"And Anna."

"I still love you, honey. And the last time I saw someone as full of love as Anna, I was looking into your grandfather's eyes. Your father loved your mother like that, too. All the way.

Holding nothing back. No matter what."

"I made her lie for me."

"Cole." His name was a warning on his grandmother's lips. "Don't keep on with the lying. Don't keep getting yourself in trouble. Yes, you benefited from the lies. But so did she, otherwise she wouldn't have gone through with it."

But the fact that Anna had made her own choices didn't change the fact that he was ruining her life, that he'd gone and done it all in the span of one short week.

"I need to let her go she can have a normal life, marry a guy who's good enough for her."

A guy he would dream of killing with his bare hands each and every night.

"I know you think you've broken her heart. But little cracks, that's all there are in it right now. You want to really see it break, you go ahead and let a better man have her. I thought you were smarter than this, Cole." His grandmother hadn't talked to him like this since bailing him out of jail his freshman year at college. "Do you really not see that your entire future is Anna?

Are you really going to just up and throw it all away? You've fought before, honey. Fight again.

Fight like hell to fix what you've done wrong. And when you get back on the straight and narrow, don't ever look back. Only forward."

Word for word, it was what she'd said to him when he was nineteen. How could he have forgotten?

Playing football had been important, had given him a purpose, a reason to feel good about himself in the morning. Football had been more than just his livelihood, it had been his everything.

But he could play a thousand more games, could keep getting up in the morning, keep depositing those big checks into his bank account, and it wouldn't matter.

Not without Anna.

Because she was his everything.

And he was going to get her back. Somehow, some way, he was going to convince her she needed to be with him.

When someone knocked, Cole looked up expecting to see Anna, and was surprised to see the doctor with her.

Please, God, no. Not this, too.

When his grandmother had been railing at him, trying to knock some sense into his thick head, he'd almost forgotten she was sick. She looked and sounded just like the woman of fifteen years ago who'd twisted his ear and told him, "Don't f**k up again."

"Mr. Taylor, I thought I'd bring your wife back inside so that I could give the whole family the news at the same time." Cole could barely process the hint of a smile in the doctor's eyes. "Eugenia, you are a remarkable woman."

His grandmother shot him a triumphant glance. "I've always told my grandson that."

"And I've always known it." Cole's insides were so f**ked up by now that his words sounded like gravel scraping on the bottom of shoe.

"I'm sorry, this isn't fair of me to draw it out like this. It's just that it's so much fun, one of the highlights of my job, actually, to deliver such good news."

Cole almost shot up out of his seat to grab the doctor and shake the rest of it out of her, but a small sound from Anna distracted him, had him looking at her instead. She held one hand over her heart, the other wrapped tightly around his grandmother's hand.

"We'll have to do more blood work, but based on the tests we did last night, I think we're heading out of the woods. Hopefully for good."

Cole could have sworn the clouds parted outside the window, that sunlight streamed into the room just as his grandmother whooped like she used to in the casinos when they got a big winner at the slot machines, as happy for a stranger as she would have been if she'd taken home the jackpot.

The ray of light illuminated Anna and he was struck for the hundredth time by her beauty.

Her innocence. The pure goodness the radiated from her core.

And as he met her eyes and smiled to celebrate his grandmother's victory, that was when his wife finally let herself cry.

Not because he'd just broken her heart.

But because a woman she'd only met a week ago might not die after all.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cole had a game to play Sunday, but he wasn't the only one who hated the thought of leaving his grandmother again so soon, especially when there was such good news to celebrate.

Anna barely knew his grandmother, but she was as happy about the news of her recovery as any one of Eugenia's close friends would have been.

For the first time, Cole was damn glad for the small hospital room. Because it meant Anna was close to him. It meant he could drink in her beauty. It meant he could listen to her sweet conversation with his grandmother. It meant he could soak in her laughter for a little while longer.

Still, the entire time the three of them were together there, Anna never once spoke to him.

Or looked directly at him. She was wholly focused on Eugenia. He only left the hospital room once to make a quick side trip. The taxi waited outside the hotel with the package--a gift for Anna, one he hoped she'd love.

After booking them on the very last flight out of town, they got into the taxi. He could tell she wasn't going to say anything more to him on the trip home than she had on the way to Las Vegas.

"I, uh, picked up something for you."

Her expression became even colder. "I told you already, I don't want your bribes."

"I heard you, Anna. I swear I heard every word you said." He picked up the carrier bag that had been waiting on the floor of the taxi by his feet. "It's not jewelry."

She looked at the moving package on her lap in surprise. She shook her head. "Whatever it is, I can't take it. Not from you."

But he was already unzipping the bag, just enough that a wet nose and tongue licked across her hand. And then, just as he'd known she would, she was pulling the mutt out of his temporary home and hugging the fur ball to her. She didn't let go of the dog for the rest of the taxi ride, held the carrier bag close all through the airport, and constantly checked on the mutt under the seat in front of her during the ride home.

She loved the fifteen-pound ball of fur with everything she had from the moment it licked her.

That could have been me.

But he was an ass**le who didn't deserve her. Even now, instead of finally letting her go to rebuild the life he'd torn apart, all Cole wanted was to hold her hostage in the limo and take her back to his house. All he could think about was finding some way to convince her that he really was sorry.