Faith had slipped behind the carefully constructed walls he’d erected and become part of his family, part of his life, and integral to his well-being. He’d never have believed it could happen and yet it had. If he lost her now, he’d hurt as badly as he had when he’d lost Levi. Now that she was in, he was never letting her go.

Levi, he thought, would want him to live his life. To honor him in all ways, not dwell on the past and never climb out of the horror they’d experienced. Although he hadn’t realized it before, he understood that now. Faith showed him he could have a future. Not one defined by Robert Dare’s mistakes or by tragic loss.

Now he just had to get Faith’s brother out of her life, and then he could tell her how he felt and hope she believed how far he’d come.

* * *

Izzy called Faith and invited her to go dress shopping with Jason’s sister, Sienna, for Club TEN29’s big concert event. It took a lot of arguing for her to get Jason to accept the fact that she could go to department stores and boutiques and be safe. She’d had to agree to have Renault trailing her every step of the way, and she felt sorry for the big man watching three women laugh their way through trying on at least fifty dresses before even hitting the shoe department in the store.

For the first time since she’d moved to New York, she was free to do what she wanted with friends, or at least with Jason’s female relatives, who felt like they could be her friends. The day brought her face-to-face with what she’d been missing in her life, and she promised herself when Colton was caught, she would build a full life for herself.

They had finished their shopping, loaded the bags into the trunk of Izzy’s SUV, and were now sitting around a table in a restaurant in Midtown.

Because Sienna was breastfeeding, she had a club soda in front of her, but Izzy and Faith had mimosas. They all ordered Oriental salads, and while waiting, they talked.

“To a successful day,” Sienna said, raising her alcohol-free glass.

“Hear, hear.” Izzy touched her glass to Sienna’s and the three of them each did the same.

“Izzy, I can’t thank you enough for letting me put my business card on the table at Noah’s party. I have been inundated with calls. Even moms whose kids’ birthdays aren’t until the summer wanted me to schedule them on my calendar.”

The pretty blonde smiled and raised her glass again. “To growing your business.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” Sienna said. “What’s really going on between you and my brother? And don’t tell me you’re just friends.” Her eyes glittered with mischief.

Faith choked on her drink. After coughing, she dabbed at her wet eyes.

“She’s blunt,” Izzy said needlessly. “And much younger, so we’ll have to forgive her.”

A twenty-three-year-old Sienna wrinkled her nose. “Hey. I have enough older brothers meddling in my life that I can do the same in theirs if I want. But I apologize if I’m being too nosey,” the pretty blonde said.