“I get that.” A pair of pigeons scuttled between them. “I know you’re not strong enough to say how you feel about me, so I’m going to tell you how I feel about you.”

He was accusing her of being weak. Nobody did that, and she went on the offensive, throwing his words back at him. “You already did. You’re maybe a little bit in love with me, remember?”

“I only said it that way to keep from scaring you off.”

He’d thrown her off balance.

“You’re skittish about us,” he said. “You have been from the beginning, and if I’d told you the truth, you would have run. You still might, because I only think I know how you feel about me. I can read your mind about nearly everything, but not about this.”

She took a bittersweet morsel of comfort from knowing she’d protected herself, at least a little. “I’m not following this conversation, but when have I been able to follow anything you and your agent doppelgänger do?”

“I love you, Piper. I didn’t fall a little bit in love with you. I fell head over heels.”

The wind screeched in her ears, and her stomach pitched.

He didn’t move. Didn’t touch her. A chunk of her hair whipped against her cheek.

“I must have known for a long time,” he said quietly, “but I didn’t understand what I was feeling until that bastard had his gun on you, and I felt my chest crack open.”

She shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweater, not believing, fighting the lure of hope. “An adrenaline rush can make you feel lots of strange things.”

“I know all about adrenaline rushes, and they go away. My feelings aren’t going to do that.”

The bitterness of reality crept up on her. “It hasn’t even been two weeks. Give it time.”

“Can you really be so cynical?”

She didn’t feel cynical. She felt as fragile as spun sugar. She’d pushed his champion’s back to the wall, and he was fighting his way out in the only way he knew, by brute force.

“Take a risk, Piper,” he said. “I’m not Duke Dove. Tell me how you feel—the truth. Either you love me or you don’t. Dig deep. I need to know.”

She didn’t have to dig deep. But saying it aloud was impossible. Yet, if she didn’t, wasn’t she taking the coward’s way out?

She was hard-core. Hanging tough was how she lived. She shoved her fists deeper in her pockets. “Yes, I love you. Sure, I do. How could I not?” She threw the words in his face. “I love you enough not to let this go any further. We’re too different to have a future, so what’s the point?”

“The only thing different about us is our bank accounts.”