Mine to Take by Cynthia Eden Page A

longer.
    Maybe Weston had been taking all those trips to the Big Apple strictly for business.
    Or maybe…maybe he’d been heading to New York for another reason.
    Alex had pulled Skye’s accident report. He’d read her statement about someone following her. Forcing her off the road.
    The more he probed, the more he worried.
    Skye Sullivan was in danger. He just hoped she wasn’t putting her trust in the wrong person. 
    A mistake like that could prove fatal for her.
    ***
    Trace kept his hand curved around Skye as they headed through the hotel’s lobby. The marble floor gleamed up at him as the concierge quickly escorted them to the private elevator.
    Skye wasn’t speaking. She was barely making eye contact with him, and he hated that.
    He missed how they used to be.
    I’ll have that again.
    He’d have everything again.
    The elevator doors closed, and the ascent began. The elevator slid up, higher and higher.
    “Uh, Mr. Weston?” The concierge—Max—cleared his throat. “Is there anything that you’ll be needing tonight?”
    Trace didn’t even try to take his eyes off Skye. She’d slept on the plane. He’d been too wired to even consider dozing off. “I have everything I need.” His voice rumbled. 
    Skye’s gaze cut to his.
    The elevator’s doors opened.
    Max scrambled outside. “Y-your suite is waiting, sir. Of course, it’s our plaza suite, just as you always request when you visit to see the—”
    “I know the suite,” Trace cut through his words before Max could say anymore. The fellow was damn chatty tonight. 
    Max hurriedly opened the suite room door.  Skye strode inside. Her head tilted back as she looked up at the massive chandelier that waited in the great room.
    “You…um…are you sure you don’t want the personal chef to come up?” Max lingered near the door as the bellhop brought in their luggage. “It’s late, but never too late for you, Mr. Weston—”
    He knew that the personal chef came with the suite. Trace just didn’t want the guy up there at that moment. He wanted to be alone with Skye. “Send him up for breakfast,” Trace said. His gaze narrowed on the bellhop. “All the bags go in the master bedroom.”
    Skye had paused at the windows that overlooked Fifth Avenue. It seemed her shoulders tensed.
    She’d heard his order about the bags.
    But she wasn’t arguing.
    Yet.
    The bellhop and the concierge left a few minutes later. The door eased shut behind them.
    Skye kept staring down at the city below. “Sometimes, I forget what New York is like…”
    Snow fell lightly past the window. They’d flown out of rain in Chicago and right into a late snowfall in New York. 
    Her hand lifted and touched the pane of glass. “When I was a kid, New York was everything to me. The people here…they were happy. Famous. Everyone loved them.”
    When she’d been a kid, she’d bounced from foster home to foster home.
    She’d found dancing thanks to a social worker who’d wanted her to have an outlet. That outlet had been at a small, community center. Skye had once told him how nervous she’d been the first day she walked into that center.
    She’d been nervous, until she danced.
    Skye turned away from the window.  “The suite, Trace?” She cleared her throat. “There are only two of us. Do you really think we need…what is this?” She glanced around with pursed lips. “I’m guessing…four thousand square feet?”
    “Forty-five hundred.”  He pulled off his coat. Tossed it aside.  Went to her.
    “Any room would have worked. Any—” 
    His hand cupped her chin.  “When I was a kid, I dreamed of not being hungry.”  She would know this. Far better than anyone else. “I dreamed of not wearing someone else’s used clothes. Of not being the one mocked because my shoes had holes in them.”  His parents hadn’t died like Skye’s. His parents just hadn’t given a shit.
    They’d forgotten him most days. Left him to feed and clothe himself.
    The day the