The bedroom door opens without a sound.

Jane’s already in here. Tucked in bed. Freshly showered, the scent of her shampoo in the air. She’s under the covers, a book propped on her knees.

I was wrong. Joe Causey can’t hover over this moment. It’s all mine.

Jane looks up from her book and smiles. She’s so goddamn beautiful. It’s a cliché to say a person is beautiful inside and out, but with Jane, it’s true. I feel guilt and hunger every time she smiles at me like this. Guilt that I’m ruining her. Sapping her of her innate goodness. And hunger that I’ll never be able to satiate. Not even if I live forever.

“Everything safe downstairs?” she teases, and I hear the real worry below her tone.

“Downstairs and everywhere else.”

She lets out a breath. “Good. I want Emily to be okay tonight. She put all that work into the party.”

I want to climb into the bed and never get out, but I force myself to be a civilized person. “Don’t go anywhere,” I tell her on the way past. It feels good to shed my jeans and get a fresh T-shirt. Better to brush my teeth. That damn gift left a sour taste in my mouth. It shouldn’t have happened. If I’m honest, none of this should have happened. I should never have fucked the nanny. It’s possible I shouldn’t have hired a nanny in the first place. I shouldn’t have let things go so far with Emily and Rhys.

But I rinse away these objections. Whether I should or shouldn’t have is irrelevant now. I did all those things, and we’re in this place.

I can’t even say that I’d do them differently. That probably makes me a selfish bastard, but I wouldn’t. Every step I took brought me to Jane Mendoza. Well—it brought her to me, delivered to my doorstep in the pouring rain.

Back in the bedroom, I turn off the lights, leaving us with her bedside lamp. Jane puts aside her book as I climb into bed and take her in my arms.

We breathe like that for several minutes.

I made a fortune on the West Coast. More money than I knew what to do with. I had the idea that it would make things easier. I’d go back to Emily and give her the kind of life she deserved. I’d buy myself that life.

I believed it was something for sale.

But all the money in the world couldn’t have conjured Jane Mendoza into being. Once she was in my life, I couldn’t buy her heart.

Love doesn’t have a price tag.

And this—holding her in my arms, feeling her warmth, the way her body settles into mine? There’s nothing I wouldn’t pay.