He groaned when the alarm went off at seven a.m., not at all ready to let reality intrude.In less than three hours, Tori would be at the airport, boarding her flight back to Portland.She seemed to dread it at least as much as he did. Her little moan vibrated through his chest where her cheek rested. “I don’t want to wake up yet.”“Neither do I,” he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “But it’s time.”The logical side of him knew that sending her home, away from him, was the best way to assure her safety.The man hunting him was a professional, not a psychopath. He would have no cause to harm Tori, so long as she wasn’t standing in the way of his true target.Ethan couldn’t think of any better place for her to avoid the assassin’s crosshairs than all the way across the country.But there was another side of him that could hardly bear the thought of letting Tori out of his reach. The part of him that didn’t spend almost every waking moment watching for incoming enemy fire, or portents of a hellish disaster on the horizon, wanted nothing more than to keep her close.As close as they’d been before Henry Sheppard issued the Phoenix down distress call.Closer even than they had been before.
