The last sound Meredith Ashford heard before the staircase disappeared beneath her was a whisper.

“Oops.”

It brushed the back of her neck like silk.

Light.

Feminine.

Almost amused.

Then the hand between her shoulder blades shoved harder.

Meredith’s balance snapped at once.

One foot slipped off the edge of the polished marble step, her body pitched forward, and the sweeping staircase in the Ashford mansion became a blur of white stone, iron railing, and exploding light.

She was thirty-two weeks pregnant.

Every instinct in her body surged toward one command.

Protect the baby.

She curled around her stomach as she fell.

Her shoulder slammed the railing.

Pain ripped through her arm.

Her hip struck a step with a crack that made the world flash white.

Her wrist bent beneath her as she tried to catch herself and gave way with a sickening pop.

She bounced, twisted, slid, and hit again, the crystal chandelier overhead spinning into shards through her blurred vision.

The house smelled of lemon polish.

The foyer below glimmered with winter sunlight.

Somewhere in the massive silence of the mansion, her own scream echoed back at her.

Then the floor rushed up.

Her head hit marble.

Darkness closed over everything.

The last image burned into her mind was Sloan Whitmore standing at the top of the staircase in a cream silk blouse, one hand half-raised from the shove.

And smiling.

When Meredith opened her eyes again, she did not know where she was.

The ceiling was white, the light overhead too harsh, and something beeped steadily beside her.

Her mouth tasted metallic.

Her body felt as if it had been dropped from a great height and reassembled wrong.

Hospital, she thought a second before the smell of antiseptic confirmed it.

Her good hand flew to her belly.

For one awful moment, there was nothing but terror.

Then she felt it.

A kick.

Small, stubborn, alive.

Tears slid into her hair.

“Easy,” Harper Bennett said, rushing to the bedside.

Meredith turned her head and saw her best friend clearly.

Harper still wore navy scrubs under a cardigan, her ponytail sliding loose, dark circles carved beneath her eyes.

Harper had been Meredith’s closest friend since nursing school, the one person who had seen her at twenty, twenty-five, thirty, tired and broke and hopeful and heartbroken, then genuinely in love.

Meredith trusted her more than anyone alive.

“The baby?” Meredith whispered.

“Heartbeat is strong,” Harper said, wrapping both hands around Meredith’s.

“They stopped the contractions.

Your wrist is fractured, you have a concussion, and you’ll be bruised for weeks, but your daughter is still fighting.”

The relief that tore through Meredith left her shaking.

Then memory returned all at once.

The perfume.

The footsteps behind her.

The whisper.

“She pushed me,” Meredith said.

Harper’s face changed, not with surprise but with confirmation.

“I know,” she said softly.

Before Meredith could ask what that meant, the hospital room door opened and Preston Ashford walked in.

He looked exactly the way a wealthy husband on the verge of a public tragedy should look.

Expensive charcoal coat.

Hair perfectly arranged despite the emergency.

Face drawn in just the right places.

His voice low with controlled fear.

“Meredith,” he said, crossing quickly to the bed.

“Thank God.”

She recoiled before she could stop herself.