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“In two hours, you’ll have no idea this happened,” a salty older woman with peroxided hair assured. “If you’ve got some touch-up paint, we’ll be in business. Fresh sheets, a little bit of treatment on the carpets . . . good as new.”

After showing the crew where to find what they needed, Luc followed Jack downstairs. Hunter awaited them, pacing the kitchen.

“I made a few phone calls to some friends,” Kimber’s brother said. “They’re working on a psych profile of the perp. But at a glance, I’d say you’re dealing with someone who’s obsessed with your wife. Your wedding seems to have infuriated him, since he stepped up his game shortly thereafter.”

Someone like Primpton? Or Tyler, who had a real reason to be jealous?

“If it’s the same guy as before.”

Hunter raised a tawny brow. “How many stalkers can she have?”

“You ever seen my wife onstage?”

Hunter hesitated, then grimaced. “Good point.”

Pushing aside the thought that yet another male had seen his wife close to naked, he focused instead on what to do next. “I can’t sit here. I need to exhaust all possibilities, and that means finding Tyler.”

But where was the bastard?

Into the pensive silence, his phone rang. Deke. “Find something?”

“I’ve got a buddy who knows a guy who works for the electric company there in Lafayette. He’s done a cross-reference of the name Tyler Murphy to coincide with an initial service date between May and July. We have three possibilities. There’s a Murphy Taylor, a T. Patrick Murphy, and a T. S. Murphy. I’m e-mailing a list of their addresses to your BlackBerry right now.”

Thank God. Maybe they were getting somewhere. Luc prayed to God he’d find his wife soon. He hoped she’d simply been scared and gone to the closest person who made her feel safe. That, he understood. Reluctantly, yes, but . . . If she had simply been shaken, why hadn’t she called in all these hours?

The three hopped back in Jack’s SUV, agreeing to hit Murphy Taylor’s house first, since it was less than a mile away. Luc darted out of the vehicle as they rolled to a stop in the man’s driveway and pounded on the door. A pretty brunette answered. After they identified themselves, she said that her husband was in the UK on business. Her pretty brown eyes soft with sympathy, she showed them a picture of her husband, just to be certain. Definitely not the Tyler they were looking for.

Cursing, his stomach twisting, they pulled out and headed to T. Patrick Murphy’s residence. It was an apartment on the northwest edge of town. Again, Luc knocked impatiently on the door. A moment later a young man answered, maybe all of twenty. Tall, lanky, and exhausted.

After blessing them out for waking someone in the middle of his sleep who worked graveyard shifts, the men muttered their apologies and left. Luc’s stomach sank. One more possibility. Luc didn’t want to think about what he was going to do if the last lead was a dead end. It almost certainly meant she’d been abducted, and he couldn’t think about Alyssa being afraid or in pain at the hands of a madman. Or dead.

In grim silence, the trio made their way to the southwestern edge of town, to an upscale apartment building. It looked new, gleaming. They drove past a sleek new swimming pool that looked more like a tropical oasis than a man-made water hole. Multiple spas, jogging trail, Wi-Fi included. Definitely more upscale than Tyler could afford on a bouncer’s salary.

Luc’s heart sank, and given Jack’s and Hunter’s grim faces, they had done the math as well. But they continued on until they reached apartment 314 and knocked.

A scuffle and a grunt and a long minute later, the door opened. Tyler stood there. Shock transformed his square face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Do you know where my wife is?”

Tyler raised a brow, then smiled. “Follow me.”

Relief crashed Luc’s system. “She’s here? Is she all right?”

The big tawny bouncer threw a glance over his shoulder, his expression somewhere between confused and annoyed. “Of course.”

Biting back his impatience, Luc trailed Tyler, then registered the fact the other man was walking down the hall of a designer-decorated apartment . . . to the bedroom.

At the end of the hall, Luc came to a stomach-lurching stop. There, Alyssa lay sprawled out across the man’s bed, curled up with his pillow, wearing one of his T-shirts that rode up around her waist, a thong, and nothing else. She was out cold.

Was this really what it looked like?

What else could it be, idiot?
If she’d simply been scared, why hadn’t she called to tell him where she was and that she was safe? Why did she need to get undressed and into Tyler’s bed?

Betrayal slammed him, so deep he almost couldn’t breathe. The sight of her so relaxed and tangled in another man’s sheets gouged his heart out of his chest. For a fleeting moment, he acknowledged that her infidelity was better than her death. But they’d been married less than two weeks. What the fuck did he do now?

“You look like I took a battering ram to your stomach.”

Luc whipped a glare around to the other man. “Didn’t you? How did this work? She came home to find the house vandalized, and called you to protect her, giving you the perfect opportunity to help her out of her clothes? Or did you hit the house to scare her and hope she’d call you, then let you fuck her again?”

“Man, you just don’t get it.”

Tyler shook his head. “Take her home; make sure she rests. And get the hell out of my face.”

His words were dismissive, as if . . . well, as if Tyler knew he’d see Alyssa—and have her—again. Whenever he pleased. Luc gritted his teeth. He ought to leave her here with her lover. He’d been stupid enough to fall for her—hard—and now he was going to pay the price. He’d married her because she carried this man’s child. Now he was getting an inside look at what it had taken for these two to conceive. And didn’t it hurt like a bitch?

But if he’d married Alyssa for this baby, then by damned, he was going to take her home for this baby. She might share her body with Tyler, but Luc planned to dig out a place in her heart and make it his, find some way to make her care so that her every betrayal became a rending ache on her conscience.

Gritting his teeth, Luc approached the bed and lifted his sleeping wife into his arms. She barely stirred. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. She’s just exhausted.”

Meaning Tyler often fucked her into a near coma? The bastard was trying to piss him off.

Luc jerked Alyssa closer to his chest. And he couldn’t lie—even knowing what she’d done, he was glad that she was safe and whole and close. “Stay the fuck away from my wife.”

“You leave her, then you’re leaving someone else to take care of her. And whatever needs she has.”

Bullshit
. Luc had loved her furiously, desperately, the morning he’d left for Los Angeles. Could she really have had needs so overwhelming in three days that she’d turned to another? Or did she have such feelings for Tyler that Luc’s absence made hopping in the other man’s bed both more convenient
and
a necessity?

He couldn’t stay here and listen to Tyler say another word or he’d turn homicidal. Luc could feel the rage boiling up in his gut, starting to bubble over. As much as Luc hated him, Tyler wasn’t worth prison time.

Then again, if Alyssa was voluntarily fucking her bouncer so soon after their wedding, neither was she.

“Fuck off.”

Jack and Hunter backed down the hall quickly, leaving a path for him; then they exited Tyler’s apartment, emerging into the late-afternoon sun. Luc clutched Alyssa to his chest, purposely avoiding the pitying looks the other men shot him as he climbed into the back of the SUV.

As he settled Alyssa into his lap, he wondered, now that he’d found her, what was he going to do with her?

ALYSSA woke with a headache and a moan. Her limbs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Putting two thoughts together in her sluggish brain wasn’t happening.

Gingerly, she lifted her lids, stunned to find it nearly dark in the shadowed room.
Her
room.

Everything inside her snapped to attention. How had she gotten here? And when? God, it had to be . . . what? Five thirty? Almost six? If Tyler had brought her back, he should know that she should have been at Bonheur hours ago. With a gasp, she rolled over to peek at the clock.

Instead, she found Luc sitting on the edge of the bed, stone still and silent. If his sudden appearance here didn’t tell her something was dreadfully wrong, his face said it for him.

“Luc?” She scrambled to sit up . . . and realized she was wearing Tyler’s T-shirt.

In fact, now that she looked around, everything had changed. The last time she’d seen this room, it had been all but destroyed. Now the bed was made with fresh sheets and blankets. It smelled faintly like paint. The mess was gone. “What—what’s going on?”

He looked grim, and she had the distinct impression he was holding in his fury. “I think it’s time I asked you that question. Someone broke in the house, and you didn’t call me. You called nine-one-one and Tyler, then disappeared for nearly twelve hours. You never called to tell me you were alive. You never answered your phone.”

“I was afraid and . . . I must have left my phone in Tyler’s car. I—”

“I assume you’ve been with him all this time.” He fired the question at her, like a well-aimed laser.

Her stomach pitched and rolled when she realized how this must look to Luc.

“Yes. But—”

“In all that time, you never thought to call me to let me know the psycho who’d broken into the house hadn’t abducted you? Oh, that’s right . . .” He snapped, the sarcasm thick and biting. “You were too busy letting Tyler fuck your brains out to tell your
husband
where the hell you were and that you were alive. I woke Jack up at an ungodly hour, walked away from the taping of my show to hop a plane, and flew across the country. I told the press you were missing. And where do I find you but Tyler’s bed.” He stood, fists and teeth clenched. “Goddamn you!”

Alyssa closed her eyes. Yes, Luc would jump to this conclusion. He must have retrieved her from Tyler’s apartment. From his bed. She winced.

But why couldn’t he get it through his thick head that, despite her “profession,” she’d never step out on him?

“It’s not what you think. Let me explain,” she implored. “I—”

“You’re addicted to his cock?”

“No.” She sighed. “Luc—”

“You’re in love with him?”

She blanched. “No!”

“Then you just get a sick kick out of cheating and making an ass of me?”

How could he believe that for a second? It was probably his anger and residual fear talking, but . . .

Alyssa took a deep breath. Then another. Hadn’t they had this conversation—or one remarkably like it—before Luc had left Louisiana and she’d discovered she was pregnant? Yes. He’d accused her of being Tyler’s main squeeze and fuck buddy for nearly two months. Couldn’t Luc see that she loved
him
? Granted, she’d never said the words, but God, she’d given herself to him in every way, let him into her life, her house. Let him plant his seed in her body. Been thrilled to know she’d always have a part of Luc. And he just kept insisting that she was a whore.

She couldn’t keep living like this.

Rolling away from him, Alyssa found the edge of the bed and stood, making her way to the door.

Luc glared at her. “Where the hell are you going?”

Damn it, she wanted to strangle the man for breaking her heart. “Fuck you.”

As she stormed out the door, his hand clamped around her biceps and he hauled her back to the bed. “Oh, you fucked me. Totally. You’ve got me coming and going so much I don’t know my name half the time. I’m twisted and tied up in you, so goddamn addicted. And you know the sad part? If you took the other man’s T-shirt off your gorgeous body right now, I’d stupidly fall to my knees and be ridiculously grateful for the chance to fuck you again.”

His words hit her like a sledgehammer. Luc had feelings for her, but he was terrified to trust her. Because of who she was. What she’d become. If she told him now that she loved him, would he embrace her and tell her that he loved her, too? Or just laugh in her face?

She was too afraid to find out.

Tears flared at the back of Alyssa’s eyes, stinging. She blinked them away, refusing to cry over this man again. “No, the sad part is you married me believing the worst about me. You never let me tell you what happened today. And now it doesn’t matter. I agreed to this marriage because you seemed to have feelings for me and claimed to want this baby. God, I’m so stupid. You probably even think the baby is Tyler’s.”

His dark eyes drilled her with anguish and fury. “Is it?”