Entwined With You

on.”
    “I have to get ready for work.”
    Gideon searched my face, then kissed me softly.
    He released me and I bent down to pick up my purse. Then I noticed that I’d stepped on my mirrored compact and shattered its case. I wasn’t heartbroken over it, because I could always pick up another at Sephora on the way home. What froze my blood was the electrical wire sticking out of the cracked plastic.
    Gideon crouched down to help me. I looked at him. “What is this?”
    He took the compact from me and broke off more of the shell to expose a microchip with a small antenna. “A bug, maybe. Or a tracking device.”
    I looked at him with horror. My lips moved silently.
The police?
    “I’ve got jammers in the apartment,” he answered, shocking me further. “And no. There’s no way any judge would’ve authorized a tap on you. There’s nothing to justify it.”
    “Jesus.” I fell back on my ass, feeling sick.
    “I’ll have my guys look at it.” He lowered to his knees and brushed the hair back from my face. “Could it be your mother?”
    I stared at him helplessly.
    “Eva—”
    “My God, Gideon.” I held him off with an uplifted hand andgrabbed my phone with the other. I dialed Clancy, my stepfather’s bodyguard, and the moment he answered, I said, “Is the bug in my compact one of yours?”
    There was a pause, then, “Tracking device, not a bug. Yes.”
    “For fuck’s sake, Clancy!”
    “It’s my job.”
    “Your job sucks,” I shot back, picturing him in my head. Clancy was solid muscle. He wore his dirty-blond hair in a military crew cut and radiated a vibe that was deadly dangerous. But I wasn’t afraid of him. “This is bullshit and you know it.”
    “Keeping you safe became a bigger concern when Nathan Barker showed up again. He was slippery, so I had to cover both of you. The minute his death was confirmed, I turned off the receiver.”
    I squeezed my eyes shut. “This isn’t about the damn tracker! I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the keeping-me-in-the-dark part that’s wrong on so many levels. I feel violated, Clancy.”
    “I don’t blame you, but Mrs. Stanton didn’t want you to worry.”
    “I’m an adult! I get to decide if I worry or not.” I shot a look at Gideon when I said that, because what I was saying was totally applicable to him, too.
    His arch look told me he got the message.
    “You won’t hear me arguing,” Clancy said gruffly.
    “You owe me,” I told him, knowing just how I was going to collect. “Big-time.”
    “You know where to find me.”
    I killed the call, then sent a text to my mom: We need to talk.
    My shoulders sagged with disappointment and frustration.
    “Angel.”
    I shot Gideon a look that warned him not to push me. “Don’t you dare make excuses—for yourself or for her.”
    His eyes were soft and shadowed, but the set of his jaw was resolute.“I was there when you were told Nathan was in New York. I saw your face. There’s no one who loves you who wouldn’t do whatever they could to shield you from that.”
    And that was really hard for me to deal with, because I couldn’t deny that I was glad I hadn’t known about Nathan until after he was dead. But I also didn’t want to be insulated from bad things. They were part of living.
    Reaching for his hand, I gripped it tightly. “I feel the same way about you.”
    “I’ve taken care of my demons.”
    “And mine.” But we were still sleeping apart from each other. “I want you to go back to Dr. Petersen,” I said quietly.
    “I went on Tuesday.”
    “You did?” I couldn’t hide my surprise at learning he’d kept his regular schedule.
    “Yeah, I did. I only missed the one appointment.”
    When he’d killed Nathan …
    His thumb brushed over the back of my hand. “It’s just you and me now,” he said, as if he’d read my mind.
    I wanted to believe that.
    I was dragging when I got to work, which wasn’t a good omen for the rest of the day. At least it was Friday and I could be a slug over the weekend, which would probably be a necessity Sunday morning if I partied too hard Saturday night. I hadn’t had a girls’ night out in ages and I felt the need for a good stiff drink or two.
    In the previous forty-eight hours, I’d learned that my boyfriend had killed my rapist, one of my exes was hoping to spread me across his sheets, one of my boyfriend’s exes was hoping to smear him in the press, and my mother had microchipped me like a damned dog.
    Really, how