It was surreal, memories of coming home from school each afternoon and trips she’d made back to Houston to visit her parents layering themselves on the current moment. She’d always been an outsider before. Had fortified herself with a shield of emotional indifference just to walk through her parents’ front door. Pretended she was someone she wasn’t or steer clear of her interests to avoid censure.

But she didn’t have to anymore. Those old survival skills no longer held value. Were not just unnecessary, but unwanted.

Kir strode into full view, his jacket gone, his shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms and his resolute gaze locked on her.

Her lungs surged on a full breath of air, and her feet got in motion. In less than four strides his arms were around her and the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear. His woodsy scent was a balm to her senses. His warmth and strength a comfort that unwound the afternoon’s tension in an instant. “You’re okay.”

“I promised you I would be.” An utterly arrogant statement that might have rankled and started an argument if she hadn’t been so overcome with relief, but there was appreciation in his voice, too. A loving lilt that said he found her concern as heartwarming as it had been for her to lay eyes on him again.

He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call you. There was much to deal with, and Sergei wanted to get Evette and Emerson home.”

She shook her head against his chest and hugged him tighter. “No. You did what you needed to.”

Footsteps sounded on the pavement, growing closer.

Kir slid his hands up her arms and squeezed her shoulders. “You have company.”

Evette.

Seeing Kir she’d forgotten everything except the need to feel him against her.

She straightened on a jolt and found not just Frieda, Sergei, Evette and Emerson closing in on her, but Olga, the guards and Roman as well. She wrapped Evette up in a hug that would have been foreign to her even a month ago and squeezed her eyes shut. “I was so worried about you two.”

Evette’s arms shook, but the strength of her response was no less powerful than Cassie’s. While there was still an indomitable spunk and spirt in her voice, there was a solemnness to it as well. “Yeah, well, Emerson and I would be almost to Mexico by now if it hadn’t been for you.”

Cassie pulled away enough to grip her shoulders and scan Evette and Emerson head to toe. “I just caught Lizbet talking about it on the news.” She looked to Sergei. Then Kir. “Does anyone know what her motive was?”

“Money,” Kir said. “And revenge.” He cast an almost bewildered expression at Sergei and Roman before he shared the rest. As if he couldn’t quite yet fathom the story himself. “Via Ricci was Alfonsi’s mistress.”

“I knew it!” Cassie said. “I asked one of his bodyguards if he might have had one, but he couldn’t give me any specifics.”