Watch Me by Cynthia Eden Page B

missed you.”
    She shook her head.
    “And when I realized you were more important than anything else, it was too late. You were with Ethan.” His jaw hardened. “He wasn’t good enough for you. I knew it. I didn’t need your father to tell me that. But when Will asked me to dig into the guy’s past, I did. And I found the skeletons there.”
    Shady deals. An ex-fiancée who’d died under mysterious circumstances. Another former lover who swore that Ethan had become obsessed and attacked her…or at least, that was what the police report claimed. The woman had later dropped those charges and seemingly just vanished from the face of the earth. The dark secrets from Ethan’s past had kept piling up, and they’d terrified Gwen.
    But even before Chance had revealed all of the dirty details of Ethan’s past to her, Gwen had already realized she was done with the other man. Her heart had never been with him. She’d been trying to escape the emptiness she felt inside by being with Ethan. But there was no escape.
    I could never get away from Chance.
    “I was planning to break up with him, even before you came with your evidence.” He’d been so cold that day. Just seeing Chance had hurt. And to learn so many painful truths about Ethan.
I suck at choosing lovers.
    Either she picked men who didn’t want her…like Chance.
    Or she picked men who were psychotically determined to never let her go. Like Ethan?
    So screwed.
    “I was jealous of him,” Chance said.
    Her brows pulled together.
    “Insanely jealous.” Now he walked from behind the desk. His steps were slow. His gaze fierce. “I hated the thought of him touching you. I hated the thought of him being anywhere near you. I wanted him gone from your life long before I found out about his past.”
    “Chance?”
    “Some of the things he said today at Wicked were true. I did think the bastard never should have touched you.”
    He was closing in on her, and Gwen’s feet felt rooted to the spot. She couldn’t have moved then, no matter what. But, well, she didn’t
want
to leave. Not when he was telling her his secrets.
    “I wanted to be the one touching you.” He stopped in front of her. And Chance lifted his hand. The back of his fingers slid over her cheek. “I wanted to be the one holding you. The one giving you pleasure. The one giving you everything that you needed. But first, I had to get Ethan out of your life.”
    Her gaze searched his.
    “You broke up with him. Told him to stay away, and I thought I might have a shot with you.” His fingers fell away from her. “Then he came after you and…that night…you saw me for the man I truly am.”
    She grabbed his hand. Her fingers curled around his.
    “You told me to stay away, and I did.”
    Gwen licked lips that had gone too dry. “I was terrified and angry that night. Haven’t you ever said anything you didn’t mean?”
    His gaze fell to her lips. “Yes.”
    She waited, hardly daring to breathe.
    “I can’t do this,” he whispered.
    Those were the words—the four painful words—that had pierced her heart on Christmas Eve.
    “Those are the words I didn’t mean. Because there was never anything more that I wanted to do…than just to be with you.”
    She blinked because her eyes were filling with tears. Crazy, ridiculous tears but—
    A knock sounded at the door.
No, not now!
    “What is it?” Chance demanded, his voice roughening.
    The door opened behind Gwen. She didn’t look back. At that moment, she just couldn’t take her eyes off Chance.
    “Dev and I are going out for some recon work,” Lex said. “You and Gwen going to stay here for a while?”
    Chance’s gaze was on her. “For a while,” he agreed.
    Her heart nearly leapt from her chest.
    “We’ll swing by the police station,” Lex continued, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room. Tension that was about to rip Gwen apart. “If the cops have more evidence on Ethan, we’ll let you know.”
    Chance nodded.
    A few