“Lara…”

Bryce had stretched his hand out, so that the tips of his fingers were only an inch away from her shoulder. One inch.

She didn’t move a muscle. “What?”

He remained motionless, too. His long fingers didn’t close the distance between them, but they didn’t retreat, either. It was like a freeze frame, the two of them suspended in time, only an inch apart.

She asked again, because the tension of that inch was unbearable. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, his voice oddly vague. “It’s just—”

She was acutely aware of her heartbeat, which seemed to be the only part of her still moving. One inch. If she leaned his way even the slightest bit, their bodies would connect.

But she couldn’t. The distance between them, even if it was only an inch, was his distance. He had put it there, and only he could take it away.

“It’s just that… If you wanted my respect for what you did today—for what you’re trying to do with your life… You’ve got it.”

Respect… Numbly she thanked him, said goodbye and climbed out of the car. Respect was cold, completely without passion. You respected your congressman, your pastor, your fifth-grade teacher and your elders.

Respect had no power to do the only thing that mattered. It could never close that final, fatal inch.

Dear Reader,

What is the mystique of small towns? So many stories are set in them, including this one. They must have something that speaks to our deepest fantasies.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida, which, though not New York or L.A., hardly qualifies as “small.” But I, too, feel the small-town magic, lean longingly toward the peace and charm. Is it the sweet air? The big sky? The unlocked doors, the homegrown stores, the creeks and glens and quiet places?

Yes, all that. But perhaps there’s something even more profound. Perhaps we’re all yearning to connect—and to believe our connections are “forever.” Maybe it’s appealing to think that, even if we are shy or injured or just born loners, the close bonds of a small town could save us from ourselves. They could pull us in, banish isolation, promise permanence.

Heyday is that kind of town. Bryce McClintock left in scandal and disgrace fourteen years ago, vowing never to return. But when he finds he has inherited one-third of his father’s estate, he must come back to the town that officially labeled him The Sinner.

He tells himself it’s temporary. Just until he can sort things out. But that’s before he meets the stray dog and the crazy tenants. Before he discovers he’s got a new niece he didn’t know about, and a new job he doesn’t want. Most of all, that’s before he learns that Lara Lynmore, the one woman who ever got under his skin, has come to live in Heyday, too.

Bryce is about to find out one more thing about small towns—and about true love. Once they claim your heart, they never really give it back.

I hope you enjoy this story.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

P.S. I love to hear from readers! Write me at P.O. Box 947633, Maitland, FL 32794-7633. And visit me at my Web site, www.KathleenOBrien.net.

The Sinner
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

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

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“NO KIDDING, th-that’s your job? You get paid to guard Lara Lynmore’s body?”

Bryce McClintock flicked a look at the name tag of the stammering young man next to him. Ted Barnes, Assistant Event Manager, Eldorado Hotels. Ted was a just-barely-twentysomething kid whose silver, European-cut suit said he wanted to be all Hollywood glamour, but whose freckled face said he’d just stepped off the bus from Iowa.

The way the kid’s mouth hung open as he looked at Lara Lynmore gave him away, too. Real Hollywood types took celebrities for granted. And Lara Lynmore wasn’t even technically a “star” yet. Although ever since her first leading role, as Bess, the doomed black-eyed beauty in the high-budget movie version of “The Highwayman,” had premiered this summer, she was getting pretty close.

Close enough to have attracted about a million innocent, panting fans, like this guy.

And one stalker, an obsessed former stuntman named Kenny Boggs.

Kenny wasn’t just annoying. He was dangerous. Bryce had seen the irrational, increasingly hostile letters the stuntman had sent to Lara Lynmore after she rejected him. He’d heard the threats on her answering machine. Kenny meant business.

Bryce had seen way too many creeps like Boggs—for these past eight years in the FBI they’d been his whole life. That was why he’d quit. That was why, as soon as he could find someone else to take this idiotic position of guarding America’s sweetheart, he was headed straight for the Bahamas, where his biggest problem would be figuring out how to beat the house at blackjack.

However, Ted wasn’t to blame for Bryce’s career problems. Ted was just a sweet sap who was going to break his corn-fed heart trying to Be Somebody, and then slink home to marry the patient girl who would never guess that every time her sensible husband made love to her, he’d be thinking of Lara Lynmore.

So instead of telling him to buzz off, as he had planned, Bryce just nodded. “Yeah. I’m her bodyguard. But it’s no big deal. It’s just a job.”

A sighing silence. Though Bryce didn’t want to take his eyes off the crowd for long, he glanced over at the kid one more time. Was that drool he saw shining at the edge of his open mouth? God.

“Movie stars are people, Ted. They’re pretty, but they’re just people.”

Ted didn’t even blink. “Not Lara,” he whispered. “Lara Lynmore isn’t just people. Look at her.”

Bryce didn’t have to look at Lara to know what Ted was talking about, but he did. And he saw what he’d seen every day, every night, for the past six weeks. A twenty-six-year-old brunette with the long-legged, ripe-breasted body of a wet-dream goddess and the sweet, wide-eyed face of the girl you’d loved and lost in high school.

It was that off-kilter combination that got you. Bryce was tough—he prided himself on it—but even he wasn’t so tough he didn’t feel it. It was like a one-two punch, sharp and below the belt.

Today Lara was giving a speech to the ladies of the Breast Cancer Awareness luncheon, so she wasn’t wearing her usual party-girl getup—no dagger-cut necklines, no sequins, no peekaboo lace.

Which wasn’t to say no sex. She looked sexy as hell in a feminine rendition of the riding clothes seen in The Highwayman. A pair of tight-fitting white breeches, a cardinal-red jacket, a white ruffled kerchief at her throat pinned by a simple sparkling diamond. A red ribbon gathered her long, dark hair at her neck and let it spill down her back all the way to her fantastic butt.

Bryce shifted and tightened his jaw. Ted from Iowa might be right. Lara Lynmore really wasn’t just an ordinary person. She was dangerously potent, the female equivalent of heroin. People who ventured too close could get addicted, get crazy, get hurt.

Bryce wondered what Ted would think if he knew that, just last night, Bryce had taken a willing Lara Lynmore down to her lacy under-nothings, right there on her living room sofa—and had chosen to stop there. To walk away empty-handed.

He’d think Bryce was nuts, that’s what he’d think. Bryce half thought so himself. He still wasn’t sure what had stopped him. God knew this job had teased every one of his hormones into a raging fury. It was like some kind of torture, standing within inches of this high-octane beauty 24/7, trying to keep those hormones on a leash. No wonder they’d ended up panty-dancing on the sofa last night.

Maybe what had stopped him was the thought of Darryl, Lara’s lawyer. Darryl, who had roped Bryce into this bodyguarding gig by playing on an old law-school friendship. Just for a little while, Darryl had begged, just until California’s best professional bodyguard was free and could take over.

You’re the only one I can trust to control this until the professional can take over. It’s serious, Bryce. This nut wants to kill her.

A few days, like hell. That had been six weeks ago. Finally, last night, just in the nick of time, just before the panties came off, the new bodyguard had called to say he could start tomorrow.

Which meant Bryce just had to get through today, and then he was home free.

And, thankfully, today looked like a piece of cake. He’d already vetted the help, everything from the waiters and chefs to good old Ted here. He’d made the setup crew change the position of Lara’s podium—they’d set it up in the center of the dais, but he needed it closer to the wings, where he’d be stationed.

And then, making himself truly popular, he’d made them remove the first row of tables, which were much too close to the dais.

That had improved the situation, though even now, things were a little too tight to be ideal. But when he looked out and saw the hundreds of pink hats and light-blue, yellow and pink party frocks in the audience, he felt better. The Breast Cancer Awareness luncheon was an ocean of estrogen punctuated by a few slim, white-clad waiters circulating gracefully among the tables.

A cocky muscle man like Kenny Boggs would stand out in this crowd like a circus clown in a cemetery.

“And, in conclusion—” Lara’s voice sounded good over the microphone, which accentuated its throaty undertones. “I’d like to thank all of you for—”

Bryce had seen a copy of her speech. Three more sentences, and they were out of here.

Suddenly, without apparent reason, his heartbeat quickened, instinct sending a jolt of adrenaline through his system. Something was wrong.

His eyes narrowed, scanning rapidly over the smiling crowd. Damn it. Every instinct he owned was telling him something was wrong. What was it?

It was… Scanning… Scanning…

It was that waiter. That waiter near the front, the one who was just a little broader in the shoulders than the others. The one who had a tray in his hand, but was walking between tables instead of slowly rotating around just one, as all the other waiters were doing, picking up uneaten fruit tarts.

Bryce edged forward for a better look. What in hell was the guy doing? His serpentine movements were bringing him ever closer to the dais. Still, it wasn’t Kenny. Kenny Boggs had blond hair, and this guy was…

Shit. Bryce came out from behind the curtain just as the waiter looked up. It was Kenny, what a fool, what a maniac, here of all places, even with dyed hair and a uniform he should have known—

Their eyes met for one broken edge of a second, but it was enough to warn the muscle-bound psycho that he’d been made. His huge shoulders clenched.

Bryce moved forward, reaching for Lara, who hadn’t noticed anything yet. “Get back,” he barked. She looked over at him, horror instantly digging a jagged furrow between her lovely brows. Her grip on the podium tightened. She looked as if she weren’t sure which way to run, as if she were frozen.

Kenny wasn’t frozen, though. All in one lightning movement, he dropped his tray with a clatter and began to run toward the dais, a large knife gripped in his left fist, point down.

At least it wasn’t a gun.

Still—Bryce knew about crazy people. Often they were able to beat smarter, stronger, saner people because they didn’t think in predictable patterns. They didn’t fight according to even the most subconscious of rules. Sometimes they didn’t feel pain. Sometimes they liked it.

Bryce had his gun out before Kenny took the first step, but everywhere he looked women were screaming, scurrying around the tables like squealing mice. If Bryce shot and missed Kenny, the bullet might bury itself in the crowd, in one of those terrified, well-meaning ladies in their stylish pink hats.

Some of them were even scrambling closer to the dais instead of toward the exits, as if fear had robbed them of their sense of direction. They stumbled on the short rise of stairs, on the hems of their expensive dresses. It was pure pink-and-blue chaos.

Damn it, damn it. He didn’t dare shoot.

Kenny moved fast, but Bryce got to Lara first. He shoved her toward the wings, even though she still gripped the podium so hard he could hear her fingernails rip on the wood.

“Ted,” Bryce called roughly, and thankfully the love-struck Assistant Event Manager was still there—and still thinking. Ted caught Lara as if she were a well-tossed football. He wrapped his skinny arms around her and began to drag her behind the curtain.

Bryce was the only thing that stood between Kenny and the curtain. Kenny rammed into him, shoulder first, trying to go right through him. But Bryce held his ground, and Kenny cursed with a hoarse fury that made Bryce’s blood run cold.

“You can’t keep me from her, you bastard,” Kenny said, or maybe it only sounded like that, Bryce wasn’t sure. His voice was crazed, his syllables more like the grunts of an animal than a human being.

“She’s mine,” he said, slashing wildly. “Mine, mine—”

Bryce kept the knife blade away somehow. Should he have holstered his gun? It was more of a liability now. The fight had become primal, hand-to-hand. He could smell Kenny’s breath. Foul. It seemed to carry the stench of his psychosis.

The struggle lasted about ten seconds. He felt Kenny’s knife finally find a home, sinking into the flesh of his upper arm as if it were a piece of pie.

The cold blade radiated fire out in all directions. And then it hit bone. Bryce’s vision exploded, red and starry, but he refused to faint.

The split second it took Kenny to work the knife free was the second Bryce needed. Ignoring the pain, he dropped his gun into the sweaty inch between their bodies. He jerked Kenny around so that the gun pointed toward the back of the dais, where no one could get hurt if something went wrong.

And then he pulled the trigger.

Kenny frowned, and for a minute Bryce thought maybe, somehow, he had missed. He had his finger on the trigger again, ready to pull, when Kenny’s mouth opened and blood spilled out like liquid words.

Kenny shook his head, as if rejecting the truth, but his body knew. He began to slide to his knees. Some absurd instinct made Bryce catch him under the arms and break his fall, lowering him toward the floor, careful of crooked legs and lolling arms.

Kenny’s abdomen was pulpy, red, and sickening. Bryce looked at it only a second before training his eyes on the man’s face. Kenny’s breath was coming in small, choking spasms. He stared up at Bryce and clutched his arm, as if he needed comfort. Bryce found that he couldn’t pull away. He didn’t even try.

“Lara,” Kenny whispered, sounding, here at the end, as innocent and adoring as wide-eyed Ted from Iowa. His fingers opened and shut rhythmically on Bryce’s coat sleeve. He shut his eyes and said her name one more time, tight with agony, blood bubbling between his lips. “Lara.”

His hand fell away.

With a fierce suddenness, the sounds of the real world came rushing back into Bryce’s ears. He felt wobbly and wet, as if he had just surfaced from a deep sea dive. Still, he struggled to his feet and took a step. He must have lost a lot of blood. He felt strange, as if he were about to fall asleep, or as if he had just awakened.

He was surprised to see he still held the gun. Its warm weight was like a living thing in his hand, black and smoking, temporarily docile but always dangerous.

He fought the urge to toss the gun aside, aware that the police would want to look at it, do tests and take prints and label it as evidence. He couldn’t let the curious onlookers touch it.

He stared down at Kenny Boggs, weaving a little, casting a moving shadow across the silent body. It all seemed so bizarre. Somehow he had never believed it would come to this. He hadn’t ever really believed it would end in death.

Bryce had never shot a man before. Maybe, he thought suddenly, he should have mentioned that to Darryl before he accepted this mission. He hadn’t shot any of the criminals he’d investigated during eight years in the FBI. He hadn’t shot the thug who stole his Lexus from his apartment parking lot, or the creep he’d found in bed with his girlfriend. He hadn’t even shot his father, whom he had hated more than anyone else on earth.

But he’d shot this guy. This total stranger. He didn’t seem to be able to force that to make sense. Kenny was crazy, of course he was, as crazy as a rabid dog, but he had died with Bryce’s bullet in his stomach and Lara Lynmore’s name on his lips. Even now, that just wouldn’t make sense.

“Bryce!” Lara came running out from the wings, stumbling gracefully. Ted must have wrestled her to the ground back there, because her bloodred coat was torn, and her tight white pants had dirty circles on the knees. Her brown hair flew around her shoulders, matted and dusty, but still flattering, as if she’d just come from Makeup, where they’d transformed her into the perfect heroine in distress.

Bryce turned away, suddenly unable to bear the sight of her.

She called his name again, catching on the y subtly, so that the sound hinted at a deep, inarticulate need. He’d heard that sound before. It was exactly how she’d called out to her lost highwayman in her big death scene. Brava, Ms. Lynmore. He half expected the delighted director to appear and yell “Cut!”

When he heard her first soft sobs, he started to walk away, toward the other end of the dais, where he now saw the uniformed cops appearing.

“Bryce, come back.” But he didn’t turn around. Kenny’s bloody body lay between them, and it was a gulf he knew he would never be able to cross. Not today. Not ever.

“Bryce.”

He almost paused. She sounded so alone.

But what a joke that was. Lara Lynmore, budding starlet, was never alone. Already a dozen people were rushing past him, eager to comfort the beautiful woman who was crying so prettily, acting as if her heart would break.

Of course she was. That was what Lara Lynmore did.

She acted.

CHAPTER TWO

LARA RODE THE GLASS ELEVATOR up to her third-floor apartment, clutching her bag of new shoes as if it were the Holy Grail. It was ridiculous to be so proud of something so simple. But this was the first time she’d ventured out of her apartment alone since the shooting, and even if it was just to the Jimmy Choo store, it still felt like a victory.

Her mother had wanted to go with her. She always wanted to—not because she thought Lara still needed protection, but because she enjoyed the adventure. If none of Lara’s fans recognized her right away—which happened very rarely these days—Karla Gilbert would be sure to do something to draw a crowd.

“Look, Lara,” she’d say loudly enough for everyone standing nearby to hear, “it’s just like the scarf you wore in The Highwayman.” It was childish, but Lara had learned not to mind. Her mother’s vicarious pleasure had always been by far the most uncomplicated reward of this strange and exhausting career.

Today, though, Lara just hadn’t been up to all the fuss. Today had been a test, to see if she could shake off the depression and anxiety that had been smothering her for the past eight weeks.

And she had passed the test. She leaned against the cool elevator walls and closed her eyes, squeezing the Jimmy Choo bag to her chest.

Now if only she could pass this next test, too. She thought of the long yellow packet, the letter from Moresville College, that lay at the bottom of her purse, like a bomb waiting to explode, and shivered slightly. This test would be so much harder.

But she couldn’t wait any longer. She’d agonized over this, she’d worried and prayed and dreamed, until she had thought she’d go crazy. But the time for fretting and planning was over. Now that she knew she was strong enough to face the world on her own, it was time for action.

Today was the day.

The first day of the rest of her life. She almost smiled, thinking how perfectly that old cliché fit the moment. A small squeeze of excitement tightened her chest, but it was brief. Almost immediately the anxiety returned.

She caught a watery reflection of herself in the elevator’s glass cage, pale and incomplete, broken by the green ferns of the three-story atrium that slid down as she ascended. Who was this plain young woman? Without makeup, without the elaborate hairstyling, without the expensive wardrobe, she looked just like any other woman. Nothing special. Not even as pretty as the ladies who sold shoes in the Jimmy Choo store, or the stylish professional women who moved through the elegant foyer below.

Certainly not the kind of woman men died for. If only Kenny Boggs had seen her like this, maybe none of the horror would have happened. A vision of his bleeding body superimposed itself onto her reflection, and she closed her eyes, suddenly sick.

How could he be dead? How was it possible that a human being had died merely so that she could live? Who was she? What made her life more valuable than his?

Logically, she understood that there were rational answers. Kenny Boggs had tried to kill her. People had a right to protect themselves. But the emotional truth was more complicated, like a dark, twisted knot inside her heart. The questions remained, ghosts that followed her around, pale and quiet in the daytime, stronger and louder at night.

But she repeated the mantra she’d used every sleepless night for the past eight weeks. Kenny was dead. She couldn’t go back and change the past.

Now all that was left was to change the future, if she was brave enough to do it.

The elevator finally stopped. She walked to her own door, took a deep breath and put her key into the lock. She was ready, her speech prepared, her shoulders squared—so why were her knees suddenly just a little too soft? She wasn’t afraid of her own mother, was she? Surely, after the initial shock wore off, her mother would—

But this was just more worrying. More procrastination.

She turned the key. The rest of her life lay, green and shining, like Oz, just across the long bridge of this one conversation. She couldn’t afford to lose her nerve now.

“Mom? I need to talk to—”

But for a second, as the door to her apartment swung open, she froze. Had she opened the wrong door?

She didn’t recognize anything in this room.

Except her mother. Karla rushed over, cupping Lara’s chin in her hand and kissing her on both cheeks, an affectation she had picked up recently, as if they were from Italy instead of Mobile, Alabama.

“Oh, good, Lara, you’re here! Ignore the mess in the living room. Remember, it’s a work in progress. It’s going to be magnificent! Maxim, she’s here! Show Lara the plans!”

Lara touched her mother’s hand. “Plans?”

Her mother adjusted a strand of platinum-blond hair behind her delicate ear and knitted her freshly waxed eyebrows. “The decorating, darling. Remember? I told you last week.”

Lara shook her head slowly. She didn’t remember anything about decorating. And besides…this was decorating? The living room looked as if it had been ransacked.

Her mother laughed merrily. “Oh, Lara, you never listen to me. I must have talked to you about it ten times, and you said it was fine. You’ve been needing to do something with this place, and now that you’re—”

Maxim came over, wearing an olive-green suit with gold braids at the shoulders. He had redecorated Karla’s apartment last year, while Lara was in England filming The Highwayman. Lara had met him once or twice on visits home, and he’d scared her to death. With his black eyes and black moustache, he looked like some sadistic headmaster at a horror-movie military school.

“You must change. You must change everything.” He drew his imposing black brows together. In spite of his outrageous clothes, Maxim defied every stereotype about the effeminate interior decorator. He didn’t just redecorate your rooms, he went to war with them. “Everything.”

“Hi, Maxim.” Lara tried not to resent his presence. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. And it certainly pointed out that her mother, at least, wasn’t trapped in a mental maze of guilt and bloody memories, trying to make sense of Kenny Boggs’s death. Her mother was moving on, picking out paint and fabric and furniture.

Of course, she hadn’t been on the dais that day. She hadn’t seen Kenny’s body.

Lara forced a smile. She was always pretending these days, trying to be like other people. “Maxim…I think maybe we should put the redecorating off a little while. I need to talk to my mother—”

Maxim growled. “You cannot put this off a minute. Not a second.” He let his black gaze sweep the room angrily. “There is no style here, there is no ambiance. There is no you. Not the real you.”

If only he knew how true that was. The real Lara hadn’t ever set foot in this apartment. The real Lara hadn’t been seen for years. In fact, in some ways, she felt that the real Lara hadn’t yet been born.

“Maxim has such wonderful things planned, Lara. All white, very modern. With little explosions of color, like…” Karla put a pale pink fingertip against her dazzlingly white teeth. “Oh, show her the lamp, Maxim.”

“Yes. The lamp is the masterpiece.” Maxim picked up a long, cherry-red, twisted-glass thing from behind the sofa and held it out like a javelin. It was at least six feet long. It looked like…Lara searched her memory for what it reminded her of….

It looked like a Twizzler.

Maxim ran his hand along the twisted, ropy surface lovingly.

“Picture,” he commanded. “It glows, top to bottom. Very red. Dramatic. It stands behind a virginal white sofa. The sofa has purple pillows. Perhaps one is yellow, to startle the eye. And then…” He held the Twizzler erect. “Fire!”

Lara hesitated, wondering whether Maxim might be insane.

“Oh.” Without warning, his face crumpled. Even his moustache seemed to wilt. “You don’t like it?”

“Yes, of course,” she assured him, though it shocked her to see how vulnerable he was under that military surface. How could she have forgotten the one immutable truth of Hollywood? Everyone in this town was playing a role, apparently even Maxim. “It’s…unforgettable.” He frowned, unconvinced, so she went on. “I love it, honestly. It’s just that I really need to talk to—”

She suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked over to see Karla plucking at the cotton sleeve of Lara’s T-shirt and frowning.

“My God, Lara,” her mother said. “Please. Tell me you didn’t wear this out shopping.”

Lara stiffened, but she kept her voice calm. “Yes, I did.”

“Oh, honey, noooo.” Her mother sounded as distressed as if Lara had confessed to walking naked down Rodeo Drive. “And no makeup? No mousse?” She fingered Lara’s hair desperately, as if she could salvage her after the fact. “Oh, honey, honey. Not even any lipstick?”

Lara tried to keep smiling. “It’s okay, Mom.” She held up the shoe bag. “As you can see, they were willing to take my money, anyhow.”

“But what if people had seen you?”

“People did see me. Lots of people. No one turned to stone.”

“But I mean, someone important? God, what about the paparazzi?”

“Mom. I’m not that big a deal. I went, I shopped, I came home. I’m not Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t exactly stop traffic.”

“Not dressed like that, you don’t.” Her mother sighed. “But when you try, when you do something with yourself, then you’re—” She turned to Maxim. “Did you see The Highwayman?”

Maxim nodded. “Yes. It was a foolish movie, but her beauty there, it was amazing. When she shot herself to warn her lover, the audience wept. Everyone. I swear this.”

Karla turned back to Lara. “You see? It’s all in the presentation.” She grabbed her purse off the sofa and began rummaging through it. “I know I have a lipstick somewhere.”

“Mom, please—”

Karla held out a small, elegant gold tube. “Here. It’s a coral, which is really my color, not yours, but it’ll be better than nothing.”

Lara’s jaw tightened, and she felt her heart beating in her ears. “I’m in my own house. Surely it’s safe to be ugly in my own house.”

“It’s not safe to be ugly anywhere,” Karla said firmly, clearly not catching the sarcasm in Lara’s voice. Karla never joked about beauty and grooming. They were a religion with her. “Not when you’re a star. Not when you’re Lara Lynmore.”

“I’m not Lara Lynmore, Mom. I’m Lara Gilbert. And I’m serious. We need to talk.”

“But—” For the first time, Karla’s lovely brown eyes registered an uncomfortable awareness. “Can’t it wait until after the redecorating?”

“No.” Lara gave Maxim a short, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but it’s important.”

Karla bit her lower lip. “But— Wait, that’s right, I almost forgot, you need to call Sylvia. She has some scripts she wants you to look at. She thinks one of them may be the one.” She shrugged as if to say, oh, well, it can’t be helped. “I promised you’d call as soon as you got back.”

“Please, don’t keep brushing me off.” Lara touched her mother’s arm. Though they hadn’t talked about what came next, surely her mother had sensed something. Surely she knew that Kenny Boggs’s death had been a turning point.

“It is very important,” she repeated slowly.

Karla frowned. For a split second, Lara thought her mother looked frightened, but she blinked, and the illusion was gone. Irrationally, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter, Karla turned her back to Lara. She picked up a card full of fabric swatches and began to flip them with a jerky urgency.

“Nothing’s more important than calling your agent.” She didn’t look up, didn’t turn around. “Honestly, Lara, I’ve told you a million times, if you want to make it to the big time, you’re going to have to—”

“But I don’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t.” Lara hadn’t meant to break it this way, but apparently her mother’s instinctive defenses weren’t going to allow for a cushioned preparation. And the words were desperate, fighting to come out before guilt and fear and pity smothered them in her chest.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mom. I don’t.”

Karla still didn’t turn around, but her hands had frozen on the fabric swatches. When she spoke, her voice sounded tight. “Don’t what?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m quitting. I’m getting out.”

“You’re…you—”

The fabric fell to the carpet with a ruffling flutter of color. And then, with a soft exhale of the breath she must have been holding far too long, maybe for eight whole weeks, Karla Gilbert slid to the floor, too.

Maxim jumped, trying in vain to catch her, assuming the faint was genuine. The Twizzler lamp dropped from his hands. It must have been a delicate glass because, even though the carpet was soft and expensive, the lamp shattered into a hundred red pieces, which sprayed out like jagged icicles of blood.

The symbolism was a little heavy, Lara thought numbly. The best directors would eliminate it, judging it over the top.

But whatever it lacked in subtlety it made up for in drama. It definitely got its message across.

Lara Lynmore, the world’s most selfish, ungrateful daughter, had just broken her mother’s heart.

“SO, BRYCE, TELL US. What’s it like living in the haunted frat house?”

Bryce looked over at Claire McClintock, the dark-haired, sad-eyed beauty who had married his brother, Kieran. She was pregnant, very pregnant. All through dinner Kieran had fussed over her as if she were made of moonbeams.

“It’s okay,” Bryce said with a neutral smile. “A little raw, but it has the virtue of being free and unoccupied.” Abandoned for at least three years, the frat house had been part of his inheritance. He had laughed when he heard about it. Old Anderson McClintock really had owned the entire damn town, hadn’t he?

Bryce looked around the lovely blue dining room. “It’s definitely not as elegant as this place.”

He didn’t add that he was surprised to find the McClintock mansion decorated in such good taste. The last time he’d been here, the infamous Cindy, his father’s fifth and final wife, had been in charge of it for five-and-a-half whole months, which apparently had been enough to do some serious damage in the vulgarity department. Bryce wondered who was responsible for the new restraint. Had old Anderson tossed out Cindy’s excesses when he tossed out Cindy herself? Or was this the gentle Claire’s doing?

Bryce had no way of finding out, of course. He’d been gone for fourteen years. A lot of things happened in that much time. One of the things that had happened was Bryce had lost his right to ask questions.

In fact, even Kieran’s simple dinner invitation had come as a pretty serious shock. Back when they were kids, and Bryce had been forced by court order to spend the summers in Heyday, the two boys had hardly been close.

Bryce was four years older, and about a hundred years cockier. He had hated old Anderson, who had divorced Bryce’s mom to marry Kieran’s mother, and he hadn’t bothered to hide it.

He hadn’t hated Kieran, exactly. He’d actually felt kind of sorry for the kid, who had to live with Anderson all year round, and, after his own mother died, endure the string of bimbo wives, too. However, in Bryce’s older, wiser, estimation, Kieran had been an ass-kissing little dork. As he recalled, Bryce had made the poor kid’s summers pretty rocky.

And to top it off, old Anderson had died early this year, and in the will, Bryce, who by all rights should have been disinherited like the black sheep he was, had been left a full third of the McClintock estate.

Bryce could imagine how resentful Kieran must have been when he heard that news. The Sinner, who never went within a hundred miles of Heyday, inheriting equally with the Saint, who had stuck to the old man like a lapdog. Where was the justice in that?

But to Bryce’s surprise, when he arrived in Heyday a few days ago, after two months in the Bahamas trying to forget the whole Lara Lynmore/Kenny Boggs fiasco, Kieran had called him immediately. He had even offered to let Bryce stay here, at the old homestead. But Bryce had drawn the line at that. He had a lot of nasty memories of this place. And he wasn’t sure how much family togetherness he could actually stomach.

“But what about the ghost?” Mallory Rackham, who sat to his right, looked genuinely curious. “Have you seen him yet?”

Bryce transferred his gaze to Mallory, the pretty young bookstore owner who had obviously been invited to this intimate little New Year’s Eve party for his sake. There were only six of them—Kieran and Claire; a smart, sharp-tongued pair of married lawyers named John and Evelyn Gordon; and Bryce and Mallory.

“Not yet,” Bryce said. “But remember I’ve been there only a week. Maybe this ghost is shy.”

“Or maybe he’s fiction,” Evelyn Gordon said as she scooped a bite of the pomegranate parfait Kieran’s gorgeous housekeeper, Ilsa, had just put before her. “Teenage frat boys don’t kill themselves because their girlfriends dump them. They just get drunk and have mindless sex with the first thing they see wearing a dress.”

“Oh, no, he’s real,” Ilsa said suddenly. She blushed, as if aware that, as the mere housekeeper, she probably shouldn’t have spoken.

John Gordon, who had a mouthful of parfait, glanced up. “Yeah? You’ve seen him?”

Ilsa shrugged sheepishly. “No. It’s just that when I pass by there, I get…” She shivered. “A feeling.” She looked across at Bryce and put her hand over her heart. “You are brave to stay there, Mr. McClintock, all alone at night.”

Amazing. He had been in Heyday only four days, and already he’d been invited over for a nice fatted-calf dinner, and now the housekeeper was coming on to him. But she was one damn glamorous housekeeper. If his New Year’s resolution hadn’t been to give up women, he might just have taken her up on it.

He laughed. “The only brave part is living with the mess. You may be surprised to learn that fraternity boys aren’t big on cleanliness.”

Oh, man, how dumb could he get? That sounded like a blatant request for a housekeeper. Ilsa’s blue eyes twinkled at him hopefully. She had just opened her mouth to speak again when Kieran gave her a smile.

“Don’t I get a parfait?”

Ilsa apologized profusely and then deposited the last crystal goblet in front of Kieran slowly—a little too slowly, Bryce thought. And was he imagining things, or did her breast brush lightly against Kieran’s shoulder? Wow. Apparently Ilsa was an equal-opportunity flirt. Any McClintock man would do.

And right in front of Claire, too.

But Claire was leaning back in her chair, trying to get comfortable, ignoring her parfait and equally indifferent, it seemed, to any threat that the gorgeous Ilsa might pose. Even at this advanced, lumpy stage of pregnancy, she obviously didn’t worry that her new husband might stray.

Of course, watching Kieran watch Claire, Bryce had to admit her confidence was probably justified. No matter who was talking, no matter whose luscious breasts were hovering just above his hands, Kieran’s gaze lingered on his bride as if she were the sweetest parfait of all.

The rest of the meal was uneventful. Bryce decided Kieran must have briefed everyone on which subjects were off-limits. Anderson himself and all five wives, especially Cindy, the last one. And of course The Highwayman, which Bryce had noticed was playing right now at the new multiplex on Main Street. Guns, stalkers, bodyguards, the FBI, Kenny Boggs and, last but not least, Lara Lynmore.

Thank God for the weather! Otherwise, they might as well have been mute.

Actually, that was fairly sensitive of Kieran, Bryce had to admit. Bryce almost hadn’t come home from the Bahamas at all, knowing he’d be forced to rehash the whole ugly mess with everyone he met. Over here, Lara was just big enough to still be news, even after two months. In the Bahamas, almost no one had even heard of her.

Over there, he hadn’t thought about her at all. Not in the daytime, anyhow. A couple of dreams might have sneaked through now and then, but that didn’t mean anything. Random firing of neurons, or too many Bahama Mamas.

Finally the parfait goblets were empty, and it was after eleven-thirty. The New Year was almost upon them. Bryce drank the last of his champagne. He didn’t have a New Year’s wish, except perhaps that this year would be more peaceful than the last.

Apparently Kieran had a few business details he needed to wind up with Mallory Rackham. Bryce gathered that her bookstore’s building was part of the McClintock estate. As Bryce’s lawyers, the Gordons were involved, too, Kieran suggested that maybe Claire would like to show Bryce around, help him get reacquainted with the house.

“Just be sure to come back in time for the toast,” Kieran added, pulling his wife close and kissing her lightly on the neck.

Claire smiled. “Of course I will. It’s bad luck, you know, if you don’t say ‘Happy New Year’ to the one you love at midnight.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck,” Kieran said softly. He took his wife’s hand and held it so tenderly Bryce felt the urge to look away. “Not anymore.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Evelyn Gordon said. “You’re going to make me barf up my parfait.”

“Would you listen to that lovely mouth on my lovely wife,” John Gordon said in mock disapproval. But he pulled Evelyn in and kissed her on that lovely mouth, and suddenly Bryce felt so out of touch with the whole damn world it was like being caught in a Plexiglas isolation tank.

Everyone was in love, it seemed. Everyone but him.

He looked over at Mallory Rackham, who was quite beautiful, but who oddly didn’t stir any romantic impulses in Bryce at all. She didn’t seem uncomfortable surrounded by all this fog of bliss. She didn’t seem to feel left out. She was smiling at the Gordons across the table.

So why did Bryce suddenly feel so strangely alone? And what was wrong with that, anyhow? Alone was a choice. Alone was good.

Maybe it had nothing to do with romance. Maybe it was just that this could have been his family, his real family. This could have been his town. These could have been his friends. And yet too many years, too many emotions, too many bad decisions stood between them.

“Let’s go out on the porch and look at the backyard, shall we?” Claire was suddenly at his elbow, smiling up at him. “It’s really beautiful on a clear night like this.”

She was right. The long, narrow strip of garden behind the eighteenth-century mansion was amazing, an orderly oasis of grace and peace under the deep, starry blue sky.

They walked slowly along the back porch, just beyond the warm yellow rectangles of light cast by the library windows, where the others were working. The weather was perfect, hovering on the crisp edge of frost, so Claire seemed quite comfortable in her green velvet maternity evening gown, and he didn’t even really need his dinner jacket.

When they came to the edge of the house, they stopped. He leaned his elbows over the cold, marble railing, favoring his wounded arm just a little, as it was already mostly healed. Claire rested her shoulder against a smooth column.

“It’s changed a lot since I was a kid,” he said.

“What’s different?” Claire looked out into the semi-darkness. “I didn’t know the house before I married Kieran. I don’t even know when the pool was put in.”

“The pool was always here,” he said. “At least as long as I can remember. But it all looked very different to me, somehow. It didn’t look this—peaceful.”

She smiled. “Adolescence isn’t a very peaceful time, is it? I mean, it isn’t for any of us—but it must have been particularly tumultuous for you.”

Somehow he didn’t get the impression she was poking around for gossip. She had a peaceful quality herself, kind of like this garden, as if she had been through a lot and found calm on the other side.

“Yes,” he said, surprising himself. “I was pretty damn angry most of the time. This garden belonged to my father, and that alone was probably enough to poison it for me.”

She just nodded. Bryce looked at her lovely profile rimmed in moonlight, and he decided that Kieran had done very well for himself. A woman who knew when to be silent was rare. A beautiful woman who knew was nothing short of a miracle.

They stood together several minutes. The air was cold and clean and sweet, filled with the scent of unseen winter roses. The light in the pool was off, so the wind-ruffled navy-blue water was lit only by wavering points of starlight. Somewhere a fountain trickled.

Suddenly, Claire made a small noise, something between a gasp and a moan. He looked over and saw that she was clutching the railing with one hand, bending toward it. Her other hand was pressed against her abdomen.

“Are you all right?” He touched her shoulder. “Do you want me to get Kieran?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t seem to be able to speak. Her breath was shallow and quick. He put his arm around her shoulder and felt the trembling in her fragile body. Oh, hell. He didn’t know anything about pregnant women. What was happening?

If it had gone on a single second longer, he would have scooped her up in his arms and carried her in to Kieran. But just then she took a deep breath and straightened up to her full height, which still didn’t reach his chin.

“Sorry about that,” she said with a wobbly smile. “Thanks for not sounding an alarm. It’s just false labor—it happens every now and then. I saw the doctor this morning, and she says it’s perfectly normal. The baby’s not due for a month. The doctor says it may be a little early, but it’s not imminent. A couple of weeks, at least.”

Bryce had removed his arm, but in his mind he still could feel those shaking shoulders. That was normal?

“But even so…shouldn’t you tell Kieran?”

“God, no.” She laughed softly. “You’ve seen how he treats me. If I told him about this, he wouldn’t let me out of bed until the baby was born. He’d be spoon-feeding me parfait night and day. I’d go crazy.”

From what Bryce had seen tonight, he judged Claire McClintock to be a pretty sensible lady. He decided, on the spur of the moment, to trust her.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t say anything.”

She squeezed his arm. “Thanks,” she said. “You know, I—”

But just then the peaceful blue midnight was shattered by the sound of gunfire. Bryce started, his heart accelerating under his dinner jacket, but almost immediately he figured it out. Of course. Up and down these normally quiet streets, people were celebrating, ushering in the New Year with sparklers and firecrackers and half-heard, half-drunken renditions of “Auld Lang Syne.”

In the middle distance church bells began to ring.

The library doors opened, and the others spilled out onto the porch, carrying glasses of champagne. They left the doors open, so that the stereo could reach the garden. It, too, was playing “Auld Lang Syne,” which in this clear starlight sounded more poignant than anything Bryce had heard in a long, long time.

Suddenly the cell phone in his pocket rang. He glanced at the caller ID, and for a minute his heart began to race again. The area code was 213, the area code for Los Angeles, California.

Excusing himself, he answered it, moving to the edge of the porch so that he wouldn’t disturb the kissing and laughing and hugging going on among the old Heyday buddies gathered there.

“Hey, McClintock, this is Joe. Hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Of course not,” Bryce said. Joe was the police officer who had been shepherding the Kenny Boggs issue through the system. He was a good guy.

Bryce realized that his voice sounded dull, so he put more energy into it. “No problem, Joe. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to tell you the final hoops have been cleared. Everything’s in order. You can even have your gun back if you want it.”

No. He didn’t want it.

“Thanks,” Bryce said. He paused. “I mean it, Joe. Thanks.”

“Forget it. I just— I mean, I also wanted to say…I hope things go good for you there in—what the hell was the name of that burg you came from?”

“Heyday,” Bryce said. “Heyday, Virginia.”

Joe laughed. “Yeah, in Heyday. I wanted to say Happy New Year, you know. I hope it’s a good one for you, McClintock. You deserve it.”

Bryce swallowed hard and thanked him, surprisingly touched that Joe had remembered and made the effort. It was only nine o’clock in California.

But when he clicked off and looked down at the silent cell phone in his hand, he had to face the truth.

He knew what he’d really been hoping.

Fool that he was, he’d been hoping that, in spite of everything, Lara Lynmore had been thinking of him.

He’d been hoping that somehow, even out there in Tinseltown where the New Year’s Eve parties were just getting started, she might sense that, here in Heyday, it was a cold and lonely midnight.

CHAPTER THREE

MORESVILLE COLLEGE WAS small in acreage, but big on charm. The view people always saw on the postcards, shot from Stagger Hill just above Heyday, was downright quaint. The school’s half-dozen Federal-style redbrick buildings were sweetly tucked into the surrounding flowery woods—they always photographed it in the spring—like so many giant Easter eggs.

Seen from ground level, in the visitor’s parking lot at the tail end of the winter break, it looked much more institutional. Bryce locked his car and gazed around. Maybe it was just the absence of student bustle, but he thought the campus looked run-down and tired.

He wondered what that was all about. When he’d last been in Heyday, the college had been thriving, really making a name for itself.

He poked around a little, getting oriented. By the time he reached the office of Dilday Merle, chairman of academic affairs at Moresville College, for their ten o’clock meeting, he was five minutes late. But since he wasn’t sure what the hell this meeting was all about, anyway, he wasn’t terribly worried.

So, 301…that was the corner office, four big windows with great views. Bryce whistled under his breath. So Dilday Merle had finally made good, huh? Bryce was glad to see it.

Fifteen years ago, Dilday Merle had been the Algebra II teacher at Heyday High. On his next-to-the-last visit home, Bryce, who had fooled around and flunked Algebra II at his own school in Chicago, had ended up attending summer school in Heyday. He’d been assigned to Dilday Merle’s class.

The guy had been geeky and ancient even then. Bryce had thought he was a total loser. And he couldn’t believe that the slow-witted Heyday kids hadn’t already seen the entertaining possibilities for making fun of Dilday’s name. Bryce and the dorky teacher had locked horns early, but to his surprise, Dilday Merle had won the battle. Bryce had never stopped being cocky and obnoxious, but he had damn sure learned algebra.

They shook hands now with warmth that was, on Bryce’s side at least, quite sincere.

“Bryce McClintock. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes. It has.”

The pleasantries didn’t last long. Dilday looked scatty, with thick black glasses overhung by shaggy, unkempt eyebrows and Albert Einstein hair, but he was mentally as sharp as a shark’s tooth.

“All right,” Dilday said. “Let’s get down to it. You know I want something, or I wouldn’t have asked you to come over. Maybe you already know what it is?”

Bryce lifted one brow. “Money? I’ve just been here a week, but so far that seems to be the odds-on favorite.”

Dilday laughed. “Oh, no. Money’s not my department. Our president, Dr. Quentin Steif, he’s the official back-slapper and fund-raiser. I’m sure he’ll be calling you before long. No, my area is academics. I am hoping I can talk you into teaching a criminology class.”

Well, that did cut to the chase. Dilday had always known how to keep students awake and edgy. Bryce could feel his curiosity pricking. He sat up a little straighter. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I don’t have time to kid. One of my criminology teachers quit last week, no notice, along with one of my special ed people and two British Lit professors.” His eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “You’re not by any chance a big fan of Beowulf, are you? I’d gladly put you to work in the English department, too.”

Bryce smiled. “No one is a fan of Beowulf, Professor Merle.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bryce. Call me Dilday. Or whatever version of the name you prefer these days. As I recall, you had several pretty good ones.”

Bryce shook his head. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I was seventeen. I was an ass.”

Dilday grinned. “Yes, you were.” He held out a slim file folder. “Here, this is the syllabus our last teacher used. You could adapt it to suit yourself, or you can work straight from his plans. It doesn’t matter to me. You’ve got the credentials, and we need a teacher. We don’t pay squat to adjuncts, but you don’t care about that, anyway.”

Bryce took the folder but didn’t open it. “Hold on. I haven’t said I’ll do it.”

Dilday didn’t look fazed. He just smiled, toying with his letter opener, the same letter opener he’d always used. Its handle was carved in the shape of a zebra. In Heyday everything was zebra-this and zebra-that. It was one of the cutesy affectations Bryce had despised most about this Podunk town. So why did the sight of this particular letter opener suddenly make him feel a little nostalgic?

“In fact,” Bryce went on, steeling himself to resist all appeals to the past, both overt and covert, “a list of the reasons why I can’t do it—not to mention the reasons why I wouldn’t want to—would stretch out from here to D.C.”

“I know,” Dilday said patiently. “But you’ll do it, anyway, because you’re a nice boy. You always were.”

“Really? I thought we just agreed I was an ass.”

Dilday shrugged. “Ass is attitude. Ass is window-dressing. Ass is, at heart, simply fear in fancy clothes.”

Bryce paused a moment, his nostalgic goodwill toward this old man diminishing. “I thought you taught algebra, not psychology.”

“Oh, forget about me. And let’s, just for the moment, forget about you at seventeen, too. All that stuff is irrelevant now. I’ve got a crisis on my hands, Bryce. I take it you haven’t heard about what happened here a couple of years ago?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“I thought someone might have told you, since that journalist Tyler Balfour turned out to be your brother. But then—I guess communication between you and Kieran has been pretty spotty.”

“You might call it that.” Bryce shrugged. “So how about if you tell me? What the hell does Tyler Balfour have to do with anything?”

“He damn near destroyed this college with his muck-raking, that’s what.” Dilday took off his glasses and started cleaning them on his tie.

The gesture took Bryce back fifteen years in one split second. He could almost smell the chalk dust and the cheap perfume of the cheerleader who had sat next to him in Algebra. He had almost had sex with her under the football bleachers one night, but she had chickened out at the last minute.

“No, let me rephrase that,” Dilday said carefully, arranging his glasses on his nose again. “He didn’t nearly destroy us. We did that to ourselves. Balfour is an investigative reporter for a paper in Washington, D.C. But you can’t kill the messenger, can you? What happened to us was our own fault. We had a problem here, and he came to town and found it. Then he went home and published a big exposé and—”

“Hang on,” Bryce said. “When you say you had ‘a problem’ here, what exactly does that mean?”

“It means—” Dilday sighed. “Well, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Some of our female students had formed a call-girl ring, and—”

“My God. I remember that.” Actually, Bryce had thought it was hilarious at the time. Rich sorority girls turning tricks in pokey little Heyday for mall money. He had read the first of the series, but then he got caught up in a trial and missed the rest. He’d meant to go back and read it all, but in the end he hadn’t cared enough. Heyday was boring. Even underage prostitution and local politicos caught with their pants down couldn’t make it interesting.

And he certainly hadn’t remembered the reporter’s name. He would never have put it together with the Tyler Balfour who had turned up out of the blue in old Anderson McClintock’s will.

“Still…how did that become a big problem for the college? Surely a little bad publicity, a few rotten apples—”

Dilday shook his head. “You underestimate how sensitive these things are. College campuses are supposed to be like protected bubbles, where parents send their children to make a safe transition to adulthood. Whether it’s realistic or not, we have an obligation to provide a secure environment. When word got out that their daughters were getting involved in things like that…”

Bryce was finally catching on. “They began to pull them out.”

Dilday nodded. “Seventy-five the week the series was published. It tapered off after that, and some came back, but we’re still down a net total of eighty students. In a small campus like ours, that’s a lot.”

“But what does this have to do with me? Surely I can’t be held responsible for the sins of my brother. Half brother. Especially one I didn’t even know existed until about ten months ago.”

“It’s not a question of responsibility. I need you, that’s all. I need someone with credentials, which, after a law degree and eight years in the FBI, you’ve got in spades. I need someone who’s independently wealthy, who’s able to make do without a real salary. And most of all I need someone who has some panache, who might bring in a few extra students.”

“Panache?” Bryce crossed his ankle over his knee and lay the file folder on his lap. “That sounds like a euphemism for something. What?”

“You know what.” Dilday Merle gave him a straight look. “You are a celebrity right now, Bryce. You just shot somebody while you were defending a gorgeous actress, and you got knifed doing it. That’s exciting. They’re just kids. They’ll eat that stuff up with a spoon.”

Dilday’s main talent as a teacher had always been his down-to-earth clarity. And he was certainly being crystal clear right now. Bryce had to hand it to him—he wasn’t trying to do a smoke-and-mirrors dance about his motives.

“But it won’t work,” Bryce said. “Even if I wanted to teach your class, which I don’t, I won’t be in Heyday long enough. The term goes until, what, May? I wasn’t planning to stay here more than a month or two at most.”

“So stay longer. You own this place, or at least a third of it, right? Stick around a while. It won’t kill you. You’ll have plenty to do just straightening out your inheritance.”

Dilday was right, of course—wasn’t he always? In only a week, Bryce had discovered just how hopelessly tangled his ties were to Heyday. He had tenants and mortgagees, employees and sycophants and a couple of enemies. He even had someone trying to sue him over an illegal dumping that had supposedly fouled the soil twenty-five years ago when a dry cleaner had occupied one of his buildings.

Absently he opened the folder and scanned the contents. The absconding Dr. Douglas had put together a pretty good class, basic and easy to teach. All the major theories and paradigms were covered—subcultural, gender-based, social structure, social process, developmental, it was all there.

He remembered this stuff from school, and what he didn’t remember he could refresh easily. It looked so orderly, so pure and hopeful here on the page, all well-intentioned and academic. Nothing chaotic and bloody, unpredictable and heartbreaking. It might be a nice change of pace. It might help him remember why he’d gone into law in the first place.

And he would have something to bring to it. Something practical and concrete, based on his years of real-life work. It wasn’t just “panache.” It was experience.

He glanced up, wondering if Dilday could sense his weakening willpower.

“Just this one, Bryce,” the old man said. “I’m desperate. Classes start in three days. And it’s only a few months. It might be fun.”

Bryce looked up and smiled dryly. Who would have thought that Dilday Merle could, just for a minute, sound exactly like Lara Lynmore’s desperate lawyer?

“I give you my word of honor, I’ll be looking for someone to replace you,” Dilday said. “Please. Just until I can find somebody else.”

“You know,” Bryce said, wondering why he was such a bloody fool, but knowing he was going to say yes. “I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that line before.”

THREE DAYS LATER Bryce confronted his first classroom full of students. Thirty-eight of them. Dilday must be in heaven. Three days ago, there had been only twenty. But then the word went out that Bryce McClintock, notorious bad-ass and bodyguard to the stars, would be teaching it and, just as Dilday had predicted, enrollment had soared.

Bryce had expected the first day, at least, to be intimidating, but they looked like nice kids. Some of them weren’t even kids. At least two of the male students were in their late twenties, and that woman in the last row must be somebody’s grandmother. Bryce found himself curious. What were their stories? Why were they here? What were they hoping he could teach them?

The real surprise was that Ilsa, Kieran’s housekeeper, was one of his students, too. She had come up to him just before class and confided in her husky, accented whisper that Kieran had encouraged her to go back to school, so here she was.

Bryce had been friendly but carefully distant. It was actually kind of scary, when you thought about the number of ways in which beautiful Swedish coeds with ulterior motives could easily spell trouble for a young professor who was her boss’s brother.

Maybe he was being unfair. Maybe busty, beautiful Ilsa was a dedicated scholar. But somehow he doubted it.

The first half of the class had gone well. The kids seemed to hang on his every word. Only one boy had found the nerve to mention Lara Lynmore or Kenny Boggs.

“Mr. McClintock,” the kid said eagerly. “You shot that stalker, and you aren’t even like a professional bodyguard. That’s like, so awesome.”

“No, Mr.…” Bryce had scanned his roll sheet calmly. He’d known this question was coming, sooner or later. Maybe it was just as well to get it over with. “Mr. Winston. No, it wasn’t so awesome. It would have been awesome if I’d been able to protect my client without having to resort to killing anyone.”

“But—”

“No buts. Shooting is always a last resort. Always. That’s true for police officers, bodyguards, anyone. If you’re good at your job, you find ways to solve your problems without resorting to violence.”

The kid had subsided, smart enough to know he’d been chastised. But Bryce saw that young Mr. Winston’s bright eyes continued to follow him with an unmistakable hero-worship. How dumb could you get? This same excited teenager probably would have wet himself after one look at Kenny Boggs’s wound.

God. Kids.

He had decided to break the ice with a classic observation-training exercise. He had asked the students to look out the window for five minutes and mentally note as many details as possible about what they saw. People, scenery, cars, weather, whatever.

It was raining, which made the exercise more difficult, more gray and confusing. Most of the passers-by were bundled up in shapeless, hooded raincoats, and dashed through the quadrangle quickly, rushing for cover.

In about two minutes, by prior arrangement, Dilday Merle would come by, stop right outside Bryce’s window and stage an argument with a student. Afterward, Bryce would ask his class to reconstruct what they’d seen. If it went according to plan, no two students would remember the argument exactly the same way.

Which was, of course, the point of the exercise. From that moment on these students would be a little more cynical, a little more observant. They wouldn’t automatically trust eyewitnesses. They wouldn’t take anything for granted, which might someday save someone’s life.

He watched with them, leaning back in his chair, tapping his pencil against his desk, waiting for Dilday to come out. He was sorry, for Dilday’s sake, that it was raining. Cold January rain in Heyday, Bryce had discovered on the way to school this morning, felt like tiny silver needles pricking every exposed inch of your skin.

But Dilday owed him big-time. A little soggy chill wouldn’t begin to pay the debt.

Some of the kids were already getting restless. Bryce made a mental note of their names. If they didn’t settle down, they’d never make good lawyers or even law enforcement officers. Short attention spans couldn’t make it through stakeouts or endless hours of boring depositions. Heck, they’d never even make it through the dusty tomes of the law library, which were the most stultifying books ever published.

Suddenly a young woman appeared on the far side of the courtyard, walking toward them through the rain. Bryce looked once—then looked again.

Slowly, he let his pencil fall to the desk. She wore the standard college student uniform—blue jeans and down-lined jacket with the hood pulled up to keep out the cold and the rain. She held an armload of books to her chest, as if trying to keep them dry.

She could have been anybody.

But he knew that walk, trained from childhood to sashay subtly, putting one foot elegantly and directly in front of the other. Head held high, from years of balancing a book there, or a beauty pageant crown. And of course he’d know those long legs anywhere. His hips burned suddenly, as his body recalled exactly how those legs had felt, wrapped around him as they wrangled on the sofa, just seconds away from the consummation they both craved.

He stood up, as much to ease the pressure as anything. He didn’t need a closer look—he already knew. That wasn’t anybody. That was Lara Lynmore.

The only question was—what the hell was she doing here?

He moved to the window. But just as Dilday Merle and his hapless student appeared and launched into their carefully scripted argument, the rain began to fall in earnest. Now half obscured by Dilday, the young woman bent her head to her books and began to jog along the shining silver sidewalk.

The students watched Dilday Merle, but Bryce watched the woman. He saw the hood fall back, exposing dark, nut-brown hair that wasn’t quite what he’d expected. He moved closer still, trying to see through the streaks of rain and thrashing branches.

But it was too late. She made a sudden turn and darted into the science building. Damn it. He looked toward his classroom door, wondering if he could make it across the quadrangle in time to catch her.

The timer on his watch beeped. The official five minutes of observation were up. Thirty-eight faces turned expectantly toward him.

It took him a couple of seconds to remember what they wanted. Oh, hell, that’s right. He was the teacher here. For the next ninety minutes, he couldn’t leave this classroom for anything. Not even to chase the wet, long-legged mirage who would might well turn out to be an annoyed eighteen-year-old total stranger majoring in elementary ed.

“So,” he said, collecting himself just in time. “Tell me what you saw.”

The students began to call out details. Trees, leaves, rain, a kid streaking through muddy puddles on his skate-board, obviously late for class. Someone had seen a cat, though the others booed that report, insisting he was nuts.

Thirteen cars—no, ten—no, eleven cars and three trucks. And, of course, Dilday Merle lecturing some poor boy—no, it was a girl—no, another teacher.

“Did any of you see a woman?” It was stupid, but he had to ask. Surely, if the famous Lara Lynmore really had just loped across the Moresville College quadrangle, someone would have noticed that.

Thirty-eight blank faces stared at him. “You mean the woman Dean Merle was chewing out?”

“No, that was a boy,” another kid insisted. “I know him. He’s in my psych class.”

“It was a girl,” a boy with spiky brown hair said. “She was hot.”

“God,” another student, this one a female, said scornfully, “You’re such a sketch, Matt. It was a boy.”

“I don’t mean the person with Dean Merle,” Bryce amended carefully. “I’m talking about another woman. Running down the sidewalk behind them.”

Several heads shook. Several students frowned, determined to remember, determined not to fail on this, their very first day.

“No.” Ilsa, her hands folded in front of her, the perfect student, looked at him seriously. “I didn’t see a woman. What kind of woman? A teacher?”

No, damn it. Young. Sexy. A movie star. A woman with dangerous legs and an angel’s face. But he couldn’t say that. With all the sexual harassment rules these days, he couldn’t even say it had been a very pretty woman, or they might think he was a weirdo. They’d think he was a “sketch.”

And besides, maybe he’d better shut up.

If he had begun hallucinating, if he was going to start seeing visions of Lara Lynmore every time he turned around, he’d probably better keep that little piece of insanity to himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HIPPODROME SUPERMARKET on the outskirts of Heyday wasn’t exactly five-star shopping, but it was open all night, so Bryce made the trip. A disturbingly skinny spaniel had been hanging outside the kitchen door of the fraternity house for the past three days. Its whining was so pitiful Bryce realized he was going to have to feed the mutt. Otherwise, the ghostly frat-boy might end up with a spectral pet.

Bryce hated grocery shopping. Still, if he had to do it, eleven at night was the most desirable time. The brightly lit, cavernous place, which had been total chaos the last time he ventured in, was almost empty.

Half a dozen people, tops. A nurse taking home a frozen dinner after the late shift, a harried father buying diapers, a couple of kids from the college with a cart full of Twinkies and Bud Light, and one red-nosed old guy who was paying for his wine with dimes.

Bryce slung a huge bag of lamb-and-rice nuggets—how horrible did that sound?—into his cart. Then, remembering he was out of coffee, he decided he might as well spare himself a second trip.

Thankfully, his list was short. He hadn’t had the nerve yet to try out the frat house oven, which had about two inches of extremely suspicious black crust under the rack. He would hire a housekeeper eventually, now that he knew he was stuck in Heyday for a couple of months. Till then, he’d just eat out.

Still, he needed to keep the bare minimum on hand. Bread, coffee, beer, an apple or two…

The produce section, which was right next to the beer cooler, was comparatively busy. Two college boys were making a show of suggestively squeezing cantaloupes and alternately moaning and giggling.

Bryce couldn’t help smiling. Morons. If you added both their IQs together, the cantaloupe would still out-score them.

Predictably, they started flirting with a young woman who stood nearby, studying the bananas, a basket filled with fresh spinach and mushrooms hooked over her arm.

“Hi,” one of the boys said, sidling up to her. “Let me tell you about bananas. See, you want to get yourself a nice, firm one. And take my word for it. Bigger is definitely better.”

The boy shot a gleeful look back at his friend, still immature enough to be more interested in scoring joke points with his buddy than anything else. “Yeah,” he went on, delighted with his own brilliance, “these little stubby ones aren’t very satisfying.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”

The young woman’s hands gripped the banana so tightly Bryce was surprised it didn’t pop. He figured that any minute she’d turn and shove the whole thing down that idiot’s throat. Bryce took his time picking out a tomato. He’d enjoy watching that.

But she didn’t do it. Though the punk was waiting for a reaction, the woman just stood there, her hands frozen on the bananas.

Without speaking, she edged farther down the counter. She turned her head away, exposing the graceful, pale nape of her neck between her hairline and her jacket.

Something moved inside Bryce, some primitive awareness that was way ahead of his conscious mind. He knew that neck. He knew that woman.

It was Lara.

Though it was as preposterous as ever, he wasn’t really shocked. It was as if he’d been half expecting this for days, ever since that first class, when he’d looked out the window and hallucinated a vision of her.

Idiot kid. If the boy knew he was making a pass at Lara Lynmore, movie star, he’d probably faint headfirst into the avocados. She could have destroyed him with one look. But she clearly didn’t have the confidence to do that anymore. And why should she? She’d spent ten months stalked by a madman who had probably seemed, at first, to be as goofy and innocent as this kid.

Bryce walked up and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Hey, pal,” he said politely. “Do something for me, would you?”

“Huh?” The kid looked up, too surprised to be hostile. “What?”

Bryce gave him a cold smile. “Shove off.”

Before the kid could react, Bryce picked up the greenest banana on the display. “And take your banana with you. It won’t be ripe for years yet.” He picked up the kid’s slack arm and slapped the banana into his hand. He raised one brow. “If you know what I mean.”

The kid’s friend snickered—he got it, anyhow. And the dark flush creeping over the banana-boy’s smooth cheeks said he got it, too.

“Sure, man, whatever. Hey, I didn’t know she was with you.”

And then, desperately trying to look cool about it, the boys sauntered away.

Bryce took a deep breath and slowly turned around. He came face to face with a snub-nosed, freckle-faced, jean-clad young woman. A typical, grungy coed who just a month ago, according to Vanity Fair, had been Hollywood’s Sexiest Newcomer.

“Lara,” he said. “Lara Lynmore.”

“No.” She spoke softly, shaking her head. “Lara Gilbert.”

She looked so young without her makeup. Her eyes were so dark, so haunted, and her face so pale. He didn’t have the heart to say what he’d been planning to say.

Instead he simply took her basket of vegetables and plopped it into the cart next to his dog food.

“Okay then, Lara Gilbert,” he said. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

LARA WONDERED where Bryce was taking her.

At this hour on a winter’s night, a little town like Heyday was fast asleep. Pointy stars glittered like frost on the black sky, unchallenged by man-made lights. The fields they passed were empty—even horses and cows knew when to hunker down.

Ahead of her, Bryce’s expensive sportscar seemed almost ghostly as it glided down the tree-lined road. Silver metal skimming across glittering snow at the edges of the road, flickering in and out of shadows, brushing past bony black fingers of oak and elm.

He had slowed down once, as they approached a roadside diner. But at that very moment the diner’s marquee lights blinked off, and the clock in Lara’s car changed to midnight. Now what? They were almost ten miles outside the Heyday city limits, halfway to Grupton, the next little town. Was there anything out here at all?

Suddenly his turn signal began to pulse red, warning her that he was about to pull off the road. She looked to the right, surprised to see that a long, low building had sprung up out of the shadows.

Absolutely Nowhere. That’s what the small red neon sign said. The name definitely fit.

Amazingly, at least five other cars were nosed up to the long brick building, looking as if they planned to stay all night. On closer inspection, the place was bigger than she’d realized. The part that fronted the road was small, just an average hideaway bar, but behind that the building stretched out in a long line of brick motel units. Another red sign flickered in front of the first one. Vacancy.

Bryce parked first, then waited so that they could walk in together. A gentlemanly gesture, but his un-smiling silence sent a different message. Lara’s stomach tightened as she brushed past him through the door he politely held open.

Inside, the bar was much more civilized than she’d expected. Booths lined the perimeter, each with a red tablecloth and a red-globed candle. Huge, framed maps decorated every wall, each with a red arrow pointing to some famous city, and the helpful words, “You are NOT here.”

She had to smile. Of course you weren’t in Paris or London or New York. You were Absolutely Nowhere.

And there wasn’t a single zebra in sight. Obviously they were no longer in Heyday, either.

Bryce led her to a booth in the corner, as far away as he could get from the other couples in the room, most of whom were huddled in pairs, twining fingers, nuzzling necks. With surprise, Lara recognized one of the librarians from the college, who was toying with the ear stud on a man about half her age, a man who didn’t look like anybody’s husband. They appeared to be about one drink away from renting a room.

Instinctively, Lara didn’t say hello. She was still uncomfortable drawing attention to herself, for fear someone might recognize her. Besides, Absolutely Nowhere was clearly the in-destination for people who didn’t want to be spotted by the folks back home.

A waitress appeared, and while Bryce ordered his beer, Lara wondered what to get. She’d planned to ask for a sparkling water, but suddenly she thought she might need something stronger.

“I’ll have a rum and Coke,” she said.

“With extra ice, please,” Bryce put in automatically, but he clenched his jaw afterward, as if he regretted saying anything. As if he would like to pretend he didn’t remember that small detail, or anything else about their six weeks together.

But he did remember. Lara hugged that thought.

When the waitress was gone, he leaned back against the bench seat and regarded Lara steadily for a long moment. She fought not to fidget, though she knew she looked awful. That was part of her “disguise,” and it had worked well so far.

In fact, she looked less like a movie star than half the people in this room. At least they had dolled themselves up for their late-night assignations. Lara hadn’t even combed her hair before twisting it back into a plastic clip. Her old jeans were fraying at the cuff, and she was sure this T-shirt had a paint stain on the front.

For the first time in months, she almost wished she had taken her mother’s advice, and never left the house without being painted and costumed and battle-ready.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” he said. “What the devil are you doing in Heyday?”

His voice was cold. He obviously wasn’t going to make this easy. But then, why should he? Back in L.A., he’d made it clear he wasn’t interested in pursuing their relationship, and now here she was, living in his hometown. She suddenly realized exactly how strange this must look to him.

“First of all, I’m going to school,” she began. She held up her hand to stave off his protest. “Don’t laugh. It’s true.”

“It may be true, but it’s ridiculous. Unless—is this some kind of undercover research? Did you land a role as a coed?”

“No. It has nothing to do with films. I’m through with films.”

He tilted his head. “Oh, come on.”

His tone wasn’t exactly insulting. He sounded too amused for that. But even so she felt stung.

She was so tired of having this argument. No one could understand why she’d quit, why even a million dollars wasn’t enough to compensate for working at a career you hated. In fact, no one could understand why she’d hated it—wasn’t it what every girl dreamed of?

But the dream of being an actress was very different from the reality. No girl dreamed of standing around for twelve hours straight, with strangers tugging on you as if you were no more human than a mannequin, arguing about how to hide the fact that one breast was a millimeter larger than the other. No one dreamed of seeing your own head superimposed on some naked body, then plastered all over the Internet, or of the nasty, suspiciously stained letters that flooded your mail for months afterward.

No one dreamed about the claustrophobia of never being private, or the isolation of not knowing who to trust. No one dreamed of a stalker.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” she said. “My agent doesn’t believe it. My own mother doesn’t believe it. But I’ve left Hollywood for good. I’m studying to be a music therapist.”

He cocked an eyebrow, a mute but eloquent incredulity.

“This is only my first semester, but I think I might have a talent for it. I’ve always liked to work with people. The very best times, back in Hollywood, were when they sent me to a hospital, or a nursing home. When I could really connect, and be myself. Of course there are lots of ways to make a career working with people. But music is very special to me. I think I’ve always understood its healing qualities. Actually, I’ve used music as a kind of therapy my whole life, to see me through the rough times.”

She heard the crack in her voice, and she stopped. She didn’t want to get maudlin. He would hate that. Besides, he didn’t know a thing about her childhood, about the years before her parents divorced, when tension hung in the air like smoke, hiding terrifying fires she couldn’t see, couldn’t predict, couldn’t avoid. Fires that would flare up suddenly in tears and slamming doors and shattered dinner plates, and in her mother’s blistering tirades. “I’ll leave. And I’ll take Lara with me. You’ll never see your daughter again.”

Finally, one day when Lara was thirteen, the fire went out. Her father left them both for a young woman of twenty-one. And then there was only the cold, empty air of abandonment, and her mother’s determination that they would show him. Lara would be a star.

She tucked the memories back into her subconscious and arranged her face into what she hoped was a calmer control. She even tried to smile. “At least I’m already trained in music. All those years of voice lessons, piano lessons—they might finally be worth something, after all.”

His eyebrow rose. “As I recall, they already were worth something—like a million per movie and climbing.”

“I don’t mean money,” she said. “I mean personal satisfaction.”

He tilted one corner of his mouth wryly. “You may be the only person in Hollywood who thinks there’s a difference.”

“Which is why I didn’t fit in there. Which is why I needed to leave.”

“Sure, for a vacation, maybe. A month in the Bahamas. Even I needed one, after the whole Kenny Boggs thing. I can see why you might have trouble getting over that—the guy was a head case. But you will get over it. You’ll go back.”

Before Lara could respond, the waitress arrived and proceeded to drop cocktail napkins on the table. On each napkin was a cartoon of an angry woman. “Where have you been?” it read above her scowling face. And below it, the answer. “Absolutely Nowhere.”

Lara was glad to have an extra minute to decide how to respond to Bryce. Irrationally, she had hoped he would be different, that somehow, in spite of everything, he might sense her sincerity. But he’d merely echoed exactly what everyone else had said.

There, there, they’d all murmured, patting her back either literally or figuratively. Of course you were terrified, take a break if you need to, come back when you feel better.

They didn’t dare take her decision seriously. They needed her to come back and make them some more money. She’d been shocked to discover how many people had been expecting to get rich on the Lara Lynmore franchise.

“It wasn’t just Kenny,” she said when the waitress had finished arranging their drinks. “It was a lot of things. I understand why you’re skeptical, though. I’m committed to making a new life for myself, but I can see it will take time to convince people.”

“About a hundred years.” He tilted his beer on the napkin, rotating it thoughtfully. “But let’s just say for a minute that you’re serious, that you really want to be a…”

He glanced up.

“Music therapist,” she supplied evenly.

“Right. Even if you really wanted to be a music therapist, why here? You can’t tell me Heyday has the best damn music therapy school on the planet. We don’t have the best anything, except maybe the best selection of cheap souvenir zebras.”

Stalling, she took a sip of her drink. The first part of her explanation had been difficult enough—but it paled in comparison to this.

“Well, I looked at quite a few schools. Lots of colleges offer music therapy majors these days, and I visited several of them. But when I got here—”

She hesitated. How much could she safely say?

Bryce was still looking incredulous. “When you got here, what? You were overwhelmed by the cultural stimulation, the sophisticated residents, the endless choices of shopping, entertainment and excitement?”

She flushed. Is that what he really thought she was all about? Shopping and snobbery and utter self-indulgence?

“Actually,” she said, “I think I was impressed by the lack of all that. I was drawn to the quiet charm. The peace of the place.”

Toying with the damp edge of her napkin, Lara went on without looking at Bryce. “Frankly, I’ve had all the excitement I can stand for a while. And besides—” She raised her gaze. “I was curious about Heyday. The few things you’d said about this little town had been so emotional—”

He laughed. “Yes, but that emotion was pure contempt.”

“Still. It was intense. Obviously your years here had been important in shaping you, and I was curious. I wanted…” She chose her words carefully. “I wanted to know more about you. I—I’ve missed you. When we were together, it was—I was—”

If only she were better with words. If she were playing a role here, someone would hand her the perfect lines, eloquent, powerful words that would miraculously soften his eyes, gentle his tone, unlock his heart. Instead, there was only this foolish fumbling to make him understand when she hardly understood herself.

But she refused to chicken out and say something noncommittal. She’d spent too many years being afraid to speak the truth, too many years worrying what other people wanted, what other people might think. In this new life, she was going to be honest, no matter how terrifying.

“Our time together was—special,” she blurted as bravely as she could. “I know it sounds crazy, but during those weeks you came to mean a lot to me.”

A daunting silence greeted that line, and for a moment she wished she could take it back. But it was true. She’d been drawn to him, not just his virile good looks and strong, hot hands, but everything about him. The calm authority, the rare moments of unexpected kindness, the intelligence, the wit…and beneath it all, the sense of some unspoken pain.

Lara held her breath, suddenly overly aware of the librarian and her boyfriend, who had begun to shuffle out of their booth giggling and whispering and fumbling with their check.

Finally Bryce shook his head slowly.

“That,” he said, “is the most ridiculous thing you’ve said in this entire preposterous conversation.”

She tightened her hand on her glass. She reminded herself that she had expected this. Shortly after Kenny’s shooting, when she had seen Bryce at one of their many interviews with the police, he had made it clear he didn’t think they had a future together. He hadn’t said so outright, but she knew he resented having had to kill a man to protect someone as frivolous as Lara Lynmore.

So this was no surprise. She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry you think so.”

Bryce sighed heavily and leaned forward. “Look, Lara—”

But he never got to finish the sentence. Just then a tall, skinny man came up and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well, if it isn’t Bryce McClintock,” the skinny man said. “It’s about time you paid me a visit. I’ve been waiting fourteen years to talk to you, son.”

Lara looked curiously up at the man, who she guessed to be about forty-five and who seemed to have been made of spare parts. He had a long, basset-hound face, which contrasted oddly with pointed leprechaun ears. But he was smiling broadly, which made him look charming in spite of the fact that it showed off a large gold front tooth.

Bryce didn’t look quite as thrilled, but he was perfectly civil.

“Slip,” he said, holding out his hand to shake the other man’s bony fingers. “You still own this dive?” He looked over at Lara. “Lara Gilbert, this is Slip Stanton. He built Absolutely Nowhere about fifteen years ago.”

“Hey, there, Ms. Gilbert,” he said. Lara held her breath momentarily, wondering if he might recognize her, but the man couldn’t have been less interested. He turned back to Bryce right away. “Yessir, I built this place, fifteen years ago this May, and it surely did put your pa in a pucker cause I wouldn’t build it in Heyday. He said he had some land he’d give me cheap, well, I knew what that meant. Swamp land. But anyhow I said what’s the point in putting a place like this in Heyday, where everybody knows everybody? You gotta get out of town before you can really let loose, that’s what I say.”

“And you were obviously right,” Bryce said politely. “Things look good.”

“Yeah, I stay in the black most of the time. Plenty of people looking to have a little fun, thank goodness.” He tugged on one of his big ears. “But that’s not what I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I wanted you to know I stuck up for you back then, you know, back when it all happened.”

Lara saw Bryce’s face tighten, and her curiosity immediately spiked. She had learned his expressions pretty well. This one meant he didn’t want to talk about it.

But Slip Stanton obviously wasn’t quite as clued in. He kept on going. “Yeah, not that it did any good, but after you left town, I went to see your daddy. I thought somebody ought to tell him how it had really been that night. Hell, you weren’t much more than a kid, and the broad was all over you, buying you drinks until you could hardly see straight, much less think straight.”

Bryce smiled. “I can imagine how that little interview must have gone.”

Slip chuckled. “He jumped all over me, said it was all my fault. And partly it was, I guess. By law I should have checked your ID. I think he would have sicced the cops on me if he hadn’t been so desperate to hush it all up. Still, maybe he listened, because it wasn’t long before that little chippy was packing up and moving on.”

“Yes,” Bryce said with a short laugh. “But they all did that anyhow, eventually.” He raised his beer in a small salute. “Still, it was a nice gesture, and I appreciate it. Thanks.”

“Any time.” Slip grinned, his gold tooth flashing in the candlelight. “Not that you’re likely to need it again, I guess once is enough for that.” He glanced over at Lara. “Anyhow, sorry to interrupt your drinks. Nice to meet you, Ms. Gilbert. And Bryce, now you’re back, don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Bryce made another noncommittal salute and, combined with a smile, it was enough to send the other man off happy.

When they were alone again, Bryce turned to Lara. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have brought you here. But Heyday isn’t exactly full of choices at this hour.”

“No problem. He seems nice. But what was that all about?”

“Oh, God, let’s don’t get into that at this hour of the night.” He looked suddenly tired. “Didn’t you say you moved here to unearth the secrets of my past? Well, I’ll let you ferret out this one for yourself. It shouldn’t be hard. That stale, seedy tale is the only thing anyone in Heyday remembers about me.”

She waited. Though she would have liked to hear this story from Bryce himself, she could tell he really didn’t want to tell her. She had to respect that. She had no right to crowd or push.

Still, there was one thing she could clear up. “All right. But that’s not really true, you know. I didn’t just come here looking for gossip.”

He frowned. “Well, you couldn’t have come here looking for me.”

“No,” she said. “Actually I thought this was the last place on earth you’d be. I know how you’ve always despised Heyday. I was shocked when one of the other students told me you were teaching a class at the college.”

“Yeah, well, God knows it shocked the hell out of me.” He took a long drink of beer and, putting the bottle down, gave her a half smile. “So help me out here, Lara. If you didn’t come to find me, and you didn’t come to snoop into my checkered youth, I’m back to my original question. What the devil are you doing here?”

She took a breath. “I guess I needed a quiet place to think things through. To begin to heal after—after Kenny. Heyday seemed perfect for that. I want you to know I didn’t intend to come across like some kind of stalker myself—as you said, I had no idea you’d ever set foot in Heyday again. But knowing you had once lived here, that it was your hometown, well, it made Heyday seem a little less foreign than other cities I might have chosen. A little safer.”

She looked at him, feeling ridiculously anxious. She didn’t need his permission to live in Heyday. He didn’t own it. Well, actually, she’d heard that he did own a lot of it. But even so—he couldn’t exactly run her out of town.

He had a deep crease between his brows and a tension in his shoulders that told her he wasn’t buying it.

“For God’s sake, Lara. You’re smarter than that. I understand that you’re scared, that you need something to make you feel safe. But there’s nothing magical about me, or the town where I was born. I’m nobody’s guardian angel.”

“I know that. It’s just that I—”

“Look, this idea that you…care about me. It’s absurd. You hired me to carry a gun and use it if Kenny Boggs got too close, and that’s what I did. It was a job, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” She squared her shoulders. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

For the first time, she felt a touch of anger rising. She knew he hadn’t much respected the well-oiled, waxed, tanned and highlighted Lara Lynmore. He had despised her sweet-and-sexy, mega-expensive designer clothes that lured fans into hungry obsession. He’d stood somberly by through the long hours of her late-night parties, refusing to be moved even when she twirled over, tipsy enough to tug his hand and beg for a dance. And though he hadn’t said a word as he mutely handed her an aspirin the next morning and turned her over to her personal trainer whose job it was to ensure that the parties didn’t wreck her all-important looks, she knew what he was thinking.

He was thinking that Lara Lynmore was a self-absorbed, superficial piece of eye candy.

No, he hadn’t respected her. Maybe he hadn’t even really liked her.

But he had wanted her. It was dishonest, and pointless, to try to deny that now. Within days of his arrival, every time they were in the same room, the air had sizzled. Within weeks, they had been in each other’s arms.

“What about the night of the art gallery opening? When we got home, when you kissed me… If Darryl hadn’t called—”

“That night was a mistake,” he said flatly. “But even so, it was just sex.”

“Just sex? I don’t feel like that very often, Bryce. Can you honestly say you do?”

He shrugged. “Often enough to recognize it for what it is.”

“And that is?”

“An intense but temporary hormonal flare-up. Quite pleasant, as long as you don’t read anything more serious into it.”

She felt her cheeks grow hot. Part of her simply couldn’t believe he’d said that. Were they talking about the same night? Her veins buzzed a little whenever she remembered it, even now.

But she had no intention of sitting here begging him to admit that their interlude had been something magical. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe it had only seemed extraordinary to her because she had so little to compare it to.

“All right,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from sounding as hot as her face. “If you say it meant nothing, I believe you. Even so, I would have thought that you might, at the very least, respect my efforts to remake my life. But if you don’t, that’s not going to stop me, because this isn’t, in the end, really about you—or even us. It’s about me.”

“Lara—”

“Please. Hear me out. I didn’t come here to pester you, and I don’t intend to. Heyday is small, but surely we can avoid each other if that’s what you’d prefer.”

She stood up. “And now I think I’d better get home. Because, as ridiculous as it might seem to you, I have an early class in the morning.”

CHAPTER FIVE

BRYCE HAD A BAD NIGHT, thanks to the encounter with Lara, which had gotten under his skin more than he would have expected. He kept rehashing their conversation, wondering how on earth she expected him to believe a word of it. Movie star turned music therapist? Trading the red carpet for troubled children and chemo-therapy patients? Right. She’d tire of this little game in…he’d give her about another month.

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