A snippet… from IF YOU SEE HER…

I really like Remy and Hope…

"He was here about you, okay?"

A chill raced down her spine.

And for reasons she couldn't even begin to explain, her heart ached.

"So much for him meaning what he says," she muttered, reaching up and wiping the back of her hand over her mouth.

"What?"

She just shook her head.

"What are you so scared about?"

She laughed, and even to her own ears, the sound was hard and brittle.  "Oh, come on, Law.  He just stood there and told me I don't need to worry him causing trouble for me, that he means what he says and yet he was here grilling you about me."

"Yes.  He was."  Law crossed the room and reached down, caught one of her wrists and lifted it, exposing the healing scars. "Mostly because of these, honey."

She curled her hand into a fist, tensed.  Staring into his hazel eyes, she whispered, "What about these?"

He held tight, his grasp gentle…but firm.  He couldn't, wouldn't, let her get away.   "Hope, somebody tried to kill you.  He beat the shit out of me, but he tried to kill you.  And up until recently, everybody just assumed you'd done yourself.  Remy's a DA.  He's got a job to do, and now you're just as much a victim of a crime as I am."

Hope swallowed the knot in her throat—victim—damn it, she was so fucking tired of being a victim.

Closing her eyes, she reminded herself that she wasn't one now, not unless she let herself be one.  So what if the law decided to view her as one?  That didn't mean she had to see herself as one, that she had to let herself be one…act like one…

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Law.  "So if he was here about these, why didn't he talk to me?"

A shutter fell across Law's eyes.

And just like that, she knew.  Pain, shame, horror, they sliced into her heart, into her soul.  A scream rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.

He knew.

Remy knew.

For some reason, that knowledge was like a lash across her heart.  Raw and unending and painful.

"Oh, shit." Jerking away from him, ignoring the sharp sting it caused in her wrist, she turned away from him.  Nausea churned inside her and if she had had any food inside her belly, she would have vomited every last bit of it up on Law's polished, gleaming hardwood floors.

Instead, she made her way over to the windows and opened it, fighting with the screen until she'd freed that, too.

Leaning forward, she sucked in a breath of air.  But it lodged in her lungs when she saw Remy.

Doing the exact same thing.

He was leaning over the hood of his car, a sleek, silver sports car…a Jaguar, if she wasn't mistaken, his shoulders bowed, head low.

As though he felt her stare, he lifted his head.

A good forty feet separated them, but she still felt the impact of his gaze and it shook her clear down to her very core.  Heat…wrapped in fear, and nerves, and need, and…surprise.

Because he looked every bit as shaken, as worried, as confused as she felt.

Those blue eyes bored into hers.

Her heart raced and for the first time in her life, Hope understood the concept of what it might be like to actually have the world fall away.  In those few seconds, it seemed like nothing, and no one, existed, except for him, and her.

from the Ash series…