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“Nice to meet you.”

“I thought you worked here,” Julia tells me in a somewhat accusatory tone.

“I do, actually, but not today. I’m a nurse practitioner.”

“She runs the clinic,” Theresa adds, with a nod and a smile for me.

“The scrubs threw us off,” Isabel explains apologetically.

“Of course. I don’t normally wear them on my day off, but I needed something clean.”

Julia reenters the conversation, addressing her brother as she looks him up and down. “You needed something clean too?”

Rick grunts in response, and it suddenly occurs to me he wouldn’t have had a chance to fill his sisters in on what preceded their mother’s heart attack. They have no idea.

I’m about to give them a filtered down synopsis of what brought us to this point—I figure they deserve to know—when the door opens and Agent Mancuso walks in.

He nods at me, lifts his chin at Rick, and then turns to the woman in the bed.

“Mrs. Rojas, glad to see you are doing better.”

“And who are you?”

Julia steps around the bed, blocking her mother from Mancuso’s view. The agent doesn’t seem offended at the rude greeting and flashes a dimpled smile instead.

“Special Agent Jason Mancuso, ma’am.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “FBI?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do you want with our mother?”

“Julia!” Theresa scolds her daughter.

But Mancuso doesn’t seem at all offended. “I just need to ask a few questions.”

Rick groans beside me, and Isabel has her eyes fixed on him as she steps up next to her sister.

“Rico? What the hell is going on?”

Chapter 28

Dana

* * *

“Yesss, there.”

I dig my fingers in the firm globes of Rick’s ass in an attempt to urge him deeper.

He grunts softly in my ear as he pistons inside of me, and I feel every muscle in his body hard with tension.

The moment my body starts convulsing with the force of my orgasm, his carefully controlled tension releases and he bucks erratically until he finally plants himself deep with a loud groan.

I welcome his weight on me, as we catch our breath and let the lingering shudders leave our bodies. My hands rub soothingly down his back, and I close my eyes to fully savor this bubble of intimacy. As spectacular as our lovemaking can be, it’s these quiet, vulnerable moments—when our bodies are depleted and our minds blissfully silent—I crave most. No protective shields, no ambient noise, just two people completely open to each other.

“I love you…”