Love, aged to perfection

As a reckless teenager, Colby Malone made a catastrophic mistake. One he’s regretted every day since. So when Hayley Watson—the woman he’s never forgotten—returns to sell her family’s vineyard, he seizes the opportunity to make amends.

But she’s not making this easy for him. Hayley wants nothing to do with him or Sonoma, California. And the intense attraction between them? Yeah, she’s ready to ignore that, too. Colby must convince her to take a chance on him…on them. And what better place to do that than the land that sparked all their dreams of a future together?

Colby had to fight to keep his touch gentle

Desire dug its claws into him. He wanted…damn, how fiercely he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until the regret of the past and the question mark of the future both disappeared into the fire of right now.

He searched her face for a sign, and found it. Her eyes…they gleamed in the moonlight, shining with need.

“Hayley,” he whispered. And then, his nerve endings firing in painful anticipation, he lowered his lips to hers and reclaimed what once was his.

Her lips were hot and sweet, and they parted almost instantly, as they always had, welcoming him into the even hotter darkness of her mouth. He groaned, and took it all. His other hand went around her waist, and pulled her body into his, breast to chest, beating heart to beating heart.

She held back maybe three seconds, and then he felt her yield, and sink into him. Her hands rose and threaded themselves into his hair.

Hayley…

Dear Reader,

On a recent trip to California, my husband and I took a short tour of wine country. Like millions of other tourists, I fell in love.

A life in this serene, rolling landscape could be very special, I thought. Days spent in harmony with nature, coaxing rich purple, red and green clusters of sweet grapes from the earth, surely would be healing, soothing, good for the soul.

The story of Colby Malone and his high school sweetheart, Hayley Watson, is the fourth book dealing with this complex San Francisco family, and the one that I knew would be the most emotionally difficult to write. The tragedy of their young love, and the years of exile and emptiness that followed, would leave deep scars. It would take a lot of healing to bring them back to joy.

That’s when I knew that this reunion tale should take place against the peaceful backdrop of California’s Sonoma Valley. A vineyard that has fallen into ruin, and a pair of hearts almost as lost…both restored by the power of love.

I have loved getting your emails and letters about the Malone brothers! Please let me know how you enjoy this one. Stop by the website at KOBrienOnline.com or email me at KOBrien@aol.com.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams
Kathleen O'Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen O’Brien was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. A Floridian, whose soul thrives on the flatlands and sunshine of her native state, she believes there will always be a special place in our hearts for the sights, smells and sounds of the place where we were born.

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

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

FOR THE MALONE family, party meant pizza.

Because the family business was a string of pizza restaurants, the three Malone brothers had more or less started eating it in the cradle. For as long as Colby could remember, the family had celebrated every occasion—holiday, birthday, anniversary, whatever—with platter after platter of Diamante’s signature hand-tossed Margherita pizza. Their kids loved it, their friends loved it. Even their girlfriends loved it, or at least pretended to. Otherwise, they became ex-girlfriends in a hurry.

The only time anyone refused Diamante pizza was when one of the Malone wives was pregnant. It was half joke, half legend in the family—for the Malones, morning sickness took the form of an extreme aversion to pizza.

But today, at his brother Redmond’s engagement party, Colby couldn’t eat a bite. That was a first. Also a first: the chattering of the family and the chaos of the children irritated him.

After the toasts were raised—California zinfandel for the grown-ups, and lemonade for the kids who had graduated from milk—Colby found himself standing slightly apart from everyone, in the shade of an old leather oak, watching the black shadows of clouds try to smother the silver fire of sun on the bay.

Every few minutes, he’d check his phone to be sure the party noise hadn’t drowned out the sound of its ringing. Finally, he put it on vibrate, then shoved the thing back into his pants pocket and cursed silently. That old bastard wasn’t going to call, was he? This was simply another of Ben Watson’s eternal manipulations.

After a few minutes, Colby saw Red lean down and whisper something to Allison. Then Red peeled himself away from her, something he rarely did, and ambled over to Colby.

Colby almost laughed at the casual air Red adopted. He’d used it himself a million times, to escape sticky situations, or to disguise his real intentions. At the moment, Red was obviously trying to hide the fact that he was worried about Colby.

“I’m fine,” Colby announced as Red drew closer. His voice sounded a shade too tight, so he added a smile. “What part of kid overload don’t you understand?”

Red laughed. “I hear you. Good thing the weather cooperated today. Where else could we have taken this thundering horde?”

It had been Nana Lina’s idea to make the party an afternoon picnic, at her Belvedere Cove house of course, where the grounds swept down to the bay and everyone had plenty of room to run and scream and play. The family had expanded like wildfire over the past few years. Kids everywhere now, and not one of them had a single quiet, obedient gene in his DNA.

Matt and Belle’s pair, Sarah and Sam, were miniature tornadoes, and had just about ensured the family was banned from any restaurant the Malones didn’t own. Red’s new fiancée, Allison York, had a little boy who didn’t walk yet, but crawled as if he had a jet pack in his diaper.

And of course David Gerard, who had become like a brother, had two kids. Colin, just turned three, never stopped talking and acted like a Malone even without the blood tie.

Ten minutes ago, Red had been trying to teach Colin how to burp the alphabet. Good thing David’s wife, Kitty, was busy tending their newborn, Tucker, and hadn’t noticed.

Colby was the only male in the family without an offspring. The only one who didn’t attend family functions accompanied by a U-Haul full of strollers, bouncers, pedal-operated zoom cars and dolls with glittering zombie eyes and high robotic voices.

Red leaned against the tree, the picture of innocence. After a moment of silence, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he spoke. “So. Did Watson call?”

“No.” Colby resisted the urge to look at his phone again. “They might not have let him out of the hospital today after all. That might have been wishful thinking. You know how he is.”

They all knew how Ben Watson was. An overweight drunk, who was closer to hitting seventy than anyone had ever expected him to be. A bad-tempered fiend who lived alone and didn’t do anything but watch his sweet little Sonoma Valley vineyard go to rack and ruin around him.

Well, over the past few months, he’d done at least one other thing. He’d pestered Colby, trying to sell him information about Ben’s daughter, Hayley, who had disappeared with her mother and sister seventeen years ago.

“He’ll call,” Red said softly. “If not today, then tomorrow.”

Damn it. Colby didn’t want pity. Not even Red’s. He was already regretting opening up about the whole mess. He’d coped perfectly well, alone, with Ben Watson’s first few calls. He’d even made an appointment to see the old guy—six appointments, in fact, over the past three months. Ben kept cancelling for one trumped-up reason after another.

Colby had finally called his bluff and told the old bastard to go to hell. But then, a week ago, Ben had phoned one last time, like a desperate poker player raising the stakes, going all in. He’d said he not only knew how to find Hayley, but he also had information about the people who had adopted Hayley’s baby.

That had come out of the blue, like a sucker punch. As soon as Colby could breathe again, he knew he had to talk to someone. Nana Lina was the obvious choice. She was the only one who had known there ever was a baby in the first place. But Nana Lina wasn’t strong these days. A year or two ago, she’d been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, A-fib, a heart condition that they were trying to control with medication.

But she still had mystery spells, days when she didn’t get into Diamante at all. They hadn’t yet been able to persuade her to consult another doctor. She said her regular internist Dr. Douglas was fine. It was nothing but the slowing down of age. Maybe she was right. She was almost eighty now.

Still, he wasn’t going to upset her with what might just be another false alarm.

And so he’d told Matt and Red instead, enduring their quiet shock as best he could. They’d both advised him to go see Watson, to get the information at any cost, and decide later what, if anything, to do with it.

Then Ben Watson had a heart attack, and he’d been in the hospital ever since. He refused to talk to Colby over the phone, refused to say anything until he was released.

Which was supposed to happen today. But even though it was nearly six o’clock, the phone still lay like a useless stone in Colby’s pocket.

“Why the hell can’t he just write a letter?” Red sounded irritable, defensive for his brother, as of course he would be. They’d been each other’s safety nets since they were orphaned as teenagers.

Shrugging, Colby tugged a leaf off the oak. Its brown center spread out in blotches of red and yellow, ending in green tips that he tore off with sharp twists, as if they were a surrogate for Ben Watson’s throat.

The smoky odor the leaf released smelled like every October of Colby’s life. This month, that smell, had always reminded him of Hayley. And if it still reminded him of her now, after seventeen Octobers spent with countless other women, he had a feeling it always would.

Red was still ranting. “Watson always was a control freak. Frankly, I don’t know how his wife stood it as long as she did.”

Colby made a noncommittal sound. He didn’t like to think about the years Mrs. Watson had endured in that mission-style vineyard house. Colby should have called the police. He should have guessed that those bruises Hayley always attributed to tussles with her younger sister must have been something more sinister. But he’d been a privileged eighteen-year-old from a loving family. He’d never seen domestic violence.

He’d been so lucky, though he hadn’t realized it at the time.

“I was just wondering…” Red glanced over at Colby. “I wonder if Ben even knows anything, really. I wonder if he’s stringing you along, enjoying getting your hopes up. And, even if he does, who says it really concerns you? I mean…at the time, you didn’t think the ba—”

“Allison is looking for you, Red,” Colby interjected before his brother could finish that sentence. He wasn’t going to consider the possibility that Ben Watson was lying. That the old man didn’t know where the child was.

That Hayley’s unborn child might not even have been Colby’s baby.

After carrying guilt around all these years, surely he wasn’t going to get this close to an answer, only to have it ripped out from under him, like some stupid cartoon character standing on a nonexistent ledge.

This week, waiting for Ben Watson’s call, had been difficult. He wanted to believe Ben had real information to sell. He had to believe it. He looked out at his family, spreading across the sloping green lawn, laughing, dancing, eating pizza… They all looked so damn contented. Even little Colin, who had eaten a slice too many and was holding his stomach and crying, was one lucky kid surrounded by love.

So many happy endings. And endings that hadn’t been easy to find. Once upon a time, David’s romance had seemed impossible, and Matt’s road had been pretty bumpy, too. And Red—well, that relationship was nothing short of a miracle.

So the idea that Colby might be able to atone for his one supreme sin, the idea that he might be able to salvage something from the wreckage his younger, arrogant, teenage self had created…

Was that so much to ask?

His hand went toward his pocket one more time. Just as his fingertips touched the metal, he felt it vibrate. As he pulled the phone out, he glanced up at Red, who frowned, obviously aware this might be the moment.

Colby answered it, angling his side to Red, away from the party, needing at least a fraction of privacy. He listened for a minute, then hung up with cold fingers.

Red leaned in closer, his voice tense. “What, damn it? Was it Ben?”

“No,” he said. He turned back to his brother, careful to keep his face expressionless. It wasn’t difficult, oddly, because everything in him seemed to have turned to stone. “No. It was Ben Watson’s vineyard manager. Ben is dead.”

IF THIS HAD BEEN A MOVIE shoot, Hayley Watson thought wryly, it would have been the perfect morning to film a funeral scene. Overcast, with silvery threads of far-off lightning in the swollen western sky. Theatrically dreary and bleak.

In the cold October breeze, a willow tree swooned against a nearby oak, whispering its grief. A wet, gray fog floated a few inches above the grass, swirling, dipping curious tendrils into the six-foot hole in the ground.

The hole where Hayley’s father’s casket would be lowered, as soon as this naive-but-well-intentioned minister stopped trying to put a cheerful spin on the brutal old devil’s life.

Hayley tried to listen, but the eulogy was pure fiction, and she felt as if she, too, were floating a few inches above it all. The mournful willow and the fingering fog reminded her of a ghost story her mother had read them one Halloween, long, long ago. The picture in the book had looked just like this cemetery. She and her little sister, Genevieve, had quivered with excitement, wiggling under the bedcovers, wondering what the ghost would do.

Then her father had burst into the house, red-faced and pop-eyed with wine. “Lazy bitch!” He’d grabbed the book and grabbed her mother’s arm. “I’ll give you something to be afraid of!”

Hayley shivered, as if she were ten again. As if her father were alive, instead of lying in that casket, the one he’d picked out in his elaborate prepaid package, bought a dozen years ago, indicating he’d finally started to realize he wasn’t immortal.

She tried to form a picture of how he must look inside it—burly arms folded, eyes closed, face molded into serenity by the mortician.

But she couldn’t see him. It had been too long. All she could remember was color, and sound and fear.

And then somehow, as if she’d gone into a fugue and missed the wrap-up, the service was over. The boyish minister had picked up her hand, but she couldn’t feel her fingers sandwiched between his two consoling palms.

“Ms. Watson. Hayley. I’m sorry I didn’t know your father better, but—”

Don’t be.

The words were on the tip of her tongue. But why say them? Why say anything except the most basic conversational conventions? She wasn’t here to make friends or right wrongs. She wouldn’t be attending this man’s church or seeking his counsel. She was here to sell the neglected vineyard, if anyone was dumb enough to buy it, pocket the money and go home.

Home to Florida, where she had a life, and new dreams. The best dream of all was waiting for her there.

“It’s all right, Pastor Donny.” He’d asked her to call him that. He must not realize how silly it sounded. “You did a wonderful job. It was lovely.”

He beamed. “Thank you. I’m sorry, too, that the day was so…” He waved at the restless trees, as if they were an added insult. “And the fog—if we’d held the service later in the morning…”

“It probably won’t lift before noon,” she said.

The sudden certainty shocked her. She hadn’t set foot in Sonoma County for seventeen years. She’d made a home an entire country away, in the flatlands of Florida. So why did she remember this fog so clearly? Why did she remember its tickling intimacy against her ankles? Why did she know, in her bones, that it wouldn’t disperse for hours?

“I guess not.” Pastor Donny shook his head. “Well, I should let you talk to your friends. I’m glad so many people came. It’s good that you’re not alone today.”

She heard his unspoken disapproval of whoever had let her make this trip alone. She wondered who he thought she should have brought. Her mother died several years ago. Just two weeks ago, she’d broken off her relationship with Greg Valmont, the only serious boyfriend she’d had since leaving Sonoma. Genevieve had recently been promoted at her CPA firm, and was working eighty-hour weeks.

After that, there was no one else to ask. The kind of life the Watson women had lived since they ran away didn’t exactly encourage intimate friendships. Her coworkers at the dress shop where she did the books would have been shocked to hear she even had family back in California.

She followed the pastor’s gaze toward the cluster of people who stood awkwardly by, clearly waiting to offer her their final condolences. She’d greeted them briefly at the funeral home, but the number had swelled since then. God knew who all had arrived while she was lost in thought.

When she’d decided to attend the funeral—and not just let the prepaid package carry on, like a bad play, without her—she’d known she’d have to cope with this.

So she put a smile on her face, just the appropriate amount of lip curve, and turned toward them. She’d practiced this expression in the mirror of the airplane bathroom a mere three hours ago. She wanted to convey gratitude, and a sense of the solemnity due at the burial of any human being.

Even Ben Watson.

But she had no intention of pretending grief. Her pride wouldn’t allow it. And besides, a few of these people undoubtedly already knew her story and were here purely for the lip-smacking entertainment of seeing how she handled herself.

She caught a glimpse of a small, thin man moving toward her. Roland Eliot—definitely not one of the gawkers. He had worked for her father since she was a little girl. When she’d arrived at the funeral home this morning, a full half hour late, she’d been shocked to see him here, waiting patiently with the others. She thought surely he’d retired or come to his senses years ago.

“Miss Hayley,” Roland said, his voice somber and his round gray eyes shining. “It is a joy to my heart to see you again. I thought I would never—”

“Roland,” she responded with her first real emotion of the day. The week. The decade? She reached out and hugged him. He smelled the same as ever, soap and earth. “It’s wonderful to see you, too.”

“This is my granddaughter, Elena.” With nudging palms, he ushered forth a preschooler who had black curls and his round gray eyes. She couldn’t be more than four. “Elena, this is Miss Hayley, the girl who sleeps in the treetops.”

The little girl’s eyes grew even wider. She nodded gravely, but she didn’t speak.

Hayley wasn’t sure she could speak, either. She had forgotten that Roland used to call her that. Suddenly she felt the wind in her hair, and the rough oak bark of her favorite perch against her cheek. She could almost see the blues and greens and browns of Foggy Valley Vineyard spreading out below her, the hills dipping and swelling and the rain on the green leaves sparkling under the summer sun.

She shook herself free of the trance. Old memories, even this one, were like ghosts. They would float in front of your eyes, and bring sights and smells and pains. But in the end, they were not real. Phantoms, with no more power than this fog.

“Would you come by the house and visit us later, Miss Hayley?” Roland’s face was more lined now, but as sweet as ever. “Later, when you’ve had time to rest? We could talk. Miranda has made a casserole.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’d love to catch up.”

Other people were waiting, so she contented herself with that. She pressed his hand and smiled her goodbye. And, touching his callused fingers, she felt a little stronger.

Over the next few minutes, she greeted half a dozen well-wishers. Some were vaguely familiar. Others were people who must have entered her father’s life long after she left it. She found her rhythm, and luckily everyone was on his best manners. No one asked overly personal questions. A couple of glances were full of pity, and she caught whiffs of the expected curiosity, but overall nothing she couldn’t handle.

Then she heard a voice so familiar it made her heart skip.

“Hayley?”

She looked to the left, and stopped breathing. She’d been doing so well. But now the facade of calm dignity fell from her shoulders like an unzipped, oversize dress.

There he was, the ghost of all ghosts, the man who had haunted her dreams for at least a decade—and still strolled into a stray one occasionally, even now.

Colby Malone.

A barrage of images assaulted her. Black-haired and blue-eyed. Expensive and dangerous and divine.

Seventeen years older, of course—thirty-five now, though it was hard to believe. But he was somehow shockingly the same. Tall, athletic, still not an inch of fat. Shoulders broader than before, broader than a dream could capture. The faint prettiness he’d possessed in youth had made way for a powerful virility.

“Hello, Hayley,” Colby said. His voice was deeper, too, more polished and yet more intense. And his jaw, though freshly shaven, hinted of a sexy stubble he’d have to work hard to repress.

He was, in some ways, a stranger. And yet, even under all this new virility, he was still the boy she’d known. He put out his hand. She twitched, as if she needed to avoid an invisible slap. A weak sensation passed liquidly through her knees—and her first truly coherent thought was, how could she ever have believed that what she felt for Greg Valmont was love?

Somehow, she held herself rigid. She was tougher than this. Naturally, she had considered the possibility of running into Colby Malone while she was here. But she hadn’t really believed he’d bother to drive forty minutes to attend the funeral of a man he had despised.

She’d told herself she would be fine, no matter what. She’d loved him, and then she’d hated him, and now she simply didn’t give a damn.

“Hello, Colby,” she said politely. She gave him exactly the same measured tone, practiced smile and cool hand she planned to give everyone here today. “How nice of you to come.”

He shook her hand. It pleased her to note that he seemed more uncomfortable than she was. As he should be.

She let go in precisely the correct number of seconds.

“How are you?” Her tone implied the question was perfunctory and didn’t require an answer. She didn’t leave time for one. “How is your grandmother? And Red and Matt? I know you must need to get back to San Francisco, but I do hope you’ll give them my best.”

And then she turned to the next person, who thankfully had begun to push closer, eager to be recognized.

She took a split second to be sure of the identification, then smiled. It was her music teacher, the kindhearted martyr who had listened to her murder scales every Tuesday afternoon for five years. A “frivolous” expenditure her mother had insisted on, like Gen’s ballet lessons—no matter how their father had roared.

“Ms. Blythe! I’m so glad to see you. You’ll be relieved to know I’ve given up the piano entirely, for the good of mankind.”

Ms. Blythe smiled, as if she might accept the light joke as the truth of Hayley’s feelings. But then she shook her head. With tears spilling down her plump cheeks, she wordlessly reached in and scooped Hayley into a hug.

With her chin pressed against Ms. Blythe’s fleshy shoulder, Hayley shut her eyes. It was so strange, being welcomed by these old acquaintances, almost as if she’d never left. But seventeen years. Didn’t they know seventeen years was too long, and she wasn’t the same person at all?

Didn’t Colby Malone know that? What could he possibly have hoped to gain by coming here? Didn’t he know that, if she’d wanted to see him, she could have called or written or come back to San Francisco anytime? If you wanted to communicate indifference, was there a more convincing method than seventeen years of silence?

Eyes still shut, she counted to three, telling herself that when she opened them, Colby Malone would be gone.

One. He had to know how she felt. The Malone boys had always been smart, all of them. Good judges of people—able to make you feel utter bliss or abject misery, with just a well-chosen word. Colby, especially, as the oldest, was the gang leader. Witty and caustic and clever.

Two. Surely someone that sharp could easily read between the lines and grasp how unwelcome he was here. He had to know.

Three. She opened her eyes.

He was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

COLBY GOT BACK to the house at Belvedere Cove just before dark. On a Wednesday evening, he expected to find his grandmother in the kitchen, whipping up the Diamondberry cheesecake that was her signature dessert at Diamante. The restaurant served it only straight from her kitchen, only Friday and Saturday nights.

They could have sold each piece a hundred times over, but Nana Lina knew better than to cheapen it by glutting the market. This way, every customer who succeeded in getting a slice felt as if he’d won the lottery.

But when Colby arrived, the kitchen was dim and undisturbed. The row of copper-bottomed pots lined up on the wall burned in the fading light that filtered in through the big back window. He glanced into the kitchen garden, but no figure, no shadow moved through the sunset-tinted herbs and grasses.

Surprised and slightly unsettled, he moved to the foyer and took the curving staircase two steps at a time. When he got to his grandmother’s door, it stood ajar, but he knocked anyway, softly, in case she was sleeping.

“Come in,” she called. “I’m just resting.”

When he pushed the door open, he was met by cool, dark shadows, which surprised him. Nana Lina’s room—once Grandpa Colm’s room, too—was always brightly lit and welcoming. Powdery blue drapes framed a picture window that overlooked the bay, and the view was so dazzling no one ever pulled them shut. Even while she slept, moonlight spilled in, making the silver picture frames and perfume bottles glow, and redoubling itself in the mirror over her vanity.

He’d spent many an hour in this room. Maybe because he was the first grandchild, he and Nana Lina had a special bond, even before his parents died. He’d always brought her his treasures, whether they were rocks with interesting fossils or cloudy shards of sea glass. She had always seemed to understand why a little boy would find these bits of debris fascinating.

“You sleeping?” He tried to sound casual, though he knew it was futile. She had a sixth sense about her family. Even the best lies set off her internal alarm.

“What an absurd question. Since when have you known me to sleep during the day?”

She had a point. She might be nearing eighty, but she would always be the heart and soul of Diamante. She might not always be the first in and the last out every day, as she once was. But she was still a force.

As his eyes adjusted, he realized she wasn’t in bed. She was sitting on a comfortable armchair, her feet propped on an upholstered ottoman. She reached up and twisted the knob of her table lamp, which immediately covered her in honey light.

“Don’t try to smooth-talk me, Colby Malone.” Her brown eyes twinkled at him. “What you really want to know is whether I’m sick.”

“Mind reader.” With a smile, he raised one eyebrow. “Well, are you?”

“I don’t know. I might be.”

His shoulders braced, and his chest tightened. He’d asked for an answer, and he’d received one. He should have known she wouldn’t sugarcoat it.

“What makes you think so?”

Her robe was made of silk, a pattern of elegant blue roses against a silvery background that matched her hair. She leaned forward from the waist and lifted the hem, which had puddled softly on the floor around the ottoman. She settled the fabric more demurely around her ankles, then repeated the motion with the other side.

Even that much activity seemed to leave her slightly breathless. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed sooner that her condition had grown this much worse.

He’d observed that she tired easily. That she stayed in bed later, turned in earlier. He’d asked her to get a second opinion about the A-fib, but she’d waved it off. Sometimes she seemed absolutely fine. Just Sunday afternoon, at Red’s engagement party, she’d played dolls with Sarah for hours....

But she hadn’t played chase or hopscotch, or pushed anyone in the swing—all activities she ordinarily loved. He frowned, wondering how long she’d been compensating for…

For what? God forbid it was something serious. He suddenly realized how impossible it was to imagine a world in which Nana Lina didn’t rule with an affectionate iron fist.

“Nana Lina, what’s really going on here? I know you’ve resisted seeing a new doctor, but clearly the meds aren’t working. I think it’s time to call—”

“I’m a little short of breath, that’s all,” she said, folding her hands in her lap and giving him her most regal look, which commanded him to remain calm. “Occasionally I get dizzy, and I don’t always have the stamina I should. Perhaps you boys and your ever-expanding offspring have finally worn me out.”

He chuckled. “It’s not us. You could handle us and the Holy Roman Army, too. With one hand.” He moved to her side, not the least bit intimidated by her scolding tone. “Look. I don’t like this. Like it or not, you’re going to see Dr.—”

“Dr. Douglas?” She tapped his arm. “Don’t you start adopting a bossy tone with me, young man. I am perfectly capable of recognizing when it’s time to consult a doctor. I have an appointment with him next Tuesday morning, in fact.” She squared her shoulders. “Sidney will drive me, so don’t get any ideas about coming along to babysit.”

Colby subsided, relieved. As long as she had the appointment, he could relax for now. He’d talk to Matt and Red. One of them would find a way to tag along and get some answers.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a phony meek voice. He sat on the edge of the bed, glancing at the magazine she’d been reading. It was a catalog of elaborate play sets designed to look like castles, forts and other magical places. One touted itself as Atlantis.

“You know,” he said, “if you don’t want the ever-expanding offspring to sap your life force, maybe you shouldn’t keep adding to the Disneyland you’ve built in the backyard.”

She whisked the magazine away with a low tutting sound. “I was just relaxing my mind after studying last month’s receipts, and Red’s proposal for the new store in Sonoma.” She fiddled a little more with her robe. “He seemed to think you might be heading over there today to take a look at it. Did you?”

He chuckled again. She was good, but they all knew each other too well. “Don’t try to smooth-talk me,” he said in a teasing imitation of her words. “What you really want to know is whether I went to Ben Watson’s funeral.”

She smiled, well aware the jig was up. “Well?” She tried to mimic his one-eyebrow query. But no one could beat Colby on that look, not even Red and Matt, though they’d spent their youths trying.

She settled for a scowl. “Well? Did you?”

He nodded. “Yes. And the answer to your next question is yes, as well.”

She lifted her chin haughtily. “My next question?”

“Yes. You want to know whether Hayley was there. It’s a fair question. I know you’ve wondered…all these years… We’ve all wondered. So yes, she was there. And she looked fine.”

“Fine?” His grandmother rolled her magazine into a tube, the paper making a soft, slithering noise. When it was safely rolled, she gripped it firmly. “What does fine mean?”

As Colby searched for the right words, a vision of Hayley Watson rose before his mind’s eye. What did fine mean? What exactly should he say to describe how she’d changed?

The transformation was dramatic. She had changed so much that, on a conscious level, he probably wouldn’t have recognized her. He might have had to ask someone to be sure—except that his body had identified her in an instant. The minute he laid eyes on her, every nerve ending he possessed zapped him with a small electric charge.

“She looks completely different. Poised, and well dressed. And she was wearing her hair—” He put his hands up and waved them around his head, trying to imply the complicated halo-braid kind of thing that had controlled her long, thick, honey-colored waves. “I don’t know. Sophisticated. She looks like someone else, actually.”

His grandmother tilted her head. “That’s the best you can do? I never saw her—or her hair—back then, except in pictures. Why would I care how she wears it now? I mean, does she look well? I don’t expect happy, given the circumstances, but does she look healthy and content?”

Did she? “Healthy, definitely. Content… I really couldn’t say. Maybe.”

Nana Lina nodded, tapping the magazine roll against her knee slowly. “Well, considering that until today we thought she might be buried out in that vineyard, along with her mother and her sister, I guess that’s saying a lot.”

Colby cut his gaze to the picture window, even though the drapes were shut and there was nothing to see.

Nana Lina didn’t know, of course, that twelve years ago, Colby had hired a private investigator to make sure all three Watson women were safe and well.

All he’d wanted, really, was to know that Hayley was alive. He shouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life wondering if there might be any truth to the local rumors that three ghostly beauties went weeping through the Foggy Valley Vineyard on nights with a full moon.

Finding them had cost a lot of money—at least, it had seemed like a lot to a twenty-three-year-old still in his last year of law school. Obviously the women had been desperate to keep their location a secret, in case Ben decided to follow them and make good on his threat that, if Evelyn Watson didn’t live with him, she wouldn’t live at all.

Something Colby’s investigator did must have tipped Evelyn off, because when Colby got the information and tried to contact her a few weeks later, all three of them—Evelyn, Hayley and Genevieve—were gone. No notice at their little apartment or their jobs. No forwarding address.

He hadn’t tried again. He knew Hayley didn’t want to see him—not if she’d remained away, without so much as an email, for years. And if she didn’t want to see him, he wasn’t going to push himself back into her life.

Especially since the investigator had told him there was no sign of a child. Colby had tried to forget it—forget her. She’d probably been mistaken about the baby, done some wishful thinking and turned a late period into an imaginary pregnancy. He’d been just a few months shy of going to college, and she had been desperate at the thought of being left behind. It wouldn’t, he told himself, be the first time a clingy female had tried to will a baby into being, just to trap a man.

It made Colby cringe to remember the bullshit he’d try to sell himself.

“Did she seem surprised to see you?”

He looked up, and he saw Nana Lina’s gaze on him, sharp and probing.

“She didn’t show it, but of course she must have been. She kept it short and…” Sweet wasn’t really the right word, was it? “We exchanged only a very few words, and they weren’t particularly personal.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve anymore.”

“Good.” His grandmother nodded, and he wondered what that tone was in her voice. It didn’t sound judgmental. It sounded…sad. Was it possible that she, like Colby, had found herself regretting what they did all those years ago? If she regretted what they’d said, what they’d done, she’d never showed it.

“Was she alone?”

Alone? For a minute, he could see Hayley standing there, in the wooded cemetery, with a storm building around her, and her dead father’s casket hovering just above the big rectangular hole. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone who looked more alone.

“Her mother wasn’t with her,” he said, deciding he’d just stick to the facts. “Neither was Genevieve.”

“No husband? No boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “No. No husband. No wedding ring. No—” He took a deep breath. “No family at all. At least, no one who had come to the cemetery with her.”

And he left it at that. But he knew that, as they sat there in silence, they were both thinking the same tangled thoughts.

No husband, no boyfriend.

And no sixteen-year-old total stranger, no nameless child with black hair and blue eyes who might, just might, have been Nana Lina’s unacknowledged great-grandson.

“THAT’S BEAUTIFUL, ELENA,” Hayley said, picking up the crayon drawing Roland’s granddaughter had made for her as they played and colored after dinner. “Is that me?”

Elena nodded somberly, and Hayley was glad she had interpreted it correctly. At four, the child’s art skills were still fairly primitive, but it seemed to be an illustration of a girl sleeping on the fragile tip-top branches of a tree. The stick figure, which stretched out rigidly across the branch, had bright yellow hair, and the tree’s leaves were made of circles so vigorously drawn they had left little green crayon shavings behind on the paper.

The four of them—Hayley, Elena, Roland and his wife, Miranda—had gathered in the front room of the little square adobe foreman’s house—well, what used to be the foreman’s house, back before her father started selling off the acreage. Now it was just Roland’s house.

Hayley smiled over at the serene-faced man, who sat in his straight-backed chair near the fireplace, watching quietly. “You must have made this tree story seem very romantic.”

“He made it seem a great deal too romantic,” Miranda said, with the rote sound of someone who had gone over this subject many times already. She had been gathering toys, and briskly tossed a bunny into a wicker basket. “When in fact climbing tall trees is quite dangerous, and if anyone I know ever tries it, she’ll be punished!”

Hayley glanced at Elena, whose eyes had grown large. “Your meemaw is right,” she said. “I wasn’t being smart. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt very badly.”

But could anyone have stopped her? She’d been about six when she fell in love with climbing the vineyard’s encircling trees. Maybe it was because, up high, she felt entirely disconnected from the misery inside her house. She imagined herself a fairy, with an acorn cap for a hat, bluebells for shoes and wings made of rainbows and wind. She was small enough to hide in the leafy branches, and sometimes she wouldn’t come down, even when she knew her mother was calling.

One day, when she was seven, her parents had a bigger fight than ever before, and she’d climbed higher than ever before. Fifteen feet up in the black oak tree, she fell asleep. According to Roland, the household was utter chaos as they looked for her—her mother frantic, her father furious, bellowing her name.

Roland was the one who had found her, sound asleep, luckily wedged between the huge trunk and the thick branch, her legs and arms dangling like pale pink tinsel. Though he had been nearly fifty, arthritic and tired from a long day in the vineyard, he’d climbed up and brought her down to safety.

The fight, she’d learned later, had been ignited by the news that her mother was unexpectedly pregnant again. After Genevieve was born, Hayley never climbed another tree. She still longed to escape, but one glimpse of the baby, and she knew she had to keep her feet on the ground, in case Genny needed her help.

She looked at Elena now, wondering if this little girl would also feel the need to find a private place, to pretend her life was different. Miranda had whispered earlier, as Hayley helped her prepare dinner, that Elena’s mother had run off a year ago, and probably wasn’t coming back.

It was hard for Hayley to comprehend that. She knew, of course, that not everyone wanted to be a mother. But this beautiful, fragile little girl…

It was so easy to damage a child like this. And so hard to make her whole again.

Her heart fluttered softly, as she thought if I had a child…

No. Not if. When. When she had a child, she would wrap him in so much love he could never break. She had a sudden image of the blue-striped wallpaper of the nursery she’d begun at home. And the five bright bluebirds that circled on the mobile above the crib. Only three more months now.

Three months, and the cradle that had been empty for so long would be filled.

She considered telling Roland and Miranda. They would be happy for her, even if they didn’t know the whole story, even if they could never understand how much this new baby would mean.

Her heartbeat sped up at the thought. Still, she wasn’t ready to share the news yet. She felt guarded, superstitious…haunted by the memory of the last time she’d had news like this to share. As if something terrible might happen if she spoke of it too soon.

They were all silent for a few minutes, listening to the crackle of the fire and the muted piano notes of Chopin on the sound system. Her heartbeat settled down—the magic of the Eliots working on her as it always had.

Hayley had spent many hours just like this when she was a child—back then, Genevieve would have been the toddler scribbling at the coffee table. By the time she was ten, Hayley had hoisted her fat, laughing baby sister onto her hip, and started coming here to the refuge of this little house, with the foreman who understood her better than her own father.

She’d given Genevieve as many hours of peace as she could. But she always had to go home again, eventually.

Just as she did tonight.

The only difference was that, tonight, her father would not be there. She wouldn’t have to wonder, as she entered the house, whether this was a good night or a bad one. Whether he was drunk or sober. Whether, when her mother turned around from the kitchen sink, she would be crying, or bleeding.

Banishing the image, Hayley stretched, shaking off the sleepiness caused by the plane ride, the time difference and the emotional day. The funeral had been harder than she’d expected. And seeing Colby…

No. She wouldn’t think about Colby. She put her hand softly on Elena’s dark curls, then stood up from the cushy leather sofa.

“I guess I should head back to the big house,” she said, trying not to sound ten years old again, and scared. “Miranda, the casserole was fantastic. Thank you so much for—”

She swallowed, suddenly unable to find the words to thank them for everything they’d done, not only tonight, but all those years ago.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t call,” she said in an abrupt switch of topic. “Or write. But Mom was always terrified. Always covering our tracks. She said any contact with our old lives would be fatal. She was so sure Dad would find us.”

Miranda came over and hugged her. “We knew,” she said. “Your mother wrote us once, just so that we wouldn’t fear for you. She didn’t tell us where you were going, merely that you had to leave. We understood, maybe better than anyone, why it was necessary. We knew your father.”

“Did he start looking for us right away? He never tried to contact us, but obviously his lawyer knew where we were.” For a long time, she’d wondered whether all the subterfuge, the fake names and the prepaid cell phones and the cash-only living, had been required. Somehow she couldn’t imagine her father staying sober long enough to launch a serious tracking campaign. Her mother had feared he would hire someone to find them, but Hayley had her doubts about that, too. She’d never known her father to turn loose of an extra penny for anyone but himself.

“I don’t think he looked for the first several years. Not until his first heart attack, I’d guess.” Roland rose, lifted Elena into his arms and came to stand near his wife, who still had her arm around Hayley’s waist. “I got the feeling he was afraid that, if your mother came back, she might press charges against him. She wouldn’t have, for herself, but for you…”

His gaze was gentle, but worried. She wondered how much he knew about that night, the night they disappeared. Someday, maybe, she’d tell him, but not tonight. She was so tired, and she still had to face that house.

Would it be better, she wondered, knowing that her father was in a casket, six feet underground, never to come storming through the doorway again? Or would that make it worse?

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” As if she’d read her mind, Miranda squeezed her waist. “I can put some sheets on the sofa.”

When Hayley started to protest, Miranda laughed. “Really, it’s quite comfortable. Ask Roland. He’s out here half the time. We call it the doghouse.”

Elena giggled, then buried her face in Roland’s shirt self-consciously. Hayley couldn’t remember ever meeting a shyer child. But Elena’s laughter was adorable, and even its echo filled the room with a sense of light and optimism.

Hayley thanked Miranda, but firmly insisted that she wanted to stay at the big house. Roland offered to walk her back, but she turned that down, too. He’d already done everything he could to make the place welcoming. They’d put her bags there earlier, before dinner, and Roland had shown her around the downstairs, just as if she’d never seen the place before. That brief tour had been enough to let her know that he’d cleaned up a little bit, and added a few homey touches, as if he’d guessed she might plan to stay there, at least for a while.

A vase of blue hydrangeas on the kitchen table, a casserole and a big glass pitcher of fresh milk in the refrigerator. Even a book or two on the end table.

The Eliots’ sensitive presence permeated the place—or at least it had this afternoon. It had been light outside, then, the storm passed and sunshine streaming in through the windows. A playful wind had teased the fluffy, October-brown heads of the grapevines.

But she’d lingered so long, coloring with Elena, that it was full night now. She shot a glance out the front window, where the silhouettes of trees moved darkly against the silvery sky, and thought of the still, empty rooms waiting for her.

She shook the feeling away. Dark or light, it was just a house. She would be fine.

The Eliots stood on the front porch and watched her walk up through the vineyard. She turned at the last minute, before the dip in the land would obscure the view, and waved merrily. She was fine. They waved back, and she thought she heard Elena call her name.

She waved again. She was fine.

Then she turned back toward the large, two-story adobe house, with its orange-tile roof and arched colonnades extending to either side like outstretched arms. Roland must have put some lights on timers, because several of the windows glowed, long rectangles of amber illumination that should have looked welcoming, but instead just looked unnatural, knowing, as she did, that no one was inside.

Weeds grew up at the edge of the rows of vines, making the path uneven. She kept her eyes on the ground and kept going, glad for a reason to ignore the strange tricks the moonlight played with the wire supports. In her peripheral vision, the metal winked randomly, giving the illusion that something moved among the leaves.

Ridiculous. She was fine. No matter how haunted the place might feel, she didn’t believe in ghosts. And even if she had believed, she wouldn’t give her father’s ghost the satisfaction of driving her out of the house again. He was gone. He had not found her, or Genevieve. Even her mother had died in peace. They had all officially survived him.

So that meant she was the one with the power now. She would sell his house, and his vines, and go back to Florida. She would never, ever think of him again. He would rot here, unloved and unmourned.

Hey, Dad, she thought, gathering her courage into one bitter burst of defiance as she neared the house. I’ll give you something to be afraid of.

But just as she put her foot on the first step of the porch stairs, a large, man-shaped form disengaged from the arches of the western colonnade. She froze in place, her hand foolishly at her throat.

Oddly, her first thought was—could it be Greg?

But that was silly. Why would Greg follow her here, all the way from Florida? He was a doctor. He was busy. People depended on him. Even though his behavior during their break-up had given her a mild case of the creeps, he wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t chase after a woman who had already made it painfully clear that they were through.

“I’m sorry to come so late,” the man said politely. He continued to move forward, his steps silent on the tiled floor, until he emerged from the shadows. Moonbeams silvered one side of his face.

The light only confirmed what she already knew, from those few syllables of his husky voice. The man who waited here in the darkness wasn’t a ghost, and he wasn’t Greg.

Once again, she had come face-to-face with Colby Malone.

CHAPTER THREE

“I’M SORRY,” he repeated carefully, trying to give her time to adjust. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” she said.

But he knew that was a lie. Her face was white. She would naturally be twitchy, coming back here after so long, especially under these circumstances. And no woman alone in an isolated spot could possibly enjoy seeing a stranger emerge from the shadows.

Weird, thinking of himself as a “stranger.” But no other word applied anymore. Back when they were teenagers, he’d waited for her so many times, right in this very spot. Once, her face would have lit up to see him, and she would have leaped into his arms, their two bodies stumbling back into the shadows with urgent kisses but no words, so that no one inside the house would hear.

Now, she froze at the sound of his voice, as guarded as a doe confronted by the barrel of a rifle.

“What do you want?”

Okay. He hadn’t expected a warm welcome, and apparently he wasn’t going to get one.

“I know it’s late, and you must be tired. I was going to wait until tomorrow, to give you time to settle in. But—”

Her face remained impassive. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk. I hoped we could talk.”

“Wouldn’t the phone have been better?”

He tilted his head, appraising this pale, collected woman who bore only the most superficial resemblance to the girl he used to know. She still had on the gray flared skirt and short jacket she’d worn to the funeral, but it didn’t look rumpled even after all these hours. The Hayley he used to know was always dressed in bright colors, always dashing about, her pink cheeks looking slightly fevered, her golden hair flyaway and fabulous.

“I would have been glad to call,” he said reasonably. “Except, I don’t know your number, remember? If you left Sonoma tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t have any idea how to find you again. I don’t even know what name you answer to these days.”

That wasn’t an exaggeration. He knew what name her mother had been using when his investigator found her, a dozen or so years ago. But she’d moved again after that, and the second time he tried to find her, about six months ago, no one of that name existed.

Bottom line was, he didn’t know anything, not one single solitary thing, about her anymore. He hadn’t even been a hundred percent sure she was staying here at the vineyard house, until he’d seen the car with rental plates in the front drive.

Leaving the cemetery after her brush-off today hadn’t been easy. The gossip among the other locals attending the service had been that Hayley would be staying in town, at least long enough to settle up her father’s affairs. But who knew if that was really true? Who knew whether Hayley Watson might decide to disappear into the night all over again?

“Colby,” she began, then stopped. She folded her arms, tucking her hands under them, as if the night air had chilled her fingers. “I don’t want to be rude, but I really don’t think we have anything to talk about, do we? As you said, it’s been a very long time. We are both different people now, and the past— Well, it just isn’t very relevant anymore.”

He heard the dismissal in her voice. His pride bucked once, trying to throw him, trying to compel him to walk away. The past was dead to her? Irrelevant? Okay, fine. She meant nothing to him, either.

He choked off the inner voice. That was just the huffy and stupidly proud teenager inside him talking. He was disappointed to discover that, after all these years, remnants of that self-centered jackass still remained.

“Hayley,” he said, working hard to avoid sounding pushy or entitled. “I understand that you may well have nothing to say to me. But I have something I’d like to say to you.”

She wasn’t going for it. He could tell by the way her full lips tightened. “Colby, I—”

“Please,” he said. It wasn’t a word she—or anyone else—had often heard him utter. “I’ve owed you an apology for seventeen years, and I don’t want to lose this chance to make it now.”

She clearly hadn’t been expecting that. Her arms fell to her sides, as if suddenly limp with surprise. Her gaze scanned his face—though he had no idea what she searched for.

Finally she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”

He glanced at her lightweight suit—a sign that wherever she lived probably didn’t have the chilly nights of Northern California. “You look cold. May I come in?”

“No.”

He had to laugh at little at that. “You aren’t planning to make this easy for me, are you?”

She smiled, too, but it was cool and unamused. “I’m not planning to make it difficult for you, if that’s what you’re implying. But neither do I see why it’s my responsibility to make it easy. I didn’t ask for an apology. I don’t require one, and I don’t think you owe me one. As I said, I believe it’s all ancient history, and best left alone. You’re the one who seems to feel it’s important.”

He felt slightly stunned, as if her attitude were an unexpected jab to the gut. He had really been a romantic idiot, hadn’t he? All this time he’d secretly thought that, if they were ever to meet again, even if it was by accident, on a crowded street, some irresistible force that had survived the whole heartbreaking mess would draw them together.

Like some sad sack in a chick flick, he had actually believed that, if he ever got the chance, he could make things right.

He looked straight into her blue eyes. “God, Hayley. Are you really as indifferent as you sound?”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “I’ve had seventeen years to make peace with what happened. I’m not saying I wasn’t angry at first. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard. But it’s over. Life goes on.”

She didn’t so much as blink. He couldn’t detect even a microscopic flinch that might have suggested she lied. She still looked only tired, cold and slightly irritated.

“Fair enough,” he said, refusing to be thrown off his course, even by that total apathy. “But the truth is, I’m still looking for the peace you say you’ve found. I’ve done a lot of soul searching over these years. And I think the reason I can’t get over…over what happened…is that I was to blame.”

She didn’t contradict him. She just waited.

“What I did was indefensible, Hayley, and I’ve never had a chance to apologize. I’ve never had a chance to make it right.”

He thought he might have seen a sudden flare of color in her cheeks, but when she moved, the light changed and the pink disappeared. She shook her head once, crisply. “Those are children’s words, Colby. There’s no making it right. In the real world, there are some mistakes you can’t undo.”

“Maybe. But I still need to say it. I need to tell you how sorry I am. From the minute you told me you were pregnant, I knew the baby was mine. I knew there hadn’t been any other men—boys…”

He cringed at the awkward phrasing. Where had all his fantasy speeches gone? In his dreams, he was so eloquent he moved her to forgiving tears. Where had all those powerful words gone now that he finally needed them?

She still didn’t move a muscle. But she was clearly listening. And that was something, he supposed.

“I was a coward. Partly, I was afraid of what my grandparents would think.”

Hayley’s news had come only three months after his parents’ deaths. He’d been eighteen, grieving, both for his beloved mom and dad, and for the loss of his sheltered, idyllic life. His grandparents, who were the strongest people he knew—then or now—had been devastated by the death of their son and daughter-in-law, but they’d rallied for the sake of the boys.

How could he tell them he’d let them down already? How could he add another disaster to their burden? That’s actually how he had thought of the baby: a disaster. And so he’d jumped through the one escape hatch he could find. He and Hayley had always been off-again, on-again. For a teenager, the forty minutes between San Francisco, where Colby lived, and Sonoma, where Hayley lived, might as well have been half a world away.

He’d met her the summer he was sixteen, when he’d been sent to the little Sonoma town of Ridley to work in the Diamante just opened there. They’d dated all summer, and they’d hung out sometimes over the school breaks, too—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, spring break. Then the next two summers, he’d requested the Ridley assignment again, and picked up right where he left off with Hayley.

But that last summer, they’d broken up. A fight about Colby going away to college. The gossip that had been circulating among their friends was that she’d taken up with her old boyfriend, who was consoling her in the time-honored way.

Colby’s pride had been wounded when he heard the rumors, and he wasn’t in the mood to believe her when she came to him, crying and saying she was going to have a baby. He told himself she was just trying to trap him. She’d been needy all summer, fearful that he’d forget her when he left for college in the fall.

So that’s what he had told his grandparents—that, even if her story was true, and she was pregnant, Hayley had probably slept with another boy. She was just trying to pin it on Colby because he was richer and a better catch.

Whether they believed him or not, they backed him. They’d met with Ben and Evelyn Watson and told them that their grandson felt he was being wrongly accused. They requested a paternity test.

Nana Lina and Grandpa Colm had seemed satisfied, and reported that the meeting had been more civilized than they’d expected, given Ben Watson’s temper. But that night, without a word to anyone—including Colby—Evelyn Watson and her two daughters had driven off into the night, never to return to Foggy Valley Vineyard.

He’d been shocked, but selfishly, a little relieved. Colby had told himself, and his grandparents, that her flight was proof enough that she’d been lying.

It made him wince to think of all that now. Who did that kind of thing? He’d been one mixed up young man that year, but that was no excuse.

Hayley seemed to have been digesting his statement about being afraid to tell Nana Lina and Grandpa Colm. Her jaw and mouth had a hard, cynical set—and he suddenly realized he had seen that look before. That was the look she had turned on him when he asked her if she was sure the baby was his.

“Your grandparents worshipped the three of you,” she said. “Their perfect young lions. They might have been angry, but they would never have stopped loving you. They would have supported you, no matter what.”

She was right, of course. His fear of letting them down had been only part of his motivation for being such a fool. The other part was even less admirable.

“I know,” he admitted grimly. “The truth was, I simply didn’t want to believe the baby was mine. I was spoiled, and I was excited about going away to college—the girls, the parties, the whole frat-boy experience. I didn’t want to be tied down with a wife and baby.”

“No,” she said, her tone dry. “Of course you didn’t.”

He didn’t blame her for the sarcasm. It was a lot less than he deserved. In fact, he might have felt better if she had yelled at him, or slapped him or burst into tears. The idea that he was too unworthy to hate made him feel cold, and strangely empty inside.

“At first,” he went on, “when I heard you were gone, I was actually relieved. I know how it sounds, but it’s the ugly truth. I thought I’d dodged a bullet.”

“Charming way to put it,” she said evenly. “But tell me. When, exactly, did you have this epiphany? When did you change your mind about the bullet? Seventeen years ago?” She smiled. “Yesterday?”

“It happened gradually,” he said, trying to be as honest as possible. But there was no easy answer. At first, he’d been in deep denial, joining a fraternity and partying like a madman, collecting great-looking coeds the way little boys collected baseball cards. He hadn’t let his grades slip, either. Straight A’s all the way, right through Stanford Law. It was as if he had to do everything, have everything, be everything—to justify not being the father of Hayley’s baby.

“I think it really started when I got out of law school. Before that, I kept so busy, and I was focused on that grand prize, the big law career. When I got a job at my first-choice firm, I expected to be completely happy. But I wasn’t. I started trying to figure out why.”

She made a dismissive sound. “The quarter-life crisis. Everybody has one. I think it’s rather classic, when you first start spending all day behind a desk, to wax sentimental about the carefree days of youth.”

“That’s fair,” he said, determined not to argue. “I’m sure there was some of that.”

He’d thought exactly the same thing, at first. Quarter-life crisis. The “is that all there is?” moment. He’d started playing handball on his lunch break, sailing the MacGregor, the family sailboat, every weekend, and finding even more beautiful women to date. He’d cut back on sleep, so that there could still be plenty of time for fun.

He got exhausted. But he didn’t get happy.

“Anyhow, that was when it started.” He wondered if he should tell her about the private investigator, but immediately decided against it. This was an uphill battle already. “But it was more than that. Finally, I just stopped kidding myself. I had been a selfish bastard, and I was going to have to pay for it the rest of my life. I was never going to forget about the baby you were carrying when you left that night. I was always going to be haunted by the knowledge that, somewhere, someone was raising a child who should have been ours.”

For the first time, she looked confused. “Someone? What do you mean ‘someone’?”

“The…people, the family…” he said, stumbling in the face of her transparent bewilderment. What did that mean? Was she shocked that he knew? “The people who adopted the baby.”

She drew her head back. “What makes you think I gave the baby up for adoption?”

“Because—your father said…” He couldn’t seem to form words correctly. “Your father said you did.”

“Ah.” She smiled coldly. “My vicious, drunken father? And you believed him?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” she said. “Did this piece of information by any chance come with a price tag?”

He shook his head. “He told me that much for free. If I wanted to know how to find the adoptive family, though, he said that was going to cost me five thousand dollars. But I never got the information, and he never got the money. He died before I got the chance.”

“Well, that’s a bit of good luck. Because you would have paid all that money for nothing. He might have given you a name, maybe even an address. But it would have been bogus. You should have known that. Like so many alcoholics, the man was a consummate liar.”

He frowned. “How can you be so sure it would have been bogus? Are you saying you didn’t give the baby up for adoption?”

His mind was reeling. When his investigator found Hayley, he had reported that she was single, living with her mother and sister and no one else. Eventually, when Colby finally stopped kidding himself that the pregnancy had been fictional, he’d assumed she’d decided on adoption. It had made a cruel sense. Alone, on the run, three women supporting themselves with menial jobs that required little documentation… How could Hayley have done right by a child in that scenario?

Besides, in his heart of hearts, he couldn’t believe that she would have raised their child, year after year, milestone after milestone, birthdays, and Christmases and acne and math, without ever sending Colby so much as a photo. Her heart couldn’t have been that hard, no matter how reprehensible his actions had been.

“Hayley, answer me. Is that what you’re saying? You didn’t give the baby up?”

“No,” she said flatly. “I didn’t give the baby up.”

He couldn’t take it in. “But—then—where is he?”

“He’s nowhere,” she said dully. “There is no baby.”

“I don’t believe it.” He shook his head stubbornly, not caring how stupid it sounded. “I don’t believe it. You weren’t lying to me that night.”

“No. I wasn’t lying. When I left here seventeen years ago, I was pregnant, and you were the father. But you’ve tortured yourself all these years for nothing. There is no baby.”

He took in a breath, trying to fill his lungs, though no matter how hard he tried, they continued to burn from lack of air.

“Why?” His mind suddenly latched on to an unthinkable answer. “Oh, my God, Hayley, surely you didn’t—”

“Damn it. No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Look, I don’t talk about that night, Colby. Not ever, not to anyone. But—because—well, let’s just say for old times’ sake, I’m going to tell you this. Though, as far as I’m concerned, you have no right to know. There is no baby, because that night—”

Her eyes sparkled where the moonlight touched them, though her face was still as hard as if she were a mannequin, made of plastic. “That night, before we even reached the California state line, I lost him.”

He was still shaking his head. He felt as if she spoke in some language he had never heard before. “Lost him?”

“Yes,” she said. “In the backseat of my mother’s car, surrounded by our suitcases and everything we could get out of the house without waking my father, I miscarried.”

She put out her hand. For a confused second, he thought she might be reaching for him, and he started to extend his own. But then he saw a key glint. She placed it neatly, deftly, in the lock and turned it. The front door opened with the squeak he’d last heard seventeen years ago.

“Go home, Colby,” she said, her tones frighteningly detached, though he suddenly saw that her face ran with tears. “There is no child, and there’s nothing more for us to say.”

CHAPTER FOUR

HAYLEY WAS TREMBLING when she shut the door behind her. She pressed her back against the wood, flattening her shoulder blades, as if she thought Colby might try to batter it down. Her breath came quickly, like a heroine in a horror movie who had escaped just in the nick of time.

She scoffed at herself for being so melodramatic, hoping she could force herself to calm down. But as she surveyed the room in which she’d taken refuge, she didn’t feel much better.

The foyer was dimly lit by a fake chandelier. Its dangling pieces of plastic, which had been cut to look like crystals, were furred with dust.

The entry area had seemed sad, pale and oddly smaller when she and Roland had dropped by this afternoon. It looked much different now that it was night, now that she was alone.

And it teemed with memories. She glanced toward the far end of the hall, where it led to the kitchen, half expecting to see her father stalking through the opening, a beer in his hand and fury in his face.

For several long seconds, she stood there, heart racing, caught between two unbearable memories. Colby hadn’t left the porch, she knew that from the utter silence behind her. But inside… She shut her eyes, as if that would keep her father’s ghost from materializing.

Oh, God, she shouldn’t have come back to Sonoma. She shouldn’t have set foot in the vineyard, in the graveyard or in this house. So what if her father had wanted to be buried here, on Sonoma soil? She hadn’t needed to come. She should have hired someone to clean the house, as Genevieve had encouraged her to do, and then hired a real-estate agent to sell the property.

But, no—she’d called that plan too cowardly. She’d been so sure she could handle returning home. It would be healthy, she’d told Genevieve. She’d been so confident that, after seventeen years, she’d grown up enough to put her old life into its proper perspective.

She shook her head, feeling her hair pulling free of its careful French braid as it snagged on the tiny splinters of the old door. This was her lifelong sin—the sin of idiot optimism and dogged pride. From the time she was a little girl, she had always believed she could do anything. Sleep safely in treetops, marry the handsome superstar, flout the alcoholic tyrant.

She could still remember the last night she’d ever entered this house and thought of it as home. She’d come in late from work—one of the other cashiers had called in sick. For once, she hadn’t even been thinking about her dad, and whether he would be drunk. She’d been locked in her own private hell, worried about the baby, and angry about Colby’s inexplicable reaction to the news.

But not yet terrified. She had no idea that the Malones had come here to see her parents. She’d believed that her secret was still safe. And, fool that she was, she believed that, once Colby got over his shock, he would come around. He’d do the right thing. He loved her. Sure, they’d fought, and they’d broken up, but everyone knew that was just temporary. They belonged together. He loved her.

The minute she shut the door and dropped her keys on the hall table, her father appeared out of nowhere.

“You disgusting slut,” was all he’d said, and then she felt something hard and cold crash against her head. Later, she learned it had been his full beer bottle. She didn’t even remember falling to the floor, and she didn’t remember the rest, either, thank God. Had he kicked her as she lay there? Or had he hauled her up by the hair and punched her? The next day she’d found her own hair all over her shirt, so maybe he had.

She only knew that, sometime much later, her mother had helped her into the living room—just to the right of this foyer—and onto the sofa. Her consciousness went in and out with a fiery, strobelike effect.

She didn’t ask why her mother wasn’t taking her upstairs and putting her into bed. She assumed that she wasn’t able to climb—one of her hips hurt so much she thought it must be broken. But hours later, when her mother woke her again and helped her limp in total silence out to the car, she realized that her mother had kept her downstairs because that would make the escape easier.

She knew, somehow, that she mustn’t cry out, though she had figured out by then that it was her leg, not her hip, that really was broken. As she exited the house, the moon was full on the vines. Genevieve already sat in the front seat, clutching her ballerina bear, her face like a white button at the window.

Her mother had brought pillows and blankets, and made a sort of bed in the backseat for Hayley. She lay gingerly down, hugging herself against the pain, and passed out again.

She woke somewhere near the Nevada line, screaming. Someone was stabbing her stomach with knives, and blood streamed out of her, soaking the denim of her jeans.

“No,” she had cried, squeezing her legs together in spite of the pain. “No…no…no…”

The sudden sound of a car engine snarling to life returned her to the present. She sagged against the door, relieved. Finally, Colby was leaving.

Somehow, just knowing she wouldn’t have to face him anymore tonight brought back a little of her courage. She moved away from the door, deciding it was time to do something practical.

She pulled out her cell phone and put a call in to Genevieve. To her surprise, her sister picked up on the first ring.

“I was just about to call you!” Genevieve’s musical tones sounded scratchy, as if she’d worked too many hours today. “I’ve been on since about six this morning, but they finally gave me a couple of hours to sleep. How are you? Did you make it through the funeral okay?”

“I’m fine.” And, as always, the sound of her little sister’s voice was enough to bring the world back into balance. “The funeral was uneventful.”

“Did you decide to stay at the house after all? I still think a hotel might be—”

“No hotels, silly. There’s a lot to do before we can put the place on the market, and I might as well get started.” Hayley had to smile at herself. Two minutes ago, she’d been seeing specters and barring the door against demons of the past, but now she was back to sounding like the bossy big sister.

“Honestly, I’m fine. The place isn’t as big a mess as I’d expected, actually.”

Genevieve sounded unconvinced. “Well, that’s good, but…”

“But nothing.” With her sister’s voice as company, Hayley marched resolutely up the stairs. “I want to hit the ground running in the morning. So I’ll just turn in early and—”

She stopped at the door to her old room. Confused, she swiveled on the landing, checking the layout to see if she’d become disoriented. But no, this was her room.

Had been her room, anyway. In Hayley’s mind, the room had never changed. It had remained exactly as she left it that final afternoon, when she dashed off, late to work as usual.

She could remember every detail. She’d bought a new pair of sneakers, because she got a discount now that she worked at the sports superstore. She’d stuffed the empty box into the trash can, but she hadn’t quite been able to make it fit, which she knew would make her father mad. The shirt she’d worn to school—white with a scoop neck trimmed with blue sequins, all the rage that year—had been tossed onto the foot of the bed, abandoned for her uniform shirt.

And, of course, all along the edge of the mirror were pictures of Colby. Laughing, confident Colby, with his arm around her, about to dunk her into the pond, or leaning over her, dangling a cluster of grapes just above her open mouth.

But none of that remained. Instead, a sea of boxes greeted her. Such a mess. She couldn’t have stepped two feet inside this pink-walled room if her life had depended on it.

It had become the rubbish closet. Maybe, she thought, that was where all the possessions they’d left behind had ended up. Maybe, somewhere in there, was her diary, which her father had undoubtedly found when he took the mattress off her bed. And the pregnancy test, which she’d wrapped in a bag and stuffed behind her winter sweaters.

“What’s wrong?” Genevieve sounded concerned. Hayley wondered how long she’d been silent.

“Nothing,” she said. She launched into a light-hearted description of the sweet touches Roland and Miranda had added to make the house homier.

As she talked, she closed the door on her room and tried Genevieve’s. Though he’d left the pink ballerina border along the ceiling, her father had turned Gen’s room into some kind of home gym. A treadmill, a weight bench, a stationary bike.

She tried to picture him using any of this—and she suddenly realized that her mental picture was seventeen years out of date. She’d asked for a closed casket, and she hadn’t felt the slightest urge to look inside.

She shut the door. She kept talking, but her mind was sending out a string of painful questions.

Had he changed very much as he’d grown older? He would have been nearly seventy. He’d always been a little overweight. Beer belly, mostly. The lawyer who phoned had said her dad died of a heart attack. Was it a surprise? Had he been warned about his habits? Had he spent the last months of his life in the converted exercise room, trying to sweat out a lifetime of booze?

“Hayley,” Genevieve said, breaking into her mindless chatter, obviously not buying it for a minute. “You sound funny. What’s going on?”

Hayley had just opened her father’s bedroom door. Finally, a bed, the same dark walnut four-poster her parents had always shared. The same picture window that overlooked the vineyards, though the drapes were closed now, and the overhead light fixture was missing a couple of bulbs.

Now she understood Miranda’s furrowed brow, her anxious eyes, when Hayley insisted on coming up here to sleep.

She knew within ten seconds that she couldn’t. Without her mother’s presence, her mother’s perfume to lighten the air, the whole room smelled like her father.

The odor was sickly sweet, with a hint of sweat and leather. Heavy undertones of beer, though someone, probably Roland, had emptied all the trash cans and even wiped down the nightstand.

She would never forget that smell. Her uniform shirt, covered in the beer from her father’s broken bottle, and the sweat of her own pain as she lay on the sofa, had smelled exactly like this room.

But if this was the only available bed…

Her only other choice would be the divan in her mother’s sewing room, if it were even still there. But that was where her mother had always retired, so that she could be alone to weep.

She could use the sofa downstairs. That might have a certain poetic justice. Her last night here, and her first night back, spent on its leather cushions…

“Nothing’s going on,” she said to Genevieve. “I’m just realizing the place is messier than I thought. I think…” She hated to admit defeat, but, damn it, she wouldn’t sleep a wink here tonight. “I think you may be right about the hotel.”

“Of course I am,” Genevieve said, clearly relieved. She laughed. “Get the heck out of there right now. I know you believe you’re invincible and everything. But you’re only human, Hayley. Like the rest of us.”

Hayley shut her father’s door quietly, and headed down the stairs. She wasn’t defeated. She was just tired. It had been a long day. The funeral, then Colby…

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, she’d return to being invincible. Tonight, she just needed to sleep.

SHE ARRIVED BACK AT THE vineyard just after dawn the next day—or so her watch said. It was difficult to tell if the sun had risen, because a heavy gray rain pummeled her windshield as she made her way up the hill. It pounded the dirt rows between the vines, too, exposing stones and cigarette butts—plus all manner of debris unidentifiable in this dim light. A small but telling sign of how her father had neglected this property, maybe for a long, long time.

Up ahead, the main house squatted, dark-eyed and unwelcoming, under the low-hanging clouds. The car bounced over the driveway ruts slowly, and she finally came to a stop inches from the front porch.

For a minute, as she debated whether to bother with an umbrella, she exchanged scowls with the two-story structure. Wet and muddy definitely wasn’t its best look.

But sleep had restored her determination, and she was ready. A cup of take-out coffee nestled warmly against her thigh, and a banana from the hotel’s free breakfast poked out of the zipper of her purse. She’d scraped her hair back in a ponytail so tight her ears stuck out like a leprechaun’s—not exactly flattering, but functional.

In the backseat, she had a blank book for jotting notes, a plastic crate to collect important papers and a box of a hundred and forty-four garbage sacks in which to dump the rest. Plus, her cell was newly loaded with phone numbers—lawyers, real-estate agents, estate-sale agents, charitable organizations hungry for donations, carpenters, glaziers and house cleaners.

To heck with the umbrella. It wasn’t as if she’d put on makeup, or fixed her hair. This was work. Dirty work. Suddenly eager to get going, she flung open the car door and darted out into the rain.

Two hours later, the rain hadn’t let up. The big kitchen windows looked like they were covered in watery gray curtains, but she had all the lights blazing. She was on her knees in front of the pantry, a yawning garbage bag on the floor next to her, when the doorbell rang.

“It’s open,” she called out, hoping she could be heard over the drumming of the rain. She figured it had to be either Roland or Miranda, who both had promised to stop by and help if they could.

The shiny black plastic bag rippled as a gust of damp, earthy wind swept through the shotgun arrangement of front door, hallway and kitchen.

“Back here,” she said, reaching for a clear container of what looked like pasta dipped in pepper. When one of the grains of pepper began to move, she realized her mistake. She dumped it, container and all, into the bag and turned as Miranda arrived in the doorway.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to that,” the older woman said, shaking raindrops from her long, black hair as she folded up a glistening umbrella. Her brow wrinkled. “We thought the fridge was more important. Your father wouldn’t let us in the house for weeks before he passed, and these last few days, with Roland finishing up the harvest and—”

“Don’t be silly. You guys have done so much already. I’ll have this cleared out in no time!” Hayley climbed to her feet and embraced Miranda, who smelled like cinnamon, as if she’d been baking. “I’d offer you something to drink, but nothing in here looks safe, except maybe the beer. I’ve already finished the milk you left.”

“I’m fine.” Miranda looked around, obviously registering the magnitude of the job Hayley was facing. “I can’t stay long, unfortunately. Just until Elena’s preschool lets out.”

Hayley assured her that was great. And it was—she knew the Eliots meant well, but some of the work she’d have to do here would undoubtedly stir emotions. The kitchen was merely grimy and annoying, but chores like sorting through her old things, or her father’s finances…

She’d rather tackle those alone.

Clearly not intending to waste a minute of what time she had, Miranda pulled out one of the padded bar stools that faced the granite island and moved it closer to the counter above the sink. She opened the cupboard door and sniffed.

“Most of these canned goods are probably still okay,” she said. “Shall we start a bag for the Food Bank?”

“That one over by the stove is set aside for donations. There’s not much salvageable in here, though.” Hayley surveyed the still-teeming pantry shelves. She was already on her third garbage bag, and only about half done. “Everything is years past the sell-by date. I guess he didn’t cook much. I must have found a dozen empty pizza boxes stacked up in the mudroom.”

Miranda laughed. “Yes, we saw the delivery boy head up here maybe four or five times a week. But never Diamante. He still refused to do business with them, even though they’re the most convenient. They probably have five locations within ten miles of here.”

Hayley paused, her fingers gingerly holding a can that had one bulging side, as if something on the interior was trying to get out. “Really? They’ve expanded that much? Before I left, they had only the one take-out place in Sonoma.”

“They’re everywhere. But your father…” She chuckled. “He said their pizza was crap.”

Hayley didn’t answer. She couldn’t. When Miranda said those words, Hayley could almost hear her father speaking. “Arrogant bastards,” he used to say when anyone mentioned Diamante. “Think they’re better than everyone, but under those expensive suits, they’re still just hash-slingers. And it’s crappy hash, too.”

He lied, of course—everyone knew Diamante had the best pizza. Strictly a California product, though. The first few years after she left Sonoma, Hayley had suffered intense cravings for the honey-sweet crust and signature red sauce.

“I guess he never forgave the Malones for…for Colby,” Miranda said tentatively. “I mean…Colby and you.”

Hayley tightened her jaw, but managed a smile and a shrug. “That was just the most recent sin. The truth was, Dad never forgave the Malones for deciding not to carry Foggy Valley wine in their restaurant anymore.”

Miranda nodded. “They were the first, weren’t they? But not the last.”

That was an understatement. Diamante had merely been the leading edge of a tidal wave of vendors abandoning the tiny winery Ben Watson had been neglecting for years. The Foggy Valley label had been well respected when Hayley’s mother’s parents were alive, but by the time Hayley was thirteen, the winery end of the business was only a memory. A few bits of silver equipment quietly rusting away in an abandoned barn on the eastern edge of the property.

Miranda probably regretted opening old wounds, because she changed the subject smoothly and began asking Hayley questions about her life in Florida. Hayley was happy to tell her all about Genevieve, and her promotion, and the little string of dress shops where Hayley had worked for the past fifteen years.

She still kept the baby news to herself.

They talked until nearly noon, by which time great, lumpy garbage bags covered fifty percent of the blue-tiled kitchen floor. All the cabinets were empty, except for the ones that held plates and mugs, glasses and other housewares. The estate-sale agent would be selling things like that. And soon.

Thankfully Hayley had learned that she wouldn’t have to maneuver through a complicated probate process. When her father’s lawyer had telephoned her with the news of the death, he explained that Ben had set up a trust that made the transfer of assets quite simple. He’d left everything to Hayley and Genevieve, no mention of his wife, as if he’d known quite well that Evelyn Watson had died long ago.

Hayley hadn’t been sure which shocked her more—that her father obviously knew where to tell his lawyer to find her, or that he’d been sensible and proactive enough to organize his will into a trust.

For some reason, both bits of information made her chest tighten, as if there might have been a great many things she didn’t know about her dad.

But the important thing was, if she worked hard, and luck was with her, she could be free of all this much sooner than she could have imagined. She could hardly wait to see what the real-estate agent said the property was worth. She hadn’t cared much about money for the past seventeen years, but with a baby coming into her life…it would be wonderful to have a cushion in the bank.

At fifteen minutes to twelve, Miranda’s cell phone beeped. She knotted off her last trash bag and whisked her hands together briskly. “Gotta go. School’s out at noon, and Elena cries if I’m even a minute late.”

Hayley nodded. They had spent some of their time this morning discussing Elena’s fragile situation, so no more explanation was needed. After a full year, the little girl hardly remembered her mother—consciously, at least. But she had a dread of abandonment that proved how deep the damage went.

When Miranda left, Hayley decided to take a break. She needed to stretch. She needed to smell something other than stale beer bottles and stagnant garbage. She grabbed the banana from her purse and wandered into the living room, where she could sit on the sofa, the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house, and watch the rain on the vines while she ate.

She wasn’t aware of falling asleep. She wouldn’t have thought, in fact, that she even could sleep on this sofa, however comfortable, because of the memories it held. But suddenly she was waking up to the sound of the front door opening. Her heart raced in her chest as she awkwardly hoisted her sluggish body to a sitting position. The banana peel tumbled to the carpet at her feet.

“Miranda?”

But that didn’t make sense. Miranda was picking up Elena…wasn’t she? Hayley looked at her watch, but it wasn’t there. She’d taken it off while she was grubbing around in her father’s trash. She rubbed her eyes and started to move toward the hall, but before she could take a step, a man appeared in the doorway.

Colby…?

But no. The contours were similar to Colby’s, but the colors were all wrong. It looked like…

What was wrong with her? Her mind really wasn’t working. Maybe she was still dreaming. Because the man in the doorway was…

It couldn’t be. He was in Florida, three thousand miles away.

“Greg?”

The tall, broad-shouldered man smiled. His thick blond hair glistened with raindrops, but its robust waves, which had earned him the nickname “Dr. Delicious” among the nurses, were unconquered.

“Sweetheart,” he said in his most mellifluous voice. He came closer. “I couldn’t wait for you to come home. I missed you too much. So I came to you.”

He held out his arms, and in spite of how gorgeous he was, a ripple of distaste ran through her. This wasn’t right. It was incredible, literally impossible to believe, that he could be here. And…somehow creepy. Why on earth had he come all this way, across the country, on what could only be a fool’s errand?

The last time she saw him, she had told him it was over, and she’d meant it. She had been clear-cut, almost insultingly explicit. No two ways about it. She meant it, and he knew she meant it.

“What on earth are you doing here, Greg?”

He took another step closer, bringing him near enough that she could smell his aftershave. Lime sharp enough to sting her nostrils. Instinctively, she folded her arms across her chest. Her heart still beat too fast.

And then her head cleared.

“Wait.” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you even know where to find me?”

He must have seen that she was very angry, but, as always, he remained calm, so calm. Greg Valmont, M.D., had the perfect bedside manner, the manner that had guided dozens of pregnant women through labor.

Always under control. Never ruffled or impatient, like her father. Never a hint of wildness, arrogance or danger, like Colby.

For Hayley, that soothing manner had always been one of his most appealing characteristics. Finally, she’d thought, here was a man who wouldn’t ever hurt her.

Until that day two weeks ago. The day he lost his temper.

“How,” she repeated, “did you know where to find me?”

“I’m so sorry, Hayley,” he said with a disarming candor. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I was going crazy, wondering when you’d be back. I looked at your mail. I saw the letter from the lawyer.”

“What?”

He tilted his head, and even in the watery light, his green eyes were brilliant, flecked with golden lights. “I know it was wrong, but you left it open on the hall table.”

“You went into my house?” She was almost breathless with fury. “How? You gave me back the key.”

He shrugged, looking sheepish. “I had another copy. I’d forgotten about it completely, until… Look, sweetheart, I know you’re upset. But you should have told me about your dad. You shouldn’t have faced this alone. I could have been here for the funeral.”

“I didn’t want you here for the funeral. I don’t want you here now. We aren’t together anymore, Greg. You do remember that we broke up two weeks ago?”

The corners of his mouth moved into little-boy-sad position. “I remember that we had a fight. I remember that I goofed up, badly. I upset you. But surely one little mistake isn’t enough to destroy a relationship as beautiful as—”

“It wasn’t a little mistake,” she said, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. Once, that kind of talk might have sounded romantic. But now she heard how false it was, how manipulative. It made her skin crawl. “It was a huge mistake. A fatal mistake. And if it hadn’t been enough to destroy our relationship, this would have done it anyhow.”

“This?”

She waved her hand toward the door. “Yes, this. This—invasion of my privacy. You broke into my house, and now—”

“Hayley, that’s not fair. I may have been foolish, but I didn’t break into anything. I had a—”

“And now you’ve stalked me clear across the country. You’ve violated my privacy here, too. You have no right to be in this house, or even in this state. I want you to give back that key, and then I want you to get out of here. Immediately.”

Apparently without thinking, he reached out his hand. He got close enough for her to feel the heat of his fingers, but she whipped her arm aside before he could touch her skin.

She felt her cheeks start to burn, as her heart pumped oxygen faster than her veins could absorb it. Her throat tightened. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

For a split second, she was embarrassed, as if she were making too big a deal out of what was obviously a friendly touch. But then she caught it—the sudden tightening around his eyes, the momentary hardening in their green depths. It was the same look she’d seen that night two weeks ago, when she’d told him she didn’t feel like making love.

He was furious. Not just angry, not just upset. Furious.

That night, he’d been aroused, and he hadn’t been able to cover his frustration. He’d grabbed her irritably, and he’d kept kissing her, pressing her toward the bed as though she were a moody, difficult female who was just confused about her own needs.

He probably believed that, once coaxed into starting, she’d end up enjoying herself. He hadn’t realized that she was the last woman in the world he should handle in such a way. Since that night seventeen years ago, she hadn’t let anyone touch her in anger. No one. She had zero tolerance—no amnesty for “one drink too many,” or for “just joking around” or for abject apologies and roses.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Hayley,” he said, shifting his shoulders wearily, as if he were a long-suffering martyr accepting an unjust verdict. “I thought you might have come to your senses. I hoped you would realize that any…extreme emotions I have are just because I love you.”

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