A Man Worth Keeping
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Copyright

Molly O’Keefe has written eleven books. When she isn’t writing happily-ever-after she can usually be found in the park acting as referee between her beleaguered border collie and her one-year-old son. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband, son, dog and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

To the person at Webster University who assigned

Jennifer Kavanaugh to the dorm room across from

mine. Whoever you are, you changed my life. Thanks.

You’re not too shabby either, JK.

Prologue

WAS THAT…a frog?

Max Mitchell tried to clear his vision, but the pain and blood made it impossible. But the frog—if that’s what the green blur on the ceiling was—seemed to sway and scream in time with his charging heartbeat.

He was dying, his blood pumping out of his body beneath a flying, screaming frog.

Is this shock?

His brain sent the message to his nerves to lift his hand so he could wipe the blood from his face.

Come on, hand, lift. Here we go.

But it didn’t work. The nerves didn’t respond.

He spit out the blood that pooled, coppery and hot in his mouth, and groaned from the effort.

The screaming, he realized when his ears suddenly popped, wasn’t from the frog. It was from the baby in the crib under the frog. The frog mobile, blood spattered and cockeyed.

Nell picked up the baby and the screaming stopped.

Relief rattled through his body, slowing his heart rate.

Or it could be loss of blood. Either way Nell had lived and he was so tired.

“Mitchell!”

Someone called his name and he made the effort to turn his head, but agony screamed through his neck and the black edges of the world closed in.

“Mitchell, can you hear me?”

The frog was replaced by the bearded face of his partner.

Good—Nell, the baby and Anders are still alive.

“You’ve got a bullet in the groin and it looks like another one creased your neck and cheek.” Anders was putting a good face on it, trying to smile, but Max could feel his partner using both hands and all his weight to stanch the blood pouring out of Max’s body.

“Hurts.”

Anders laughed. “I should think.”

“Groin?”

“It’s bad, lots of blood. But you’ll live to love another day.”

“Where—” The blood made it difficult to talk, but he spit out more and tried again. “Where’s Tom?”

“Tom?”

“The dad. Adult male.”

Anders glanced briefly behind him, where blue shapes and the screaming and the frog all lingered just out of Max’s focus.

“The wife is hurt, but not bad. The infant is fine, but we were too late for the dad. The first bullet was right through the chest. He died instantly.”

Justice, Max thought, is too damn complicated.

Medics approached, pushing Anders out of the way. But Anders wasn’t a man easily pushed and he hovered over a medic’s shoulder.

Max was glad. He didn’t want to die alone.

“The teenager?” Max asked as the medics lifted him onto the stretcher. Hot shards of pain, like glass, like blowtorches and firebombs, blazed up his body from his leg. He screamed, warm blood spilling into his mouth and he choked.

“Jesus, guys. Careful,” Anders barked, and the medics ran to get Max out of the nursery room that had turned into a bloodbath.

“The teenager?” he cried, pushing against the black edges that lingered and taunted him with sweet relief.

“You got him,” Anders said, pride and regret in his voice. “He’s dead.”

Max had done his job. He let go and the world went dark.

Chapter One

Two years later

MAX MITCHELL SLID the two-by-four over the sawhorses and brushed the snow off his hand tools, but more fat flakes fell to replace what he’d moved.

It was only nine in the morning, and the forecast had called for squalls all day.

Winter. Nothing good about it.

Of course, spending every minute of the season outside was a surefire way to cultivate his dislike of the cold. But lately, walls no matter how far away—and ceilings—no matter how high—felt too close. Like coffins.

The thick brown gloves didn’t keep out the chill so he clapped his hands together, scaring blackbirds from the tree line a few feet behind him.

Even the skeleton structure he’d spent the past few months constructing seemed to shiver and quake in the cold December morning.

He eyed his building and for about the hundredth time he wondered what it was going to be.

It wasn’t one of the cottages that he’d spent last spring and summer building for his brother’s Riverview Inn.

Too small for that. Too plain for his brother, Gabe, the owner of the luxury lodge in the wilderness of the Catskills.

Max told everyone it was going to be an equipment shed, because they needed one. But it was so far away from the buildings that needed maintaining and the lawns that needed mowing, he knew it would be a pain in the butt hauling equipment back and forth.

Still, he called it a shed because he didn’t know what else to call it.

Besides, the construction kept his hands busy, his head empty. And busy hands and an empty head stymied the worst of the memories.

The skin on the back of his neck grew knees and crawled for his hairline and he whirled, one hand at his hip as if his gun would be where it had been for ten years. But of course his hip was empty and, behind him, watching him silently beneath a snow-covered Douglas fir, was a little girl.

“Hi,” he said.

She waved.

“You by yourself?” He scanned the treeline for a parent.

She nodded.

Talkative little thing.

“Where’d you come from?” Max asked.

The girl jerked her thumb toward the inn that was back down the trail about thirty feet through the forest.

“Are you a guest?” he asked, although it was Monday and most guests checked in on Sunday. “At the inn?” She shrugged.

“You…ah…lost?” Max asked.

She shook her head.

“Can you talk?”

She nodded.

“Are you gonna?”

She shook her head and smiled.

His heart, despite the hours in the cold, warmed his chest.

“Do you think maybe someone is worried about you?”

At that the girl stopped smiling and glanced behind her at the buildings barely visible through the pines.

“Should we head back?” he asked, stepping away from his project in forgetting. At his movement she darted left, away from the trail, under the heavy branches of trees and he stopped.

She was a deer ready to run. And since beyond him there was a whole lot of nothing, he figured he’d best keep her here until someone came looking for her.

“All right,” he said. “We don’t have to go anywhere.”

Amongst the trees, her pink coat partially hidden in shadows, he saw her pink-gloved finger point at the building behind him.

“It’s a house,” he said.

She laughed, the bright tinkle filling his silent clearing.

“You think it’s too small?” he asked, and her head nodded vigorously.

“Well, it’s for a very small family—” he eased slightly closer to her where she hid “—of racoons.”

Something crunched under his foot and she zipped deeper into the shadows and now he couldn’t see her face. He stopped.

Two years off the force and he’d lost his touch.

“Want to play a game?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer and didn’t run he took it for a yes. “I’m going to guess how old you are and if I guess right, we go inside, because it’s too cold.” He shivered dramatically.

Again, no sound, no movement.

“All right.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “It’s coming to me. I can see a number and you are…fortytwo.”

She laughed. But when he took a step, the laughter stopped, as if it had been cut off by a knife. He stilled. “What am I—too low? Are you older?”

Her gloved hand reached out between tree limbs and her thumb pointed down. “You’re younger?” He pretended to be amazed. “Okay, let me try…eight?”

No laughter and no hand.

For one delightful summer of his misspent youth, Max had been an age and weight guesser on Coney Island. He had a ridiculous intuition for such things and that summer it had gotten him laid more times than he could count.

Ah. Misspent youth.

“Am I right?” he asked.

She stepped out from underneath the tree, her face still, her eyes wary.

“Are you scared? Of going back?”

She shook her head and looked at the end of her bright orange and pink scarf, playing with the tassels.

“You just don’t want to?” he asked.

The little girl’s eyes lifted to his and he saw a misery there that he totally understood. She didn’t like what was back there.

“Tough one,” he muttered.

“Josie!” The cry split through the quiet forest. “Josie! Where are you?” It was a woman’s voice and she was panicked. Scared.

“You Josie?” he asked the little girl, and her guilty expression was enough.

“She’s here!” he yelled. “Stay on the trail and—”

A woman, petite and fair, erupted from the trees and nearly tripped into the clearing. Her wild eyes searched the area until they landed on Josie, small and pink and looking like she wished she could vanish.

“Oh my God!” the woman cried, hurtling herself through snow to practically slide on her knees in front of Josie. “Oh, Josie. I was so worried.” She checked the little girl, cupped her cheeks in her own bare hands. The woman didn’t even have a coat on.

“What did I say about wandering off?” the woman asked, snow gathering in her red hair. “What did I say? You can’t do that, Josie. You can’t scare me that way.” Finally the woman hauled Josie into her arms but stayed on her knees, her blue jeans no doubt getting soaked through.

No coat. No gloves and now she was going to be wet.

He cleared his throat. “She’s been with—”

Before he could even finish, the woman was on her feet, Josie sequestered behind her. The woman was braced for battle, a bear protecting her cub and Max had serious respect for that particular facet of motherhood and had no desire to screw with it.

He took a careful step away from the two females and lifted his eyes to look into the woman’s in an effort to calm her down. He opened his mouth to tell her that he meant no harm, but the words died a quiet death in his throat.

There was a buzz in the air and under his jacket all the hair on his arms stood up.

I know you, he thought, looking into her radiant blue eyes. I know all about you. Her stiff shoulders and trembling lips told the tale more vividly than anything she might say. This woman was terrified of more than just losing her daughter momentarily. This was a woman—a beautiful woman—grappling with big fears.

And the big fears seemed to be winning.

Her eyes narrowed and he looked away, suddenly worried that she might see him as clearly as he saw her. Though he didn’t know what she would detect in him—cobwebs and dark corners, probably.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Max Mitchell,” he answered calmly, despite the fact that his heart was pumping a mile a minute.

He needed this woman to get out of here. Take her silent daughter and leave.

“Your brother is Gabe? The owner?” He nodded and she relaxed, barely. “He said you were in charge of operations.”

“I mow the lawn.” He shrugged. “Shovel snow.” Not quite the truth, but the fact that just about everything would grind to a halt these days if he wasn’t here didn’t seem like the kind of thing to discuss at this moment.

“You better head back. You—” He pointed at the wet patches on her jeans and the snow scattered across her bright blue sweater. Her tight, bright blue sweater. A mama bear in provocative clothes, Lord save him. “You are gonna get cold.”

And my clearing is getting crowded.

The woman and girl were a pretty picture, surrounded by white snow and green trees. They were bright spots, almost electric seeming. He found it difficult to look away.

“I’m Delia,” she said, her accent flavored by the south. Texas, maybe.

A redhead from Texas. Trouble if ever there was. And a woman from Texas without a winter coat or gloves, in a Catskill winter, had to be a guest.

The girl tugged on her mother’s hand and Delia wrapped an arm around her.

“And this is my daughter, Josie.”

Josie waved a finger at Max and he smiled.

“We’re acquainted.”

Delia didn’t like that. Not one bit. Her lips went tight, and her pale skin, no doubt cold, went red. “We’ll head on back. Don’t bother yourself showing us the way.”

He nodded, knowing when he’d been told to stay put.

They turned toward the trail and Max forced himself not to stare at the woman’s extraordinary behind as she walked away.

“What did I say about talking to strangers?” Delia asked.

“I didn’t say a word, Mama,” Josie said, her voice a quiet peep with enough sass to indicate she knew what she was doing.

Max couldn’t help it, laughter gushed out of his throat, unstoppable.

Trouble, the two of them.

DELIA DUPUIS’S mother was French, her father an oil rigger from the dry flatlands of West Texas. Depending on the situation, Delia could channel either of them. And right now, her daughter, her eight-year-old girl who was way too big for her britches, needed a little sample of Daddy’s School of Tough Love.

“This isn’t funny, Josie,” she said. “I don’t know that man and he could have been dangerous.”

“He was nice,” Josie protested.

He was. He was more than nice, and her instincts echoed Josie’s statement. But Delia was not on speaking terms with her instincts these days. She had to shake off the strange sensation that she knew Max. Really knew him. For a moment there she’d felt a spark of something, like being brushed by electricity, and when she looked into his eyes all she’d thought was, I can trust this man.

She’d seen such sadness in his eyes, manageable but there, like a wound that wasn’t healing. That sadness and the way he held his head and how he talked to Josie, the way he didn’t crowd Delia, the way he had shown her more respect in those five seconds than she’d received in the last year of her marriage, had her whole body screaming that he was one of the good guys.

Which, of course, was ridiculous. She couldn’t tell that from a five-second conversation, from a quick glance into a pair of black eyes. And the fact that her instincts told her the compelling, handsome and mysterious man was a good guy was a pretty good indication that he wasn’t.

Her instincts were like that.

Delia turned and despite the cold and her aching hands and misleading gut reactions she crouched in front of her daughter. “Listen to me,” she said, hard as nails. The smile and spark of defiance fled from Josie’s brown eyes. The response killed Delia, ripped her apart, but she didn’t know what else to do. “When I say you stick close, it means you stick close. It means I can see you at all times. I’m not telling you again, Jos. You know how important this is, don’t you?”

Josie nodded.

“How important is it?” Delia asked. She would repeat this a million times a day. Delia would tie Josie to her side if she had to.

“It’s the most important thing,” Josie repeated dutifully.

Delia arched an imperial eyebrow—another trick from her daddy, who could act like a king despite the black under his fingernails.

“Got it?” she asked.

After a moment, Josie nodded, her lips pouty, her eyes on her boots. “Got it.”

“I love you, sweetie. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

Delia pulled Josie close, but the child stood unmoving in the circle of her arms.

She just needs more time, Delia told herself, blinking back tears caused by the cold and the unbearable abyss between her and her baby. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She’ll come around.

That’s what all the books she’d been reading about raising children after a divorce said. Time, patience and a little control over their own lives were what children needed when growing accustomed to a new divided home life.

And if something in the back of Delia’s mind insisted that it couldn’t be that simple, she ignored that, too. No one was forking out the big bucks for her thoughts on child rearing, so what did she know?

Only that Josie was too young to comprehend what was happening, all the dangers out there that wanted to tear her away and hurt her. It was Delia’s one job—her only mission right now—to keep the dangers away.

“I want my daddy,” Josie whispered, her voice filled with tears.

Delia’s eyelids flinched with a sudden surge of anger. It was growing harder and harder to control this anger, this ever-bubbling wellspring of rage she had toward Jared.

“I know you do, sweetie,” she said, and stood, holding her daughter’s small hand in her own.

It was too bad that Daddy was the biggest danger of all.

“Are we going to stay here?” Josie asked as they approached the rear of the beautiful lodge.

“If they give me the job we will.”

“Why do you need a job?” Josie asked. “You said we were on vacation.”

Delia shrugged. “It’s a working vacation. We won’t be here very long.” Not that the Mitchell family would know that. They were looking for someone long-term and these days her version of long-term was decidedly shorter than it used to be.

She watched Josie taking in the sights with wide eyes. This was a different world from where they’d come. Snow, pine trees, the towering escarpment of the Catskills—Josie had only seen these things on television. “Do you like it here?”

Josie humphed in response.

“Where will we sleep?” Josie asked, and Delia swallowed hard the guilt that chewed at her. They’d slept in terrible places in the past week and a half. After leaving her cousin’s place in South Carolina, she’d been on a slippery slope downward. Afraid to use her credit or debit cards, she’d been forced to use the small amount of cash she had. And small amounts of cash bought them nights in places with bad odors, scratchy sheets and too thin walls.

“In there.” Delia pointed to the lodge. “We’ll have a room all to ourselves, and we’ll each get a bed. And a nice big bathroom with a huge old tub.”

And solid locks on the doors.

“How does that sound?” Delia jiggled her daughter’s arm, needing just a little help, just a little support, in the brave-face department.

“Good,” Josie said, and Delia smiled, the bands of iron that constricted her chest loosened.

“Can I call Dad tonight?”

And like that, she couldn’t breathe again.

“Not yet. I told you, sweetie, he’s still at that conference. He’s going to be there for two whole weeks.”

“That’s a long time,” Josie said, looking glum.

She wanted to comfort her daughter, kiss away the pain that had settled on her small fragile shoulders. But Delia didn’t know how.

She didn’t know how they were going to get through the day, much less tomorrow or the day after. She’d bought herself a few more days with the lie about Jared being at a conference.

But what then?

Those books she’d read had no answers about this sort of situation and all she had to go on were her faulty instincts.

“Oh, sweetie—” Delia hesitated, reluctant to add another lie to the heaping pile, but knowing she had no choice.

“What?”

“If anyone asks, our last name is Johnson.”

MAX SPENT AN HOUR after the females had left his clearing trying to stop smiling. Delia had her hands full with Josie, he thought, cinching on his tool belt then carrying the two-by-fours over to the house.

He slid the wood to the ground and hoped Josie was occupied by something. School. Dance or whatever. Because kids that smart, when left to their own devices, found other ways to occupy their time. And those other ways were never good.

Framing out the roof was a two-person job, but his dad, who had been his primary second throughout the building of all the cabins for the inn, was downstate dealing with his lawyer.

Gabe was useless with carpentry, besides being far too preoccupied acting the nervous husband over his pregnant wife and—

Again, the skin on his neck shimmied in sudden warning that he wasn’t alone and he whirled, crouched low, his hand at his hip.

But instead of his standard issue, he had a palm full of hammer.

“Old habits, huh, Max?” Sheriff Joe McGinty stepped into the clearing.

“Careful, grandpa.” Max dropped the wood and stepped out of the building, his hand outstretched. “It’s getting icy.”

“Grandpa? Don’t make me hurt you.” Joe grabbed his hand and shook it mightily. They might have hugged if they were different kind of men. Instead they clapped each other’s shoulders and grinned.

“How you doing?” Joe asked, his thin, wrinkled face chapped by the elements. “Working on your dollhouse.” “It’s a shed,” Max said, compelled to defend his building. “Want to help me frame out that roof?”

“It’s too cold to be working out here.” Joe shuddered and rolled up the floppy fur collar on his shearling coat. “Too cold for anything but going inside.”

“You come out here to give me a weather report?” Max asked.

Joe ran his tongue over his teeth and appeared to be slightly torn about something, which was more than odd for the old law enforcer. He was like a winter wolf. Scrawny and tough and too stubborn to give up and head for greener pastures. And Max liked him for all those reasons.

“Problems with more kids?” Max asked, pulling his gloves on since it seemed this conversation might take a while.

“Nah.” Joe swiped at his dripping nose. “The afterschool program you ran out here in the summer set a lot of ’em straight.”

Max had had ten kids working here over the summer and fall. Kids who’d gotten in trouble, were failing out of school—some of the worst of them had been headed for the halfway house for teens out by Coxsackie. Two of them still worked here as full employees, no longer the atrisk kids they’d been.

“Sue’s still going to school?” he asked about the most stubborn of the kids.

Joe nodded. “She’s getting straight D’s, but she’s there.”

“Good,” Max said and waited a little longer for Joe to get to the topic he’d traveled out here to discuss.

“You know I’ve never pried, right?” Joe asked, and Max felt his gut tighten. “I know you were on the force in some capacity. I mean the way you move, the way you keep grabbing for your gun, the way you handle those kids—it tells me you’re law enforcement all the way.” He paused and Max could feel the old man’s eyes on his face.

“You investigating me?” Max asked, kicking snow off his boots, where it had gathered.

“No. That’s what I’m saying. I could look you up. Ask around. It wouldn’t take much to figure out where you’ve been.”

“So? Why don’t you?” Max squinted up into the sky. Here he was outside, no ceiling, no walls. Nothing but trees and clean air and snow. Still, he felt his failure like a weight on his chest. He hauled in a deep breath. Another.

“I keep hoping someday you’ll tell me.” Joe’s voice dropped an octave and was coated in uncomfortable pity.

Max didn’t say anything.

“Were you FBI? Undercover? Vice?” Joe asked.

“I was just a cop. That’s all.”

“I get that it was bad, but—”

“Nothing worse than usual.” Max faced Joe and got to the heart of the matter. “Why are you asking?”

“Ted Harris is retiring.”

Max smiled. “You’re here to celebrate? That idiot’s been a thorn in your side for—” Something in Joe’s face, a stubborn mix of hope and concern, made Max stop and shake his head. “I don’t want the job, Joe.”

“Juvenile Parole Officer. You’d be perfect.” Joe put his hand on Max’s shoulder and Max struggled not to shake it off. Joe continued, “We’ve got a juvenile crime problem in this county and Ted didn’t do jack—”

“I don’t want the job, Joe.”

“But between the program you ran here and the help you gave me with the break-ins over at the community center, you’re perfect. And from what I can gather, you’re qualified.”

Max nearly laughed. He was qualified. More than qualified. But he was utterly unwilling.

“I don’t want the job.”

“You like this?” Joe asked, flinging an arm out at the half-built building and the barely visible lodge through the trees. “This is satisfying?”

Max blinked. Satisfying. He didn’t think in those terms anymore. This, what he did here with his dad and brother, it was easy. If something went wrong, everyone still woke up in the morning.

Those were the terms he lived by these days.

“Sorry, Joe.”

Joe stared at him for a long time and Max avoided his gaze. The guy was too wily and he didn’t want or need the man as a surrogate father—he had a great one kicking around. And he didn’t need a counselor, or a friend from the force. He needed to be forgotten, left alone.

“I just thought you might be interested. It’s a chance to do some real good,” Joe said, the disappointment like a neon sign in his voice.

Max couldn’t stop the harrumph of exasperated, black humor. He’d been told that once before, three years ago. And maybe he’d done some good—he just didn’t care anymore.

“Son—” The pity was back in Joe’s voice.

“Gotta frame that roof, Joe. So?” Max faced the old sheriff, kept his eyes empty, his heart bleak. “Unless there’s something else you need.”

Joe tried to wait him out, no doubt looking for a crack he’d never find.

“Stubborn cuss,” Joe grunted.

“I could say the same.”

Joe brushed his hands together like he was cleaning Max off of him. A good decision, all in all. “I’ll see you around.” Joe tipped his head and turned, heading back up the trail toward civilization.

Max wondered if he’d burned a bridge there. He liked Joe. Liked helping him in the small ways he was willing to take on.

Max opened his mouth to call him back, to apologize or explain why he couldn’t take the job. But just the thought of saying the words shut his mouth for him.

He watched Joe walk away until he was replaced by snow, by gray sky, by the isolation Max cultivated like a garden.

Chapter Two

“HI,” DELIA SAID to Gabe Mitchell as she entered the dining room from the kitchen, her daughter in tow. “Sorry about the interruption.”

“No apologies necessary,” Gabe said with a smooth smile. The man had a dangerous charm and was painfully easy on the eyes—a potentially lethal combo and one that in the past would have had her panting at his feet.

Thank God she’d grown up some in the past few years.

From what she could tell, the two brothers could not be more different. Max had been kind enough but she’d bet her car he didn’t know how to roll out the red carpet like Gabe. Stupidly, she found herself liking Max’s quiet intensity better. But she’d married her husband thinking the same thing and look where that had gotten her.

Delia would make a point to stay away from Max if she landed this job.

“I would have done the same thing if my daughter had run off.” Gabe smiled at Josie, who had the good sense to look chagrined.

“Did you see anything interesting?” he asked Josie.

“Max.”

Gabe nodded. “Well, he’s interesting all right. Did he scare you?”

Yes, Delia thought. He scares me.

“No,” Josie said. “He was nice.”

“Nice?” Gabe pretended to be doubtful. “We’re talking about the same guy? Big and tall with black hair and—?”

“That’s him.” Josie was smiling.

Gabe leaned forward and whispered, “Did he show you his scar?”

Josie’s eyes went wide and she shook her head.

Gabe lifted his chin and drew a line across part of his throat. “Pirates got him.”

Immediately Josie looked dubious and Delia stifled her own smile. Gabe had just insulted Josie’s tenuous status as a big kid.

“There are no such things as pirates.” She looked scornful. “You’re fooling around.”

Gabe sighed and straightened. “You’re too smart, Josie Johnson. Too smart for me. I think we’ve got some coloring books around here somewhere. My wife’s idea.” Gabe’s eyes twinkled.

Ah, yes. The wife.

Smooth smiles or not, there was no way any woman could combat the love Gabe clearly had for his wife, Alice.

Delia hadn’t met Alice yet, but Gabe’s feelings for her practically filled the room.

Gabe turned to the cabinets near the bar to look for the coloring books and Josie rolled her eyes at Delia.

Josie thought she was too old for such things and maybe she was, but Delia lifted her eyebrow anyway. The kid would sit and play with rocks or stare quietly into space or whatever it took for Delia to finish this interview.

They needed this job. They needed it bad. They had no cash and nowhere to go.

Gabe turned around armed with puzzles, books, coloring books and big boxes of crayons and colored pencils.

“After a few dinner-hour disasters, Alice bought this stuff for the guests with kids,” he said, handing everything over to Josie, who perked up at the sight of the puzzles.

The girl was a sudoku fanatic.

Josie settled herself at one of the tables and Delia gripped her hands together behind her back, in an attempt to stem the anxiousness whirling through her stomach.

“Where were we?” she asked, while Gabe watched Josie.

“Sorry.” Gabe shook his head and laughed. “My wife and I are expecting and I just…It’s nuts to think I’m going to have an eight-year-old kid at some point.”

He’d told her about the baby maybe a million times when they should have been talking about the inn’s new spa services. But Delia smiled. “It goes by fast, that’s for sure.” She paused for a moment and channeled some of her mother’s graceful social niceties. “You were talking about the new addition to the lodge—”

“Right, right. Sorry.” Again the lethal smile and she hoped this Alice woman knew how lucky she was. “Follow me.” He led her to a door in the back corner of the dining room, next to the elegant desk, where guests checked in. The door had a discreet sign on it: Spa.

“We’re still adding the finishing touches, but here it is.” He pushed open the door to a dimly lit hallway, painted a soothing gray-green. “There’s a little bit of paint and electrical work to do. We wanted to leave it fairly unfinished so whoever we hired could make the space their own.”

Delia stood on the threshold and let the chills run through her. Her gut, her head, her heart—they all said, This is it.

Daddy always said his momma had the sight. Delia didn’t believe in those things anymore—not since Jared had taken a sledgehammer to her life—but she could see herself here. Working. Raising Josie.

This couldn’t be a better situation.

Autonomy and security, at least for the time being.

Gabe stepped down the hallway and Delia turned to shoot her willful daughter a look then followed him through the door.

“Our reservations fell so dramatically once the fall colors ended we knew we had to do something.” He opened the door to a massage room with a big padded table positioned in the center. There was a shelf for her lotions and even an outlet so she could plug in her hot pot to do hot-stone massages. “We’re getting a few cross-country skiers but it’s still not enough. So—”

“So, you’re an inn and spa.”

“Exactly. We were going to wait a few years before adding the spa, but we figured sooner rather than later would help us all keep our jobs.” He grinned again and Delia wondered if anyone ever said no to the guy. No wonder his wife was pregnant. “We’re ready to start advertising the services, but we wanted to get the right person in, someone who we knew could handle the work and had the right philosophy.” Gabe paused, offering her an opportunity to tell him her philosophy.

Funny, she used to have one of those. Now her whole philosophy was surviving the day.

“I was trained in San Antonio,” she said. “I apprenticed at the Four Seasons there and am a registered massage therapist and yoga instructor.”

“The last month and a bit?” he asked. “You have a gap in your résumé.”

Delia forced herself to smile and let the lie slide right off her tongue. “I went to France. Personal reasons.”

“Ah, nothing better than personal reasons that lead you to France. Josie must have loved it.”

The implication that she must have taken her daughter slid through her like poison. “She did. We both did.”

It didn’t even faze her anymore, the lies. Her heart didn’t trip, her hands didn’t go cold, and her face didn’t go hot.

She was thirty-seven years old and a liar, now. Another black mark on Jared’s hell-bound soul.

“I ran my own business for five years previous to France and at the same time worked at a holistic health center as part of an integrated care system for people suffering from terminal illness.”

“That’s all right here, Delia.” Gabe looked down at his clipboard, where she guessed her résumé was. “I’m hoping to find out a little bit about you. About what you think you can offer and what you think we can offer you.”

Right. She felt desperation well up in her gut like sticky tar, clinging to her courage and will, dragging her down to someplace scary.

“I want to be a part of something that people love. Something generous and good,” she said, the truth like an elixir, clearing away the fear and despair, the hunger and sleeplessness. Jared used to mock her for thinking she could help people with her “rubdowns.” But she’d seen the proof firsthand.

But even as she said the words, they felt like a lie. She hadn’t been living a generous life in far too long. Jared’s poison had infiltrated her being and she felt small and bitter. So she reached deep into the reasons she’d become a massage therapist, trying hard in this beautiful place to reconnect with the woman she’d once been. “I want to work side by side with people who work hard to do their best, to provide the best experience for guests. I want to help people recover, to feel better, to step lighter and maybe laugh a little more. That’s why I loved working at the holistic center. I want to make people’s lives a little bit easier—”

“Done. You’re hired.”

Delia blinked and Gabe laughed. “It’s why I started this inn. I wanted to give people a home away from home and you fit into that perfectly.”

She eyed him skeptically. Nothing. Nothing in her life lately had been this easy. When she’d read the ad for this position on the Internet, it had read like a dream come true considering her suddenly changed circumstances—seasonal, middle of nowhere, starting immediately.

She’d applied on her first day in South Carolina and the second she got the e-mail from Gabe asking her to come up for an interview, she’d packed Josie into the car and driven north.

Gabe finally shrugged. “Truth is, we haven’t had that many applicants. Not many people are excited about living in the Catskills in the middle of winter.”

That made her laugh. She wasn’t all that excited about it, either. And she certainly never would have come here if she didn’t have to. But it would be the last place anyone would look for her. She was a Southern woman, with blood as thin as sweet tea.

“But,” he was quick to state, “even if we’d gotten the résumés I do believe you’d still get the job. You’re a good fit—I could tell when you walked in. I have instincts about people.”

You and me both, buddy. She just hoped he trusted his more than she did her own.

She clenched her hands a bit tighter behind her back to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.

“I suppose you’d like to know the particulars?” he asked, and she pretended to be interested.

“Of course.”

“On paper the salary isn’t much but it includes room and board. Tips, of course, are yours. You need to let Chef Tim know of any dietary problems—”

“That’s great.”

“As per your request, you’ll be a contract employee. So no health benefits. Taxes will be your problem. Checks will be made out to Delia Johnson.”

“That’s no problem.” As a contract employee they wouldn’t need her social security number and since Delia Johnson didn’t have one, that seemed altogether best. She could wait to cash the paychecks—living on tips for as long as she could. She could take a paycheck in and get an ID made, maybe. God, she’d never had to worry about this before.

But with food and lodging covered, all she really needed to pay for was gas and the odds and ends that she and Josie required.

Delia shook her head. She didn’t need any more. A roof, food for her daughter, someplace safe for her to catch her breath and figure out what to do next.

“It would be a real pleasure to work here,” she said. “A real—” relief, blessing, gift, godsend “—pleasure.”

Gabe held out his hand and Delia put her clammy palm into his. “Welcome aboard, Delia Johnson. We hope you’ll stay awhile.”

Not likely, she thought, but shook on it anyway.

MAX SHOOK the snow out of his hair and stomped his boots on the rug at the front door. Gabe hated when he used the front door, tracking in snow and mud from outside, which was pretty much why Max used it.

The winter months were slow. All he had to pass the time was building his shed and irritating his brother. And the snowstorm outside was making the former impossible.

I’m thirty-six years old, he thought. I should have more in my life.

He looked up and found the little girl, Josie, staring at him as if he were a wild animal coming in for dinner.

He almost growled just to see what she would do.

“Hi,” she said after a moment.

Max looked around for the mother bear but didn’t see her. Should she see him talking to her daughter, chances were not good she’d welcome that.

He didn’t blame her. Since the shooting, mothers seemed to have a sense about him.

But this little girl looked so forlorn and small sitting at the big table that he decided to risk the wrath of Mama Bear.

“Hi, again.” He stepped over to her table and pulled off his gloves, taking a look at the book she had open in front of her. “Sudoku, huh?”

“Yeah.” Her lip lifted in a half smile and her hair—hidden earlier under her pink hat—fell over her shoulder. Red. Like her mother’s, only a bit more blond.

Max was at loose ends. It was snowing too hard to work. There were no repairs that needed to be done. No point in shoveling snow while it was still falling. Dad had left yesterday for downstate to talk to his lawyer about something. Alice was lying around with her feet up. And his brother must be checking in Josie’s mother, so he wasn’t around to annoy.

“I’m bored,” he said, the words popping out before he’d finished thinking them.

“Me, too.” Josie’s sigh was long-suffering and pained.

“Yeah?” He pushed out a chair with his foot and sat. He liked kids and he especially liked kids with attitude, which Josie had in spades. “Want to hand me one of those puzzle books?”

“There’s only one,” she said, and tossed him a different book from the stack. “You can have this.”

“A Barbie coloring book?” He opened it and grabbed a crayon from the box between them. “My favorite.”

Josie smiled and bent over her book of math puzzles, but watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye.

He worked diligently on Prince Charming’s military jacket.

“So?” he said, coloring over the medals pinned to the cartoon’s chest, saving him the pain of the memories required to have earned those medals. “Where you from?”

Josie stopped looking at him, focused on the puzzle, running her pencil over the six she’d written until it was black. “We move around a lot.”

Warning sirens wailed in Max’s head.

“You sound like you’re from the South.”

“Texas,” she said.

“Have you ever seen this much snow?”

She shook her head.

“What do you think of it?”

She wrinkled her nose and he grinned then, changing tactics, he held out his hand. “I’m Max Mitchell. I live here.”

“I’m Josie G…Johnson.” The sirens wailed louder. Something wasn’t right. “And I think I live here, too.”

He blinked. “You and your mo—”

“Josie?” Mama Bear was back and she was not happy. Max put down his crayon and turned to look at Delia standing, all her feathers ruffled, beside Gabe.

“Hi, Mama,” Josie said, looking like a kid caught stealing.

“Max.” Gabe stepped neatly into the fray. “I want to introduce you to Delia Johnson. She’ll be our new massage therapist and spa manager.”

Uh-oh.

“You’re not a guest?” Max nearly cringed at his own question. He sounded angry that she wasn’t a guest and maybe, somewhere, deep down in places he couldn’t feel anymore, he was. He certainly didn’t need feisty Josie and angry, sexy Delia around for more than a weekend.

“No,” Delia said, stepping to stand next to her daughter. She placed a hand on the little girl’s shoulder as if to remind everyone what the teams were. “We’ll be here awhile.”

Back off, her blue eyes said, and Max stood, ready to comply.

“Welcome,” he said. “Both of you.” He turned to leave just as the kitchen door swung open and Alice, his very pregnant sister-in-law, waddled in.

Hot on her heels was Cameron, one of Max’s at-risk kids who now worked here. Formerly Alice’s assistant, these days he was more like Alice’s babysitter.

“I tried to keep her in the office, like you said. But she wouldn’t stay,” Cameron said, looking both panicked and pissed off. Which, frankly, was a pretty standard reaction to pregnant Alice. She was prickly when she was in a good mood—pregnant she was live ammunition.

“You’re supposed to be lying down,” Gabe said, his eyes shooting sparks at his wife.

“I’ve been lying down,” Alice griped. “I’ve been lying down so much my butt is flat. The doctor said small amounts of activity were fine as long as I took it easy.”

“Are you taking it easy?”

“No,” Cameron answered for her.

“Yes!” Alice amended, shooting Cameron a shut-up-ordie glare. As she turned, she caught sight of the audience and her fair cheeks blazed red. “Oops.”

“Delia,” Gabe said, his jaw clenched, “this is my wife. Six months’ pregnant and on bed-rest orders from her doctor.”

“Modified bed rest,” Alice said with a thin-lipped smile. She held out her hand to shake Delia’s and her smile became more sincere. “And we’re being so careful it’s ridiculous. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the inn.”

“Thank you,” Delia said. “I’m really looking forward to working with y’all.”

Max noticed that Delia turned on the charm for Alice and Gabe, which made her reaction to him all the more pronounced. He used to have a way with people, pretty redheads included. Now, he felt tongue-tied. Lost. As though he was hidden somewhere and by the time he found the right words to say the moment was gone.

Everyone had moved on.

“This is my daughter, Josie.” Delia stepped back and Josie stood to shake Alice’s hand, the total picture of good manners, with no eight-year-old smirk.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Josie said in her soft drawl.

She glanced at him and he rolled his eyes just to let her know he was on to her.

“I’m Cameron.” Cameron stepped forward, holding out his hand like a grown-up and Max couldn’t help but feel some pride. When Cameron had first arrived at the inn, he’d been sullen, angry and disrespectful. Looking at the sixteen-year-old now, he’d never guess.

“I’m going to show my wife back to her bed,” Gabe said, mostly to Alice, who rolled her eyes. “Max? Can you show them to the West Suite and give them the ten-cent tour?”

Max had been about to make his silent getaway, but now all eyes were on him. Including Delia’s wide blue ones.

“Sure,” he finally agreed, careful not to look at Delia or Josie.

He’d spent ten years as a detective and it wasn’t hard to figure out that things were not what they seemed with these two females. And Max hated that. It made his gut act up. He’d left the detective life behind and come here so that his gut could grab a rest.

He rubbed at his stomach and hoped that the beautiful Southern woman would get tired of the cold and isolation and leave. Soon.

GABE AND ALICE LEFT the room, arguing about the definition of modified and Delia and Josie were left alone with Max. Delia wanted to call the couple back, keep them close, because with their absence, Max Mitchell’s presence became all the more disconcerting.

He waited silently, a specter at a respectful distance. Still, for every moment that passed, she grew more and more uncomfortable. She wanted to holler, stop staring. But he wasn’t staring. He wasn’t even glancing their way.

I’m losing my ever-loving mind, she thought. Maybe this time her instincts were right. Maybe he was a good guy. A nice man. Someone she could trust.

Dear God, wouldn’t that be something, she thought.

Weirder things had happened.

She pressed her fingertips against the high neck of her shirt and the bruises along her neck pulsed with a sore, dull ache.

She was tired. Hungry. Obviously not thinking clearly. Max Mitchell was the least of her problems. Some food and some sleep and a new plan would clear part of this fog and doubt that Max seemed to create in her.

“If you could just show us to our room?” Delia said, making a point of not meeting his eyes. “We won’t bother you for a tour. We need to unpack and clean up, right?” she asked Josie, tucking an arm around her daughter, who nodded eagerly.

“Do you have any luggage?” Max asked. “I’ll grab it from your car.”

“I can do it,” she said, and quickly smiled to cover up the bite of her voice. The last thing she needed was Max Mitchell privy to the sad state of their garbage bag luggage. “I hate to put you out.”

He looked for a moment as though he was going to argue. Then he nodded, spun on his heel and walked over to the check-in desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a key, made a note in the old-fashioned register on top of the desk.

“Ready?” he asked, his thick black eyebrows arched over his dark eyes.

Delia nodded and Max was off, up the giant staircase that led up to the second-floor rooms. His long legs made short work of the steps and she and Josie practically had to quick march to keep up.

“Your room is back here,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re essentially alone in this part of the lodge.”

“Where do you sleep?” Josie asked.

Delia gave her daughter a stern stare. Not only was she being rude, but they didn’t need to know any more about this man. “You don’t have to answer—”

“It’s no problem. I’m in one of the cabins this winter,” he said. “My dad usually stays in this part of the lodge, but he’s away for the next week, so you’ve got it to yourself.” He shot a quick grin at Josie over his big, wide shoulder and she grinned back.

Her daughter clearly trusted him. Liked him.

He was making an effort, Delia could tell, to put them at ease. His smile, while rusty, had a trace of his brother’s charm and she found herself smiling in return.

Would it be so bad, she thought, to have a friend right now?

“Is your cabin like the one you’re building?” Josie asked, and Delia looked down at her daughter, stunned.

“A little bit bigger.”

“You guys sure got friendly.” She tried to make the comment sound light. As though she didn’t care, but it came out accusatory and suspicious. She’d told Josie not to talk to strangers.

“Here you go,” he said, standing in front of a wide door with the words West Suite burned in script on the oak panel. He held out the key, and carefully dropped it in her hand when she reached for it.

The key was warm, hot even, from his skin. She felt a wave of heat climb her face and wash over her chest. God, she was so stupidly aware of this man she could feel his gaze on her skin like a caress before he turned to Josie. Delia, in turn, glanced at him. He was handsome. Not Gabe handsome—but really, to have two men who looked like Gabe in the same family was practically criminal. Max was rugged. Strong and powerful. And his eyes…his eyes were magnetic.

“Where’s your scar?” Josie asked, and Delia nearly gasped in horror.

“Josie! That’s not polite—”

“What scar?” Max asked.

“Gabe told us about the scar…right here.” She lifted her thin little chin and drew a finger across the white skin of her neck. “He said pirates got you, but I don’t believe him.”

“You don’t?”

“Josie,” Delia butted in. “Gabe was kidding—”

“It was pirates,” Max said, giving Delia a quick smile to indicate Josie’s interest was okay. And then he tilted his face, revealing a thick band of scar tissue that went from his ear halfway to his chin along the hairline of his scruffy whiskers.

Delia bit her lip and Josie gasped.

It was bad, that scar. A reminder of something violent. Something bloody and scary. Delia was sure of it.

She wrapped her hand around Josie’s shoulders, pulling her slightly closer, away from Max. They were running away from those things, from violence and injury and pain. She was trying, desperately, to leave it all behind.

That’s why you can’t trust your instincts, she scolded herself, panicked and light-headed from the sight of that scar and the answering throb of the scratches and bruises around her own neck.

She’d been right to doubt herself, to shove away all hints that this man was good or kind or helpful to them in any way.

He was trouble.

And she was on her own.

She quickly unlocked the door so Josie could run in and flop facedown across one of the big beds.

“Shout if you need any help,” Max said politely.

“Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to mean it, to not run inside and lock the door against him. “We appreciate it.” From inside the room Josie squealed and Delia stepped farther into the room.

“Your daughter—”

“Isn’t any of your business,” she snapped over the sound of her screaming instincts.

Her words hung in the air and she felt as if she’d slapped him. The sadness, the deep melancholy she sensed in him, was visible in his eyes.

I’m sorry, she wanted to say, to eradicate the hurt she’d caused. I’m not like this, but I’m so scared of you. I’m scared of everything.

“Right,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “It’s okay.” He nodded, stepped back and was gone before she could blink.

Shaken slightly by Max and her reaction to him, she shut the door behind her and gave herself a moment. Just a moment to give in to all the things she really couldn’t afford. Doubt. Wishes. Hopes that she could fall asleep and everything in her life would be right again. That she wouldn’t have to run from Max and their strange connection. That she was a different kind of woman.

Josie darted out of the bathroom to stand in the box of light coming in from the windows. Her hair sparkled and glittered, and her smile, unguarded and genuine, was like a pinprick to Delia’s heart. Josie turned to face her and slowly, like the sun setting on the flat, barren desert she came from, the smile vanished only to be replaced by caution and worry that made Delia want to howl.

“Everything okay, Mama?” Josie asked, adult worry stamped on her young face.

The past year had aged Josie, turned her from a little girl to this changeling. Divorce was hard—Delia was proof of that. Having survived, barely, her own parents’ split, she’d always sworn she wouldn’t put her own children through the experience.

A promise she’d tried so hard to keep. Yet, here she was.

Delia braced herself against the door, let it hold her up when her knees wanted to buckle, while she wished, with all her heart, with every cell and granule of her self, that Josie had a different kind of mom. A better kind.

“Everything is great,” Delia lied, smiling. Those divorce books told her that Josie would be susceptible to Delia’s moods, so if she pretended everything was okay, Josie might start to believe it. And maybe Delia could, too. Someday.

Chapter Three

DELIA STROKED Josie’s hair—clean and sweet smelling—over the pillow while her little girl slept. Josie would never let her do this while awake.

She used to, of course, six months ago. Before France. Before Jared lost his mind and self-control.

Delia had thought, stupidly, that the divorce had been bad enough. But this? How could they possibly recover from what Jared was doing to them?

Josie always had been such a daddy’s little girl. And really, Delia couldn’t blame her—Jared had been an unbelievable father. Devoted, kind, more patient than she’d ever been, that’s for sure. He’d played endless rounds of tea party and dress-up. He acted as Prince Charming for Josie a hundred times a day.

But as the years stretched on in their marriage, it seemed that the better father he became, the worse husband he became. The qualities that she had found so earth-shatteringly attractive—his confidence, his willingness to fight for what he thought was right, his loyalty to friends—became disastrous as their marriage fell apart and she was increasingly what he fought against. The security she’d thought she’d found had turned to quicksand.

That had been her problem in the end—looking for security in someone else.

It was a lesson she seemed to have to relearn nearly every day.

Despite promises to the contrary—given in the rush of make-up emotion—Jared’s temper started spilling over into their relationship. He brought the pressures of his job into their home and sullied it with his uncontrollable rage.

She was never right and Jared’s opinion of her, which he vocalized more and more, plummeted. Until finally he started calling her stupid. Worthless. A terrible mother.

She’d moved out at that point, filed for divorce and joint custody. Probably too late, having stuck it out for Josie’s sake, but life had been okay for close to a year. Jared had been stable, their relationship civil. Then her mother got sick, alone in a shabby apartment outside of Paris.

Delia twined a lock of Josie’s hair between her fingers and thought about fate. About the way the world turned out of control all the time.

For Josie the past year had been one catastrophe after another. Culminating in this “vacation” with a mother she no longer seemed to like.

Delia had the memory of shrugging off her own mother. She’d been twelve or so and on one of her summer trips to France to visit the mother who had left them. She remembered wanting so badly to be touched by her mother but wanting to deny her at the same time. Hurt her. Wound her for leaving as she’d been wounded by the leaving.

Like mother like daughter, she thought bitterly about both connections.

Josie sighed and rolled on her side away from Delia. The little girl was exhausted. She’d barely eaten anything and had almost fallen asleep halfway through her bath.

Delia felt her own eyelids flutter, the panic and fear in her bloodstream ebbing as she relaxed.

Don’t start resting yet, she told herself, shaking away the weariness that stuck to her like cobwebs. There were things she had to do before she could let down her guard. She had to deal with Jared.

Assured Josie was out cold, Delia eased off the bed and grabbed her room key, calling card and cell phone from her purse.

She felt as though she was in some bad made-for-TV movie. Running around, buying cell phones from gas stations and throwing them away, using a calling card so the number couldn’t be traced. She didn’t even know if any of her tactics worked.

Those bad made-for-TV movies were her only guide.

The room door opened soundlessly, easing over the wide oak-planked floor. The floorboards creaked slightly as she stepped into the hallway and crept downstairs to the dark, silent dining room.

The moon still hid behind clouds and so the light sliding out from under the kitchen door was the only illumination in the opaque, thick blackness.

She was alone.

Stepping into the darkest shadows beside the staircase, she made a quick prayer to a no-doubt-incredulous god and dialed her phone with shaking fingers.

If you want to stop running, you have to do this, she assured herself. This is the right thing to do.

But every instinct—survival, maternal, self-preservation—screamed for her to stop, to not make the call.

“Hello?” Jared’s voice was enough to make adrenaline gush through her body, locking her muscles. Her throat closed and her heart hammered against her breastbone.

“Delia? Is that you?”

Her mouth was the Sahara Desert. “It’s me.”

His laughter, evil and snide, rippled down her back. “Well, if it isn’t my vacationing ex-wife. Tell me, how is South Carolina?”

Tears of panic and fear burned in her eyes and she couldn’t say anything.

“Did you think I wouldn’t look for you there?” he asked, so mocking and confident she wanted to reach through the phone lines and claw at his face. “Your cousin runs a shelter for idiots like you. I knew you’d go there.”

“I’m not there anymore,” she finally managed to say. “So who is the idiot?”

“Listen, you bitch.” His voice turned mean, a physical slap across the miles separating them. “I’m doing you a huge favor right now telling people you and Josie are just on a little trip. But I’m running out of patience. All I have to do is breathe the word kidnapping into my good friend the district attorney’s ear and this little ’vacation’ of yours is over.”

That galvanized her. Her spine straightened and the tears vanished. The good-old-boys’ club that her exhusband was so secure in had forced her to run, had turned a blind eye to his actions and had ruined any trust she’d had in the men she’d called friends over the years.

And she’d had enough.

What Delia knew about Jared he’d never want known. And that balanced the scales.

“You know your ’friends’ might forgive a man who beats his wife,” she said, her voice low. “They might understand an officer of the law taking some bribes now and again. Hell—” she was on a roll, feeling her own power well up from the ground under her feet “—an old football star like you might be forgiven a lot of things. But all I need to do is mention your involvement with the vanload of Mexican immigrants found dead in the desert to the press and you—”

“You don’t know anything,” he said, but she could hear the doubt in his voice.

“The man they arrested was staying with you, Jared. Josie saw him in your house in the middle of the night. She heard you arguing. Before you turned him in you kept him hidden. In the same house as your daughter!”

His laughter cut her short. “Who is going to believe you, sweetheart? I am the Lubbock County sheriff. I play golf with the governor. She’s just a little girl and you’re an unstable mother who abandoned her daughter to go to France.”

Anger blasted through her nervous system like an electric charge. “For six weeks, you bastard. My mother was dying and you wouldn’t let Josie leave the country with me.”

“Baby, you were never cut out to be a mother. And now you’re proving it by dragging our little girl all over the country for nothing.”

So mocking. So cocky. She wanted to go to the police right now. This minute. Just to see Jared’s mug shot all over the evening news.

But she didn’t know who she could trust. Where she could turn. And if something happened to her, if his evil web of golf buddies buried her and the evidence, what would happen to Josie?

What would happen to Josie if Jared truly understood what his little girl had seen?

“If I don’t know anything, and Josie’s just a little girl, why did you try to kill me? Why did Chris—” She nearly stuttered on the name.

“Sweetheart, Chris was doing his job. When he became one of my deputies he stopped being your friend. His loyalty is to me.”

“His job shouldn’t include protecting a scumbag like you, Jared.”

“Well, then maybe he decided it paid better to be my friend than yours.”

She pressed her forehead against the wall, wishing she could shove the memories of her friend’s betrayal out of her skull. But they were burned there. Like the fingerprints and fingernail scratches around her neck that, even though they were a week and half old, didn’t appear to be going away.

She’d thought she could trust Chris. The last person in her life who was on her side in the war between her and Jared. And when she’d gone to him with the information she had about Jared’s involvement in the human smuggling, her old friend had set her up.

He told her she and Josie were safe staying at his cabin. He told her he would bring the chief of police and the D.A. to hear what she had to say. He held her and listened to her and that night, after she put Josie to bed, when she answered the door expecting the cavalry, Jared had stood there instead.

“The hospital in Charleston has records of what you did to me,” she said. “And I have proof of those men you’ve been dealing with.” A slight lie—she had no real proof. But her cousin had told her about private investigators whose job it was to dig up the dirt no one wanted found. If she told the right people, they could find the proof and they both knew it. “So why don’t you cut the bullshit? If you didn’t think what I knew could hurt you, you’d have already called out the dogs on me.”

He was silent for a moment and it was so gratifying more tears bit into the back of her eyes. Victories, no matter how small and brief, were not something to be taken lightly these days.

“What do you want?”

“I want to make a deal,” she said.

“Forget it. I’m not dealing with trash like you.”

“Fine then. I’ll call my lawyer—”

He laughed. “Please, no one in town would dare represent you.”

She laid down her ace card and hoped it was enough to scare him away from them for good.

“My cousin knows people who would.”

He paused for a second and Delia held her breath. Her cousin Samantha, who ran the shelter in South Carolina, had resources such as lawyers who specialized in these sorts of cases.

“You haven’t talked to her about this,” he finally said. “I know because I talked to her when I tracked you to that crappy shelter you took our baby to.”

“I haven’t talked to her yet, Jared. But I could.”

She could hear him breathe, could imagine the vein in his forehead pressing against his skin. The ugliness in his soul turned his handsome face into something evil.

He was not the man she had married. He was not Josie’s father. This man was a monster and she didn’t understand when it had happened. When had he lost control? This all seemed like some absurd nightmare, one of his terrible practical jokes that only he thought was funny.

“You wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re too weak. Too scared.”

Once maybe that had been true. But she was Delia Dupuis. And she was her daddy’s girl and tough as nails.

“Don’t push me, Jared. You’d be surprised what I could do.”

“I’ve seen what you can do, and I owe you for that.” That night in the cabin she’d nearly split open his skull with a fire poker. When his grip around her throat eased, she’d pulled herself free, prepared to run, but rage and a long list of injuries for which she deserved retribution forced her to turn back to him and kick him solidly, viciously, between the legs.

He’d passed out from the pain on Chris Groames’s floor and she’d grabbed her sleeping daughter and run.

She swallowed bile, hating herself and what she’d turned into when backed into a corner.

“Why haven’t you talked to her, then?” he asked. “With all this proof you’ve got on me.”

“You want Josie to see what you really are?” she asked, her voice cracking. She was doing the unthinkable, protecting him in order to protect her daughter. “You want her to be called as a witness against you? She’s a little girl, Jared. It would kill her.”

The line was silent for so long she allowed herself to hope that he was seeing reason.

“Jared, let us go. We can—”

“You talk to your cousin and she’s dead,” he growled.

Ice water like fear chilled her to the bone. Years ago, she would have said Jared, despite his temper, wasn’t capable of real violence. But the last year of their marriage and whatever mess he’d gotten himself mixed up in with the smuggling of drugs and immigrants over the Mexican border had convinced her otherwise.

He was capable of anything and she had the bruises to prove it.

“Stop looking for us and I won’t say anything. To anyone. Just leave us alone,” she nearly begged.

“I’m happy to leave you alone. I’m happy to let you rot wherever you want to. But you’re not taking my girl.”

“I’m not letting you have her back.”

“Tell me, does Josie even like you? You left her for six weeks, Delia. That’s a hard thing for a kid to get over. You divorced her father. You’re making her run all over the country. What are you telling her about this little trip of yours?”

“We’re doing fine,” she lied.

So many mistakes.

But she hoped keeping Jared away from Josie was the one good thing she could do as a mother, to make up for the mistakes she’d made. Even if Josie hated her for it.

“You’re a criminal, Jared. You think I’m going to let her go back to you?”

“And you think I won’t hunt you to ground like an animal? Josie is mine, Delia. You proved that when you walked away from her.”

In the end, he was right. She’d left her little girl with a monster. A monster disguised as a devoted father.

She was suddenly tired, too weak to keep battling. Her adrenaline and nerves bottomed out and she sagged against the wall.

“Leave us alone,” she breathed.

“You can’t run forever, you—”

She disconnected the phone and pressed it hard to her lips until she felt her teeth. Her pulse chugged in her ears and cold sweat ran down her back. She slammed her fist against the wall, wishing it were her husband or Chris Groames.

How did I get here? she thought, hysterically.

Her fingers traced the yellow and purple bruises on her neck through the thin cotton of her sweater.

Two weeks ago she’d gotten back from France. She’d been trying hard to make amends with her daughter, to put aside the guilt she had about her mother. She’d been thinking about planting a garden behind her little house. Her own herbs and some tomatoes for Josie to pick when they were ripe.

But then the news story about the van of immigrants broke and her life changed.

This is too much, she thought, too much for me to handle on my own.

But she didn’t have a choice. Jared made sure of that.

Her father was dead. Her mother, if she were alive, would be less than useless, having spent her whole life avoiding anything messy or ugly. And this was both.

Turning to her cousin Samantha was now totally out of the question.

Josie has me. Me and no one else.

And I have no one. The realization filled her with a despair so heavy, so all-consuming she couldn’t breathe.

A rag doll without bone or muscle operating out of sheer habit and will, she turned only to realize the front door stood open, the silhouette of a man outlined in silver light watched her.

“JUST LEAVE US ALONE.”

Max heard the snap of a cell phone shutting and the distinctive sound of a fist hitting the wall. He had a sickening sense of déjà vu. How many times had he seen this while on the force? How many times had a woman’s voice, shaking with the same combination of fear and anger, haunted him? Echoed in his head long after the damage was done?

He turned to duck away, telling himself it was to let Delia have her privacy, but he knew the truth.

He wanted to pretend he didn’t hear the emotional plea for help in her voice. Because he was a coward.

But as he stepped back into the night, her voice again cut through the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she asked. She stepped into the slice of light from the open door, but the light didn’t reach her face and all he could see were her fists pressed against her stomach.

“Delia, it’s me. Max.” He was careful. Quiet. He kept the door open so he could avoid turning on the overhead lights.

He didn’t want to reveal what he knew instinctively she would want hidden. Her face, her eyes, the devils that chased her and from which she couldn’t hide.

“Sorry.” Her voice came out on a soft gust of relief and forced laughter. “You startled me.”

He did a hell of a lot more than that but he wasn’t about to push the issue.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” She swallowed and opened her hands to reveal the cell phone. When she spoke again her accent was more pronounced. “Just some family problems. You know how it is.”

He chuckled politely. She was telling half-truths, white lies that were inconsequential, while she hid something big.

She’s probably having a fight with a boyfriend or her ex or her mother, for all I know, he thought, convincing himself he didn’t need to get involved.

But then she sighed and her breath caught on a hiccup and something in the way she stood changed. She was cracking, falling apart right in front of him.

And if she did that they’d both be ruined. He was not the sort of man people should trust—that had been proved time and time again. He didn’t want the burden of whatever she was about to tell him.

“Max—” she breathed. “I—”

“It’s none of my business.” He held his arms out to his side, a position of surrender. “Just like you said.”

Her hands, alabaster in the moonlight, like white birds or handkerchiefs, clutched again briefly at her stomach then relaxed. He guessed she didn’t realize how much she gave away with that gesture.

I’m sorry. The words flung themselves against his lips, but he kept his mouth shut.

He suddenly wanted to tell her that she was safe here, to at least offer her that kind of succor. But it wasn’t true. Safety was an illusion.

Besides, she’d probably prickle and tell him to mind his own business.

“Okay,” she breathed, her own act of surrender. Suddenly they were linked by whatever she wasn’t saying and he wasn’t pushing her to say. They collaborated on her pretense. “Thank you. I better get back before Josie wakes up and screams the place down.’

And just like that she was gone. Up the stairs and out of sight.

He stood still in the silence that she left behind, caught in an eddy that smelled of jasmine and fear.

Responsibility ate at him. The lingering ties that bound him to the oath he’d taken as a police officer cut off circulation to his brain and he had to fight the desire to go after her, to find out what was forcing her to the dark shadows.

He took some deep breaths. Told himself to see reason as he entered the dining room and reached over the bar to grab two beers from the fridge. He could see light under the door to the kitchen and he hoped that meant Gabe was up.

What about his responsibility to Gabe, to Alice and the Riverview? Shouldn’t he say something to them, warn them of the possible danger that had been delivered to their doorstep by Delia and Josie.

He shook his head. This was what he’d been trying to avoid for the past two years. This very spot between a rock and a hard place. He wanted no responsibility toward anyone, so that he couldn’t fail everyone. Again.

“Anyone home,” he said when he opened the kitchen door. From his office, Gabe grunted in reply. Max opened the fridge and found two of the chocolate cakes he was after—one sunken and slightly burnt on one side adorned with a note: Max, eat this one.

He grabbed it, two forks, the two beers and pushed open Gabe’s partially closed office door.

“Hi, Max,” Gabe said, barely looking up from his keyboard as he clacked away on something.

“Cake?” Max asked, sitting in the folding chair opposite the cluttered desk and the big wall calendar behind Gabe. It didn’t look good, that calendar. Through the summer and fall it had been filled with the names of guests, weddings, tour groups. So many names there had hardly been any white space beneath Gabe’s color-coded guest booking system.

Now it was all white space. The Christmas holiday marked off in black at the end of the month.

“Ah…” Gabe looked over the computer screen at Max’s cake. “Sure,” he finally said and Max extended it and the fork.

“Are we getting any more guests?” Max asked, waving his fork at the calendar. “Or am I going to have to take another cut in pay?”

“I’m paying you?”

They smirked at each other, their way of showing brotherly love. It was pretty juvenile, but it worked for them.

“Actually—” Gabe stuck the fork in his mouth, clicked on a few more keys then grabbed his blue marker from the mug at the corner of his desk and scrawled in arrival times and names on various weekends for the next two months “—I posted the spa services this morning and we got two reservations from that. The New Year’s package, once I added the complimentary massages, got three reservations. And this weekend, last minute, two women are coming from Arizona.” He added the names JoBeth Andrews and Sheila Whitefeather to Friday’s square.

“How long are they staying?”

“They didn’t say.”

“We’ve got a houseful of Southerners these days.”

Gabe turned and reached out his fork for more of the chocolate goo. “What do you mean?”

“Delia and Josie.”

“They’re from Indiana.”

Max shook his head. “No, they’re not.”

“Well, maybe not originally but that’s their last address.”

“Then why doesn’t Delia have a winter coat? And why is this the first time Josie has seen this much snow and—”

“Do you have a problem with Delia and Josie?” Gabe asked, leaning back in his chair.

Max could tell Gabe, right here and right now, that something was wrong. That he didn’t trust Delia, that she was hiding something and that his gut said that something was real bad. Gabe would believe him and Delia and Josie would be gone by the end of the day tomorrow and Max could go back to constructing useless buildings and forgetting.

But that mix of fear and courage in her voice still resonated in him like a struck bell. The way her hands fisted at her stomach told him more than words and her bravado that she needed a safe harbor.

“No,” he finally said. He couldn’t be responsible for the two of them being turned out, not until he knew what was at play.

“You sure? I mean, she’s a very beautiful woman…” Gabe trailed off as he reached for more cake and Max pulled it out of the way.

Gabe scowled and Max handed the cake over to him entirely. “Or—” Gabe lifted his eyebrows “—maybe you didn’t happen to notice her looks.”

“I noticed.” It was impossible not to. She was a neon sign in a dark window. He found it hard to look away, and when he did, her image lingered, burned into his eyes. “But she has made it real clear that I make her uncomfortable.”

“Did you hit on her?”

“Of course not.”

“Right.” Gabe nodded. “I forgot you’re working on unofficial monk status.”

“I’m in the middle of nowhere with my brother, my dad and my very pregnant sister-in-law. It’s not that hard to be a monk.”

“Daphne, from—”

“I’m not talking about this,” Max told him definitively. His love life was no one’s business.

“So, why do you make Delia uncomfortable?”

“I talked to her kid and it made her jumpy.”

“She’s pretty protective,” Gabe agreed, and took a swig of his beer. “But I guess pretty, single moms have to be.”

“That’s the third time you’ve mentioned Delia’s looks.” Now it was Max’s turn to be smug, to needle his brother. “You want me to tell Alice you’ve got your eye on another woman?”

“She’d never believe you,” Gabe said, as assured as a man could be. He practically oozed satisfaction. Happy wafted off him like stink from garbage and his wife was the same way. When she wasn’t complaining about having to lie down most of the time, or grumbling about the size of her ankles or her butt she had “the glow.” And when Gabe walked into the room she glowed harder.

It was nice.

Nice to be around such happiness. Such normality. It gave him back a kernel of faith in marriage and parenthood, faith the last years of his job had ripped all away.

“You heard from Dad?” Gabe asked, taking one last bite of cake then setting down his fork. He had been complaining of the sympathy weight he’d been putting on with his wife.

Max didn’t have such problems so he finished off the chocolate goo and shook his head. “It’s only been two days, Gabe. I haven’t heard from him since he left.”

“It’s so weird him taking off like that.”

“Because Dad’s been the picture of mental health since last summer?” Max asked, not sparing the sarcasm.

“You worried?”

“About what? That he’ll tell Mom to come even though we made it real clear we didn’t want to see her again?”

“Or that he went to see her?”

They were silent for a moment and Max wondered if Dad would actually do that. Mom had walked out on the three of them thirty years ago. Just packed up and left in the middle of the night, no note, no goodbyes, not even a hint that she was unhappy.

Then a few months ago she had contacted Dad asking to see all of them, like she had the right. Like the door she’d shut when she left would swing open because she wanted it to.

Max rubbed at his face. “He said he had to go talk to his lawyer about his life insurance. That he needed to get his things in order.”

Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like a lame excuse.”

“Maybe he’s off having a dirty weekend—”

Gabe shot him a shut-the-hell-up look. Max smiled and drank his beer.

“You’re not worried?”

“About Dad?” Gabe nodded and Max shook his head. “Nope. I don’t worry, Gabe. I let you do that.”

It was another reason why living here worked out for Max. He had shelter, clothes, food, company, gooey chocolate cakes and mindless work that kept him occupied—and he didn’t have to worry about any of it. Gabe worried enough for both of them.

And now, with him and Alice finally having a baby after years of effort, his mother hen ways were in overdrive.

Which was another reason not to say anything about Delia.

Max stood. “Where do you want to put those two women arriving on Friday?”

“Cabin four, I think. It’s the biggest, so if they want to stay, they won’t feel cramped.”

“All right.” Max grabbed the half-eaten cake, the two forks and the empty beer bottles. “I’ll go make sure it’s in good shape.”

“Now?” Gabe asked, looking at his watch. “It’s midnight.”

Max shrugged. “Why not?”

Gabe stared at him a little too long and all those questions his brother and father had been dying to ask since he got out of the hospital suddenly swirled around the room. They were never far away—the questions, concern and worry.

“I’m fine,” he said, forestalling the actually uttering of the questions. No one would truly understand what was wrong. The guilt he carried that had nothing to do with a dead father and a dead kid.

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