“Oh.” There was a tickling inside his chest. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that. Congratulations? Or . . . wow?”

“It made me feel strong, and excited. And . . . complete. I wanted to tell you. It made me feel something like I do when I’m with you. When you touch me. You don’t want to touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else.”

“It doesn’t stop the want, Nell.”

She nodded, let the relief of that come. “You won’t touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else. But the fact is, Zack, the only man I have a real tie to is you. When I ran, I told myself I would never tie myself to another man. Never risk that again. Then there was you. I have magic in me.” She lifted a hand, fisted, to her heart. “And it’s amazing and thrilling and sweet. Still, it’s nothing—nothing, Zack—to what I have in me for you.”

Any defense, any rational reason he may have had quite simply crumbled. “Nell.”

“I miss you. Just being with you. I’m not asking you to make love with me. I was going to. I was going to try to seduce you.”

He skimmed his fingers through her hair. “What changed your mind?”

“I don’t want to ever lie to you again, even in a harmless way. And I won’t use one set of your feelings against another set. I just want to be with you, Zack, just be. Don’t tell me to go.”

He drew her down until her head was cradled on his shoulder, and he felt her long, long sigh of contentment echo his own.

Nineteen

It wasn’t easy for an important, successful man to get away by himself for a few days. It was a complicated and tedious business to reschedule meetings, postpone appointments, inform clients, alert staff.

There was a whole world of people dependent upon him.

More tedious yet was making travel arrangements personally rather than using the services of an assistant.

But after careful thought, Evan decided there was nothing else to be done. No one was to know where he was, or what he was doing. Not his staff, not his clients, not the press. Naturally, he could be reached via cell phone if there was a crisis of any sort. Otherwise, until he’d done what he set out to do, he would remain incommunicado.

He had to know.

He hadn’t been able to get the information his sister had so casually passed on to him out of his mind.

Helen’s double. Helen’s ghost.

Helen.

He would wake up at night in a cold sweat from images of Helen, his Helen, walking along some picturesque beach. Alive. Laughing at him. Giving herself to any man who crooked his finger.

It couldn’t be borne.