I wish I would have been there for you.” He finally found his voice. “I wish I would have been there to beat up all the children who bullied you, to shoot your father dead the first time he broke one of your bones. I wish I would have been there to sweep you out of town and save you from the horrors you went through.”Her eyes widened in surprise and then immediately narrowed as she shook her head. “I didn’t need to have a hero in my life, Mark. I needed to figure out how to be my own hero. I took the easy way out. I allowed small-town people to label me and then I did my very best to live up to the label they’d provided. It’s taken me thirty-seven years to realize I don’t need a hero. I’m all I need and I’m strong enough to build the rest of my life alone.

He laughed, a low, sexy growl, as she moaned in obvious frustration. “Patience is a virtue,” he said. “Torture is a federal offense,” she replied.

In that instant of eye contact, in the mesmerizing depths of that sweet emotion, she felt bound to him in a way she’d never felt connected to another man. It was as if in that moment their hearts and minds, their very souls, were one.