“Kellan.” She put a hand on her chest as though catching her breath. “You scared me.”

Oh, likely she wasn’t scared enough of him. He intended to make her understand just how scared she should be, but first he had a case to plead. “Sorry. I just want to talk to you.”

Those gorgeous lips of hers thinned to a stubborn line. “There’s not much to say. You made yourself clear in Dallas. Message received. But now that I’m trying to leave, you’re using that employment contract to force me to stay? It wasn’t intended to force me to work for you.”

She was certainly smart enough to know the contract was a Hail Mary play, but they were very good lawyers. Still, he understood the way the court system worked and how the game was played. “It could take a while to convince a judge of that, and the case would have to be heard in Chicago. Do you need the name of a good attorney?”

“I shouldn’t need a lawyer.”

Probably not, Kell conceded. But he couldn’t let her ask Tate. The big genius would agree to represent her, then likely argue against himself in court.

“You’re being an ass, and I don’t understand why,” she went on. “You’re the one who wanted to be rid of me. So I left. Why does anything I do matter to you anymore?”

“Because they’re desperate, Belle. Could you just hear me out? We might be able to avoid a crappy, embarrassing court case we’re sure to lose.”

“At least you admit I’m right.” Arms crossed, she frowned and turned away from him, watching her dog-thing run around the tiny yard.

“It’s a stall tactic, and you know it. You’ve watched us work enough to know that sometimes we wait out the opposition long enough to make them rethink their position.” He sighed. “Listen, they can’t walk away. They won’t.”

“They?”

This was the hard part. He had to be honest with her. “We. I should probably go, but I don’t want to either, Belle. I need to talk to you before we make any decisions about the situation. But first, think about what Eric and Tate are offering you.”

She turned to him, her eyes wary under the delicate arch of her brows. Even in a cartoonish nightshirt, she was so beautiful it hurt. “I’ve already had a dose of what they’re offering me. I think I should keep waiting.”

“You’re not being fair, Belle. You are the singular most forgiving person I know, so why are you punishing them for my stance? You dropped a bomb on us that night.”

“It wasn’t a bomb, just the honest truth.”

“Maybe, but the news hit me like a ton of bricks.” He sighed because she was being naïve. “The honest truth is telling Eric that you liked the way he kissed or Tate that you swooned at the sight of him without a shirt, or even admitting that you enjoyed the spanking I gave you. Springing your virginity on us? That was a megaton bomb that blew up in my face. I admit that I didn’t handle it well. Don’t punish Eric and Tate for my behavior.”

She sat on one of the white patio chairs in the shady courtyard and hugged herself in the morning breeze. She seemed almost frail in that moment, though it was an illusion. Belle was strong. Kell had no doubt she’d easily survive his stupidity.

As much as he hated to admit it, he was the fucking fragile one. He pulled out the chair beside her, legs scraping the flagstone gently, then sank down. He ached to hold her close, but he’d lost that right. Hell, he’d never had it in the first place, and it was time to let her know why. “You know I was married, right?”

Belle shook her head, her long black hair caressing her shoulders softly. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“Maybe I don’t have to, but I should.” Otherwise, nothing between them would work. She’d keep hoping for more from him because she always expected the best in others. And he’d just keep hurting her because he wasn’t strong enough to walk away again on his own accord. “Belle, I’m trying to salvage any sort of relationship between us because I really do care about you. I don’t even want to think about a world where I don’t see you, but you need to understand why I can’t do the hearts and flowers thing. Do you hate me so much that you won’t even listen?”

Somehow he hadn’t expected that of her. He should know better than anyone that a single moment could change a person for life. He should know that one betrayal could make an idealist bitter. He stood, sick to his stomach that he’d been the one to do it to her. Damn it to hell, he was going to have to find the strength to walk away from all of them because he was toxic if he could ruin someone as sweet as Belle with a few careless words. Destroying her would kill his best friends, too.

He just fucked everything up wherever he went.

“Never mind. I won’t force you to hear this.” He curled his fingers into a fist to stop himself from touching her. “I’m sorry.”

Belle touched him, a hesitant caress of her fingertips on the back of his hand, so soft he almost didn’t feel it. “Stop. You think I hate you, Kellan, and I don’t.”

When he looked down he saw that gorgeous face he knew so well, the one he saw every day while he worked and dreamed of every night when he slept. It tore at his heart. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

She shook her head. “I know you were married. Since you’re not anymore, I assume it didn’t end well.”

He eased back into the chair beside her, so close now their knees nearly touched. The intimacy of their closeness in the early morning light made it easier to confess his past.

“It was more than the end. Way more.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, trying to ease away the tension. “I met Lila in law school. We were the golden couple of our class.”

The slightest smile tugged her lips up. “I can see that.”

His head sometimes hurt just thinking about his ex-wife and her machinations. “My father is a judge.”

“In DC, right?”

“Yes, he’s a federal court judge, but before that he was a lawyer for years. Kent and Associates was a powerhouse firm. We made millions. When the president appointed dear old dad, I took over the firm. Well, Lila and I took it over. We hadn’t been married long.” He shook his head, thinking about all his stupid hopes and foolish dreams back then.

Belle tucked her hand in his. A stronger man would push her away, but damn, the world seemed like a better place when she touched him.

“Obviously, the divorce had a profound effect on you, Kell. You must have loved her very much.” A well of sympathy filled her voice.

He winced. That had been part of the problem. Perhaps he could have forgiven himself if he’d been blinded by love. “I thought I did, but I’m pretty sure now that I chose Lila because she fit the bill, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

That didn’t surprise him. Belle wouldn’t marry for any reason but pure, abiding love. “I was ready to start my life and getting married was the next step. I had a plan, you see.”

“Not surprising. You always have a plan.”

He was a list maker, a man who usually thought out his next twelve steps before taking one. He’d never been a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants thinker the way Eric could be. He’d never had impulsive moments like Tate. Nope, he thought through every pro and con, then made decisions based on his sometimes laborious risk assessment.

Loving Belle was too much of a danger. He’d decided that long ago.

“I wanted to go into politics. It probably sounds stupid, but I decided to seek office when I was a kid. I’m sure it had something to do with pleasing my parents. My mom was a wonderful woman. From the time I was little, she always said I should be president. We’ve had a few senators in our family, but Mom thought I deserved to be the first Kent to achieve the nation’s highest office. She put it just like that, too. I was convinced I wanted to help people. So corny.”

“Not at all. I think it’s admirable.”

Belle could be so naïve. “Did I really want to help people? Or was I just an ambitious fuck who had too much money and always wanted the best of everything? Being president looked like the best job, so I’d made up my mind to surround myself with the appropriate trappings and go for it. Lila was pretty and so smart it hurt. Hell, she was smarter than I was. Tate was top of our class, but she was right behind him. I trailed her academically, but she backed my dreams. So we became a pair. About the time I graduated, my mom died of cancer. Her last wish was that I pursue my dreams. She’d given birth to me and when she lay dying, I couldn’t do anything but promise I would.”

“Kellan, at the risk of sounding like Tate, it’s almost statistically impossible to become president. Your mother wouldn’t hold you to a deathbed vow, especially if chasing the goal was making you miserable.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t know my mother. She would be disappointed in me today. But at the time, I was determined to keep my promise. So I proposed to Lila, and we went to work for my dad’s firm. After a year, we started planning my first campaign. State senator. We began fund-raising, and for a while we were really a team. I thought we were happy. I wanted to have kids, but she put me off at first. She agreed it would be great publicity for me to campaign with a pregnant wife, but she wasn’t ready.”

Belle’s little gasp said it all.

“I wanted kids. Having them wasn’t just about the campaign for me. Please understand that. I wasn’t some party guy. I worked eighty hours a week and I was married. I wanted a family to come home to. For months after the wedding, Lila resisted even discussing trying to conceive. She didn’t want to lose her figure in her twenties. She wanted to establish her career. She wanted time with me. That last one was a lie because she was always working. But she had every excuse to avoid becoming a mother. Then suddenly she was ready to throw away her birth control pills. I should have known something was going on, but I chalked it up to her simply coming around to my way of thinking.” He snorted. “And I was a bit behind in the poll numbers.”