“She made her decisions,” I said, soft but firm. “You made yours. I made mine. I knew precisely what would happen if I got on that plane, Nick. I knew. It came faster than I expected, but I knew. I made my decision and got on that plane. It still doesn’t make what happened my fault. It also isn’t yours. It’s the life she chose. Neither of us should feel guilt because my sister decided to resurrect the family business not with sound investments but by building drug labs.”

“You make a lot of sense, baby,” he replied, but he did it watching me carefully, and I knew he thought I was making sense just to make him feel better.

So I decided to give him what he needed actually to make him feel better.

“Do I miss the sister I thought I had?” I asked. “Yes, but I’d been missing her a lot longer than this.” I turned in his arms, curled my lips slightly and put my hands on either side of his neck. “I missed her even longer than it’s been since you faked my death.”

At my words, his lips quirked and he took his hands from the railing to wrap his arms around me. Closing in, he pinned me against the deck and held me tight and warm in the cold mountain evening air.

“Have I told you you have a flair for drama, body bags, burning mansions?” I teased in a further effort to lighten the mood.

He bent his head closer to me but said nothing.

“One day,” I murmured, “you’ll have to explain how you pulled that off.”

“Coroner owed me a favor so the ID swung our way. And Baldy has certain access and assured me that particular…specimen would, in the end, do a single good deed in her life, making you safe in yours,” he explained immediately.

My eyes slid away. “Okay. Maybe I didn’t want to know.”

“Though, he was so willing to help, I wasn’t likin’ that much,” Nick stated and my eyes slid back.

“Dr. Baldwin has a soft spot for me.”

He gave me a squeeze. “Yeah, caught that. That’d be the part I wasn’t likin’ that much.”

“I wouldn’t allow a man to fake my death and then get on a plane, leaving everything behind, knowing my shoes and handbags were all going up in smoke, if that man was Dr. Baldwin.” I squeezed him back. “I did it for the man I love. I did it for you.”

Again, Nick said nothing.

Weirdly, he did this for a long time. So long, it concerned me.

“Nick?” I called on another squeeze.

Finally, he spoke.

“The man you love.”

“Yes,” I confirmed rather unnecessarily.

“The man you love,” he repeated.

“Yes,” I repeated as well, getting annoyed because I was getting confused.

He stared at me again.