He grinned, unable to stop himself. “Fancy that. I hate it when you get shot at too. Let’s never do it again.”

“I can’t even with this. And by the way I trust you enough to cry. I was just trying to hold on until you were out of here. I hate that my stuff keeps interrupting your work. I don’t want you to have to be my babysitter.”

“Maybe you could play babysitter. I think I’d like that.”

“You’re a deviant.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Totally. Now, take a nap. I’m not leaving the house so don’t even suggest it. But I’ll do some work in my office. The door will be open so yell and I’ll hear you. Polly should be here in a bit anyway.”

“Thank you for coming for me.”

“Oh, baby, I will always come for you. As long as I draw breath I will come for you.”

Her smile was wobbly, but genuine. He stacked pillows so she wouldn’t roll back and hurt her back, and then he headed down the hall.

“You’re aging me prematurely,” Royal told her as she finished applying her lipstick. “Can’t you just take one more day?”

“No. I have so much stuff today it’s not funny. I can’t expect Peter, Edward and Justin to pick up all the slack all the time. Plus I like my job, Royal. I like it and this shithead is not going to steal that from me either.”

He groaned.

“I’m going to work. And you will go to work too and that is that. I’m allowing you to drive me in. No one is going to let me do anything alone anyway. Plus the investigator is coming to my office at four. Shep is coming over to hear the update. Then you’ll be there at five thirty to pick me up.”

“I’ll be there at four to hear the update from the investigator and then we’ll go home from there.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Of course. I want to know too. Your struggle is my struggle, silly. This has been a long road for you. I just want it all to be positive. And safe. So I’ll see you at four. At the office?”

“Yes, okay. I’d like that. Thank you for being interested in this, or at the very least faking it well.”

It wasn’t like she actually got shot or anything. She got some stitches in non-important places. There was no reason for her to be anxious or sore or freaked out.

Royal told her about his plans for the day, and she turned slightly in the seat so she could look at him as they drove.

A song started, one that made her sigh wistfully. “I forgot my iPod was still in your car.” Kate Nash’s “Nicest Thing” sounded between them. She looked at his hands on the steering wheel. Capable. Strong. The hands of a man who used them to work hard. They were work rough and sometimes he’d apologize when he’d stroke up her thighs.

But she liked it. Liked the slight burr. Liked the contrast between using his hands to haul and pick and throw and all that, and the way he touched her.

“I love that song. It used to make me a little melancholy. I mean who hasn’t felt that way toward someone? The words are so wistful and full of yearning. But now I hear it differently.”

She’d shifted her gaze from his hands back up to his face. He was smiling. “And how’s that, then?”

“I was that person, the one in the song. Only not really about anyone, just that dreaming of having someone who knows you so well. I wanted that connection. And now when I hear it, I know I’ve found him. It’s like reading back through journal entries from a year ago, or from a time in your life when things were very bad. You appreciate it all the more now that you’ve weathered that storm. You’re different because of whatever that moment is. You’re that moment, that person. You’re my nicest thing.”

Royal took a deep breath. “I don’t think we’ve really talked a whole lot about me and Anne because it’s weird. I know it’s unusual that she and I are such close friends. But you seem to deal with it in stride and I love you for it and I also love that you’re secure in my feelings for you.”

“Pffft. Listen, mister, if she ever steps over the line again I will take her out. However, she seems to be a total idiot and gave you up. Her loss is my gain and I will not tolerate any nonsense.”

“You are a zero-tolerance-for-nonsense sort of person. At last with your grandparents even. Anyway I’ve touched on most of it, but not what finally drove me away.”

She waited, not wanting to spook him.

“You were talking about that song, and I hadn’t heard it before but I heard it in two ways too. The obvious one is that you’re that special and important to me. All the time I was with Anne, she was settling. And part of me knew it. And part of her knew it. But I loved her and kept hoping she’d love me, and she was comfortable with me so she never really made a move to go. So I took whatever she gave me and lied to myself that the closeness we had was enough. That it was love in its own way. And it was. It is.

“I don’t even know if the last year or so we were together that I actually believed it. But she and I just let ourselves get comfortable. And I watched another one of my friends truly fall in love with someone who deserved them, and it just hit me that I could not live that way another day. She came to my house, the old one, before this one was finished, anyway, and I’d packed up her stuff that she’d left around and I ended it once and for all. I got some coverage here at the ranch and I took off. I was in San Diego for a month. I just needed to be gone.”