."

"No."

She smiled. There it was. That smile. The one that had been following me home for two months, sitting with me at dinner, lying beside me in the dark. The one I'd started seeing when I closed my eyes.

She stepped closer.

"Do I distract you?"

"Constantly."

Another step. She was close enough now that I could smell the rain on her, and something underneath it, jasmine and cedar, the same scent that had been living in the collar of my coat since the last time she stood this near.

"Do you think about me?"

The amusement drained out of me. She'd stopped playing. So had I.

"More than I should."

The rain filled the silence between us. She set her glass down on my desk without looking away from me, and the small sound of it touching the wood was louder than it had any right to be.

"How much more?"

I looked toward the window. Then toward the door. A habit. Always checking. Always calculating, even now, even here, with the ranch hands gone home and the main house empty and no one for half a mile in any direction.

She noticed. Of course she noticed. She noticed everything.

"No one followed me," she said.

"That isn't what concerns me."

"What does?"

I looked at her.

"You."

For once, Scarlett Noir had no clever response. She just stood there, and something shifted behind her eyes, something I couldn't name, and I stepped toward her before I'd decided to.

She didn't retreat.

"Do you understand what would happen," I said quietly, "if people discovered this?"

"This?"

I gave her a look. She knew exactly what I meant. She always knew.

Her mouth curved slightly.

"I wanted to hear you say it."

I moved closer until scarcely a breath separated us. I could feel the warmth coming off her, could see the tiny flecks of rain still caught in her lashes.

"This thing between us."

Her eyes stayed on mine.

"And what exactly is this thing between us, Alistair?"

My name sounded different when she said it privately. No Mr. Thorne. No Counselor. Just Alistair, dropped into the quiet like a stone into still water.

I reached up slowly and brushed one damp strand of hair from her face. My knuckles grazed her cheek. Her skin was cool from the rain.

Scarlett closed her eyes for half a second at my touch.

That tiny reaction nearly destroyed what remained of my restraint.

"This," I whispered, "is a very bad idea."

She opened her eyes.

"Probably."

"You could walk away."

"So could you."

Neither of us moved. Her hand found the front of my waistcoat. Her fingers curled gently into the fabric, and I felt the pull of it, felt her drawing me a fraction of an inch closer, and I let her.

"Scarlett."

There was a warning in the way I said her name. I meant it as one. I meant it as the last line of defense, the final wall between me and the thing I'd been circling for weeks.

She ignored it. She pulled me closer.

"Tell me to leave."

I should have. Every sensible instinct I possessed demanded it. Alistair Thorne had spent years protecting his reputation, his family, his businesses, his career, his name. I knew precisely what the intelligent decision was. I'd built a life on making intelligent decisions, on calculating risk and reward and choosing the path that kept the scales tipped in my favor.

I kissed her anyway.

Scarlett inhaled sharply against my mouth. Weeks of restraint disappeared in an instant, like a dam giving way, and then her arms were around my neck and my hands were on her waist and I was pulling her against me, hard, without finesse, without thought.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It carried every unfinished conversation between us. Every glance across a crowded room. Every accidental touch that hadn't been accidental at all. Every moment when one of us had walked away because someone else had entered.

Her mouth opened under mine and I tasted whiskey and rain and something sweeter underneath, something that was just her. Her fingers slid into my hair and gripped, hard enough to sting, and I made a sound against her lips that I would have been embarrassed by if I'd had any capacity left for embarrassment.

I didn't. There was nothing left in me but want.

My hands moved down her back, over the wet wool of her coat, and I shoved it off her shoulders. It fell to the floor in a heavy heap. Underneath she wore a dark blouse, high-collared, proper, the kind of thing a respectable woman would wear to a respectable appointment.

I wanted to tear it off her.

She pulled back first. Barely. Her forehead stayed against mine, and her breath came fast and warm across my mouth.

"You took your damn time," she said.

I laughed, breathless, my hands still on her.

"I was attempting to behave like a gentleman."

"How unfortunate."

She kissed me again. Slower this time. And somehow that was worse. Because slow meant I had time to feel it, to notice the way her lips parted, the way her tongue touched mine, the way her body pressed against me from chest to thigh and fit like she'd been made to stand exactly there.

I could feel myself forgetting everything beyond that room. The rain faded. The fire faded. The letter on my desk, the client in Amarillo, the whole of Deliverance and everyone in it, all of it went quiet and distant, and there was only Scarlett. The warmth of her. Her perfume and the rain in her hair. Her fingers sliding down the back of my neck. Her hips shifting against mine with a small, deliberate pressure that made my hands tighten on her waist.

When the kiss finally broke, neither of us stepped away.

"We cannot do this," I murmured.

Her lips hovered near mine.

"No."

"People cannot know."

"No."

"This stays between us."

She looked into my eyes. Up close, her pupils had blown wide, and the green of her irises had gone dark as pine in shadow.

"Then perhaps you should lock the door," she said.

I stared at her.

She raised an eyebrow.

Slowly, I reached behind her. My hand found the brass bolt. I turned it.

Click.

Scarlett smiled. That damned smile.

I kissed her again before she could say anything clever about it, and this time there was no pretense of restraint left in me. My hands went to her blouse, to the row of small buttons down her front, and I worked them open one by one with fingers that weren't quite steady. She watched me do it. She didn't help. She just stood there with her hands at her sides and her eyes on my face, letting me undress her, and the weight of her attention made my mouth go dry.

The blouse opened. Underneath, a corset, dark silk, laced tight.

"Turn around," I said.

She did. Without a word, without a smile, she turned her back to me and swept her hair over one shoulder, baring the long line of her spine and the laces that ran down the center of her back. I found the knot at the bottom and pulled. The laces came loose one crossing at a time, and with each one the corset eased, and I could hear her breathing change, getting deeper, fuller, as the stays released her ribs.

I took my time. I wanted to. I wanted to feel every inch of this, the slow unraveling of her, the way her shoulders dropped and her spine curved as the pressure came off. When the last lace was free, I hooked my fingers under the edges of the corset and drew it away from her body. It slid off and joined her coat on the floor.

She was wearing nothing underneath but her chemise, thin white cotton, and through it I could see the shape of her back, the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips. I put my hands on her bare shoulders. She shivered. I bent my head and pressed my mouth to the back of her neck, to that soft place where her hair had been, and she made a low sound in her throat that I felt travel through her whole body.

"Alistair," she said.

Just my name. Nothing after it. She didn't need anything after it.

I turned her back around to face me.

God, she was beautiful. Hair disheveled, cheeks flushed, chemise clinging to her breasts, the peaks of her nipples visible through the thin cotton. She looked at me the way she'd been looking at me for months, only now there was no crowded saloon between us, no witnesses, no reason to look away.

I reached for the hem of her chemise. She caught my wrist.

"Not yet," she said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"You're still dressed, Counselor."

She pushed my waistcoat off my shoulders. It fell. Then her hands went to the buttons of my shirt, and she undid them fast and sure, no hesitation, no teasing, like she'd been thinking about doing exactly this for as long as I'd been thinking about it. When the shirt hung open, she pressed both palms flat against my chest. Her hands were cool. I was not.

She ran her fingers through the hair on my chest, down over my ribs, and stopped at my belt.

"May I?" she asked.

The question was absurd. She'd already undone half my clothes. But she asked it with that sharp little smile, and I knew she was doing it on purpose, making me say it.

"Yes," I said.

She unbuckled my belt and unbuttoned my trousers, and when her hand closed around me through the fabric of my drawers, I had to brace one hand on the desk behind me to keep my knees from doing something undignified. She stroked me once, slow, and I let out a breath that turned into something close to a groan.

"Scarlett."

"Hm?"

"You're going to be the death of me."

"I certainly hope not." She stroked again. "I have plans for you."

She pushed my trousers and drawers down over my hips and I stepped out of them and kicked them aside. Then she looked at me, really looked, head to foot, and her smile widened.

"Well," she said. "That's something."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her against me, skin to cotton, and she gasped at the contact and then laughed too, and we stood there in the lamplight laughing into each other's mouths like a pair of fools.

Then the laughter died, and there was only the kissing again, and the kissing turned into my hands on her hips, on her back, sliding up under the hem of her chemise at last, finding the warm bare skin of her stomach and the curve of her lower back. She arched into my touch. I pulled the chemise up and over her head and tossed it aside, and then she was naked in front of me, and I stopped.

I stopped and I looked at her.

Full breasts, pale as cream, the nipples flushed dark. A narrow waist. The flare of her hips. A small dark triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs. She stood there and let me look, chin lifted, not a trace of shyness in her, and I understood in that moment that this was the real Scarlett Noir, the one nobody else got to see, the one she kept hidden under trench coats and sharp smiles and a private investigator's careful distance.

"You're staring, Mr. Thorne," she said.

"I am."

"That's impolite."

"I've been accused of considerably worse."

She reached for me, took my hand, and drew me toward the bedroom.

I stopped her.

"No," I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Not the bedroom."

Her eyes flicked to the desk. To the rug in front of the fire. To the heavy leather armchair in the corner.

"Where, then?"

I walked her backward until her hips hit the edge of my desk. Papers scattered. A pen rolled off and clattered to the floor. She sat on the edge of it and looked up at me, and I stepped between her knees and bent down and kissed her.

Her hands came up into my hair again. Mine went to her breasts.

She was warm and soft and heavy in my palms, and when I brushed my thumbs across her nipples she broke the kiss and let her head fall back with a sharp intake of breath. I kissed her throat, her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her neck. Then lower. I took one nipple into my mouth and she made a sound that went straight through me, a low, broken moan, and her fingers tightened in my hair.

"Alistair," she breathed.

I moved to the other breast. I licked and sucked and grazed her with my teeth, and she squirmed against the desk and pressed herself into my mouth, and I could feel how wet she was getting, could smell it, that musky sweetness rising off her, and my cock ached with the need to be inside her.

But not yet. I wanted to make her wait. I wanted to draw this out. I'd waited two months. I could wait a little longer.

I dropped to my knees in front of the desk.

Scarlett looked down at me, eyes wide, and I saw something flicker across her face, surprise, maybe, or anticipation, or both.

"What are you doing?"

I put my hands on her thighs and pushed them apart.

"I should think that's obvious."

"Alistair."

"Yes?"

"You don't have to..."

"I want to."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she leaned back on her elbows on the desk and opened her legs wider for me, and that was all the permission I needed.

I bent my head and put my mouth on her.

She was wet and hot and she tasted like salt and honey, and the first stroke of my tongue made her whole body jerk. I held her hips steady with both hands and licked her slowly, from bottom to top, dragging the flat of my tongue over her clit and then back down. She gasped. Her thighs trembled against my ears.

I did it again. Slower. Then faster. I found a rhythm, long slow strokes and then quick flicks right where she needed them, and I listened to her breathing change, to the little sounds she couldn't hold back, to the way she whispered my name into the dark.

Her hand came down and gripped my hair. Not guiding. Just holding on.

"Don't stop," she said. "Don't you dare stop."

I didn't. I slid two fingers inside her while I worked her clit with my tongue, and she cried out, a real cry this time, loud enough that I was suddenly very glad the ranch hands had gone home and the nearest neighbor was half a mile off. Her hips bucked against my face. Her fingers twisted in my hair. I curled my fingers inside her and found the spot that made her whole body go rigid, and I pressed there, over and over, while I sucked her clit between my lips.

She came with a shudder that ran from her thighs all the way up through her spine. Her back arched off the desk. Her mouth opened. No sound came out at first, and then a long, low moan that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest.

I kept going until she pushed my head away, oversensitive, breathless, laughing.

"Enough," she gasped. "Enough, I can't..."

I stood up, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and looked down at her.

She was sprawled across my desk, flushed and gleaming with sweat, hair a wreck, chest heaving. The lamplight caught the sheen on her skin. She looked like a painting. She looked like something I'd have been arrested for thinking about a month ago.

"Come here," she said.

I stepped between her legs and she reached for me and pulled me down into a kiss. She could taste herself on my mouth. I knew she could, and the thought made me harder than I already was, which I hadn't thought possible.

Her hand closed around my cock. She stroked me, once, twice, spreading the wetness at the tip down the shaft, and I had to break the kiss and press my forehead against hers and breathe.

"Scarlett."

"Yes?"

"If you keep doing that, this is going to be over very quickly."

"Then perhaps you should get inside me."

I looked at her.

"You're sure?"

She laughed. "Alistair. I've been sure since the first time I saw you across the saloon. I've been sure for two months. Get inside me."

I didn't need to be told twice.

I positioned myself at her entrance. She was so wet, so ready, that I slid in on the first push, all the way to the hilt, and we both groaned at the same time. She was tight and hot and she fit me like a glove, and for a moment I just stayed there, buried in her, breathing, trying to hold on.

"Move," she said.

I moved.

The first few strokes were slow, careful, letting her adjust. But she wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me deeper, and after that there was no more slow. I fucked her hard on the desk, papers scattering under her back, the whole thing creaking with every thrust. She met me stroke for stroke, hips rising to take me, nails raking down my back. I bent my head and kissed her neck and her jaw and her mouth, and she bit my lower lip hard enough to hurt.

"Harder," she said.

I gave her harder.

The desk slammed against the wall. A stack of books toppled off the corner and hit the floor. Neither of us cared. I was lost in her, in the feel of her around me, in the sound of her breath in my ear, in the smell of her skin and the taste of her mouth. Two months of wanting, two months of pretending, two months of telling myself I could control this, and here I was, out of control, buried to the hilt in Scarlett Noir on my own desk, and I didn't care about anything else. Not the ranch. Not my name. Not what anyone would say if they knew.

Just her.

She came first, the second time. I felt it happen, felt her tighten around me, felt her whole body lock up and then release, and the sound she made pushed me over the edge right behind her. I buried my face in her neck and groaned against her skin as I spilled inside her, thrusting through it, riding it out until I had nothing left.

For a long moment neither of us moved. We just lay there, tangled together on the desk, breathing hard, slick with sweat. The rain kept on against the window. The fire had burned down to nothing but embers.

Scarlett spoke first.

"Well," she said. "That was worth the wait."

I laughed, still breathless, still inside her.

"You're welcome."

"Modest as ever, Counselor."

I lifted my head and looked at her. Her eyes were soft now, softer than I'd ever seen them, and she reached up and touched my face, tracing the line of my jaw with one finger.

"That was..." she started, and then stopped.

I waited.

"That was more than I expected," she finished.

I knew what she meant. I felt it too. This wasn't supposed to be more. This was supposed to be a bad idea we got out of our systems. This was supposed to be a mistake we made once and never spoke of again.

It didn't feel like a mistake. It felt like the first honest thing I'd done in years.

I pulled out of her slowly and she winced, and I helped her sit up. She swung her legs off the desk and stood, and I watched her walk naked across the room to where her clothes lay on the floor. She bent to pick up her chemise, and the sight of her in the lamplight, bare and unashamed, made my chest ache.

"You're leaving," I said.

She pulled the chemise over her head.

"I should."

"It's still raining."

"It's been raining all night."

"Then stay."

She paused. She looked at me over her shoulder, and something complicated moved behind her eyes.

"Alistair..."

"Just until it lets up."

She looked at the window. The rain hadn't let up at all. If anything it had gotten worse, hammering the glass so hard I could barely see the barn lights through it.

"All right," she said. "Until it lets up."

She didn't put the rest of her clothes back on. She just walked to the bedroom, chemise and all, and I followed her, and we lay down on my bed in the dark with the rain coming down outside, and she put her head on my chest and I put my arm around her, and we didn't talk. There wasn't anything to say.

I woke before dawn.

The rain had stopped. The window was grey with early light. Scarlett was already dressed, standing at the foot of the bed with her coat on and her hair smoothed back into place. She looked at me the way she always looked at me in public, composed, distant, like we were strangers who happened to share a room.

"You're going," I said.

"I have to. Before the hands arrive."

I sat up. The sheets were cold where she'd been.

She walked to the bedroom door and then stopped. Turned. Came back to the bed and bent down and kissed me, once, hard, and whispered against my mouth:

"Try not to think about me today, Counselor."

I told her that would be easy.

It was the first lie I told that morning. And far from the last.

She was gone before I got out of bed. I heard the front door open and close, heard her boots on the porch, heard the sound of a horse being led out of the barn. Then nothing but the drip of water off the eaves.

I lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling.

What the hell had I done.

I got up. I washed. I shaved. I put on a clean shirt and my good coat and combed my hair in the mirror, and when I walked outside the ranch was already waking up. Cookie had the stove going. Two of the hands were mucking out the stalls. The sky was pale and clear and the whole world smelled like wet earth and new beginnings.

Nobody looked at me twice. Nobody knew anything. I looked exactly as I always did. Coat immaculate. Hair neatly combed. Expression composed.

And underneath it, the memory of her mouth on mine, her legs around my waist, her voice saying my name in the dark.

I made it through the morning. I made it through a client meeting, through a stack of correspondence, through lunch with my foreman about the south pasture fence. I was fine. I was normal. I was Alistair Thorne, and nothing had changed.

Then I went into town for supplies, and I saw her.

She was coming out of the telegraph office, trench coat buttoned to the throat, that silver ring on her right hand catching the afternoon light. She saw me across the street. She didn't smile. She didn't wave. She just looked at me for one second, two, and then turned and walked the other way, and I stood there on the boardwalk with my heart pounding like a fool.

That was how it started.

The glances. The little signals. The way she'd find me in a crowded room without ever seeming to look for me. The way I'd know she was there before I saw her, some animal sense I'd never had before and couldn't explain.

We became experts at pretending.

In public, she was Miss Noir. I was Mr. Thorne. Occasionally Counselor, when she wished to tease me. Our conversations stayed respectable. Our distance stayed appropriate. Our hands never lingered where someone might notice.

But whenever she passed behind me, her fingers occasionally brushed my shoulder. Whenever I helped her into a carriage, my hand stayed around hers one heartbeat longer than necessary. Tiny indiscretions. Dangerous little secrets hidden inside perfectly ordinary moments.

Neither of us spoke about them. Neither of us needed to.

The first letter came three days after the rain.

I found it tucked into a book on my shelf, a volume of Texas statutes I hadn't opened in a year. A single sheet of paper, folded twice, in handwriting I recognized from the case files she'd brought me six months ago when she'd first walked into my office and hired me to review a contract.

*Counselor,*

*I find myself thinking about your desk. Specifically, the state of it now. I hope you've tidied up. A man of your reputation ought not have scattered papers.*

*Yours,*

*S.N.*

I read it four times. Then I burned it in the hearth and watched the ashes curl up the chimney.

Two days later I wrote back.

*Miss Noir,*

*The desk has been restored to order. The wall behind it, however, still bears the mark of our conversation. I've decided to leave it. Consider it a reminder.*

*A.T.*

I left the letter in a place only she would know to look. A hollow behind the third brick of the courthouse steps, where we'd once sat waiting for a verdict and she'd mentioned the loose mortar. She found it. I knew she found it because the next day I received a reply.

*Counselor,*

*You romantic. A mark on the wall. I'm blushing.*

*S.N.*

And so it went. Letters hidden where only the other would know to look. Meetings arranged without ever speaking of them aloud. A nod across a room that meant the alley behind the hotel at midnight. A hand brushed across a sleeve that meant my office, Thursday, after everyone's gone home.

We were careful. God, we were careful. I'd never been more careful in my life. Every meeting planned, every exit checked, every alibi prepared. I told myself it was because I was a man who planned, a man who calculated, a man who maintained control.

The truth was simpler. I was terrified of getting caught, and not for the reasons I told myself.

I was terrified of losing her.

The weeks went by. The affair deepened. We met in the dark corners of Deliverance, in empty offices and quiet stables and once, memorably, in the back of a hay wagon under a moonless sky. She'd laugh at me when I checked the door for the third time. I'd laugh at her when she pretended not to care whether I came. We learned each other's bodies the way you learn a language, slowly and then all at once. I learned the place behind her ear that made her shiver. She learned the spot on my throat that made me forget my own name.

And somewhere in there, between the secrecy and the desire, something changed.

I stopped merely wanting her. I started searching for her. Every room I entered, my eyes went first to the corners, looking for that sharp black bob, that flash of green, that silver ring. Every conversation I had, part of me was listening for her voice. Every night I spent alone, I lay in bed and thought about her, and not just about her body, though God knew I thought about that too. I thought about her laugh. Her stubbornness. The way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching, like I was something worth looking at.

She started telling me things. Small things at first. The name of her first case, the one that got her started in this line of work. The reason she'd left the city and come to Deliverance. Then bigger things. The brother she'd lost. The man who'd hurt her, years ago, the one she'd never told anyone about. The parts of herself she kept hidden under the trench coat and the sharp smile.

I told her things too. About my father, and the name I'd spent my whole life trying to live up to. About the case that had almost ruined me, back in the city, the one I still had nightmares about. About the fact that I'd never really trusted anyone, not since I was a boy, not until her.

We promised each other it would stay uncomplicated. No expectations. No promises. No foolish dreams about a future neither of us could guarantee.

We lied.

We lied to each other and we lied to ourselves, and the worst part was, I knew it. I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew every time I watched her walk away from me in a crowded street that I was falling deeper into something I couldn't control. I knew every time I wrote her a letter that I was putting words on paper that could destroy us both. I knew every time I kissed her goodbye that I was saying goodbye to a version of myself I'd spent forty years building.

And I didn't stop.

I couldn't.

By November I was in love with her. I said it to myself in the mirror one morning, out loud, just to hear how it sounded. It sounded like the truth. It sounded like the first true thing I'd said in years.

I didn't tell her. Not yet. I was still a man who planned. Still a man who calculated. Still a man who maintained control.

But I was starting to understand that control was a story I'd been telling myself, and Scarlett Noir had seen through it from the first glance.

The trouble started on a Tuesday.

I was in my office in town, going over the papers for a land dispute, when the door opened and Sheriff Hollis walked in. He was a big man, slow-moving, with a mustache that had gone grey and eyes that missed nothing. He'd been sheriff of Deliverance for fifteen years, and he'd never once come to my office without a reason.

"Alistair," he said.

"Hollis." I set down my pen. "What can I do for you?"

He closed the door behind him. That was the first sign something was wrong. Hollis never closed doors.

"Got a question for you," he said.

"Ask."

"You know Scarlett Noir."

It wasn't a question. I kept my face still.

"I've retained her services once or twice. Why?"

"She's been asking around town. About the Beaumont place. About what happened out there ten years ago."

I felt something cold settle in my chest.

"That's her business."

"Maybe." Hollis walked to the window and looked out at the street. "Maybe not. There's folks in this town who don't like that story being dug up. Folks with money. Folks with influence."

"I'm aware."

"So am I." He turned back to face me. "I'm telling you as a friend, Alistair. Whatever she's into, you might want to keep your distance. A man in your position can't afford to be tied to a woman like that."

"A woman like what?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"You know what I mean."

I did. And I hated him for it. I hated the casual way he said it, the assumption behind it, the way he thought he could walk into my office and tell me who I could and couldn't be seen with. I wanted to throw him out. I wanted to tell him exactly where he could put his advice.

Instead I said, "I'll take it under advisement."

Hollis nodded. He opened the door and paused on the threshold.

"She's a smart woman," he said. "But smart women get themselves killed in this town. You remember that."

He left. I sat there for a long time after he was gone, staring at the closed door, and I could feel the whole careful structure of my life starting to tremble.

That night I rode out to the Beaumont place.

It was ten miles east of town, a ruined house at the end of a long dirt road, abandoned since the fire. I didn't know why Scarlett was asking about it. I didn't know what she'd found. But I knew her, and I knew that whatever it was, she hadn't told me, and that meant it was dangerous.

She was there when I arrived. Her horse was tied to a post by the gate. I found her in the ruins of the parlor, standing in the dark with a lantern in her hand, looking at a wall.

"Scarlett."

She turned. She didn't look surprised to see me. She never did.

"You followed me."

"I was worried."

"You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you." I walked toward her. "Hollis came to see me today."

Something flickered across her face.

"What did he say?"

"That you've been asking questions about this place. That there are people who don't like it."

She turned back to the wall. I looked where she was looking. There was a mark on the plaster, faint, almost invisible in the lantern light. A symbol of some kind. A circle with a line through it.

"What is that?"

"It's a brand," she said. "The same one that was on the cattle that burned in the fire. The same one that's on the deed to half the land in this county."

I stared at her.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying the Beaumont fire wasn't an accident." She looked at me. "And the men who set it are still in Deliverance. Still running things. Still killing anyone who asks too many questions."

The cold feeling in my chest spread.

"Who?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know yet. But I'm close. And when I find out..." She stopped. Looked at me. "Alistair, if this goes wrong, I need you to stay out of it. Whatever happens. Whatever you hear. Stay out of it."

"Like hell."

"Listen to me." She stepped closer. "You have a name in this town. A reputation. A family. If you get tied to this, everything you've built goes up in smoke."

"And if I lose you, what's the point of any of it?"

The words came out before I could stop them. I hadn't planned to say them. I hadn't planned any of this. I stood there in the ruins of a burned house with a lantern flickering between us and I said the truest thing I'd ever said.

Scarlett looked at me. For a long moment she didn't say anything.

"Alistair..."

"I'm in love with you."

The words hung in the air. The lantern flickered. Somewhere outside, a night bird called.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet.

"I know," she said. "I've known for weeks."

"And?"

"And I'm in love with you too. Which is exactly why you need to stay out of this."

I reached for her. She came into my arms and pressed her face against my chest, and I held her in the dark of that ruined house, and I understood that whatever came next, whatever danger she'd walked into, I was already in it. I'd been in it from the first glance across the crowded saloon. From the first brush of her fingers on my shoulder. From the first time I looked at her and knew I was lost.

"I'm not staying out of it," I said.

She laughed against my chest. A wet, broken laugh.

"I know."

We stood there a long time. Then she pulled back and looked at me, and the lantern light caught the tears on her cheeks, and she smiled that smile, the one that had been following me home for months.

"Take me home, Counselor."

"Which home?"

"Mine."

I took her home. To her small house on the edge of town, where no one would see my horse tied up in the yard. We made love in her bed in the dark, slower than we ever had, like we both knew something was ending. Afterward she lay in my arms and traced the lines of my palm with her finger, and I listened to her breathe, and I thought about all the ways this could go wrong.

The fire. The brand. The men who ran this town and didn't like questions. Hollis's warning. My name, my family, my career, everything I'd built.

And her. Always her.

I didn't sleep. I lay awake until the sky went grey, and when Scarlett stirred beside me I kissed her forehead and got dressed and slipped out before dawn, like I always did, like a thief in the night.

I rode back to the ranch through the cold morning, and I told myself I'd figure it out. I told myself I'd find a way to protect her and keep everything else intact. I told myself I was still a man who planned, a man who calculated, a man who maintained control.

I was wrong about all of it.

Because when I got home, there was a letter waiting for me on my desk. No envelope. Just a single sheet of paper, in handwriting I didn't recognize.

*We know about the woman.*

*We know about the letters.*

*You have until the end of the month to end it. Or we'll end it for you.*

*And Counselor? We'll make sure everyone in Deliverance knows exactly what kind of man you really are.*

I read it three times. Then I folded it and put it in my pocket and walked out to the porch and stood there in the cold morning light, looking out at the land I'd spent my whole life building.

And I understood, finally, that I had a choice to make.

The name I'd spent my entire life building.

Or the woman I'd fallen hopelessly in love with.

The rain had stopped. The sky was clear. And somewhere out there in Deliverance, Scarlett Noir was waking up in her empty bed, and she had no idea that the life we'd been hiding was about to come crashing down around us both.

I had until the end of the month.

I had three weeks to decide.

I went back inside and poured myself a whiskey, even though it wasn't yet eight in the morning, and I sat down at my desk and stared at the wall. The mark was still there, faint but visible, where the desk had slammed against it the first night she came to me.

I hadn't been lying in my letter. I'd left it there on purpose. A reminder.

Of her.

Of us.

Of the fact that some things, once started, could never be undone.

I finished the whiskey. I set the glass down. And I started to plan.