Hanging his head, he noticed that he’d left fresh bloodstains on the creamy tile from the wounds that had reopened on his knees.

Yeah, immortal didn’t mean embalmed; that was for sure.

Adrian sat down next to him, his face far too pale as he stared across the toilet seat. “You want me to get you into the shower? That’s what helps me when she . . .”

As their eyes locked, it was survivor-to-survivor.

“Ah, shit . . .” As Jim spoke, his voice was rough and his throat felt like it had been hit with a plumber’s snake. “She saw me like this. Sissy . . . she saw this.”

He couldn’t believe he said it, but keeping that inside was a no-go.

Unable to retain eye contact, Jim squeezed his lids shut and eased back against the flank of the tub. As the water fell like rain in the shower behind him, and the hard floor bit into his ass, he whispered, “She saw me ruined.”

It was the last thing he said before he passed the fuck out.

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 37

You wouldn’t have thought that a six-thousand-square-foot town house with three floors—four, if you counted the basement where the wine cellar was—could be cramped as a shoe box.

But as the morning dragged on and bloomed into noon, Grier felt like she couldn’t get enough air . . . or any alone time with Isaac. Her father was a pacing, eagle-eyed presence who seemed to fill every room, even when he wasn’t in it. And Isaac was just as bad, constantly moving around, glancing out windows, going up and back from the front of the house to the kitchen.

By two o’clock, she couldn’t stand it any longer and went to organize her bedroom closet. Which was ridiculous, because it was already tidy—although she found a quick cure for that.

After standing in the middle of the room and doing a three-sixty on the rows of clothes hanging by category, she took each and every blouse, skirt, dress, suit, and pair of slacks off the racks and tossed them into a pile on the floor. Ostensibly, she was reordering the various sections. In reality, she was giving herself a mess to clean up so she could enjoy a slice of control.

Hanger by hanger, item by item, she set about righting her wardrobe.

God . . . Isaac.

If she’d heard him right, down in the kitchen, by the coffeemaker . . . he’d said that he loved her.

Come on . . . of course she’d heard him right. And his incredible eyes had confirmed what her ears had struggled to comprehend.

There were a lot of buts, however, that the lawyer in her wanted to lay out. The thing was, the woman under the attorney-at-law didn’t care about any of that: she felt something equally as strong.