She waited.

He didn’t blink.

“No.”

Okay, so he was good at this game. She was better.

She raised her chin and gave him the sort of smile she’d dreamed of giving a handsome older man but never had the guts or the chance to try it.

“Too bad.”

“Eleanor, we need to discuss the predicament you’re in at the moment.”

She nodded her agreement.

“I’m in a real pickle.”

Smile? Laugh? Withering glare? Nothing.

“You were arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto. Several luxury vehicles with a combined value of a quarter of a million dollars were stolen tonight. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“I take the Fifth,” she said, proud of her legal knowledge. “That’s what I’m supposed to say, right?”

Now she received the withering glare she’d been hoping for.

“To the courts, yes. To me, never. To me, you will tell the truth always.”

“I don’t think you want to know the truth about me, Søren.” She dropped her voice to a whisper at the moment she said his name. It seemed like a magic word to her, his name. Like knowing his name meant something special like it did in fairy tales.

“Eleanor, there is nothing I don’t want to know about you. Nothing you tell me will shock or disgust me. Nothing will cause me to change my mind about you.”

“Change your mind? You’ve already made up your mind about me? What’s the verdict?” She braced herself, not wanting the answer. They had nothing in common, she and her priest. He looked like money, talked like money. He had the whitest fingernails she’d ever seen on a man. White fingernails, perfect hands like a marble sculpture of a Greek god. And her? She was a f**king train wreck. Chipped black nail polish, soaked clothes, dripping wet hair and her entire life over in one night.

“The verdict is this—I am willing and capable of helping you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into tonight.”

“Can we call it a pickle? Pickle sounds less scary than mess.”

“It’s a disaster, young lady. The car they caught you stealing belongs to a very powerful man. He’s already demanding the police try you as an adult and put you away for the maximum sentence. You could spend years in juvenile detention, or worse—an adult facility. At the very least, this man doesn’t want you seeing sunlight until you’re twenty-one years old. Blessedly, I have some connections in this area. Or, more accurately, I have someone who has some connections in this area.”

For the first time since they started speaking, he broke eye contact with her. He glanced away into the corner of the room. His face wore the strangest expression. Whoever this powerful person was, Søren didn’t seem all that excited about asking him. In fact, if she had to guess, she’d say he was dreading it.

“You’re going to go through all this trouble for me, why?”

Søren looked back at her and gave her a smile that stripped her soul naked and put it on its knees.

“Because there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Eleanor. Nothing I wouldn’t do to help you and nothing I wouldn’t do to save you. Nothing.”

The way he spoke the final “nothing” sent a chill through her body. It scared her instead of comforting her. He meant it. That was why it scared her.

“That’s not an answer. You’re saying you’re helping me because you’re helping me.”

“I am.”

“There’s no other reason?”

“There is, but I can’t tell what it is yet.”

“But you will?”

“In time. But first, Eleanor, there is something you should know.”

Eleanor sat up straight her in her chair and gave him her full attention.

“What?”

“There is a price you will have to pay.”

“Oh, goodie,” she said, and gave him a wide smile. “Now we get back to my first question about the f**king of the kids at church. Well, if you insist.”

“Do you value your worth as a child of God so little that you presume I would only help in exchange for sex?”

He asked the question calmly and with only curiosity in his tone, but the words still hit as hard as a fist in her stomach.

“So that’s a no?”

Søren raised an eyebrow at her and Eleanor was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was beginning to like this guy. She’d fallen in love with him the moment she first saw him, and she would love him now until the end of world. But she’d never dreamed she’d like him so much.

“That would be a no,” he said. “I will, however, require something from you.”

“Do you always talk like this?”

“You mean articulately?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Weird. So what am I paying you for your help? I hope it’s not my firstborn child or anything. Don’t want kids.” She wasn’t sure about that last part but it sounded kind of tough.

“My price is simply this—in exchange for my assistance, I ask that you do what I tell you to do from now on.”

“Do what you tell me to do?”

“Yes. I want you to obey me.”

“From now on?” She couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. “Like, for how long?”

Søren looked at her again, looked at her without smiling, without blinking, without jesting, without joking. He looked at her like the next word he said would be the most important word he ever spoke and the most important word she ever heard.