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He had to be able to walk away from her.

“She died.” Like millions before her. And millions after. Like Kelsey Stuart the day before. Too much like Kelsey Stuart.

He heard Tricia’s glass touch the table. Felt her sit back against the sofa. And then nothing. Heard nothing. Felt nothing.

“I did everything I could.” His voice belonged to a stranger, someone who was sitting a distance away, speaking of things Scott refused to think about. “It wasn’t much.”

Quiet had never been less peaceful. Or a muted room more filled with loud and bitter truth. He watched a drop of perspiration move slowly down the bottle of beer. Thought about picking it up and pouring it into his mouth.

“My ability extended to a phone call on my still-operable car phone. And to waiting for someone to come and do whatever needed to be done.”

“Could you get to her?”

Tricia’s voice slid over him, inside him, chafing the nerves just beneath his skin with her compassion.

“We hit on her side of the Porsche. She was thrown into my lap. I was afraid the car might explode so I moved her just enough to get us clear of the wreck.”

He’d made a mistake, doing that. The car hadn’t exploded. And her neck had been broken. If she’d lived, he’d have paralyzed her by that move.

Someone, at some point, had said better to have been paralyzed than blown up. Might even be something Scott would say to a victim. But it didn’t ease the guilt.

Neither did the beer he gulped.

Tricia didn’t move, didn’t reach out that slender hand to touch him. He was immensely thankful for that, yet he hated being with her and feeling so separate. So alone.

“Leaning up against a rock on the other side of the road, I held her and prayed for someone with medical knowledge to come past. Two cars passed. Stopped. But couldn’t help.”

“Were you hurt?”

Depended on how she defined that. “A few cuts and bruises…” A broken left forearm where Alicia had landed, slamming his wrist against the door. Not that it had hurt. He’d been so numb he hadn’t even known about the injury until hours later.

When everything had hurt. He’d gone crazy with the pain….

Scott got up, went for another beer. When he came back, Tricia was sitting just as he’d left her. Disappointed, relieved, he sat again.

“For forty-five minutes I waited there with her sticky blond hair spread over my arm, her sweet face going purple, and watched as she died in my arms.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Slamming his beer onto the table with unusual force, Scott turned, pinning her with a stare that he knew wasn’t nice, but one he couldn’t avoid, either. Other than in bed, his passion was always firmly under wraps. He couldn’t seem to keep it there at the moment.

“It was completely my fault,” he said, gritting his teeth so hard they hurt. The pain was tangible, identifiable, welcome. “I was larger than life, speeding like the spoiled, immature punk I was, so certain that I was above it all. Above the law…and death.”

“You didn’t do anything any other kid hasn’t done.”

Other kids might speed. But most other kids didn’t kill their fiancées while doing it.

His first reply was a derisive, humorless laugh. Followed by, “So many times I’d heard people—my friends even—say that I had it all. But in the end, I had nothing.”

Depleted, Scott picked up his beer, slid down on the cushion until his head touched the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “No amount of money could help her hang on.” The words were as soft as his previous ones had been harsh. Moving his head, he looked over at Tricia, hurting all over again. “You know?”

She nodded, her gaze never leaving his. What was she thinking? Wondering whether she could trust her son to his driving? Glad she hadn’t been the one in his car, in his care, that Saturday so long ago?

“Money didn’t give me the ability necessary to help her. Nor could it revive her when help finally did arrive.”

He glanced away and then back, eyes open wide, completely focused on her as he finished. “No amount of money could ease the pain of knowing what I’d done, of having to face her family, to bury her, to live without her; and in the months and years that have followed, there hasn’t been enough money in the world to take away the guilt….”

God, she hated feeling helpless. Hugging her arms around her shoulders, Tricia sat beside Scott, studying his hunched silhouette in the dim light, aware that there was nothing she could do. No words that would change the circumstances of his life. Nothing she could offer him to alleviate the self-loathing.

She was a woman who’d once been in control of everything about her life, and the realization left her floundering. Should she get up? Leave him to the mercies of his conscience? Go to bed?

It was his bed.

She could sit quietly. For as long as it took. If he wanted her there, she wanted to be there.

And she wanted to tell him the truth, as he just had with her. It would be such a relief. She valued his opinion. He’d tell her she was being ridiculous, worrying herself sick over Leah. All she had to do was open her mouth. She could do it. And then…

No. She wasn’t going to revisit that ground. She’d been all over it. Too many times. Some things just had to be put to rest or she’d be incapable of going on. Taylor needed a sane parent.

“Not quite the hero anymore, huh?”

He’d turned his head, studying her.

“I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

The CD player changed discs, the clicking loud in the room. Intrusive. Tricia went to check on Taylor. She adjusted the covers at her son’s waist and double-checked the latch on the side of the crib, ensuring that her small son was secure. Running a hand lightly over his fine dark curls, she sucked in a long, shuddering breath. Her integrity depended solely on being the best mother she could be.

Scott didn’t need her, or her protection. Taylor did.

“I will keep you safe,” she whispered. “Whatever it takes.”

Calm as she returned to the living room, clear in her resolve, she settled on the cushion next to Scott. She didn’t think he’d moved at all.

“You are, right now, the same man I’ve loved and cared about for almost two years.” The words came softly, without conscious thought.

That statement was the only honesty she could give him.

He covered one of her hands with his. And started to talk. About the help his family tried to give him. The support from Alicia’s parents. Sitting there with him, listening, Tricia could easily imagine the days he described. Four years of college, trying not to feel, and always feeling too much. She understood completely the despair he described, the sense that life would never again contain moments of pure joy. At the same time there was the undeniable urge to press on, simply because one breathed.

And she understood the social pressures, the parents who just wouldn’t give up their need to make everything at least appear okay, regardless of whether or not things would ever be okay again.

He held her hand during the telling. At some point, as the minutes passed, her fingers stole up his arm, tangling lightly in the hair at the back of his neck, caressing him.

“I graduated from college with a dual degree in fire science and business, went to work for my father and hated the sight of the years stretching endlessly ahead,” he said, as though narrating rehearsed lines.

“I was so tired of fighting it all—my memories, my guilt, my family.”

Her fingers stilled along the back of his neck. “So what did you do?” Had he fallen into the same depths that had almost consumed her? Scott seemed far too strong….

“For one thing, I gave in. They’d been trying for a couple of years to fix me up, and when they introduced me to Diana Grove of the New England banking Groves, I went along with everyone’s not-so-gentle pushing. Diana was sweet, beautiful, had a great sense of humor…”

A paragon of virtues. Tricia would bet she’d been honest in every way, too.

Nothing like herself. A jeans-wearing alterations specialist for a local dry cleaner, who was paid in cash only. There was nothing upper-crust about her. Not her plain brown unstyled hair. Not her drugstore makeup or homemade purse. Certainly not her non-existent bank account—or the made-up social security number on file at the free health clinic where she took Taylor.

And not the facts she hid from the world, either.

“And for the other thing?” He’d said giving in was one thing he’d done. She rubbed the too-tight cords of his neck, taking comfort from the contact, the heat of his smooth skin, even though she knew that in loving him too much lay a danger that could kill her. Or Taylor. She couldn’t let herself need Scott. Couldn’t let a sense of security tempt her to trade away the freedom she’d bought at such a high price.

“What?” he asked, turning his head to look at her. In their closeness she could see the reflections of light in his eyes, the warmth and compassion that was never missing for long, shining from deep inside.

“You said ‘for one thing’ you gave in. I just wondered what the other thing was.”

He took her free hand, held it between both of his, stroking her palm with his thumb. It was so damn hard to keep her resistance up when he did that—when all she wanted to do was concentrate on that simple touch until it was her only reality.

“I made the decision to take control where I could. I was never again going to be in a position where I had to sit, helpless and incompetent, as I watched someone’s life slip away. It wasn’t enough that I had the degree in fire science. I was determined to get paramedic training, as well.”

“What did your family—and Diana—think about that?”

“She was understanding. Encouraged me to do what I needed to do.”

As any well-trained socially prominent wife would do with the man she hoped to marry.

“And your family?”

He shrugged, turning her hand as his thumb moved from her palm to her wrist. “They humored me.”

“Expecting you to get over it.”

“Something like that.”

“You didn’t.”

“Nope.” Sitting back, Scott put an arm around her shoulders, still holding her hand. “Diana didn’t believe me at first when I told her I was going to spend my life using that training.”

“And when she did?”

“She went along with it for a while.”

“Until?” Let me guess. Until he actually had to help some homeless or otherwise socially insignificant person and came home with low-class blood on his clothes.

That reaction wasn’t like her. It was probably true—but still, not the way she would’ve thought two years ago. She’d always been more of a glass half-full kind of person.

“She walked when I told her I didn’t intend to live in the mansion my parents planned to give us for a wedding present.”

So they’d gone as far as to get engaged. Something she’d never have the honor of doing with Scott.

“Why didn’t you want the house?”

“Somehow, living a life of luxury didn’t seem conducive to the job I had to do. It always comes down to those split-second decisions. I couldn’t risk getting too comfortable, losing my edge.” He threaded his fingers through hers. She loved the feel of silk against the back of her hand.

Moving her fingers against his, Tricia fell in love with the man all over again. If she’d met him a few years before, knew that men with character really did exist, she might still believe in fairy tales.

Scott leaned forward, grabbing his beer, which had to be pretty warm by then, and took a long sip. He held on to the bottle. “I’m never again going to be that soft boy sitting beside his mangled Porsche by the side of the road, waiting to be waited on.”

“No, you aren’t.” But not just because he’d given up a luxurious house.

He took another sip of beer. The CD changed, filling the room with Enya’s evocative tones. Tricia laid her head against his shoulder.

“I’m curious about something.” Petrified, more like it, but pretending to herself that she wasn’t.

Bottom line, she was on her own. Always would be. She could handle anything. Hadn’t she already proved that to herself?

“What?”

“Why did you choose today to tell me all this? Your parents coming for a visit or something?”

His hand on her shoulder stilled. He didn’t pull away, yet Tricia felt his withdrawal as completely as if he had.

“My parents have been on a cruise around the world for the past six months. They’ve called my cell phone a few times. They’re due to return sometime next month.”

“So you have contact with them?”

“When they’re in town, I talk to them, and to my brother, every week. Once they realized I was serious about my life choices, they gave me their full support.”

He talked with them every single week and she’d never known. That hurt.

And there wasn’t one damn thing she could say or do about it.

She and Scott were a moment, not an item. There was no reason for her to know his family. She couldn’t expect them to understand the terms of their relationship—that there was no future for them. It just made things too complicated.

And what if she liked them and they her? That would just make walking away even harder.

“Do they live here, in San Diego?”

He shook his head. “Mission Viejo. It’s where I grew up.”

“So back to my question—why come clean today?”

He sat forward, clasped his hands in front of him.

“I attended a freeway accident yesterday. A single vehicle rollover.”

His distant tone scared her.

“The driver was a young girl, about Alicia’s age….” Tricia almost slammed her hands over her ears. She knew what was coming. Didn’t want him to have to say it.

“We got her out. I did what I could. And watched her die anyway.”

Sliding a hand along his thigh, she reached for his hands. “Even the most world-renowned doctors lose patients sometimes,” she reminded him softly. “Sometimes it’s just not up to us….”

“I know.” His answer, the accompanying compassionate smile, threw her. And relieved her.

“So…”

“It’s not that I blame myself for her death,” Scott continued. Fear gripped her anew, more tightly, until her chest ached with it.

“What then?”

He turned to look at her, his eyes serious. “I’m never going to recover from Alicia’s death.”

“I understand.” She did. She just wasn’t sure why it mattered right now if it hadn’t the day before.

“I didn’t.” His words surprised her. “Not until I sat on the side of that road yesterday and felt the crushing weight of it all. Alicia’s death. The guilt. I can’t risk that again, Trish. Not even for you.”

He didn’t have to hit her over the head with it. She got it. All the way through to the vulnerable little girl lurking inside her, hoping against hope to somehow find unconditional love.

“Of course not for me.” She had no idea where she found the strength to sound so normal. “We have an understanding, buster,” she said, grabbing his hand, squeezing it. “No strings attached. No expectations. Today, but no promise of tomorrow. Remember?”

She hated it. Every word. But it was only under those circumstances that she could stay.

Face solemn, he studied her for long seconds while she held her breath. And then he nodded.

“Just so you aren’t hoping for more,” he said.

“I’m not.” Not in any way that could ever matter. Not now. Not with Leah missing and her heart still so raw and hurting for Scott and everything he’d told her that day. Not while she was suffering her own guilt for the lies she was telling. So she did the only thing that felt right, the only thing that had the power to dispel the darkness. She pulled his head toward hers and lost herself in a kiss that stirred every nerve in her body until there was no coherent thought left other than to assuage the ache between her legs.

And the hardness between his.

4

T hursday morning brought more bad news. Senator Thomas Whitehead sat behind his mahogany glass-topped desk, hands steepled at his chin as he faced the best defense attorney on his team, Kilgore Douglas. Thomas still maintained a penthouse office at the downtown San Francisco high-rise that housed the law firm he owned—although he no longer practiced there.

“Kassar found reasonable grounds to issue search warrants.” Kilgore came right to the point after announcing that he’d just heard from Detectives Stanton and Gregory.

Judge Henry Kassar. Democrat. Openly opposed to every Republican branch in Thomas’s family tree.

Sharp pain stabbed at Thomas’s stomach, but only for the second it took his mind to take control, issue calm. “To search what?”

“Your home. Cars. Offices. Everything.”

“I have nothing to hide.” But it wouldn’t look good to his constituents. And once doubt was cast…

Damn Kassar. Thomas had wiped the floor with his Democrat opposition—who’d been fully endorsed by Kassar—during last year’s election. The man would stoop to anything to get his own back. He’d seen Thomas’s remarks to the press as a personal attack. It wasn’t personal at all. Publishing a man’s accomplishments or lack thereof, as the case might be, was just part of politics.

Douglas, resting against Thomas’s desk, glanced down at the papers he held, nodding. Thomas recognized the blue folder. It contained the complete record of Thomas’s experiences with San Francisco’s law enforcement—one traffic ticket when he was sixteen, and everything relating to Kate’s disappearance.

The familiar jolt that shot through him as he stared at that folder, remembering his beautiful and spirited wife, hurt worse than usual today.

“I don’t like it,” Douglas said. “You have an airtight alibi. They shouldn’t still be poking around. I plan to appeal.”

Douglas was the best on his team, but only because Thomas, once the city’s highest-paid defense attorney, wasn’t practicing anymore.

Thomas shook his head. “Appeal on a warrant decision is so rare, it would play right into Kassar’s hands, drawing even more attention to me. Besides, if we do that, some people are going to think I have something to hide.”

“You know as well as I do that your being clean won’t stop them from finding potential evidence if they try hard enough.”

“They won’t try. They don’t have a case and they know it. They don’t want to come out of this with egg on their faces, either. Kassar aside, as far as the D.A. is concerned, this is merely a formality. So he can tell the mayor, and the mayor can tell his voters, that it’s been done. San Francisco’s second wealthy young beauty has just disappeared. They have to turn over every stone on this one.”

These were all facts he was comfortable with. Still, out of curiosity…

“What were the reasonable grounds?”

“You’re associated with both women.”

“What wealthy young woman in San Francisco don’t I know?” Thomas asked. In the past ten years, he’d done enough campaigning, socializing, smiling and schmoozing to get elected president of the United States if he decided to make a run for that office. “What wealthy person don’t I know?”

“You were the husband of one and escort of the other.”

Thank God that well-known fact was all they had to go on. He was innocent in both cases, but the prosecution might come to a different conclusion—the wrong conclusion—if they had all the facts.

“They’re going to see if they can find something among my things—phone calls I’ve made, bills I’ve paid, food in my refrigerator, whatever—that might connect the two disappearances.”

He hadn’t practiced courtroom law so successfully for seventeen years without learning how to outthink the prosecution.

“Leah and Kate were best friends.”

“So maybe they ran off together!”

Douglas chuckled without any real humor. “You don’t really believe that.”

Thomas rubbed his hand across his face, an unusual display of weakness. Revealing emotion, especially negative emotion, was something he almost never did. A Whitehead kept up appearances at all costs. In his world, that rule had been the most important condition for sustaining life. Breathing came in a close second.

“No,” he said, looking up at his attorney and closest friend. “I don’t believe that.” His voice broke and he stopped a moment to calm himself. “Kate and I…we—”

“I understand, buddy.” Douglas’s hand on his shoulder kept him from making even more of an idiot of himself.

“Sorry,” he said, standing. The ability to detach himself had always served him well—in the courtroom and in life. He wouldn’t lose it again.

“Hey, Thomas, this is me. No need to apologize.” Douglas rounded the desk, shoving the folder back in his hand-tooled leather briefcase. “Frankly, man,” he continued, his voice a little muffled as he bent over the chair in front of Thomas’s desk, latching his case, “I don’t know how you do it. If it were me and I’d lost Kate—let alone the baby—they’d have had to pull me out of the river. And now Leah. It’s…unsettling, you know?”

“I know.” Arms crossed over his chest, Thomas stood beside his desk, nodding slowly.

Douglas straightened, stared at him for a long silent minute. “Yeah, I guess you do. Listen, you want to hit the club tonight? I could use a drink.”

“Maybe.” He’d be drinking, that was for sure. “As long as Mother’s okay.”

“What’s it been, six months now since your father died?”

Thomas nodded.

“How’s she doing?”

“Like the rest of us, I guess. She has good days and bad ones. Nights are the hardest.”

Shaking his head, Douglas moved to the door. “You guys have had it rough lately, but you know what that means.”

“What?”

“That your turn’s coming for something really big.”

Thomas was counting on that.

Scott’s four days off made it difficult for Tricia to get to the paper every morning, but that didn’t stop her from driving herself crazy until she had the most recent edition of the San Francisco Gazette in her hands. She hated lying to Scott, hated being impatient with him when he accompanied her and Taylor on their morning walks, and then suggested going to the Grape Street dog park so the little boy could run and play with the animals. For some reason, her son was smitten with dogs. She’d never had a pet in her life and she’d certainly never considered having one that not only lived in the house but shed, drooled and didn’t wipe after it went to the bathroom. But watching Scott and Taylor with the unleashed pets in the park, she couldn’t help laughing.

And wishing that life was different—that she had a place where she felt secure enough to buy her son a puppy.

Still, she made excuses every day to get out of the house on her own. Thread she’d suddenly run out of. A quick trip to the grocery. A rush job that she’d forgotten had to be delivered.

He’d raised his eyebrows at that one, but had said nothing.

Which was pretty much what she got from the San Francisco Gazette. Nothing. Senator Thomas Whitehead had returned from an annual fishing trip. He’d stopped by the precinct the moment he’d heard about the heiress’s disappearance and no arrest had been made.

He was in the clear. Again.

On Saturday, the last day of his off-rotation, Scott stood in the doorway of the smallest bedroom in his modest three-bedroom home, watching the woman he thought of far too often for his own good. She sat there, some kind of dark garment in her hand, doing nothing.

He always wondered where she went when she did that. But he didn’t ask. The answer could very well take him into territory they’d agreed not to travel.

“You almost done?”

She jumped, bent her head for a second, and then turned to him, her ready smile in evidence. “Almost, why?”

Whatever had been on her mind, she wasn’t sharing it with him. Not that it mattered. He had no business knowing what made her jump in the middle of the night—or in the middle of the day when her lover spoke to her from a doorway in their home.