“I figured we’d go back to the city tonight,” he said.

“I thought so.” She sighed. “I’ll make sure there’s a room available for me at the hotel where Cassidy is staying.”

He shook his head. “Nothing’s changed since you moved out of the last hotel. You should stay at my apartment. With me. I’ve got a concierge downstairs, an alarm on the apartment, and your security can stay outside the door, watching the hallway. You can’t get safer than that.” Not to mention, he wasn’t ready for her to leave him yet.

She pushed them apart and climbed out of bed, reaching for one of his tee shirts she’d used to go to the kitchen for a snack last night. It hung to her mid-thighs, and he wanted to keep her wrapped up in him forever, but she was already creating distance.

“Xander, we’re playing with fire with this. Us.” She gestured back and forth between them. “The longer we stay together, the harder it’s going to be when it ends.”

“Because we’re not going to hurt now?” Because he fucking did.

She wrapped her arms around herself, looking as pained as he felt. “I think I should stay at a hotel and let my security stand in the hall there. I’ll never be unprotected.” Her eyes were wet with tears.

He’d finally made the decision to let his anger go and allow himself to fully be with her and enjoy her and she wanted to walk away this soon? Oh, hell no. It didn’t look like she wanted to go any more than he thought she should.

“Look–” His thought and sentence were cut off by the ring of his cell phone. He glanced over to see Alpha Security show up on the screen. “I need to take this. It’s your security team.”

She winced. “I left my phone in my room.”

He picked up the cell and took the call. “Hello?”

“Speaker,” she mouthed at him, and he put down the phone and hit the button so she could hear both sides of the call. “Sasha’s here with me. You can tell us both,” he said.

“Hi, Sasha. Dan here. I own Alpha Security.”

“Hi, Dan.”

“So as I just started to say, our tech guys have been going over the emails, snail mails, and gifts sent to you and stored by your PR people. We sorted through the crap and narrowed down ones similar to the one slipped beneath the hotel room door.”

She glanced at Xander and he patted the empty spot on the bed. With a nod, she sat down beside him.

“What did you find?” Xander asked.

“A definite pattern. The way the letters are cut out. The type of fonts used and how they’ve been pasted on the paper. Very crude in this day and age,” Dan, who had a scratchy, deep voice, said. “And he was escalating and angry he wasn’t getting a response. Not that the PR people caught on.”