Chapter 1
Nathaniel Morgan King IV stared through the two-story windows of his penthouse at the Manhattan skyline while dusk fell over the city. Rusty reds and flaming oranges bled across the gathering darkness. His stomach tightened at the impressive light show as sleep beckoned.
The nightmares had woken him again last night, dragging him back to the cellar room, the fetid smell of his own urine, the pain of fresh bruises covering old wounds and the fear crawling over his skin...
He drew in a steadying breath and turned from the dying conflagration as it settled over the Hudson. Knocking back a glass of bourbon, he let the sultry burn scour his throat, the shadows stretching across the room's luxury furniture. The liquor glowed in his empty stomach but provided no warmth.
A ringtone blared through his system.
It took several seconds for his thundering heartbeat to settle back into his chest. He lifted the cellphone to his ear, irritation dissolving the grip of anxiety.
"Nate, how's it hanging?" Brett Charles, his old pal and the current COO of Morgan-King Enterprises, asked, his voice buoyant with false bonhomie.
"Better before you called," Nate growled.
"Hey, man. Don't be like that. Listen, I called to give you a heads-up. I've hired you a Girl Friday, she starts in the morning."
"What?" Sweat broke out on his upper lip and crawled down his spine.
He couldn't be around people. He didn't know how to be around people anymore. And he didn't want to be.
The terrifying memory of shouted questions, the blazing camera lights and too many people suffocating him when he'd stepped out of the private jet at JFK and into a firestorm of publicity still churned in his stomach from six months ago, every time he contemplated leaving the penthouse.
"You need to get out of there, Nate." His now ex-friend's voice lost the grating cheerfulness and softened with concern. Nate hated the concern more. "You're turning into Robinson Crusoe, but without the paradise island. Or that chick in the tower with the really hot hair. You need to get used to people again. Or you'll never get over what those bastards did to you."
Nate swore under his breath, the fury gathering pace. "I am around people. I have a cleaning crew you insisted on hiring for me, remember?" The thought still rankled, that he'd had so little say in his own life when he'd returned to New York. Because he hadn't been able to function. Hadn't even been able to walk or talk for the first couple weeks.
"Who you never see or speak to," Brett shot back, "because you won't let them live in."
"I don't want people here when I'm sleeping. I told you why," he said grudgingly.
"You still having the nightmares?" Brett asked. "Perhaps we should call in the shrink again?"
"No!" The word exploded from his lungs. "No more shrinks. No more behavioral psychologists, or trauma specialists. I don't want anyone else in my head." Because there were more than enough ghosts there already. "Nor do I want anyone invading my personal space."
Especially not a woman, he thought bitterly. Knowing Brett, he would have hired a PA who looked like a supermodel—because Brett with his jock sensibilities thought all Nate really needed was to get laid.
Not happening.
It had been over a year since anyone touched him with his consent. And he planned to keep it that way.
He shuddered, forced to relive that last evening in Rome…his naked, unmarked body humming with afterglow, the beautiful seductress who had lured him in like a black widow spider, lying in bed watching him with lust darkening her eyes, and then… Vicious pain exploded in his skull and he woke up, groggy, hurting, and alone in the dark, dragged down to spend a hundred and eighty-six days and nights in hell.
He shook off the pain, which still lingered.
He'd survived. Against all the odds. Returning home to find his grandfather dead, and the business empire he had inherited in Brett's capable hands… He didn't leave the penthouse, because he didn't need to, he didn't want to. Solitude was his strength now.
"I mean it, Brett," he said, putting the impotent rage that still consumed him into the caustic tone. "You send this woman here, and you and she will both regret it."