“Who told you about his mother?”

“No one,” he replied.

“Someone must have.”

“Look, I told you I’m half-dead from the tour and the jet lag and all that. Let’s talk in the morning.”

He wasn’t going to rush her off the phone, not now. “We can talk in the morning as soon as you answer my question. You haven’t been doing any kind of…of background check on Tobias, have you?”

“No! Of course not.”

“You’d better not, because who I date—it’s none of your business. Just like it would be wrong of me to go poking around in the life of any woman you might date.”

“It is my business,” he argued. “As long as we have children together.”

“No. That’s crossing the line. You need to trust that I won’t let anyone who wouldn’t be good for our children be around them. And I have to trust the same thing.”

“If we stayed together, we wouldn’t have to worry about that,” he pointed out.

“That was my reasoning when this all started, remember?” she said. “But everything’s changed, Axel. You need to go back to your tour. Your bandmates are waiting for you. You can’t let them down.”

“They’re fine. Let me stay and drive you and the girls home. We can get a marriage counselor once we get there to help us rebuild. That could make all the difference.”

“I’m not ready to leave Silver Springs,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Because of some guy with more muscles than brains?”

“How dare you!” she snapped. “Just because Tobias is fit doesn’t mean he isn’t smart, too.”

“Then maybe it’s your brain I need to worry about.”

“Because I won’t come back to you? I feel something genuine for him, and I’m going to pursue it.”

Silence. Then he said, “You really want him.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. Did she dare cast away from the familiar? Take a risk on someone new?

When she looked at it that way, she was scared enough to say no.

But when she thought about Tobias, about how she felt when he touched her, she knew if she left now, she’d crave Tobias the whole time she was in Colorado. How could she go back into a relationship with Axel when she felt the way she did? It had been difficult enough when she was completely committed. “Yes.”

“Forget it, then,” Axel shouted. “I wouldn’t get back with you now if you begged me to.”

Harper could feel her heart pounding against her chest as he disconnected. She’d held fast to her decision.

She just hoped to God it was the right one for everyone concerned.

Harper was pacing the floor thirty minutes later when she received a text from Tobias.

Merry Christmas.