Despite the growing ache, Gabriel smiled. “Strangely enough, relationships often grow with such treacherous knowledge.”

She spun away from him, staring at the tender white petals of the magnolias in bloom. The flower, a staple of the region, was foreign to her. As foreign as buying groceries on her own and renting an apartment and feeling safe.

It had taken nearly her entire lifetime to accomplish the first two, and now a specter from her past, determined to strip safety away, had found her in New Orleans.

Gabriel made her feel a million things, but safe wasn’t one of them. “We don’t have a relationship. We’ve just met.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Gabriel closed the distance between them and turned her to face him. The look of abject misery compelled him to tease. “Is it my hair? I usually get it cut more often.” He brushed his thumb along the edge of her jaw, savoring the glide of velvet flesh.

Laughing sadly, Erin shook her head.

“Then what? Why are you so determined to push me away? You like my sister. We’re practically the same.”

“Your sister doesn’t make me nervous,” Erin said dryly. “She doesn’t insist on touching me.”

“My sister has poor taste in women.”

“Why are you pushing this? I’ll give you your story, but you have to let me investigate on my own.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Erin demanded. “You’ll have what you want. A way to save your paper.”

“I want more than the paper. I want you,” Gabriel said before he realized the words had formed. Abruptly, he dropped his hand from her skin as though singed, and this time, it was he who widened the distance between them. He paced off the walkway, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He returned to where she waited silent beneath the magnolia. He ground out, “I know you. I don’t understand it, but I know you, Erin Abbott.”

At the sound of her name, Erin recoiled. There it was, lying between them, and he had no idea. How could she talk with him, laugh with him, dream of him, when he had no idea who she really was?

And by his very nature, he would need to know. When she continued to resist, as she must, he would ferret out the truth of it. All of it. But she wouldn’t allow that to happen. The woman she’d once been had disappeared into the California mountains, and she would do anything to leave Analise Glover there forever. She had already possibly committed the worst act imaginable, and she wore his ring as a constant reminder.

No, Gabriel didn’t know her, but if she pushed him away, he’d try to find out. She had one hope of protecting her secrets and protecting him from her past. “You can have the story, Gabriel. But that’s it. I have nothing else to offer.”

“What does that mean?”