Surrender (Careless Whispers #3)(14)

“I told you. It’s a decoy.”

“And yet he told me not to give it to ‘him’ as he died. That makes no sense.”

Kayden sets the iPad on the desk. “But I’d argue it as fact.”

“Based on what?”

“We know that Neuville being there in that hotel, and your needing his help, wasn’t an accident. And if that necklace was real, he would have taken it from you.”

“Unless I’d already hidden it.”

“At that point, you didn’t seem to know what was going on.”

“I’m smart enough to know everything wasn’t as it should be, and I darn sure knew there was a note in the necklace. I also knew that wasn’t normal. And you said that address was a drop location. David left the necklace with me.”

“He went to negotiate a higher price, and it backfired.”

“He left the necklace with me.”

“And checked you out of your room.”

“He also begged me not to let ‘him,’ whoever he is, have the necklace. Why would he do that if it was a decoy?” My stomach knots. “Unless . . . he didn’t. Neuville either set all of it up or he intercepted David and whoever he was working for.” I press my hands to my face, frustrated with myself. “I have to remember.”

Kayden steps to me and lowers my hands, his covering mine, now resting between us. “You will. And talking about it seems to fill in holes for you.”

“Yes. It does, actually.”

“So talk to me,” he encourages. “Tell me the part we both know you don’t want to talk about.”

“How I ended up with Neuville.” I hate that just his name sends a shiver of dread down my spine.

“Yes. How did you end up with Neuville?”

I withdraw from Kayden, moving to sit in the chair, and he doesn’t try to stop me. Somehow, he seems to understand that I’m not rejecting him. I’m just not capable of reaching the monster in my life when the man I love is touching me.

“I had a dying man at my feet,” I say, as Kayden once again leans on the desk, “a necklace in my pocket, and people after me who would likely kill me for it.”

“And you had no money or resources in Paris,” he supplies, leading me to my next decision.

“Exactly. And knowing I had the necklace that seemed to be the reason David was killed, I couldn’t call the police without taking the risk of alerting who knows who. I needed help, and I needed it fast.”

“You called Neuville.”

“Yes,” I confirm. “Where else was I going to go? He was conveniently the only person I knew. The man set up to be standing in my path. He was this rich, powerful man who seduced me with any method he could including the promise of a safe place to hide that was never safe at all.”

“You were drawn to him,” Kayden says, and it’s not a question.

My eyes meet his, and the combination of knowledge in his eyes and understanding in my belly punches me in the chest. But I don’t run from it, or try to sidestep it. “Yes,” I admit, self-loathing filling me. “I was. Too much in the beginning, I think, and being that bad a judge of character doesn’t seem accurate. I don’t understand it, yet I’ve had random flashbacks that tell me it’s the case.”

Kayden pushes off the desk and steps in front of me, offering me his hand. I flatten my palm in his, warmth radiating up my arm, across my shoulders and chest. But I don’t look up and make eye contact, instead savoring the way I feel him everywhere, in places he isn’t touching me but I want him to touch me. In places deep in my soul that somehow I still don’t know, but he does. We linger like that a few moments, connected in ways that I know I have never felt with any other person, right in ways that I somehow know few things have been in my life before him. And this bond I share with this man only drives home how odd my pull to Neuville had been.

It is this question I’m still asking when Kayden gently urges me to my feet, but when I would search those now warm blue eyes for an answer, he simply offers me one. “We’re all human,” he says. “You were alone, and from what I can tell, you’d been alone a very long time.”

Somehow he’s hit on exactly my feelings when I’d called Neuville that night at the chocolate shop. “That’s not an excuse for not seeing him for the criminal he was right away. I might not know if I was CIA or not, but I know I’ve had the training and experience to see through that man.”

“He’s the head of the French mob for a reason,” he says, his hands settling on my waist. “He’s a master manipulator.”

“Don’t make excuses for me, Kayden,” I say, my fingers balling around his shirt. “Excuses equal weakness, and you can’t have a weak woman by your side, any more than I want to be one.”

He turns us, settling me against the desk, his hands on the desk on either side of me, mine beside his, while his big body frames mine but does not touch it. “I didn’t give you an excuse, Ella,” he says, his voice strong, almost hard. “I gave you a reason, a way to understand your actions and decisions, because you can’t control what you don’t understand. You are human—and if you forget that, it becomes a weakness. Know yourself. Know what can or cannot get to you, because your enemy always will.”