Page 81 of Girl Anonymous

Dante flinched and protected. “She says no.”

“Did you see her take a pregnancy test?” Connor read the answer on Dante’s face. “Do you believe her?”

“I believe I’ve got to get this situation under control damned fast before…”

“Before the baby bump is so big she’s waddling?”

Dante inclined his head.

“Are you going to marry her?”

“I already did.” Dante reached into his sleeve.

Instinctively Connor flung the hose aside and pulled his stiletto.

Dante producedla Bouteille de Flamme.

The stiletto disappeared back into Connor’s sleeve, and he reached out with tentative fingers. “Is that…?”

“Yes. Yesterday someone put it in her house.”

“To frame her.”

“Yes. To get her killed by someone, I assume someone in the family who could be trusted to overreact either with purpose or as a tool.” Dante gently transferred the bottle to Connor’s cradled hands.

Connor viewed it with a mixture of awe and terror. “How did you find out?”

“She called me.”

“Did she? How terrifically interesting.” Connor frowned at the bottle.

“I went at once, of course. I recognized the machinations, if not the hand behind it.”

“Are you sure she’s not playing you?”

“Positive. Because I also recognized…her. Who she was to me. Fate is not the bitch I’d imagined, because for the first time in three weeks, I felt whole. In my heart.” He was saying words he hadn’t even thought before, but they came out easily, as if he’d always known and finally admitted.

“Ah.” Connor nodded judiciously.

Dante felt a little chagrined. “That’s all? Ah?”

“You’re in love.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Knee-jerk reaction. And he didn’t do knee-jerk reactions.

“When I met Owen, I didn’t want to commit. I didn’t want to fling myself into a marriage. Especially a gay marriage. My God! I knew the havoc he would cause in my life, my associations.My mother! I tried to walk away, I really did. I walked so far I almost didn’t get back before… When I came to my senses, he didn’t want to listen to me. He didn’t trust me when I said I loved and needed him. I had to prove myself before he would enter the relationship again.” Connor took a discomfited breath. “I had to beg.”

“Ah.” No wonder Connor used that single syllable; it said more than Dante ever imagined.

“I understand what you feel.” Connor wore thatmisery loves companyface. “Did you beg?”

“No time for that. She was in danger in her own home—and she had the stopper.”

“I see that.” Connor touched it with one fingertip. “You got her to…?”

“She joined them while I held it.”

“Witnesses?”

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