“Where’s Christine?”

“She’s—” Tory was having trouble breathing.

Taking the younger woman’s trembling hands, Phyllis led her to the couch. She responded to Tory’s desperation, and her own emotions began to shut down, preparing her for the bad news she sensed was coming.

“Bruce…” Tory tried again.

“He found you,” Phyllis said, trying to keep her panic at bay. “He’s got Christine.” Tory’s ex-husband was the reason Christine had accepted the job in Shelter Valley—to get Tory as far away from the man as she could.

Tory shook her head. “He…killed…her…” The last word trailed off into a tormented whisper. “He caught up with us on the New Mexico border.”

“What happened?” Phyllis gasped.

“When Christine wouldn’t pull over, Bruce started bumping the side of the car, trying to force us to stop.” Head down, she played with her fingers. “I don’t remember much else. When I came to in the hospital, they told me there’d been a one-car accident—that we’d lost control and driven over a cliff—and that my s-s-sister was dead.”

“I’m so sorry…”

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Shelter Valley! Or, if you’re visiting for the first time, all of us who’ve been here before wish you a warm Shelter Valley welcome. You’ll find that just about everything here is warm—the welcome, the people, the weather…

On this particular visit to Shelter Valley, you’re going to meet Tory Evans. She’s only twenty-six but circumstances, experience and a sharp intelligence make her more aware of some things than she’d like to be. You’ll get to know Tory from the very beginning of this story—but only you and one other person in Shelter Valley know that she’s Tory Evans; everyone else believes she’s her older sister, Christine. Tory is lonely, but because she can’t tell anyone who she really is, making friends is almost impossible. That’s where you come in. I hope you’ll be moved by Tory and that she’ll find a friend in you—an advocate—to see her through the battle for her freedom.

I think we all fight Tory’s battle in one guise or another. Sometimes we’re faced with a wrong that seems right—a decision that looks right but which, on further reflection, we recognize is wrong. And we’re all forced, at some time or other, to confront who we really are, the people life and circumstances have made us—and the possibilities of who we might become…. And ironically, the part that often takes the most courage is being able to see the value that already exists within ourselves.

Luckily, Tory is making her search in Shelter Valley, where life’s most fundamental truths still form the basis of people’s decisions and relationships. In that sense, my home is a mini-Shelter Valley and I find, along with Tory, that knowing what’s important, keeping the heart at the heart of the matter, can and does lead to happiness.

So, welcome to Shelter Valley. Travel the road to happiness!

Tara Taylor Quinn

P.S. I love to hear from readers. You can reach me at: P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, AZ 85267-5065 or check out my website at http://members.home.net/ttquinn

My Sister, Myself
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Patty

I pray that you will never run out of answers—or the willingness to share them with me.

Thank you for opening up my world, and filling my heart.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PROLOGUE

SHE WAS ALMOST there.

Shelter Valley, once a two-day drive away, was now just two miles ahead. How had more than thirty hours passed without her being aware? What had she driven by along the way?

Was she going to take the exit? Or wasn’t she?

How could she possibly make a decision when she wasn’t ready?

If Christine didn’t show up to take this job, she’d lose it.

Another green sign whizzed by the passenger window of Tory’s new Ford Mustang. Shelter Valley, 1 mile.

Christine. Tears flowed from Tory’s eyes, as they’d been doing for most of the trip, trailing almost unnoticed down her face. Christine. So beautiful. So worthy.

What do I do? How do I go on without you?

And then, to herself, How do I not?

Tory’s life had been spared. That made no sense to her. Justice had not been served.

“What do you want me to do?” she cried to an absent Christine when the silence in the car grew too overwhelming. “Bruce thinks he killed me, not you.” Pulling over to the shoulder of the road, Tory barely got her car into park before the sobs broke loose.

Her beloved older sister had only been dead a week.

Tory was all alone. Completely and totally alone for the first time in her godawful life. And she’d thought, after spending two years fleeing a maniacal ex-husband, that it couldn’t get any worse.

Her tearstained face turned toward the sky, she tried, through blurry eyes, to find some guidance from above. Was Christine up there in all that blueness somewhere? Watching over her, guiding her?

There were no answers from up there. But straight ahead was another green sign with fluorescent white lighting. Shelter Valley, this exit.

Twenty-six-year-old Tory Evans had been searching for shelter her entire life. But she’d never found it. Was this time going to be any different?

As long as Bruce thought her dead, she’d be safe from him.

Coming from old New England money, he had widespread influence. His tentacles were everywhere. They’d infiltrated every city, every small town, every hut she’d ever inhabited while trying to evade him. Bruce Taylor had never been denied. His mother, having found him perfect in every way, had refused to allow any kind of discipline in his life—still refused to see that her grown son was less than exemplary, making excuses for him at every infraction. And his father, a shipping magnate, had assuaged the guilt of his neglect with everything money could buy. He’d even bought off someone in the legal system the one time Tory had gone to the law for help regarding Bruce’s physical abuse. Somehow the tables had been turned on her, the innuendoes so twisted that Tory had known, even before she’d faced the judge, that she was going to lose.

She would never have gotten her divorce if she’d gone about it the normal way—filing, having him served. In her desperation, she’d come up with a pretty clever plan: coaxing Bruce to accompany her on a Tiajuana get-away and then, in the middle of his three-day drunk, taking him to the local courthouse for a quickie divorce. He’d demanded the divorce be nullified. She wouldn’t agree to it, but he still hadn’t accepted her no.

At thirty, Bruce didn’t know the meaning of the word no. He took what he wanted, accepted it as his due. And he wanted Tory. Was obsessed with keeping possession of his ex-wife. The only way to be safe from him was to be dead. To stay dead. And to let Christine live.

It was never going to work.

CHAPTER ONE

BEN SANDERS approached the Shelter Valley exit with trepidation. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. There were other places to get a good education. Other places to start over. What if the town was nothing more than a few old buildings, some houses and a street or two? What if it wasn’t home?

He’d heard about Shelter Valley his whole life, heard it described as a town where people cared, where they looked out for one another. A place where family mattered. He hoped it was true.

Signaling his turn, Ben guided the Ford F-150 from the highway, slowing as he came to the end of the ramp.

With everything he owned packed in boxes and stacked in the bed of his truck, he took the turn toward Shelter Valley, glancing avidly around him. He had no idea what he was looking for. Something he recognized, maybe. But no matter what his boyhood imaginings told him, he knew there would be nothing. He’d never been here before.

Except in his heart.

He’d been hearing the story of his grandmother’s journey from Shelter Valley since before he was old enough to understand its significance—a fourteen-year-old girl separated from her family, from the strong father she’d adored, from the only way of life she’d ever known. That story was the one piece of family lore his father had ever shared with him.

Shelter Valley had been beckoning him ever since. Maybe because of the nomadic way he’d grown up. Or maybe he’d inherited more than his share of his great-grandfather’s genes. Maybe old Samuel Montford was calling him to come home.

Maybe he’d just built up some stupid fantasy of a home because at the age of twenty-six he’d never had a real one.

The town came into view in a hurry. Over a hill, and there it was, out in the desert right where his great-grandfather had left it. Surrounded by hard ground and cacti, the town of his dreams had a color scheme of shades of brown and a backdrop of majestic mountains. Slowing the truck as he drove into Shelter Valley, Ben tried to notice everything at once. The neighborhoods, what he could see of them, looked nice, nothing fancy for the most part, but clean and well kept. There were people about, an old woman pruning a rosebush, some kids playing with a ball on the sidewalk, a teenage girl roller-skating alongside him.

He let her pass.

This time was for him. He wanted to savor it alone.

A few mansions sat interspersed on the distant mountain ahead of him. He wondered if a Montford lived in one of those houses. If there were even any Montfords left in this town.

He’d always believed he had family here.

More wishful thinking of a lonely boy.

Ben wasn’t a boy anymore. Marriage had cured him of that. Raising and supporting the child he’d believed was his had finished the job. Or maybe it’d been losing her—

No! He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to allow himself those thoughts, those memories. The pain. Not ever. He had a new life now. The one that had been interrupted during his senior year in high school. He was going it alone, counting on the only person he knew he could count on—himself. No more looking back.

His new address was on a piece of paper that lay on the seat beside him—an apartment in an older home near the campus of Montford University. Classes started in two days, but it wouldn’t take him that long to get ready. He’d already registered by mail and phone, only had a few books left to buy. Some boxes to unpack.

Eight years later than he’d planned, he was starting college.

Slowing even more as he neared downtown Shelter Valley—a strip of stores on both sides of Main Street, with angled parking along the curbs—Ben smiled. The Valley Diner, with its forest-green awning, Weber’s department store, the drugstore, were all just as he’d imagined. Almost as if someone had crept into his boyhood fantasies, stolen the images and dropped them here for him to find all these years later.

And then, as he reached the intersection at Main and Montford, he noticed the statue holding pride of place in the town square. Surrounded by lush green and carefully cropped grass, the life-size sculpture sparkled with a newness that reminded him of Christmas. Its polished stone surfaces glistened beneath the setting Arizona sun. The placard was so big he could read it from the road.

With a rush of incomprehensible feeling, Ben pulled his truck into the first empty spot he found, locked it up—kind of pointless considering all the stuff piled in the back—and as though compelled, headed straight for the statue. He read every word of the brief biography typed in smaller print on the placard before allowing himself his first real look.

He’d been waiting all his life for this moment.

And he wasn’t disappointed.

Incredulous, his heart full, Ben stared up at the likeness of his great-grandfather. The sculpted features were solid and real, almost as though Samuel Montford would come to life if the sun got warm enough. And as Ben stood and stared at the man who’d lived so many years ago, he could have been looking in a mirror.

A couple strolled by hand in hand, engrossed in each other, but they smiled at Ben as they passed. He smiled back. He wanted to ask if they saw the resemblance, half expected them to notice without his asking. They might have, too, if they’d ever fully looked his way.

There’d be time for that later. The rest of his life.

Bidding his great-grandfather a silent “See ya later,” Ben strode eagerly toward his truck. The apartment he’d never seen before was calling him. He’d come home.

“COME ON, CHRISTINE, where are you?” Dr. Phyllis Langford paced in front of her living-room window, watching the road intently. She found herself playing an old childhood game: Christine’s would be the fifth car to drive down her street. No, the tenth…

Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the window, she was a little frightened by the tension she read there. Even framed by her flyaway red hair, her face looked stiff, unyielding.

With Christine already weeks later than she should have been, Phyllis was growing more and more anxious to see her, to know that her friend was all right. Daylight passed into darkness, and still Christine didn’t arrive. Her note, obviously quickly scrawled, had said today was the day.

It had said nothing about the car accident that had delayed her. Nothing to convey to Phyllis the extent of Christine’s injuries, the damage to her car, how Tory had fared. Cryptic to the point of impersonal, the scribbled note had merely said she’d be arriving this afternoon.

Afternoon was over now.

Driven from her quaint little house by an energy she didn’t understand, Phyllis stood out by the curb, watching for headlights. Something was wrong.

Her heart twisted as she thought of her friend, and the tortured life she’d led. Shelter Valley was supposed to be Christine’s new beginning. A life where good was possible—and where evil was left far behind. A time for healing. A time for Christine and her younger sister, Tory, to nurture each other.

With a doctorate in psychology, Phyllis fully understood the steps the sisters would have to take, the stages they’d pass through on their way to emotional freedom from their abusive past. But it was as a friend that she intended to be with them, to accompany them on that journey.

Back in her house, Phyllis rechecked the room that Christine and Tory would be sharing. The twin beds were made. The closet full of hangers. The new dressers empty and waiting.

School was due to start on Monday. As the newest psychology professor at Montford University, Phyllis had been ready for the semester to begin weeks ago. Christine, the new English professor, hadn’t had the same time to prepare. She had her lessons planned; she’d shipped them—and all her books and research materials—ahead of her. But still, she’d left herself too little time to acclimate to her new home in Arizona—a far cry from the New England city they’d left—and to Montford’s campus, the small town, the people here.

Not to mention the new climate, Phyllis thought, going in to change the short-sleeved knit shirt she’d pulled on over knee-length shorts earlier that afternoon. Even with the air conditioner running, she couldn’t seem to stop sweating. Arizona’s heat might be dry, but Phyllis certainly wasn’t.

Maybe when Christine got settled in, she could help Phyllis lose some weight. She’d offered to help back when they’d lived next door to each other in Boston, but at that time Phyllis had still been punishing herself because of a husband who’d preferred another woman’s body to her own. Her plumpness had been what she’d deserved.

Then.

Christine and Tory weren’t the only ones reinventing themselves. In the weeks since she’d arrived in Shelter Valley, Phyllis had changed, too. Already she’d made some friends. Close friends. Becca and Will Parsons and their darling new daughter, Bethany. Becca’s sister, Sari. Martha Moore and John Strickland. Linda Morgan, the associate dean at Montford. Will’s energetic youngest sister, Randi. Most of them friends she knew would still be in her life thirty years from now.

Because of their big hearts and their willingness to accept a stranger as one of them, Phyllis had begun to value herself again.

And she knew that if Christine was ever going to find peace on this earth, Shelter Valley was the place.

Having waited so long for the doorbell to ring, Phyllis felt her heart jump alarmingly when it finally did. She flew to the door, flung it open and pulled the young woman standing on the front step into her arms.

“I’m so glad you guys are finally here,” she said, tearing up with relief.

“Yeah.” Tory was crying, too.

“Where’s Christine?” Phyllis asked, urging Tory into the house as she looked past her.

There was a new Mustang in her driveway. An empty Mustang.

Dread crawled over her as she turned slowly back. But there was no reason to think the worst.

“Where’s Christine?” she asked again. Back in Boston there’d been reason to worry, but Christine would be fine now.

“She’s…” Tory seemed to be having trouble breathing. “He…Bruce…”

Taking the younger woman’s trembling hands, Phyllis led her to the couch. Phyllis responded to Tory’s desperation, and her own emotions began to shut down, preparing her for the bad news she sensed was coming.

“Bruce…” Tory tried again.

But Phyllis didn’t need to hear. Tory’s sobs were so filled with anguish Phyllis was choking, too.

“He found you,” she said, trying to keep her own panic at bay. “He’s got Christine.”

Tory’s ex-husband was the reason Christine had accepted the job at Montford—to get Tory as far away from the man as she could.

Tory shook her head. “He…killed her…” The last word trailed off into a tormented whisper.

Numb with shock, Phyllis sat with Tory, held her, comforted her, but she had no idea what she was saying. Had a feeling it didn’t much matter, that Tory had no idea what she was saying, either. A solitary tear stole down Phyllis’s cheek.

Damn.

She’d known something was wrong. She’d known it.

“How did it happen?” she asked softly, more because the only part of her mind currently working, the analytical part, knew Tory needed to get everything out.

Christine’s life was over. Her struggle was over. Phyllis just couldn’t believe it.

“Somehow he discovered that we were heading out here,” Tory said, her voice weak from crying. Her slim, perfectly sculpted frame and beautiful face were sagging with strain. Watching her, Phyllis was taken aback at how much she resembled her sister. She’d thought so when she’d first met Tory earlier in the summer.

Not many months ago, Christine had sat on this same couch back in Boston, her body bent in defeat, her big blue eyes—exact replicas of Tory’s—dark with shadows as she recounted for Phyllis the horrors of her childhood.

As Phyllis had then, she sat quietly now, allowing the other sister to do her telling in her own time.

“He caught up with us at the New Mexico border.”

Oh, God. The landscape was so barren there. Hot. Unyielding.

“He kept motioning for us to pull over, but Christine wouldn’t.”

Tory’s eyes filled with helpless tears again as she looked at Phyllis. “I told her to stop,” she said. “He wanted me, not her.”

“Unless he was angry with her for taking you away from him,” Phyllis offered, already seeing the blame and guilt Tory was heaping on herself.

Tory shook her head, her short blond hair bouncing with the vigorous movement. “He only ever wanted me,” she said, her voice bitter. “Other people don’t matter enough to make him angry.” She paused, her eyes dead-looking. “In his mind, there’s no one alive who can beat him. People are merely ants he occasionally has to step on.”

Though she’d heard such things before—in clinical settings—Phyllis was sickened by the description. And by young Tory’s far-too-mature account of the man who’d made her life a living hell.

“So what happened when Christine finally stopped?” Phyllis coaxed softly when it appeared she’d lost Tory to places Phyllis had never been—places she probably couldn’t even imagine.

Tory shook her head, hands trembling. “She didn’t stop,” Tory whispered, her eyes wide with horror.

“She told me I was the only good thing in her life, the only thing worth living for, and she wouldn’t stop.”

“You sound like that surprises you,” Phyllis said.

“If it hadn’t been for me, Christine’s life would have been perfect once she left home,” she said sincerely. “I let her down so many times. I didn’t go to college. I married Bruce. I ran from everything.”

Remembering that she knew things Tory didn’t, Phyllis chose her words carefully. “Christine chose Bruce for you, Tory,” she said, revealing the part she could.

“What?” the young woman asked, shocked.

“How? She couldn’t have. I met him at a party.”

“And when you brought him home, when she met him, knew that he came from a good family, a wealthy family, she did everything she could to throw the two of you together.” Phyllis repeated what Christine herself had confessed all those months ago. “She thought he was your ticket out.”

Silently Tory listened, her gaze turned inward, as though she was remembering back to the unreal days of her courtship.

“She did, didn’t she?” Phyllis finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Tory said, her brow furrowed.

“I guess. Yeah, she was kind of always there, encouraging me, helping me get ready for dates, choosing just the right clothes for me to wear. But then, she was my older sister. She was supposed to do that.”

Feeling the other woman’s confusion, her pain, Phyllis smoothed the bangs from Tory’s eyes—and saw, for the first time, the ugly red scar marring Tory’s forehead just beneath her hairline.

“What happened?” she gasped.

Tory rearranged her bangs self-consciously.

“When Christine wouldn’t pull over, Bruce got more and more reckless, bumping into the side of the car, trying to force us to stop.” Head down, she played with her fingers. “I don’t remember much else,” she confessed. Tears dropped onto her hand.

“When I came to in the hospital, they told me there’d been a one-car accident—no one’s fault. We’d lost control on a curve and driven over a cliff—and that my s-s-sister was dead.”

Phyllis drew the young woman into her arms. “Oh, Tory, honey, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, over and over again, as her own tears fell on Tory’s hair.

Oh, Christine. Dear, sweet, tortured Christine. Have you finally found your peace?

TORY COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d slept. Coming slowly awake Saturday morning in the comfortable bed, the comfortable room, feeling almost rested, she wondered at first if she was still dreaming. A dream she didn’t ever want to wake from.

She glanced sleepily around the room and saw the luggage she and Phyllis had carried in the night before, the new dresser—and the empty twin bed across from her own.

For Christine.

That split second was all it took for everything to come tumbling back. The dread. The fear. The soul-crushing despair.

“You awake?” Phyllis’s voice followed a brief knock on the door.

“Yeah, come in.” Tory quickly pulled her bangs down over her forehead. After years of hiding bruises, the action was purely instinctive.

“Good morning.” Phyllis smiled, carrying a cup of coffee, which she set on Tory’s bedside table.

Being waited on in bed warmed Tory even more than the coffee Phyllis had brought.

They discussed trivial things for a while—the unbelievably hot Arizona weather, the pretty house Phyllis had found in August when she’d preceded Christine out to Shelter Valley. Also some of the people she’d met. People Tory would likely meet.

Trying to listen, to absorb, Tory settled for concentrating on Phyllis’s smile, instead, the steady cadence of her voice, the calm strength she emanated as she sat in the middle of Christine’s bed. Her nerves bouncing on the edge of her skin, Tory somehow made herself stay put, made her thoughts stay put. Forced down the panic inside her.

Phyllis was being so darn nice. Other than Christine, no one had ever been so nice to her before. And for no reason that she could fathom.

“We’re going to have to call Dr. Parsons and let him know Christine isn’t coming,” Phyllis finally said gently.

Here it comes, Tory thought, taking a deep breath.

She’d rehearsed the speech. A hundred times on her trek across the barren New Mexico and northern Arizona landscape.

Another deep breath, and still nothing happened.

She couldn’t do it.

“Life insurance was part of her benefits package,” Phyllis said, her eyes full of compassion. “I know Christine’s was already in effect because it was done at the same time as mine. We can give Dr. Parsons a copy of her death certificate, and at least you won’t have any financial worries.”

Tory stared at her.

“I’m counting on you to stay right here with me, just like we planned,” Phyllis continued. “Until you have time to decide what you want to do, anyway. It’s kind of lonely having an entire house to myself after living in an apartment for so long,” she said, obviously giving Tory whatever time she needed to enter the conversation. “I guess I need to hear life on the other side of my walls.”

“There isn’t one,” Tory stated bluntly.

Phyllis frowned. “Isn’t one what?”

“Death certificate.”

“But—”

“At least, not for Christine.”

“I don’t understand.” Phyllis was still frowning. “The hospital told you your sister was dead, but no one signed a death certificate?” Her face cleared. “If they haven’t seen her body, she may still be alive.” She looked at Tory. “Maybe Bruce has her, after all.”

Watching the expressions chase themselves across Phyllis’s face, Tory shook her head.

“The hospital authorities saw her.” She paused, swallowed. “I…saw…her.” Arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, Tory stared down at the bed. “I had her cremated like she always said she wanted.”

Maybe most sisters didn’t talk to each other about their burials while still so young, but she and Christine had. With the lives they’d lived, the home they’d grown up in, death had been a constant possibility.

“You can’t do that without a death certificate.”

“I had one,” Tory admitted, biting her lip. “Just not Christine’s.” Her head hurt and her face was numb as she silently spun in the unending loop of terror inside her mind.

“Christine and I look so much alike….”

Chin resting on her knees, Tory studied the bed through blurry eyes. Tears dripped off her face, rolling slowly down the sides of her knees, but her voice was almost steady as she related what she’d been told so compassionately by the clergywoman who’d visited her in the hospital.

Tory’s bed sank on one side with Phyllis’s weight. She tried to concentrate on the comfort of the other woman’s hands rubbing slowly back and forth along her back.

“My driver’s license was brand-new. Christine’s was six years old….”

The hand on her back slowed, stopped moving, hung there suspended.

“We were both pretty messed up in the crash….”

“Tory—”

“She’d gotten cold, my monogrammed sweater was the only thing within reach for her to put on without stopping and—”

“Oh, my God.”

“When word got out that the woman who died in the crash was presumed to be Tory Evans, Bruce, who was apparently beside himself, sent one of the family staff to identify me. Her.”

“And the guy did?”

Tory nodded, turned to meet Phyllis’s incredulous eyes. “Christine went through the windshield,” Tory said, trying not to remember the one brief glimpse she’d had of her sister in the morgue. “Her face was barely recognizable, even to me. She’d just had her hair cut short like mine, said she was embarking on a new life and wanted a new look.”

Tory’s sigh was ragged. “Apparently when I first came to and they asked me if I knew who I was, I said Christine.” She looked at Phyllis again. “I can’t remember that at all, but knowing me, knowing how I get when I’m hurting, I would’ve been calling for Christine….”

Her sister had been her balm her entire life, as far back as Tory could remember. Which was pretty damn far. She’d been only three the first time her stepfather had thrown her against a wall. She could still remember the stars she’d seen. The confusion that had kept her immobile long enough for him to do it again.

“This is incredible,” Phyllis said. She took hold of Tory’s shoulders, turning Tory to face her.

“They think you’re dead, that you’ve been cremated.”

Tory nodded wearily, her eyes overflowing with tears. “The death certificate I have is my own.”

CHAPTER TWO

BEN LASTED until midway through Saturday morning. His ground-floor apartment was clean and quiet and comfortably furnished, but now he was at loose ends, and it was only ten o’clock. That was how long it had taken him to get his few pots and pans and dishes and glasses moved in and put away in the appropriate cupboards. And get his computer set up. He’d have done better if he hadn’t already put his clothes away and hooked up his stereo the night before.

He’d called Alex last night, too, thankful that she’d answered on his first try. The week before, he’d had to claim a wrong number three times before his daughter had been the one to answer his call. His daughter—not his daughter but the little girl he’d raised and loved as his own. Now that he had a number of his own, the subterfuge wouldn’t be necessary. He’d had Alex write down the number, complete with step-by-step instructions on how to call collect, and then made her repeat everything back to him several times. He’d given her his address, too, but didn’t expect her to be able to use it. At seven, Alex was bright enough to write him a letter and address the envelope, but she’d have to go to her mother for a stamp, and Mary would certainly deny the request. Ben wasn’t Alex’s real father—her birth father—though Mary had neglected to tell him so until recently. Now she wanted Ben out of their lives. Out of Alex’s life.

Damn her for putting Alex and him in this situation. Besides, the courts had said he and Alex should remain in contact, despite the fact that he was divorced from her mother and had no biological claim on her.

He headed out and spent an hour and a half at the local grocery store, stocking up not only on food but on every single household item he thought he might need at some point in his life.

Cleansers, a mop and bucket, sponges, a couple kinds of dishwashing cloths, several kitchen-towel sets, shoe inserts, extra laces and polish, bandages and antiseptic. Aspirin, cold tablets, cough syrup, paper towels. Toilet paper, tissues and a sewing kit, too.

Anything and everything that seemed to belong in a home, he bought.

The girl at the checkout made eyes at him as he went through.

“You new in town?” she asked with an appreciative smile.

“I am.” Ben glanced around for the name of the store, scribbling it on a check.

“Looks like you’re planning to be here a while.”

“Yes.” He signed the bottom of the check and waited for the total.

After a few more failed attempts to snare his attention, she finished ringing him up.

He was glad to collect his bags and be gone. The girl had been cute. Friendly. Twenty or twenty-one. If he’d met her in another life, he might even have smiled back at her.

But not in this life. At least not until he had his college degree and a career that satisfied him. He’d wasted eight years already. There were no more to waste.

After a brief detour to visit his great-grandfather, Ben was home again, slowly and methodically unloading his purchases. The first-aid stuff had to go in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Everyone knew that. And the kitchen towels in a drawer by the sink. One he draped over the oven door handle. He’d seen that on television once.

Down to just the sewing kit, he wasn’t sure where to put it. He finally settled on a drawer in the bathroom. Chances were, if he ever needed it, it would be when he was getting dressed and pulled off a button. Wouldn’t be much call for it otherwise. Sewing on buttons was about the only thing Ben could do with a needle and thread.

Not even noon yet, and he had a day and a half to kill before school started. Ben rearranged some things in the kitchen—and then moved them back to their original places, deciding he’d made the best choice the first time around.

George Winston’s Autumn piano music drifted through the apartment, but as he made one more trek from room to room to make sure there wasn’t anything more he could do, Ben felt the quiet—the absence of life—a weight pressing down on him.

He was used to noise—childish laughter and shrieks, blocks tumbling, play dishes being washed. And a woman’s whines trailing behind him with every step he took.

Ben got his keys again, and went back out to his truck. He had a home now. His own home. One where he’d be spending the next few years. Where he could call the shots.

It was time to get a dog.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL the authorities they’d made a mistake? That Christine was the one who died in the accident?” Phyllis asked Tory later that morning.

She’d had a phone call earlier, and then Tory had asked if she could shower off the grime of the drive. She’d been too exhausted, mentally and physically, to do so the night before. When she’d come out of the shower, Phyllis had placed Tory’s suitcases on her bed and was standing by with an empty hanger, ready to help her unpack.

Now they were sitting at Phyllis’s kitchen table, the remains of a late breakfast neither of them had really wanted, or eaten much of, in front of them.

Why hadn’t she told the authorities? Tory had known the question was coming.

“I started to,” she said, sweating in spite of the air-conditioned kitchen. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, regardless of Phyllis’s warning about the Arizona heat, but it wasn’t the clothes that were making her uncomfortable. It was the task ahead of her.

She was about to find out just how insane she was. And what little chance her half-born hope of freedom really had.

“I fully intended to tell them, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. At first, everyone just figured I was too distraught to speak. Whenever I tried to tell them the truth, they’d tell me to get some rest, or they’d pat my arm and say they understood.”

Phyllis’s hand covered Tory’s. Tory gently pulled her hand away.

“Then it hit me,” Tory said, her gaze pleading as it met Phyllis’s. “As soon as I told them and word got out, Bruce would be right back on my tail. I only wanted a couple of days to rest, to think, to plan. So I let them think I was Christine. But as one day turned into the next, I couldn’t make myself become Tory again and…and take on all that fear.”

“I don’t know how you lived with it as long as you did.”

Tory smiled bitterly. “What other choice did I have?”

Phyllis moved the salt and pepper shakers. “So what are you thinking now?”

“That as long as I’m Christine, I’m safe.”

“Christine has a job to do starting Monday.”

“I know,” Tory said, her throat dry.

“Christine said you never finished college.”

“I never even went to college. Bruce didn’t want me on campus with all the college boys.”

Both women were silent, the words they weren’t speaking hanging in the air. How could Tory possibly be Christine? Christine was a college professor.

“You could always quit the job.”

“And go where? Do what? My résumé says I’m a professor.”

Every possibility had already occurred to Tory. She knew there was no way this could work. No way she could convince herself this was even a little bit right. She was just too weak to face the alternative.

“Bruce will probably keep tabs on Christine for a little while. If she’s alive, she has to be teaching college. Anything else will make him suspicious.”

“The bastard should be in prison.”

Tory couldn’t travel that road. If she did, her bitterness would destroy her.

“I have two choices,” she said, pushing congealed eggs around on her plate. “Either I come clean and spend the rest of my life trying to hide from Bruce and wearing his bruises every time I fail, or I show up at Montford University on Monday morning and teach English.”

She used to believe there was a difference between right and wrong. That for every situation there was a correct choice, the right choice. She’d even vowed, when her married life had first become a living hell, worse than the life she’d had growing up, to always make that right choice. She’d believed it would eventually deliver her from cruelty, from pain.

She didn’t believe that anymore.

“The boxes Christine shipped are in the closet in the spare bedroom,” Phyllis said. “I’m using it as an office.”

Tory watched the other woman scrape their uneaten food into the garbage, and then stack the two plates.

“Her lessons plans are in there,” Phyllis continued, speaking unemotionally, as though they were discussing nothing more serious than what movie they were going to see. “They’ll be clear, concise and very detailed. You’ve got thirty-six hours before school starts.”

Heart pounding, Tory said, “You don’t think I should even consider trying this, do you.”

Phyllis looked Tory straight in the eye, her expression grave. “I don’t see that you have any other choice.”

Tory held Phyllis’s gaze for as long as she could stand it, then dropped her eyes.

“What would Christine think?” she whispered, the guilt rising up to choke her. She should be dead, not Christine. She’d have gladly given her life if it meant saving Christine’s.

“She’s watching over you, Tory. Can’t you feel her?” Phyllis lowered her voice to a rough whisper, but the sharp conviction behind her words was unmistakable.

Tears in her eyes, Tory shook her head. She wanted so badly to believe that Christine was still with her. She could hardly even breathe when she thought about facing the rest of her life without her sister. But she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Did Christine really want her to do this? Or was Tory’s mind, influenced by her cowardice, playing some sick game with her?

“Christine told me once, not too long ago, that you were her only reason for living,” Phyllis said.

“You were the only good thing in or about her life.”

“She told me that, too, but she was just being kind. It didn’t really mean anything. How could it? She was an incredible woman, had the whole world at her feet.”

“She didn’t think so.”

The sincerity in Phyllis’s voice grabbed Tory, holding her until she had to admit that Phyllis might know more about her sister’s mental state in the past few years than she did herself.

“She would insist that you do this, Tory,” Phyllis said firmly. “And she’d want me to help you in any way I can.”

“WILL—DR. PARSONS—only met Christine once. Months ago. She’s had her hair cut since then. Lost some weight…”

The two women were in the bedroom Phyllis had turned into an office, sitting on the floor and surrounded by opened packing boxes. They’d been at it most of the day, Phyllis administering the fastest teacher-education course in history.

“Our eyes are what people notice most about us,” Tory said, trying, for Phyllis’s sake if nothing else, to get into the spirit of the plan.

“They’re beautiful,” Phyllis said gently. “So large and such a striking blue. But mostly so expressive.”

Tory leafed through the pages of the American literature anthology she held on her lap.

“They were one of the first things I noticed about Christine,” Phyllis added.

The familiar pang clutched Tory’s insides. “I’m so sorry, Phyllis,” she said, dropping a lesson plan for the third week of classes as she looked up. “I’ve been weeping all over the place about losing my sister, but you also lost a great deal, didn’t you? The way Christine talked about you, the two of you must have been very close.”

Tears brimmed in Phyllis’s eyes, but her ready smile was evident, too. “We were. Your sister was very special.”

Tory nodded, a measure of peace loosening the knots in her stomach. “I think you must be very special, too,” she said softly. “Do you know you’re the first real friend Christine ever had?”

“No,” Phyllis said, her eyes wide. “I know she was a private person, but as sweet as she was, I’m sure there were others who scaled those walls of hers.”

Scaled those walls. The words were threatening to Tory. She and Christine both had their walls. And the security in that was to think them unscalable.

“Our colleagues at the college all flocked to her,” Phyllis said. She was assembling materials for the fourth week’s lesson plan. “It must have been the same for her in college. You probably just never met any of her friends, since she was five years older than you.”

“She never had a friend,” Tory said with complete certainty.

Any chance of friendship had ended when they’d tried to report their stepfather’s abuse. Everyone had been shocked. Ronald was well-known in the community, soft-spoken, active at church. He’d carpooled. He’d protested his innocence, incredibly hurt by then-twelve-year-old Christine’s allegations. They’d been assigned a caseworker, but of course there’d been nothing to find. Ronald had simply not had anything alcoholic to drink during the weeks of the investigation.

And the confusing cruel truth was, when Ronald wasn’t drinking, he hadn’t been a bad father to them.

They’d been made to feel so ashamed of their complaints they’d begun to blame themselves for the abuse. They’d also lost all faith in the system that was purported to protect them.

“She lived at home when she went to college—probably because our stepfather wasn’t as rough with me when he had two of us to torment,” Tory said slowly. “Never once did she go out. Not on a date. Not to study. Nor did she ever have anyone over.”

Neither of them had. Neither had had the courage to risk bringing another person into their home. For that person’s sake. And for their own.

Bearing the violence privately was bad enough; to have it made known to others would have been intolerable. At least with no one else knowing, when they left the house, they left the violence behind. While they were safely at school, they were free. The real world was an escape neither of them had been willing to jeopardize.

“OKAY, THE FIRST THING to remember when you walk into the classroom is that you’re the boss.”

Exhausted, yet filled with nervous excitement, Tory sat on her bed, taking notes as Phyllis continued her crash course well past midnight Saturday night. They’d changed into their pajamas hours earlier, but hadn’t gotten around to turning in.

“You have to establish your authority immediately, and then you’re home free. The most important tool you’ll take into that class with you is confidence.”

“Kinda hard to be confident when they’re all going to know more about my subject than I do,” Tory said dryly.

“We’ll take care of that,” Phyllis replied, her entire body exuding positive energy. “Luckily you’re teaching five sections of American lit this semester. You’ll be teaching the same material five times, in other words. Now, we have all day tomorrow, to study the textbooks and Christine’s notes. For this next week, you only need to know Emerson and Thoreau, and you’re already familiar with a lot of that.” She was sitting on Christine’s bed, her legs crossed, her red hair framing her pretty face as though she’d just styled it an hour before, instead of the almost eighteen hours it had been.

“Christine said you were extremely intelligent. She said that when she was in college you used to help her study for exams, reading her texts and asking her questions from study guides. According to her, you’d often know the answers as well as she did.”

“Sometimes.”

“You must have a wonderful memory and a very acute, analytical brain.” Phyllis smiled. “Christine mentioned that you had some pretty stirring debates and some real differences of opinion. You’re obviously a natural.”

“Hardly,” Tory said, but she warmed at the compliment.

Phyllis twisted the opal ring she wore on her right ring finger. “Have you ever had your IQ tested?”

“No!” And Tory had no intention of doing so.

“I’d hate to find out that I’m not as smart as I think I am.”

“What if you found out you were smarter?”

Tory was silent for a moment, wondering if her numbed mind was going to take in everything it had to in the next twenty-four hours. “I think I’d hate that, too,” she admitted softly. “Because then I’d know just how much I’ve wasted, how much I’ve lost.”

“Hey,” Phyllis said, unfolding her legs as she reached across to squeeze Tory’s hand. “It’s not too late. You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you. Amazing things to accomplish.”

Tory smiled, but inside, the familiar dread was spreading. Yeah, she had a whole new life.

It just wasn’t her life.

BEN WAS IN THE KITCHEN of his two-bedroom apartment, paper towel in hand, when his alarm went off Monday morning.

“Okay, little buddy, you and I need to get some things straight,” he said, leaving the puddle in the kitchen as he scooped up the puppy and strode back to the master bedroom to turn off the alarm.

“I’m the boss in this house and what I say goes, got that?” He kept the puppy firmly under his arm, out of harm’s way, off the carpet, and with those big imploring brown eyes out of his line of vision. Ben had been implored so much in the past two days—and had given in so often—he was making himself sick.

“When I say it’s time for bed, bedtime it is.” He continued the lecture as he headed back to the mess awaiting him in the kitchen. “That means I lie down, you lie down, and we both sleep. There will be no barking.” He stepped over the gate he’d put up across the kitchen doorway. “No whining. And if—that’s a big if—I deign to take you into the bedroom with me, there will be no more biting on the ears.”

Dropping the wad of paper towels on the puddle beneath the kitchen table, Ben soaked up the deposit, threw the towels in the special trash bag that would leave the house with him that morning, poured a generous amount of disinfectant on the soiled spot and with another wad of paper towels mopped that up, too.

Only then did he put the puppy down. One set of urine-wet paw prints traipsing across the floor was enough for him. He was learning quickly.

Buddy, which was what Ben had called the dog so far, darted around puppy-style, falling as much as he ran, coming to rest suddenly by a leg of the kitchen table.

“No!” Ben hollered, grabbing him up before more damage was done. He took the puppy out the sliding glass door off the kitchen and out into the yard, where the little guy did his business. Ben was pleased. Between the two of them, they’d gotten it right that time.

Yes, Ben praised himself, all in all, the training was coming along nicely.

Shut in the bathroom with Ben, Buddy whined the entire time Ben was in the shower. Whether because he missed his master or because the sound of water scared him, Ben wasn’t sure.

And because it couldn’t be proved either way, he chose to believe that Buddy missed him.

“I’ve got school this morning, Bud,” he said as he dried off, pulled on some briefs and stood before the mirror to shave.

Buddy chewed on his toes.

And then on the new bath rug Ben had purchased the day before to replace the one Buddy had chewed Saturday night when Ben had shut the puppy in the bathroom so he could get some sleep.

“We’ve already been over this,” Ben explained as he pulled the rug off the floor and flung it over the side of the tub. “No chewing on my things. Not on me, my rugs, my clothes or shoes, not anything that I don’t hand directly to you. Got that?”

The eight-week-old wad of fur stared up at him, his big brown eyes expectant as he waited for the games to begin anew.

“Don’t forget, my man, Zack said I could bring you back if I found you were too much to handle,” Ben threatened.

Zack Foster was the local vet—half of the Shelter Valley veterinarian clinic’s team. Zack’s partner, Cassie, had been out of the office—out of town—when Ben went there Saturday, looking to start his new family. He and Zack had hit it off immediately, spending half an hour talking about the town, what there was to do in the area, baseball scores and the chances of the Phoenix Suns making it to the playoffs that year. By the time he’d gotten around to his reason for being there, Ben had gladly taken the runt-of-the-litter Zack couldn’t find a home for. He’d given away the other three, but he’d had no takers for this one—and now Ben thought he knew why. But he’d assured Zack that no six-pound squat-bellied thing whose front and back legs couldn’t agree was going to get the better of him.

There was no way, after that grandiose speech, that Ben could return the little bugger. But Buddy didn’t have to know that. It wasn’t beneath Ben to use whatever tactics he must to establish his authority in the house, once and for all.

Ready for class, in spite of his high-maintenance housemate, Ben was just about to head out when he made a mistake. He looked at those big brown eyes.

Dropping his backpack on the floor, Ben ran to his bedroom, grabbed the only spare blanket from the linen closet, ran back to the kitchen and made a bed for the little guy against a cupboard—on top of which stood the radio, turned down low and set to a classical station. Moving the water dish, and the potty pad, too, he gave the puppy one last scratch behind the ears.

“Wish me luck.”

Slinging his backpack over one shoulder, he locked up and climbed into his truck.

He’d been waiting more than half his life for this day.

It had finally begun.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CAMPUS WAS beautiful. Though grass was at a premium in this desert town, Montford’s lawns were green and lush, so velvety thick Tory had an urge to lie down in it and pass the day there.

She might have, too, if her kill-’em-with-love drill sergeant wasn’t marching along beside her. Students milled all around them, moving with purpose, every single one of them looking as though they belonged.

“You’re going to do fine,” Phyllis was saying. Not that Tory had expressed her fears this morning. Phyllis just knew she was feeling them.

“You’re sure you tested me on every aspect of the Emerson years?” Tory asked for the third time that morning.

“You know it, Tory,” Phyllis assured her. “You had a lot of it down before we even started yesterday.”

Tory shrugged, feeling stiff in her sister’s suit and low heels. Tory was used to less-formal clothes. And higher heels. Christine’s feet had been half a size larger than Tory’s, but Phyllis had fixed that with some inserts. They’d go shopping for Tory’s school clothes later in the week.

“I had no idea I’d retained so much from when I helped Christine study.”

“I’d guess it was a good diversion from whatever else might have been going on in your house.”

Tory stumbled, still not used to Phyllis’s open way of talking about her and Christine’s painful up-bringing. She wondered how Christine had dealt with her friend’s honesty. Wished, suddenly engulfed by an unexpected surge of grief, that Christine were there so she could ask her.

“You’ve had your meeting with Dr. Parsons,” Phyllis said, motioning toward the sidewalk on the left when they came to a fork. “He didn’t suspect anything, and he was your toughest sell. The others who interviewed Christine only saw her for a few minutes back in April and then never spoke with her again. Christine got her hair cut. Had a makeover and lost a little weight over the summer, most recently due to her car accident.”

“Dr. Parsons sure was nice,” Tory said, relaxing just a little as she replayed her early-morning meeting with the president of Montford University. He’d asked about the car accident and been very sympathetic about her sister’s death, agreeing not to say anything to anyone else about it, as no one knew her sister or knew that her sister had been coming to town. He understood her need to grieve in private.

“He seemed to have a real affection for Christine, though he seemed surprised that she cut her hair.”

“You cut your hair,” Phyllis corrected, slowing as they came to the side door of an old brick building. “You can’t keep thinking of Christine as someone else if you’re going to pull this off.”

Tory looked up at the imposing building, afraid that it was their destination, that Christine’s new office, her new colleagues, were in there.

“You make it sound as though we’re criminals,” Tory told Phyllis, staving off the panic that could send her right back into Bruce’s clutches.

“I’m not up on criminal law,” Phyllis said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we’re breaking a couple of laws.”

Tory had been so caught up with the emotional trauma inherent in the entire situation, she hadn’t even given a thought to the legal issues.

“You know, I’ve spent years ignoring the laws that were supposed to help me, because in my case they never worked. So I’ve never even thought about the ones I might be breaking.”

She looked at her new friend, an angel sent to her from heaven—if there was a heaven. And turned to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“We can’t do this, Phyllis. Risking my life, my freedom, because the alternative is no better, is one thing. But I won’t risk yours.”

Grabbing Tory’s arm, Phyllis pulled her toward the door. “If I am breaking a law, that’s my choice,” she said firmly. “You may think I’m the only friend Christine had, but I know she was the only real friend I’ve ever had, and I’m not letting her down. Or you, either. Let’s go.”

Perhaps it was a sign of her cowardice. Or weakness. But Tory went.

And two hours later, when she stepped into the first college classroom she’d ever been in—the first of five she’d be stepping into that week—when she saw the rows of desks, the students sitting there, and walked right past them to the front of the room, she refused to let the weakness show.

She was Christine Evans. The best damn teacher any one of those intimidating intelligent students had ever had.

IN A CHAIR right in the middle of the room—not so far back that he wasn’t a part of things and not so close to the front that he missed what was going on behind him—Ben watched as his fellow classmates filed in and took their seats. So far, he was the oldest of the bunch. Not too many seniors took American Literature 101.

Still, he wasn’t daunted. Or even the slightest bit disappointed. This was his classroom. His school. His day.

Pulling out the black spiral-bound notebook he’d bought for this class and a new pen, he sat back and waited for his teacher to arrive. C. Evans.

Was “C.” a man or a woman?

Listening as a rather immature boy, clearly fresh out of high school, tried to pick up the blond cheerleader-type in the back of the room, Ben smiled. He felt the way Buddy had looked in the bathroom that morning.

Let the games begin.

A young woman walked in just then, clearly fresh out of her high school, if the confident tilt of her head was anything to judge by. Ben’s euphoria faded just a little as he watched her. Overdressed compared to the rest of the shorts-clad students, she stood out in her proper blue suit and white blouse. And she was far too striking to be wearing the no-nonsense pumps she had on.

What bothered him, though, wasn’t her clothes. Or even her confidence. It was the way his nerves tensed when she passed his desk. He’d been looking at female students all morning, and he could have been looking at a herd of cattle for all the reaction they aroused in him.

Staring down at the desktop in front of him, at his notebook lying there ready and open, Ben avoided noticing where the young woman sat. He wasn’t in the market for an attraction, a flirtation or a romance. Or anything at all that had to do with a woman. Maybe once he’d graduated, enough time would have elapsed and he’d be willing to venture down that road again. Maybe. But for sure, it would be no sooner than that. He wasn’t going back to working till he dropped, working at dead-end jobs just to pay the rent.

“Okay, everybody, let’s get started, shall we?”

His gaze shooting toward the front of the room, Ben came to attention. He’d been so set on ignoring one of his fellow students, he hadn’t even realized the teacher had come in.

Yes, he had. He just hadn’t known she was his teacher.

C. Evans. A woman. The suit.

Damn.

She looked straight at him, almost as though she’d read his thoughts, and Ben received his second jolt of the day. Her eyes, so compelling, so full, held his, and he sensed, somehow, that she was speaking to him. And what she had to say was far more intense than anything to do with American literature. For a few brief seconds, it was as though only the two of them were in that room.

“I’m Christine Evans,” she said, breaking eye contact with him. After glancing around at the rest of her students, she focused on him again.

Her look wasn’t sexual. Wasn’t the least bit suggestive. It seemed more as if she was searching for a friend. And that she’d chosen him.

Ben couldn’t accept the honor.

Glancing away from her, he observed the rest of the students in the room. Had any of them noticed the odd communication? Had any of them experienced it, as well, when Ms. Evans had looked at them? All the students in his line of vision seemed young, inexperienced, oblivious. So much so they didn’t recognize the undercurrents? Or were there simply none being sent their way?

“This syllabus covers the entire semester, and we’ll be following it exactly,” Ms. Evans was saying, passing around handouts.

She hesitated beside his desk, then dropped the stapled sheets on his notebook and moved on.

“Since I’m brand-new to town, I don’t know a single one of you, but I’m usually pretty good with names, and I expect to have them all learned within a couple of days. Until then, please bear with me.”

Like him, she was a newcomer.

“We’ll take a few minutes to go over the syllabus,” she went on, “plus my requirements of you and the expectations for this class, including the weekly essays you’ll have to write. Then we’ll be moving on to this week’s topic, the Emerson years…”

She might be new to town, but she clearly wasn’t new to teaching.

Ben settled in, making himself concentrate on what the teacher was saying with the same sheer strength of will that had seen him through eight years of toiling at jobs he hated so he could feed his baby girl. Nothing was going to keep him from getting his college degree.

Nothing.

“BEN? COULD I SEE YOU a minute?”

Ben stopped on the way out of his American literature class on Monday, the second week of class. His teacher wanted to see him.

“Sure.” Backpack hanging off one shoulder, he approached her desk. Stupid to feel underdressed in his shorts, T-shirt and sandals, but he did. Didn’t seem to matter to Christine Evans that it was over a hundred degrees outside. She’d worn a suit to class all four times they’d met.

Not that Ben had permitted himself to dwell on what the woman wore. At least not when he could help it.

She waited for the other students to finish packing up and leave the room, gathering her own stuff together at the same time. Ben started to sweat. He’d spent far too much of the weekend thinking about his English professor.

What secrets were hiding behind those big blue eyes? What made her expression so shadowed sometimes?

How old was she, anyway? And had she ever been married? Would she think him a fool for the mess he’d made of his own life?

Despite his resolve to allow no feelings to complicate his life, he could feel the woman’s sorrow. Maybe because it mirrored his own?

“I just wanted to speak with you about your piece on Thoreau,” Christine said when the last student had left the room. “Your portrayal of him as an intensely deep and lonely man, rather than the quack many considered him, was quite moving.”

“Thank you.”

She asked him a couple of questions about his research and he answered her. When she held the paper out to him, her hand was shaking.

“There’s a quarterly newsletter, The Edifice, for students of English to publish their work. I’d like to see you submit this to the editor for publication.”

Ben met her eyes. And looked away. “You think it’s good enough?”

“I do.” She nodded. “I’ve got the submission requirements and the address in my office, if you’d like to come with me now.”

No. He had another class to get to, all the way across campus. A finance class. Part of his business major. Although it didn’t start for another hour…The main thing was, he couldn’t afford to see any more of Christine Evans than the three hours a week he was required to sit in her class.

“That’d be great, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble,” he heard himself say.

His orders didn’t seem to have any more effect on him than they did on Buddy.

SHE WAS A FOOL. Not that this was news to Tory. What in hell was she doing inviting Ben Sanders to her office? In the first place, she didn’t belong there. The office really wasn’t hers. She’d barely moved in.

In the second, teachers shouldn’t have favorites. Especially not students who had a look of knowing about them, a maturity. Students who were so capable. So reliable.

“It’s obvious you do all your reading,” she said as she walked with him across campus. The heat was almost tangible, caressing her skin, and she reveled in its gentleness. Phyllis was having a hard time acclimatizing to Arizona’s weather. Tory loved it.

“I thought we were supposed to,” he said, shortening his stride to stay beside her. She moved over just slightly, automatically, leaving space between them.

She was still wearing Christine’s ill-fitting shoes, too busy studying every night to get into Phoenix for that shopping spree.

“You are!” She grinned, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t a teacher walking with a student.

“But I’d guess some of my students haven’t even bought the text.”

“Then they’re idiots, wasting this opportunity.”

Tory wondered if he meant that.

“Do you like the Emerson years, Ben?” He’d certainly challenged her thinking a time or two during class with his insightful interpretations. She’d rather enjoyed debating with him. In the safety of the classroom.

“Not particularly.”

“Oh!” With heat flooding her face, Tory felt once again like the untutored young woman she was. “Well—”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he interrupted, moving far enough ahead to turn and walk backward, facing her. “It’s not that I don’t think your class is great. I do. I’m just not particularly fond of the Emerson era.” He shrugged. “Too stuffy for me.”

“So what authors are you fond of?” Passing a couple of girls from one of her other classes, she waved to them, feeling almost like one of them, accompanied as she was by the man they were all drooling over.

Except that she wasn’t drooling. Tory had given up drooling. She could relax a bit, though, as long as Ben was in front of her like that.

He shrugged again, fell back into step beside her. “Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Fenimore Cooper.”

“You go for the witches and wars, huh?” She moved sideways, leaving a little more space between them.

“What I admire most about The Last of the Mohicans is not the battles.”

“What is it?”

“Hawkeye.”

“Of course. The hero who conquers all and gets his woman.” Tory had a problem with that story. She’d wanted to believe there really were heroic men like Cooper’s Hawkeye, had held steadfast to that hope even in high school, despite the damage her stepfather had done. She’d held it until she’d met Bruce, married him and found out that no matter what their station, all men were alike.

“No. Hawkeye’s a man who has such a sense of honor and decency that he’ll risk everything he has, everything he is, to see justice done.”

Tory stopped in her tracks, her heart beating heavily in her chest. And then started walking again.

There was no point in arguing with him, in telling him that it was just such viewpoints, beliefs, that hurt people like her so badly. People who still believed that the sort of people they read about in books actually existed. There was no point in getting into it with him because she couldn’t support her argument with the facts.

“So who’s your favorite nineteenth-century American author?” he asked as they neared her office building.

“Louisa May Alcott.”

“Hmm. Kind of a minor player, isn’t she?”

“I guess,” Tory said, standing back as he opened the door for her. “But I like her, anyway.”

“Why?”

He was still holding the door, standing there looking at her, and she could feel his glance all the way to her bones.

There was something special about this man. Something compelling. And frightening.

“Because in a time when those guys—your Hawthorne and Melville and Emerson and so on—were writing about witches and wars and big issues, she wrote about ordinary everyday life. Her own life and that of her sisters. She was practical, the way women often are because they have to be. And she was able to take reality and make it palatable. Her writing engaged me as a child and, equally, as an adult.”

“I think I prefer books that transform reality,” he said, letting go of the door as she started down the hall. “Instead of stories that just present it the way it is.”

“Like any good writer, she did both. Her books were based on aspects of her own life, but they weren’t autobiographical.” Tory shook her head.

“I’ve been to the house where she grew up,” she told him. Christine had taken her there—as well as many other places important to American literature. In New England, they’d been right there for the visiting. “It was so…so touching to see things I’d read about. In Little Women, one of the heroine’s sisters draws all the time, and upstairs in Alcott’s home, in this little attic bedroom, there were these incredible pencil sketches along the wall. Louisa’s sister had done them.”

Tory had treasured that tour. And all the others. For those brief moments history and fantasy had come together.

“You really love this stuff,” Ben said, waiting while she unlocked her office door.

Standing there with him right behind her, she wondered why she wasn’t feeling the need to run. Usually she couldn’t tolerate being so close to a man.

Probably because she was still playing the part of Christine.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I really do.”

BEN WAS WITH ZACK FOSTER the following evening, driving home from Phoenix. The bed of his truck was filled with Zack’s new living-room furniture. As he drove down Main, he saw Christine Evans coming out of Weber’s department store. He watched her climb into a brand-new white Ford Mustang. The car seemed to suit her better than the clothes she wore. She never seemed comfortable in them.

But then, she didn’t seem comfortable, period.

“Someone you know?” the vet asked, responding to his interest.

“Not exactly,” Ben said, pulling his gaze away, refusing to look in his rearview mirror to see which direction Christine had taken. “She’s just my English professor.”

Zack frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”

“She’s new to town.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Zack said, his voice appreciative. “Not that I’m noticing,” he added.

“How long ago did your wife leave?” Ben asked, glad to change the subject. Zack had told him, when Ben had stopped in at the vet’s to pick up more puppy food for Buddy, that he was having to refurnish his house after his divorce. That was when Ben had offered the use of his truck to pick up Zack’s new furniture.

“Six months.”

Using the rearview mirror, Ben surveyed the couch and chairs in the back of the truck. “You been sitting on the floor all this time?”

“I haven’t been home long enough to sit anywhere.”

Ben could understand that. After Mary had left, taking Alex with her, Ben hadn’t been able to sit still, either. Though they’d never been in any one apartment for long—Mary had always found some reason or other to be dissatisfied with what his income could provide—there’d still been Alex’s laughter bouncing off whatever walls were surrounding them.

“You seeing anyone?” Ben asked. He had no interest whatsoever in complicating his life again, but Zack seemed like a man who’d enjoy women. Tall, blond, athletic-looking, the guy probably had women following him in droves.

“Nope,” Zack said. “I’ve been too busy at the clinic. Cassie and I are initiating a national pet-therapy program in universities across the country, and I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, though not nearly as much as she has.”

“I don’t imagine there’re lots to choose from in a town this size, anyway,” Ben commented. The thought pleased him.

“Not many I’ve noticed.” Zack grinned. “But I’m not looking, either. Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m in no hurry to put myself through it again.”

“Know what you mean.”

“You been married?” The vet glanced over at Ben.

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Eight years.”

“Six, here.” Zack sent him a purely male look of commiseration. “Eight years,” he repeated. “You must have married young.”

“I was eighteen. Just finishing high school. I traded my education for a couple of dead-end jobs that allowed me to support my wife.”

Zack whistled, motioning for Ben to turn. “It’s the last house on the right,” he said. And then he added, “She must’ve been some looker to get her hooks into you that deep.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. Mary had been beautiful, but it wasn’t Mary who’d hooked him.

It was Alex.

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