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hours—”
    “No.”
    “Evie.”
    “I said no. I’m not going, and you can’t force me. I don’t want to be holed up in some box of a house with a couple boring agents, unable to go anywhere or do anything. Besides, unless you made some changes in the last couple of years, you don’t even have a house here in Charlotte.”
    She paused, waiting for his response, but he said nothing, impressed she remembered the details of his job he’d deigned to share. Of course he had never told her where the safe house was located, just that they shared houses with other agencies in locations that were a few hours out of North Carolina.
    “Also,” she continued in an even, if not calm tone, “Anthony isn’t looking to hurt me. If I’m in Charlotte, wouldn’t it work out better for you?”
    Kian admitted she had a point. “I can’t use you as bait, Evie.”
    “I’m not asking you to. Just let me stay here.”
    He ran a hand over the back of his head and hesitated. “You could stay at the house. I have good security. There’s the extra bedroom.” He expected her to turn him down flat, but she nodded.
    “That might be the best solution. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” She looked at him, and it came to him what she meant.
    “No, you’re not.”
    “Okay, then it’s settled.” She gasped, and a haunted expression came over her face. He started to reach for her hand, but she drew in a deep breath and blew it out. He recognized that determination. “I need to go back for my clothes and my laptop.”
    “I’ll get someone to pack a bag for you.”
    “No way some agent is rifling through my panties, Kian. I need to do it.”
    He bit off a grunt at her use of the word panties. Inviting her to stay with him might not have been as good an idea as he thought.  “I’ll take you over there later. Right now I have to get moving on locating the men responsible for the drive-by and re-interview another.”
    “Are there any leads?”
    “Not yet, but we’ll find him. I promise.”
    Kian drove Evie to the house they’d shared and watched as she walked inside. Her eyes showed recognition, but she turned her head so he couldn’t see if she experienced a feeling of coming home. Having her there did something to him. For weeks after she left, he’d run into her scent or evidence of her in various spots. When he’d broken down to do laundry one day, he’d come across a T-shirt of his she had loved to wear. The material smelled like her even after he’d washed it, and he had lay in bed with it on his chest. At that time, he’d refused to go after her, deciding they were better off apart. He had blamed her and didn’t want to see differently.
    Evie strode past his bedroom without looking in. He followed her, noticed the pantyhose on the floor, and grimaced. Meghan had left them. He frowned and swooped them up to stuff into his pocket. Evie paused at the spare bedroom and looked back at him. “Anything wrong?”
    “No.”
    She peered into the spare bedroom, and this time, he did catch a little something. Her blink appeared deliberate and more rapid than normal. The next instant, she spun away from the room. “Is there a bed in the other room, or are you still using it for storage?”
    “There are some boxes. I can move them and transfer the bed. It’s smaller in there.”
    “I don’t mind, and I can move the bed myself.”
    He questioned whether she chose the third room because she wanted to be farther away from him or because that room was to be their future baby’s. “I’ll move the bed, Evie. Don’t touch it. I’ll be back early tonight.”
    She frowned at him. “I’ll have to go to the grocery store.”
    “The fridge is stocked. You can have anything you want.”
    “I want to take care of myself.”
    He moved past her and began picking up boxes from the third bedroom to carry into the second one.
    “What are you doing?”
    He continued working. “I’m doing what I know you’re going to do the