She swallowed hard, fighting back the panic struggling to take hold in her brain as she handed over her driver’s license. “Laura Spaulding.”

“Reason for your visit?”

“I…I’m not expected. I’m here to see Tony Daniels.” It struck her that maybe she should have called first. What if he wasn’t there? Or in a meeting.

She didn’t care. She needed her questions answered by someone other than Rob.

By someone who, at an instinctive level, she trusted would not lie to her.

By someone she trusted, period.

She didn’t know where that trust in Tony stemmed from, but it felt right.

For now, she’d go with that.

The guard tapped her information into the tablet, walked to the back of her truck, presumably to note the tag number, and then snapped a picture of her driver’s license with the tablet’s built-in camera. “Just a moment, please.”

He disappeared into the guard shack and returned less than minute later with a plastic ID badge. He handed it and her license to her, along with a paper parking pass. “Put the pass on your dash. He’s in building C, which is that one there.” He pointed it out, along with where to park. “Make sure to wear the badge while you’re on campus. When you leave, we take them both back from you here.”

“Thank you.” He opened the gate for her and she found a parking spot not too far from the building.

Why am I here?

Now she wasn’t sure if this was the greatest idea. So many things floated through her head, confusing, emotions and memories and overwhelming loss and need.

It threatened to swamp her.

She suspected of the people she’d met so far, it would be Tony who could help her make sense of it all.

Honestly.

The unvarnished truth.

Before she confronted Rob about any of it.

She left her phone and purse locked in the truck and made herself walk to the building. The front door was locked, but a man working at a reception desk raised his head and hit a buzzer when she rang the doorbell.

The lock clicked and she had to force herself to tug on the handle to open it. Somehow, despite no longer being able to feel her feet, she managed to walk across the lobby to the desk.

The man immediately frowned. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

No, I’m less all right than I can ever remember being in my life.

She choked back a snort of laughter at that, considering she could only clearly remember the last couple of weeks since waking up, with everything else disjointed and shattered across the realms of her mind.

Tears threatened. It was all she could do to force the words out. “I need to speak with Tony Daniels, please. It’s…important.”

He kept a wary eye on her while he grabbed a phone and spoke into it. “He’ll be out in a minute,” he said. “You can sit over there, if you’d like.” He pointed to three chairs lined up on the other wall, but she shook her head.

“I’m okay. I’d rather stand.”

Laura hated that she involuntarily flinched when she heard the inner door latch click loudly before it swung open and Tony walked out. When he spotted her, he immediately crossed the room to her side.

“Laura? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Tears were imminent. She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

He grabbed her by the elbow and led her to another door. “No interruptions,” he barked over his shoulder as he opened the door to what was a small conference room. He flipped on the light and closed the door behind them before guiding her to the nearest chair.

He pulled another chair around so he could sit in front of her. “Laura, what is it?” he asked, grabbing her hands. “What happened?”

Ragged sobs broke through. “I…read. I read Shayla’s articles…” That was all she could choke out before she lost it, her fear and anger and loss pouring out of her like the rushing tide through the Boca Grande pass.

He let out a deep sigh but said nothing. Instead, he gently put his arms around her and let her cry on his shoulder. She didn’t know how many minutes passed while she cried the worst of it out, until she finally sniffled back snot and tears and slowly sat up.

She let out a sharp laugh when he glanced down at the wet spot on his shirt before smirking at her.

“Does Rob know you’re here?”

She shook her head while wiping at her cheeks with her hands.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He left the room. Alone with her thoughts, she realized this was probably not the greatest idea.

Ironically, it didn’t escape her that she had no clue whether or not it was her worst idea ever.

He returned a few minutes later with a laptop case slung over his shoulder and a handful of tissues, the latter of which he passed to her. Then he held out a hand. “Give me your keys,” he softly said.

She passed them over without comment.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To talk. I told them I had a family emergency.” He shoved the keys in his pocket and held out his hand to her again. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go.”

She felt a deeply embedded trust in him. She took his hand and let him lead her out of the building.

“Where are you parked?”

She pointed and he changed direction to lead her there. “What about your car?” she asked.

“Shayla can bring me back later to get it. Or she can bring me to work in the morning. You aren’t an employee or a vendor. If we leave your truck here tonight, they’ll tow it.”

He walked her over to the passenger side and unlocked the door for her, waiting until she was in to close it. Then he walked around to the driver’s door, put his laptop in the backseat, and climbed behind the wheel.

After turning in her parking pass and visitor’s badge, he drove. She didn’t speak, unsure what to even say.

Somehow she felt it was better to wait until he could give her his undivided attention.

He stopped at a convenience store, where he bought them a couple of cold bottles of water, as well as a small box of tissues. After another twenty minutes of driving, turning off a main road and into a residential area, they pulled into a park. It felt familiar, but the sign at the entrance identifying it as the De Soto National Memorial rang absolutely no bells in her memory.

There weren’t many cars there, so he had no trouble finding a shady spot to park a ways from everyone else. Still feeling no need to fill the silence, she grabbed a wad of the tissues and followed him as he carried the bottles of water and led her toward a shaded bench near the water overlooking a bay.

Once they were settled on the bench, he cracked the top open on one of the bottles and passed it to her. “I texted Rob,” he said. “I told him simply that you were with me and safe and that I’d call him as soon as I found out what was going on.” He took a swallow from his own bottle. “And that he needed to not panic.” A wry smile curved his face.

Laura had no trouble recognizing what Shayla saw in Tony. He exuded a presence that calmed her simply by being near him. Steady as a rock, ready to deal head-on with whatever he had to face.

Much like she felt about Rob.

Volume deserted her voice. She pushed the words out. “I need to know.”

“We need to back up. You read the articles Shayla wrote about…?”

He didn’t finish. She made herself look up at him. “BDSM.”

He slowly nodded. “And?”

There wasn’t any reason to try to hide her tears. “I need to know.”

“About?”

“Can’t you make this easy for me?”

“No,” he gently said. “I won’t lie to you, but I won’t spoon-feed you your past, either. If you want me to tell you about my relationship with Shayla, I will. If you want me to tell you what I know of you and Rob, I will. If you want me to detail what happened between you and Rob, I can’t, simply because most of your relationship happened beyond my view.”

Carefully drawing in a shuddering breath, she asked, “How did I really meet you and Shayla?”

“Now that,” he said in the same gentle tone, “is something I can tell you.” He recounted, from his point of view, how Laura had emailed Shayla only a few months after they’d married. She’d read Shayla’s articles and, like many others, finally grew the nerve to reach out for more information.

“We invited you to join us and Ross and Loren at dinner one evening. You looked like you were frightened out of your wits.” He smiled. “Shay draped an arm around your shoulders and it was like the two of you had been sisters all your lives.

“We sat there talking for several hours, until nearly midnight and the restaurant was trying to close. You and Shay and Loren exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and you were texting and calling each other until that weekend, when you came to Maria’s Submission 101 class at the Venture.

“That’s the name of the club,” he clarified. “Shay and Loren met you there, and you went to dinner with all of us after class.”

He took another swallow of his water. She didn’t interrupt him while he gathered his thoughts. “You really wanted to throw yourself head-first into BDSM. Fortunately, the girls helped you temper that. Shay asked me if it’d be okay to offer for us to step forward as your protectors.”

She had to ask. “What’s that?”

“In terms of protocol for some, it means people had to go through me or Shay before they could play with you. That we were the ones who vetted your play partners. It didn’t stop asshats on Fet from trying to contact you, but you had no problem dealing with and blocking those creeps on your own.”

“Fet?”