This time, it has to be forever

Emily Jordan has been in and out of Salem Pearce’s life for years. As an archaeologist, her work often took her far away—even when he asked her to stay. She called it bad timing. He called it running away. Now she’s back and asking for one last chance.

But Salem is a single father with more than himself to think about. If he gives Emily another shot and she takes off again, it’ll hurt his daughters, too. He can’t take that risk. But deep down, he needs Emily. He always has. Maybe this time she’ll stay….

“What’s wrong, Emily?”

Salem laid her on the sofa in his office. When he tried to let her go, she grasped his shirt.

Even through her clothing, her skin burned. Just like Emily to come here like this, to bring mayhem into his well-ordered existence. She liked drama. He liked peace. She liked chaos. He needed order.

“Emily,” he said, keeping his voice low to soothe her as he would a skittish animal. “I need to get water.”

She nodded. “Yes. Water.”

Even so, she didn’t ease her grip.

“Let go.” He became stern. “I’ll come back.”

“Promise?” Her insecurity tore at him. Trouble roiled in her witchy blue-hazel eyes.

Where was his confident, brash Emily? What happened to you?

“I’m always here for you, Emily. You know that.”

She smiled so sweetly it broke his heart. Yes, Salem was always here for her, but she wasn’t always there for him.

Dear Reader,

Always Emily is my tenth Mills & Boon Superromance book. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy writing them and living my dream job!

In this story, I deal with two large issues—the first of finding trust again once it’s been broken, and the second of rebuilding ourselves after the choices we’ve made backfire.

In every life, there will be issues and hardships. I called up difficult circumstances in my past, when I learned I was strong enough to not only survive, but also thrive. At the time, it required a lot of flexibility and adaptability. To give my characters depth in this novel, I delved into the emotions I felt back then.

When I write, I look for tidbits of insight or wisdom to pass along through my characters’ journeys and often look at what others around me are dealing with. Ultimately, though, I come back to my own journey and the lessons I’ve learned. These inform my stories.

I hope you enjoy reading Always Emily as much as I did writing it.

Mary Sullivan

Always Emily

Mary Sullivan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary grew up a daydreamer amid the pop and fizz of Toronto’s multicultural community, wondering why those around her didn’t have stories rattling around in their brains, too. This novel involves an archeologist and a museum curator, dovetailing with her enjoyment of all of history’s lively stories. New ideas continue to pop into her head, often at the strangest moments. Snatches of conversations or newspaper articles or song lyrics—everything is fodder for her imagination. Be careful what you say around her. It might end up in a novel! She loves to hear from readers. To learn more about Mary or to contact her, please visit her at www.marysullivanbooks.com

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For eleven years, I was a member of an amazing critique group. It ran its course and is over now, but I will be grateful to these wonderful women for the rest of my days. We learned to write together, laughed a lot and inspired each other to be better writers, to do our best always.

My utmost respect and admiration go out to Ann Lethbridge, Maureen McGowan, Molly O’Keefe and Sinead Murphy.

Simply put, I am in awe of your talent.

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

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

One year ago

“YOU COULD ALWAYS STAY here with me,” Salem Pearce whispered into the velvety night, his butter-soft voice a contrast to the chirrups of crickets in the tall grasses lining the road.

G. veletis. Spring crickets. Only the males sing. Like crickets, men had their calling, courtship and rivalry songs. Emily Jordan had heard them all. In her experience, men were full of bluster.

But not Salem. Not her friend of few words.

These words shocked her. Even more, they frustrated her because his timing couldn’t be worse.

“I’ve waited years for you to ask me that,” she said fiercely. “How could you do this to me now? The night before my flight out?”

“You’re always catching a flight.” The bitterness in his voice might have been justified if not for their history. She wasn’t the only one who had turned away in the past. “You’re always leaving.”

The pale moon shone on hair as black as a cricket’s back and sent his deep-set eyes, as dark as the night weaving through the woods beside them, into shadow. His Native American skin, honey-gold in sunlight, glowed darker in the moonlight. An intensity she hadn’t seen before hardened his features.

“Of course I’m always leaving,” she answered. “Because I don’t work here. My livelihood takes me everywhere but here.”

“You set a record this time.” His voice hardened and cut through her defenses like an acetylene torch, the steel of the armor she’d spent years shaping useless against him when he used that harsh tone. She’d loved him for years, and then she’d learned to turn it off when he’d married someone else. “You didn’t last even a weekend.”

That set up her dander. “I’m returning to work.”

“Work? Is that what you call it?”

“Yes,” Emily shouted. Ooh, the man could make her so mad. “I’m a good archeologist. I do great work.”

“Archeology. Yes. You’re great.” He touched her arm, sending a zing of pleasure through her. “But we both know that isn’t why you go back, over and over again.” His tension swirled around them like fog, separating them as much as age and distance ever had.

“I’m returning to my work,” Emily insisted.

Salem stepped close so quickly, his long jet-black braid fell forward over his shoulder. “You’re returning to him.” The heat from his body chased away the late April chill.

“No.” She was involved with Jean-Marc, but her work called to her.

“He’ll be there.”

“Of course he will. He’s working on the same dig. He’s my boss. That doesn’t mean anything, Salem. There are a lot of people there.”

“You’re going back to him,” he repeated.

Relenting, she forced herself to answer honestly. “Yes.” Jean-Marc drew her as relentlessly as her work did. As equally.

A car on its way into Accord cast its headlights across the Colorado night and the glare turned the landscape to black and white.

She and Salem had been driving past each other on the small highway and had pulled over to talk. She’d wanted to tell him she was leaving in the morning. How could she have expected his beautiful, terrible bombshell? Stay with me.

In the wash of the car’s lights, Salem did his imitation of a sphinx, Native American-style. He closed up and set his beautiful lips into a thin line beneath his broad Ute cheekbones. Stone man. Lord, she hated when he did that.

This was so unfair. “You abandoned me first. Why?” Salem didn’t answer. She knew he understood the question, the one he’d never answered years ago. “Why?” she pressed. “You could have waited for me. You wanted me.”

“Not when we first met. You were so young. Like a kid sister. We had a bond, yeah. You were my little buddy. I couldn’t believe a twelve-year-old actually got me, understood my love of nature and my heritage, of history.”

He tapped his fist against his chin, a measured action, maybe judging how much to tell her? “I felt less alone because you were there. Why else would an eighteen-year-old hang out with a twelve-year-old? Why else would I pour my dreams out to you? I’d never known a kid who was so good at listening. I—I wished you were part of my family.” He angled away, as though embarrassed to admit to the very thing she had felt when she first met him—an unprecedented affinity with another person. Her heart soared. He had felt the same way as her!

“Then you were fourteen, almost fifteen, and beginning to look like a woman, and things changed. I fell in love with you.”

Her heart rate kicked up, did a song-and-dance routine in her chest.

“I found you attractive.” He grasped her upper arms, expression intense. “Don’t you get how young you still were? I respected both you and your dad too much to touch you. And myself, when it comes down to it. For God’s sake, it wouldn’t even have been legal. I tried waiting, but I kept on thinking about you, dreaming about you. I had to change how I dealt with you, to cut off the friendship, because it was becoming something it shouldn’t have been until you got older.”

All that time when she’d been dreaming about him, and he had started to turn away from her, he’d been doing the same with her. She’d had no idea. He’d hidden it well.

When he said, “I hated that attraction. It drove me nuts,” he shattered her blossoming happiness. “I had to distract myself with other women. Waiting was hard for a guy that age. What was I supposed to do? Wait four or five years?”

“Yes.” It came out a sibilant plea. “Why didn’t you?”

“You were a girl. I was a young man. I needed companionship.”

“You needed sex,” Emily said, still bitter sixteen years later.

“What was so wrong with that?” The sphinx was gone and Salem’s anger slipped through. “I was a guy. That’s what men do. They have sex with willing women. Annie was willing.”

“You didn’t have to get her pregnant.” And break my fourteen-year-old heart.

“That was an accident. Failed birth control.”

“You didn’t have to marry her.”

“Seriously, Emily? Leave Annie to raise the baby alone? Maybe let some other man step in? Don’t you know me at all?”

Yes, she did. Through and through. Proud, ethical Salem would do the right thing. She expected no less. It had been only her vulnerable young heart that had been unreasonable. It had hurt to lose him.

To lose something you never had, Emily?

But we did have something, a connection. Everyone thought so, not just me. Salem just told you he felt it, too.

“Why were you distant after you got married? We still saw each other all the time, but you treated me differently.”

“Of course I did.” The statement exploded out of him. “I was married and committed to making it work. I would have been a fool not to. I had children and was trying to create a strong family. My children had to believe I cared for their mother. Annie tried hard, too.”

It all made perfect sense. Her own naïveté had wounded her, not Salem.

“Stay,” Salem said again. “With me and the girls. Annie’s been dead for four years. We could make it work now.”

The age gap that had mattered when they were teenagers no longer did at thirty-six and thirty.

One big, big thing besides her career did separate them, though. Jean-Marc. She couldn’t dump him, long distance, just because Salem asked her to. Out of the blue, she might add. Where on earth had this come from?

“Don’t go back, Emily.”

“I have to.”

“Then this is goodbye.”

Her heart chilled. “What do you mean?”

“No more hanging together. No more contact. It’s too hard on me. I need to walk away. I need a clean break.”

The ice in his voice stripped her skin raw and opened a yawning pit where his presence had always been, dependable and there. She might see him only three or four times a year, but he was always present in her mind, like a beacon lighting a path through her dark times.

The thought of losing Salem, her rock, sent her into a panic. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do, Emily,” he said, the sphinx back and unyielding. “The next time you come home, stay away from me. Leave me alone.”

Bewildered, she said, “But—but you’re my best friend.”

“For the love of God, Emily, friend? Is that how you see me?” Before she realized he’d moved, he gripped her wrists, his shoulders blocking the spill of moonlight from overhead. He swore and pulled her against him. His lips hovered above hers.

He’d never— She’d always wanted— At last.

But he didn’t kiss her. He moved his mouth to her temple but didn’t touch her, simply breathed on her skin, raising goose bumps across her flesh.

Time stilled while his soapy aftershave wove ribbons of scent around her.

Lick me. Lick my temple, my cheek, my lips. Make love to me.

His breath swept her cheek, lingered on her ear and then trailed down her neck. He made no contact, but shivers followed in his wake. Her mind knew she couldn’t give in, but her body, oh, her body wanted nothing to do with common sense. Her heart wanted to own his.

Fingers of cool air caressed her shoulders, but Salem’s palms on her back were hot, drawing her closer to his hard chest and flat belly.

She’d always loved his height, his muscle. She touched him now, her hands flat against his chest and roaming his lean frame, measuring his dimensions for those nights when she would need memories, something, to hold close in the Sudan. Salem. Words, thought, fled. Only Salem. Only this and now.

Too soon, he set her away from him, his hands hard on her shoulders. “I’m not your friend, Emily. The next time that jackass hurts you, the next time he screws around on you, don’t come crying to me. If you leave tomorrow, this will be our last time together.”

She struggled to catch her breath. She wasn’t this kind of woman. She didn’t keep two men at one time. When Salem had been married, and since her relationship with Jean-Marc started, she’d been careful to not give Salem any sign he might construe as encouragement. She had put aside her youthful infatuation, had buried it deeper than the most elusive artifact, opting instead for only friendship and a shoulder to cry on. By the time Annie died, Emily had already become deeply involved with Jean-Marc.

Shaken that she’d almost lost reason, she stepped away.

Salem wreaked havoc with her good intentions. And he hadn’t even kissed her. Lordy, Lordy, what if he had?

She swiped beads of sweat from her upper lip and pulled herself together. Her hand shook. Salem, what you do to me should be against the law.

“I have to go back,” she whispered. “There are things—”

“Fine. It’s over.”

She saw red. She didn’t know that could be real, but holy relics, it was. “Over?” she asked, her voice dangerously quiet. “How can something be over when it never began?”

“Get on that plane tomorrow morning and consider us done. The next time you visit your family, stay the hell away from me.”

He strode to his beat-up old Jeep, slammed the door and spewed gravel, leaving ruts in the side of the road.

Her best friend, her onetime crush, meant it. He never wanted to see her again.

The air around Emily became thin, leaving her dizzy. For too long, she had taken Salem for granted, had assumed he would always be here waiting for her. Now he was gone, as far away from her emotionally as Jean-Marc was physically, and it cut a dent into her heart, hacked out a hunk of it and left it bleeding on the road.

Exhausted, she got into her car to drive home to her father’s house, in the opposite direction Salem had gone, and wasn’t that freaking symbolic?

Hadn’t they always been heading different ways?

Stay here with me.

Oh, Salem, and what would I do about my work? About my...my what? My boyfriend? What a pale description for her relationship with Jean-Marc. And too simple. My lover? Yes, that, but more.

The following morning, although it made her sick in both heart and body, she boarded the plane to return to work and Jean-Marc.

Present day

“STAY WITH ME,” Jean-Marc said, bringing back memories of one year ago, when the words came from a better man. She’d made the wrong choice, and now it was too late. Too late to get Salem at any rate.

She could certainly dump Jean-Marc, though, and gladly.

“We can work everything out,” he said, ramping up the charm with his too-easy grin and continental good looks—long tawny hair and ghostly pale blue eyes above high cheekbones in a rugged face. Over time, the elements roughened his skin and made him look even better, as though the sun’s sole purpose was to serve this man. She’d grown tired of his looks and his arrogance. Other women hadn’t. They flew to him like moths to a flame, but like a flame, Jean-Marc burned brightly but only briefly for any given woman.

Women envied her. Don’t, she should tell them. He’ll only tear you to pieces, too, just as he has me.

Brilliant at getting governments and countries to open their borders and doors to him even in tumultuous times, when others couldn’t, Jean-Marc had an enviable reputation in the world of archeology. He knew how to work the press, how to make digging in the dirt sound sexy and how to promote himself as much as any of the ancient ruins on which he worked. He brought glamor to archeology. With his daily tweets and constant Facebook presence, added to his raging good looks, he’d become a star.

Humans were a great lot for mythmaking. She got that. In her line of work, how could she not? But her job was to separate fact from fiction. It should have been Jean-Marc’s, too, but somewhere along the way, he’d begun to believe his own press. He thought he was God, all-powerful and above reproach.

“We can work this out,” he repeated.

“Stuff it, Jean-Marc.” Yeah, she was being rude. Dad’s wife, Laura, would be appalled. Dad, on the other hand, would applaud. He was a fighter like Emily. A scrapper. She’d held her tongue for too long, the result of being involved with one’s boss. Foolish girl.

Two nights ago, she’d caught Jean-Marc in bed with the latest PhD groupie, another one drawn in by his charisma. Until now, she’d been able to deny these things happened. In a weird and wonderful way, she was relieved that it was all out in the open. She could end it cleanly. If only she didn’t feel so lousy. If only her breakfast would stop playing hopscotch in her stomach.

Over the years, she’d endured whispered rumors about his affairs and pitying glances. She’d ignored it all. No longer. “I’m sick of it.”

She lifted her backpack onto the bed to fill with her carry-on items. She had a flight to catch. Yesterday, she’d boxed up her tools and had arranged to have them sent home. She’d said goodbye to dear friends and colleagues.

A hot breeze blew the dust of the desert in through her open window. Local merchants hawked their wares four stories below. Inside, Jean-Marc tried to sell her damaged goods. “Come on,” he said. “Be reasonable.”

God, what an asinine phrase. Jean-Marc meant, Agree with me.

“Save your smiles for the young women you chase.” She packed her cosmetic bag. “They no longer work on me.”

Emily shoved a sweater into her backpack, ready to walk out of this man’s life for good. It had taken her a year to come to her senses.

“You’re running away.” If one more man told her that, she would scream.

Disillusioned with him, she’d also come to the end of her love affair with the past. Somewhere along the way, archeology had lost its magical allure, had changed from the excitement of revealing ancient treasures and had become...digging in the dirt.

Relics, the secrets of ancient worlds, still commanded her respect and awe, but she was tired of it. She needed a firmer attachment to the present. She needed to get a life that worked. Past time to go home, she was determined to get out of here in one piece, with her sanity intact.

Too late, kid. That’s long gone.

She swiped a hand across her brow, skimming sweat from her forehead. She was used to the heat of the desert, but today’s heat was way too high for May. Even her brain felt foggy. She’d lost track of their argument. What had Jean-Marc said? Oh, yeah.

“I’m not running away,” she stated. “I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”

“Explain it to me.” She already had, but Jean-Marc was a notoriously bad listener, especially when he disagreed with a point.

She’d given the man too much, because that’s what she did as a matter of course. When she committed, she gave her all. It had been her downfall with Jean-Marc.

Time for self-preservation.

She stuffed all of her socks beside her one sweater. Why did she bother? They were ragged. It might be hot as hell in the desert in the daytime, but nights were cold. She’d worn the daylights out of her clothes. They’d become as ragged as some of the relics she’d unearthed in her career, and a sad metaphor for her life.

Time for a new me. It starts with a clean break.

“We can work things out,” Jean-Marc insisted.

“Really? By me being a doormat while you sleep your way through all of the young beauties of the Sudan?”

“You’re exaggerating. I made only one or two mistakes.”

Emily sent him a repressive look. “You’re beginning to believe your own lies.”

“You are a prude,” he snapped. “This is how modern people conduct affairs.”

Emily slammed her alarm clock into her backpack and snapped the buckles together, then tossed it toward the bedroom door. “I’m tired of your lies and your vanity. My God, is there another archeologist on earth, another man, with a bigger ego?”

Jean-Marc became a mini–Mount Etna, ready to blow. If she weren’t so angry, she’d laugh. He didn’t look much like the suave playboy now, did he? “I have an ego because I’m good. The best.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” Her anger whooshed out of her on a giant exhalation. Her shoulders slumped. “Why me? If you wanted to sleep around, fine, but why keep me dangling? Why not just let me go?”

In a split second of honesty, his smile a ray of sunshine, he said, “I love you, chère. Don’t you know that?”

She wouldn’t give in to that smile, as she’d done so many times in the past, because it was too small, and she wanted, deserved, more. Love should be huge. Grand. She’d been sucked in by his larger-than-life personality and brilliance, but it hadn’t translated into a big love. Only a troubled one.

She gestured between them. “I can’t keep doing this. I need peace and quiet. I’m going home.”

“Yes, to your small town where people do nothing magnificent, nothing lasting, where they never become world citizens working to enlighten all of humanity.” She’d rejected his moment of sweetness, and his spiteful side took over.

She thought of Salem, with his light hidden under layers of modesty, and the way everyone with whom he came into contact respected him. How hard he worked to teach the community about his culture, with quiet humility. With Jean-Marc, she’d chosen flash over substance.

“Some people don’t need the whole world held up to them as a mirror. Some people do great things even while they are humble.”

“I don’t need to be humble. Nor should I be.”

“Please, Jean-Marc.” Her head pounded. “Be a better man than this. Leave while I finish packing. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I will ruin you.” There was something smug about his disgusting little smile, all sunshine gone now, proving as he often had that his ego was stronger than his love. He left the bedroom and, a moment later, the apartment door slammed shut behind him.

She double-checked that she hadn’t left anything behind then carried everything to the front door, but decided to use the washroom one last time before going. She wished her stomach would settle down. Those airport lineups could be brutally long and slow. Khartoum was a small airport by international standards, but busy. She was washing her hands when she thought she heard something in the living room.

“Hello?” She stepped out. No one. Just her imagination.

She reached for the doorknob to leave. The door stood open a fraction of an inch. It should have been shut tightly, especially because Jean-Marc had slammed it on his way out. Had it been closed when she put her bag here? She rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t remember.

She studied the small rooms. Nothing was amiss. She glanced at her knapsack and violin case. They looked fine. A thread of doubt ran up her spine and she opened her case. Jean-Marc would know where to hurt her most, by damaging her precious violin.

She checked every square inch of the instrument and found it sound, then packed it back into its case.

Her headache set off fireworks behind her eyes and she just wanted out—of the country and the relationship—so she shrugged off all thoughts of what that open door might mean. A shuffle in the building hallway alerted her. Someone was there. She threw open the door then let out a breath. Not Jean-Marc come back to wreak vengeance, thank goodness.

Instead, seven-year-old Maria Farouk, in all of her cosmopolitan beauty, compliments of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother, stared up at her with liquid brown eyes in an olive-skinned face. Her thick hair had been brushed to glossy perfection.

“Maria,” Emily said. “What are you doing in the hallway alone?”

“I came to say goodbye.” The child sounded too solemn. Of all of the farewells Emily had made in the past two days, this would be the most difficult.

Emily glanced toward Maria’s apartment. Her mother, Daniela, stood in her doorway making sure her child was safe alone in the corridor. When she saw Emily, she waved.

Emily leaned forward and cupped Maria’s face with her palms. “We became good friends, didn’t we?”

Maria nodded. “Can you send me postcards?”

It had become a game with them, that Emily would find the funniest cards in her travels and mail them to Maria. Also, because she’d loved the child so much, she had bought her a child-size violin and had taught her to play.

“Yes, lots of postcards,” she promised. “Will you practice your violin?” Maria had great talent, more than Emily would ever possess.

“Every single minute,” Maria shouted. Emily laughed and kissed her forehead.

“Not that much, little one. Make time for fun.” She made sure she had eye contact before saying from her heart, “I promise you this. When you grow up and become a famous violinist, I will come to your concerts.”

“You will come backstage,” Maria ordered. “I will give you a pass. You come say hello to me.”

“I will. I promise.” Emily had to leave right away because if she stayed, she would cry, and that would sadden Maria. “In the meantime, I’ll send you a postcard of a bear from Colorado.” From home. Her longing overcame the sadness of leaving. She wanted home. Her family. Peace and quiet.

Maria returned to her apartment. Emily watched until she was safely inside. Despite the clean break, bits of Emily would linger behind, with Maria, with her friends Penelope Chadwick and Les Reed, and with her impassioned colleagues. She had enjoyed her time with them all.

But Jean-Marc? That connection was gone for good, severed as cleanly as though she’d taken an amazon’s sword to it. If not for the sweat seething from her pores, she would be on top of the world. Free at last.

Only one more goodbye left. She went down to the second floor of the apartment building in which all of the archeologists lived. Penny answered the door when she knocked.

Jean-Marc used to call Penelope Chadwick the Horse. Yes, she had a long face and those endless legs, but also a bosom most women envied.

Her smile eased some of Emily’s apprehension. Penny, in her oversize T-shirts and baggy trousers, with her manly tramping about the toughest terrain on her muscled athletic legs, had been a dear friend, and Emily loved her every capable, unfeminine, not-too-attractive molecule.

Penny was one of the good people.

Behind Penny, Les Reed, her compatriot and lover, touched Penny’s elbow, the movement a subtle sign of possession and pride.

Where Penny was tall, Les was short and rotund. When Penny held Les, her ample breasts would flank his face. Emily wondered if he ever felt smothered. Judging by his satisfied grin, he would die a happy man.

She loved these people. She loved their honesty, loyalty and boundless integrity. Why couldn’t everyone in the world be like them?

She fell into Penny’s enveloping embrace. “I will miss you so much.” Her sinuses ached. Why wasn’t life easier? Why couldn’t she carry her friends with her in her pockets, wherever she went, and take them out when she needed them? “I’ll write often.”

“You’ll visit us in England when we’re at home.” From Penny, it came out as order rather than an invitation.

“Yes,” Emily promised. “I will.”

After copious hugs and kisses with both Penny and Les, and a too-brief goodbye, Emily was on her way to her new life.

Fifty minutes later, she stood at the airport in a lineup that moved with glacial slowness toward security.

At last second in line, she put her violin case onto the conveyor belt that would carry it through the X-ray machine.

Sweat poured from her face and a pair of Japanese Kodo drummers hammered her temples in unrelenting waves. This had nothing to do with the heat of the desert. She was sick. Some kind of flu. Rotten timing.

Suck it up, kid. Nothing would hold her back from getting on that plane.

Unsnapping the buckles on her knapsack, she reached inside for her cosmetic bag, where she kept cotton hankies. Her hand touched something unexpected, something she hadn’t packed, and she froze.

Whatever the object was, she hadn’t put it there. She peeked inside, keeping her actions unobtrusive. In her palm, she held a tiny ancient prayer book. She’d seen it before. On their dig. It was supposed to be under lock and key at the National Museum of Sudan, where every artifact they unearthed eventually found a home. So what was it doing in her bag?

She dropped it back into the knapsack, but a tiny gasp betrayed her. Despite how insignificant that intake of breath, it drew the guard’s attention. He approached.

Damn, damn, damn.

Her mouth dried up like the Sahara. Too late to turn and leave. If she took her bag and violin from the belt, he would know something was up and would detain her. One way or another, her bag would be searched today.

The penalty for smuggling artifacts out of the country was jail time. No questions asked. No leniency. No compassion. Too much had been stolen from these civilizations over the centuries. They’d been robbed blind.

If she denied ownership, they would think she was lying. If she tried to tell them she’d been set up, they would think she was lying.

There was no good outcome here. She was the most screwed piece of metaphorical toast on the face of the planet, and she knew whom to blame.

Jean-Marc. Her open apartment door. He’d retrieved the relic from his apartment down the hall and then had slipped back into her place long enough to stash it in her things so she would be caught with it as she left the country. Vindictive piece of decrepit crap.

I will ruin you. Yes, he had.

Rage filled her, and not just because of what he was doing to her, but because this precious article shouldn’t have been in his possession. Why was it, damn him?

The day she let Jean-Marc win was the day she rolled over and died. She had to get out of this airport and get the relic back where it belonged, with the people of the Sudan.

Think. Think!

What could she do?

Sweat dripping from her forehead burned her eyes. She grasped the hankie in her hand and ran it over her face. The man in front of her in the lineup hadn’t bathed recently, and the smell made her ill.

“Is something wrong, miss?” the guard asked, tone solicitous but eyes hard. “Are you nervous about your flight?”

She shook her head. “Sick.”

His brow furrowed. “If you are sick, you cannot fly.”

“Have to. Need to get home.” She wasn’t thinking clearly. The fever was messing with her brain. She had to get out of the airport, not onto a plane.

Her violin case and bag crept along the belt closer to the X-ray machine. They would question the prayer book. It wasn’t shaped like a paperback novel. It was flat and small—and oh so ancient and precious. She reached to take it back. The guard stopped her.

They would find the relic and send her to the closest prison, where she would rot for years. Nothing and no one would be able to help her. The thought turned her stomach.

And wasn’t that fortunate? She was desperate enough to try anything.

She glanced at the guard’s immaculate uniform and her reflection in the glossy surface of his spit-shined brown shoes. Vanity, you just might be my saving grace.

This past winter, she’d had a cold that had left her with a cough that wouldn’t quit. One day, it had been so bad she’d coughed so hard, she had ended up losing her breakfast.

The bag slid closer to the machine. The belt stopped abruptly. They questioned the man in front of her about an item in his carry-on luggage.

She took advantage of the lull and started to cough, covering her mouth with the hankie. She coughed harder, contracting her muscles to get them to obey.

Given the heat of the day, the unnatural fever and the sour scent of the man in front of her, it didn’t take much to get her stomach to cooperate.

Her breakfast rose into her mouth and—oops—her hankie slipped away from her lips. She vomited on the floor, leaning forward enough that she also hit the guard’s shoes.

“Hey!” he yelled and swore in Arabic.

Another guard joined them. “What’s wrong here?”

“She’s sick,” the first guard spat. “Disgusting.”

Good. Maybe they would let her turn around and walk out of here. She could get the relic back to where it belonged.

Her mouth tasted like hell. “Maybe I should return to my apartment and take a later flight.” She held her breath, willing the man to agree. He ignored her as though she were a gnat.

“Clean this up,” the second guard called to a janitor. Pointing at her, he said, “You come with us.”

Oh crap, oh crap. He took her past security to the offices. Scrap that thought. They were headed to a private interrogation room. She was in deep trouble.

The first guard had retrieved her knapsack and her violin case from the belt and carried them into the room. He dropped them onto the table and she reacted before she could think, yelling, “Hey, be careful. That violin is old.”

He paid no heed while the second guard took his time checking her passport and documents. “Why did you think you would be able to fly while you are so ill? Did you not consider the other passengers? They would not want to get sick.”

She wouldn’t lose her cool. There had to be a way out of this. “I didn’t feel this ill when I left my apartment. It came on suddenly.”

A firm knock sounded on the door.

“Come,” one of the men said.

A man Emily recognized stepped into the room—tall, handsome Dr. Damiri. Everyone on the dig used his services when they were ill. “Doctor! What are you doing here?”

“More to the point,” he said in his soft, sensible voice, “what are you doing here? I was in another lineup and saw you get ill.”

He turned to the guards and handed them his identification. “I am her doctor. May I check her out?”

The first guard scowled, but the second returned Damiri’s ID. “It’s okay. I know him. He is my sister’s doctor.”

Dr. Damiri felt Emily’s forehead. “High fever,” he murmured. He examined her throat, pressed on her stomach and asked endless questions, at the end of which, he pronounced, “Malaria.”

“What?” She hiccupped a tiny sob, playing the pity card, willing to do whatever it took to save her skin. Maybe they would let her go through without checking her bag. “But I just want to go home.”

To the guards, the doctor said, “It isn’t infectious. She can fly.”

To Emily, he instructed, “It won’t be a comfortable trip home, but you can make it. You will have fever. Chills. Great fatigue.” He smiled gently. “Maybe more vomiting.”

“My brain wants to pound out of my skull.”

“Yes, headache, too.” He wrote on a pad of paper he pulled from his briefcase. “In my estimation, you have uncomplicated malaria. There’s nothing you can do but ride it out. In America, go to your doctor and get a prescription for this medication and take it to prevent a reoccurrence.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. That’s all you can do.” He handed her a small vial of pills. “Take these.”

“What are they?”

“Anti-nausea tablets. I always carry them when I fly, but you need them today more than I do.”

With a wink, he was gone and she was alone with two unhappy guards and a stolen artifact in her luggage.

Emily stood, her brain so foggy she didn’t know whether to come or go. “I can return to my apartment and get better, and then take a different flight another day.”

For the second time, the guards ignored her suggestion.

“The doctor has cleared you to fly. You will go today.” He reached for her bag. No!

She retrieved her cosmetic bag, leaning close to breathe in his face. “I vomited. I have to brush my teeth before I get on the flight.”

Screwing up his nose, he waved her away.

In the washroom, she entered a stall and locked the door. The washroom might have cameras, but the stalls wouldn’t. After she pulled the prayer book out of the bag, she took a moment to examine it, a little beauty in good condition. The papyrus had yellowed with age and the tiny paintings had faded, but it had obviously been cared for and well-loved by its owner.

She dumped her small toiletry bottles out of the zipped plastic bag she’d stored them in, put the book into it, secured the edges together and stuffed it into her bra, protecting it from the sweat of her fever.

After using the toilet, she washed her hands and made a show of brushing her teeth carefully, because she needed to, but also in case they watched her. She chewed a mint from her makeup kit.

Back in the room, the guards had emptied her bags and were searching every object, every item of clothing. Shivering, she picked up a pashmina she’d bought on her travels and wrapped it around her throat, dropping the ends to cover the slight bulge in her bra.

Thanks to Dr. Damiri’s list of symptoms, they wouldn’t find her behavior suspicious. She hoped.

One of the guards took her makeup bag and searched it. The other left the room, presumably to search the bathroom. When he came back, he gave the guard a surreptitious shake of his head.

She was allowed to repack her belongings, while feeling an inexorable sense of losing control. Not for long. She would fix this. Somehow.

They led her to the departure lounge and left her there. This was too wrong. Taking an artifact out of its native country, out of its home, went against every ethic, every part of her moral code.

Nausea rose into her throat, and she took one of Dr. Damiri’s pills.

She had no choice but to leave. At the moment, self-preservation was more important than ethics. And didn’t that suck? The prayer book belonged here, not thousands of miles away in Colorado.

Jean-Marc had known exactly what he was doing. Her rat of an ex-boyfriend had ruined her plan for a clean break. The prayer book tied her to him.

An hour later, she was on the first of many flights that would take her home, curled under a blanket with chills that had nothing to do with inflight air-conditioning, and everything to do with a smuggled artifact burning a hole in her chest wall, so far up shit creek without a paddle she wasn’t sure how she would recover.

CHAPTER TWO

EMILY CAME HOME to Accord angry, railing against men and their perfidy, and scared.

She’d returned to answer the toughest questions of her life—who was Emily Jordan? Who had she allowed herself to become? And how did she find her way back to being a better person?

And what on earth was she going to do with the rest of her life?

The hand she ran across her forehead came away damp. She’d been sweating for three days. The fever had to break soon.

She stood in front of her father’s house. Another year come and gone and nothing to show for it. She didn’t even have her own home.

She wrapped her arms around her violin, pressing the case hard against her breastbone, anything to stop the shudders that wracked her body.

Cars lined the long driveway to her dad’s house, a white sanctuary in a sea of green conifers, lit up like a birthday cake. As it should be. Today was his birthday—the big five-O—and she didn’t even have a birthday present for him. Was I always this self-centered? Then again, she was sick and had other things on her mind.

Where were the years going? How did her father get to be fifty already? How could Emily herself possibly be thirty-one, and what did she have to show for it?

At her age, her dad had been a parent for twelve years, had already made his first few million and had owned a big house in Seattle.

Emily had the knapsack on her back, the violin she clutched to her chest like a treasured doll and a career as an archaeologist she would never pursue again.

She’d left the dry, dusty heat of the Sudan behind as though she were a mummy shedding her wrappings, one difficult twist at a time.

Too bad it felt as if those wrappings still clung to her, like a ribbon stretching between Colorado and the Middle East, sticking to her pores like the sand of the desert during a windstorm.

She imagined one long thread of decaying but tough fabric winding its way across the earth from her to Jean-Marc. With that one artifact he’d hidden in her bag, he’d bound her to him.

“Get lost,” she whispered to the mummy wrapping. It didn’t listen. Resigned to that tug toward a man and a part of the world she had rejected, she opened the front door and stepped into a wall of sound, light and warmth, of conviviality and happiness—the most beautiful, welcoming homecoming she could imagine. And it felt all wrong.

Oh, the things she’d done. She didn’t deserve these people.

“Emily!” The voice belonged to Laura, who rushed down the hall toward her with arms spread wide. If Dad was fifty, that made Laura fifty-three. Wasn’t it a crime for a woman her age to look so good when Emily felt like crap?

Laura had a body men drooled over, albeit a little thicker around the middle than it used to be. Her chestnut hair, threaded now with silver but still thick, fell past her shoulders and framed a face with a few more wrinkles.

A crocheted sweater fell off one shoulder, revealing freckles that dotted pale skin, and a filmy flowered skirt floated around her ankles. Earth mother.

“Nick!” Laura called toward the kitchen. “Our girl is home!”

Enveloping Emily in a hug, she cloaked her in a cloud of patchouli and incense, the scent so familiar and dear it brought Emily to the edge of control.

She’d been awful to Laura when she’d first met her, a twelve-year-old witch who’d wanted her father all to herself, but Laura had persevered in creating a lasting friendship. Thank God.

Emily didn’t think of Laura as a step-mom. More like a second mom. Emily’s first mom lived outside Paris, and Emily visited when she could. Laura pulled back from Emily, puzzlement wrinkling her brow. “Are you all right? You feel—”

A fine-boned hand touched Emily’s elbow. Pearl. Her baby sister had grown up. Last time Emily had been home—one year, one month and three days ago, but who was counting?—Pearl had been eighteen. Now, at nineteen, adulthood showed on her face in quiet, elegant bones that spoke of blossoming maturity and dainty beauty.

She had her mother’s striking thick chestnut hair rather than Emily’s tawny richness, almost overwhelming her delicate features, and striking blue eyes with the odd ring of hazel that she’d inherited from her Grandpa Mort, as Emily had. Oh, you beauty. The guys at college must be falling like dominoes.

Emily’s features and body were sturdier than Pearl’s. Or usually were. At the moment, Emily was as weak as a kitten.

Her little Pearl had grown up. Hard to believe Emily had ever resented Laura’s pregnancy all those years ago when it had produced such a devoted sister, and a too-perceptive friend. Pearl watched her with a knowing gaze. “What is it, Emily? What’s wrong?”

“What? No greeting?” Emily said, voice brittle and too bright. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Emily,” Pearl admonished. She valued honestly.

Emily deflated and said quietly, “Malaria.”

Laura gasped and Emily touched her arm. “It’s okay. It’s uncomplicated.”

“What does that mean?” Laura frowned. “Isn’t malaria bad? We need to get you to the doctor.”

“I stopped at the hospital in Denver when the flight landed.” She dropped her knapsack and violin at the bottom of the stairs. She’d take them upstairs later, when her legs stopped feeling as heavy as stone sarcophagi. “I picked up medication, but it’s just to prevent further attacks in the future.”

“What can we do this evening?” Pearl brushed hair back from Emily’s forehead.

“Nothing. It has to run its course.”

Laura placed a cool hand against her cheek. “What do you need?”

“Water. Lots of cold water.” She’d returned to the land of plenty, where reaching for a glass of water was as natural as breathing. There were no shortages here, no rationing.

Laura took her hand and dragged her to the kitchen, threading their way through the crowd of friends and family saying hello. Her father looked up from slicing something at the counter, saw Emily, grinned and dropped what he was doing.

Scooping her into his arms, he spun her around.

“When did you get here? Why didn’t you call? I would have driven into Denver to get you.”

She held on to her father, breathing in his familiar scent and taking in his strength. Oh, Daddy. She was a girl again, protected and cherished. Nothing bad could happen to her here.

She was safe.

The tug of that mummy wrap tying her to the past, to dusty old digs and dried relics, to pain and betrayal, tugged her to the past, but she resisted. She’d stayed in the land of the dead too long.

These people were vital. Alive.

Laura handed her a glass of cold water and she downed it in two gulps, giving it back for a refill. Only after she drank three glasses could she answer questions.

Yes, this time she was home for good. No, she wasn’t going back. Yes, she was ecstatic to be here. Yes, she had missed everyone. No, she was no longer with...him. Silence fell over the group that surrounded her.

Laura broke it. “You need food.”

Ah, yes, the answer to everything. A plate of food. A bowl of soup. As though any of that were going to fix what was so badly broken in Emily’s life.

“We started early and a lot of the buffet food is eaten, but I’ve got one of your favorites here,” Laura chattered. Nerves. Laura was so seldom affected by them; Emily must look really bad.

Laura handed her a cup of tea and one of her bakery’s cinnamon buns. Emily’s first bite buried her cynicism, and she sighed. Yes, maybe food was the answer.

She ate half the bun, but she’d put so little into her stomach in the past few days it had shrunk. She handed the rest to her little brother, Cody, though little was a misnomer. At eighteen and six feet tall, he might better be described more accurately as simply younger.

Cody finished the bun in two mouthfuls. Where Pearl’s features were delicate, Cody’s were strong, his jaw square, his trademark Jordan dark brown eyes beneath dark eyebrows and hair a replica of their father’s. Cody was well on his way to being a good-looking man, like their dad, and Uncle Gabe, and Uncle Tyler, all of whom converged on Emily for hugs. So did their wives. And their children.

Oh, those Jordan men could hug, could administer love and support and affection like no one else on earth.

It suffocated her, the bosom of her family too accepting of her at a time when she knew she shouldn’t take it.

Perceptive Pearl saw through her shaky smile, took Emily’s hand and led her down the hallway toward the stairs. She picked up Emily’s knapsack from the bottom step.

Emily retrieved her violin case and followed Pearl up two flights of stairs, to her small, private apartment under the eaves on the third floor. Dad had designed it for Emily when he’d built the house nineteen years ago just after Pearl’s birth.

It ran the full length, with the roof’s slanting edges cutting off height on the two long sides, and white wainscoting running under soft mauve walls.

Emily set her violin on a chair and glanced around. In the sitting area overlooking the garden, sketchpads and pencils were strewn over the sofa and coffee table and chintz armchair.

She picked up one of Pearl’s sketchbooks and thumbed through it. Her sister was good—very good—the scenes of small-town life accurate, unsentimental, and yet attractive. Pearl had also sketched life around Accord, the forests, farms and ranches of Colorado.

Emily turned the page...and there it was. The Cathedral. Her name for the Native American Heritage Center, because it seemed beautiful and holy to her. Salem’s Cathedral. Emily had first named it the Cathedral after it was built, and the name had stuck with everyone. Most people in town called it either the Cathedral or the Heritage Center.

Pearl had captured perfectly the lighting of a dying sunset as it glinted from glass walls. Longing expanded Emily’s chest, but Salem had told her to stay away, and so sadness replaced her yearning.

“I’m sorry. I spend too much time up here.” Pearl started to gather up her work, but Emily stopped her.

“This should be your room now. You’re old enough to have your own space.”

“Where would you stay when you come home?” Pearl dropped what she’d gathered onto the table.

Emily shrugged. Her head hurt too much for thinking right now. She took a tissue from a box on the bedside table and wiped sweat from her forehead. “How’s school?”

“Good. You know me. I’m keen. I like school. I like learning. I’m a nerd.”

A pretty nerd who the boys liked, no doubt.

“How’s the art going?”

Pearl’s face lit up. Even as the tiniest child, art had made her happy. “Great. I’ve had interest from a couple of advertising firms.”

“Finish school first,” Emily warned.

“I will.”

Dreams shone in Pearl’s eyes. Emily used to have dreams, too.

Pearl placed one of the pillows on the bed up against the headboard and leaned against it, curling her legs into the half-lotus yoga pose and laying another pillow across her knees.

She smiled and patted the pillow. Emily couldn’t help but return that serene smile. As a child, Pearl had spent many hours up here visiting Emily with her head in her sister’s lap.

Laura would come upstairs to find Pearl asleep and Emily reading a book while she stroked her baby sister’s hair.

Emily laid her head into the dip in the center of the pillow, where it rested on Pearl’s calves. The pupil had become the teacher.

Pearl touched her cheek. “Your skin is clammy. Are you cold?”

“Cold and hot.”

“You’re pale, but your cheeks are bright red.”

“I have fever and chills.”

“How long will it last?”

“Another day or so.”

“Tell me what’s wrong, Emily.”

Pearl didn’t mean the malaria. She was right. That was a surface thing. What was wrong with Emily went bone deep. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself.

“Everything.” She sighed.

Pearl stroked her hair. “You should sleep.”

“I wish I could.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Emily thought about it. Solitude? Was that what she needed? She’d give it a try. “Yes.”

Pearl struggled out from beneath Emily, stood and kissed her forehead. “Love you, sis. See you in the morning.”

But Pearl had only just closed the door at the bottom of the stairs when Emily missed her already. So...solitude wasn’t the answer.

Neither was rest. As exhausted as she was, she knew she wouldn’t sleep, not with the problem of the prayer book turning her inside out. She retrieved her laptop from its pocket in her backpack and set it up on her desk.

A moment later, she had her email open. It exploded with messages from the past two days, the tone of all of them, from friends and colleagues, frantic.

Where are you?

What have you done?

You stole an artifact??? That is so not you!

No one believes what Jean-Marc is saying.

What was Jean-Marc saying? She could only imagine.

She opened her Twitter account, and that’s when it sank in—how much Jean-Marc wanted to hurt her and exactly how much he’d succeeded.

The whole archeological world thought she had been stealing artifacts from the dig. He hinted that there had been a series of objects that had gone missing. There had? Whether or not it was true, Jean-Marc had succeeded in implicating her, in tarnishing her reputation. He’d done it with just the right amount of innuendo, with no real accusation she could take as slander and use against him in court.

Furious that she hadn’t been caught at the airport, he’d pulled out all of the stops in social media. Bully. Traitor.

The wash of shame that heated her chest was old, familiar, an enemy she’d fought before in a battle she had never wanted to revisit. She had thought she’d gotten over those old demons. Hadn’t she worked her butt off to leave all of that behind, including leaving her home literally to travel the world? Now this. Jean-Marc brought it back to the surface with a few strokes of a keyboard and an enter key. She’d traded one set of bullies for another.

No. She wouldn’t let him destroy her. People had tried in the past. She’d been too young to know how to fight back then, but now she did. With maturity came perspective and strength. Maybe not enough, though. This bloody malaria was killing her.

She, and only she, knew who the real culprit was. The question was, would they come after her? And who would they be? Her own government? Would they come here and search her father’s home?

No way was she going to wait to get caught. She’d done nothing wrong. She wouldn’t give Jean-Marc the satisfaction of seeing her hurt. But how could she protect herself? And her family?

Where could she go? What could she do? She shouldn’t have come here. She would only bring them pain.

Her panicked glance fell on Pearl’s sketchbook, on the exquisite drawing of the Cathedral. She wanted to be there, in that place that brought her peace.

She had to get there, but she couldn’t leave through the front or back doors. Too many people downstairs. They wouldn’t let her go. They would worry, and rightly so.

Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she worried, too. She looked like hell, her hair a mass of tangled curls. Pearl was right. In spite of her deathly pallor, two red spots rode her cheekbones like clown’s paint, the look unnatural. Unhealthy.

Even so, now that she’d thought of the Cathedral, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop herself.

She had rejected Jean-Marc’s ultimatum. Stay or I’ll ruin you. And she had accepted Salem’s. Don’t contact me. Leave me alone. That didn’t mean she couldn’t visit the Cathedral.

She took the prayer book out of the baggy and wrapped it tightly in plastic she found in the wastebasket. It looked as if it came from Pearl’s sketchbook. She put the wrapped artifact back into the baggy and made sure it was zipped firmly against moisture, and then tucked the whole thing into her bra.

Grabbing her jacket, she buttoned it to protect the book before opening the door to the tiny back balcony. She closed it behind her and peered over the railing. Her father had never trimmed the maple tree she used to climb down to sneak out during high school.

She slung a leg over the railing to reach the nearest limb. Dizziness swamped her. She hung over the gap, robbed of breath, the ground far below wavering in her vision. She gripped the slippery wood until the nausea passed. Heights. She hated heights. But she could do this.

When her head felt steady enough, and her pulse had calmed, she grasped the branch and pulled herself into the tree. She climbed down, branch by branch, a trip that should have taken five minutes taking ten in her weakened state.

Or maybe it was age. She felt old these days when she should feel young and vibrant. She worked hard on the digs. She was in good shape.

On the ground, she rummaged through the garden shed until she found what she needed. A trowel. She crept around the side of the house and out onto the road.

A brisk wind gusted. A Roman legion of rain clouds advanced on the horizon, heavy with menace.

Maybe a heavier jacket would have been a good idea.

Fifteen minutes later, she arrived at the Accord Golf and Cross-Country Ski Resort. Her father’s pride and joy.

The hotel, sleek in glass and wood and shining like a Christmas tree, held no interest for her. Through the windows, guests lounged around a huge stone fireplace. Looked as if the place was fully booked, even in May. Good for Dad. A drop of rain plopped onto her forehead.

As though wading through mud, she trudged to the clearing in the woods behind the resort, leaf mold and pine needles crunching underfoot and kicking up a damp, mossy scent that reminded her of childhood.

She plodded through the darkening woods, aware that there wasn’t a dry bone or sand dune in sight, nothing beige or desiccated here. Only vibrant, green life. Her spirits lifted, even if her body couldn’t. More drops of rain hit her face, anointing her spirit with hope, but also chilling her body.

The Cathedral stood in the middle of tall Rocky Mountain Douglas firs. When her father had wanted to build the resort twenty years ago, construction had been held up by Salem and his fellow band members. They’d staged a demonstration and had refused to move until her father had given in to their demands to research the land. Despite being so young, Salem had been chosen as their spokesperson. Emily remembered him being quiet, but articulate and passionate about the land and its history. Parts of these lands used to be migratory routes for their ancestors. A nomadic tribe, Utes had buried their dead where they fell, so Emily’s father couldn’t build without going through the proper channels first, even though his family had owned the land for a few generations.

With the help of local elders, and professors who taught and studied Native American affairs, they had determined that the routes ran through another portion of land, so the construction wasn’t likely to disturb any burial sites.

To appease the elders, and to thank them, her father had given Salem this piece of land and had paid to build the Native American Heritage Center, which had become a tourist attraction for the resort. Her father, recognizing Salem’s passion and uncommon maturity, had asked Salem to set up the exhibits and to care for the collections. It hadn’t taken long for her dad to stop supervising Salem and give him free rein. Salem had proven her father’s trust in him to be well deserved.

As curator, Salem had helped to design the building and had turned it into one of the best museums in the state, and as beautiful as Emily remembered.

A crystal in a sea of green, three stories of glass and brushed steel with a polished wooden column running up the center that housed the elevator and washrooms, it shone like an oasis in the desert of her life.

The hallowed beauty of both the woods and the building had given her peace over the years.

Small spotlights on the first floor highlighted the artwork on a full-size teepee in the foyer. The architect had created a twenty-foot ceiling to accommodate it. Her breath caught in her throat. Lord, the place was gorgeous, glowing from within.

Since it was Saturday and the museum was closed for the evening, the public areas were dark.

On the third floor, a single yellow light shone in Salem’s office. Why was he here on a Saturday night? He should be home with his family. Or maybe a better question was why he wasn’t at her father’s birthday party. He was a friend of the family. He and her father had buckets of respect for each other. She should have noticed that he wasn’t at the house when she’d arrived.

Salem is here. The hell with his order to stay away. She needed him.

So close and yet so far away. She needed Salem, his calming energy and his quiet efficiency. Salem could handle anything thrown at him, and Emily was running on empty. She needed a friend.

She had to get up there, to him, if only her shaky legs would cooperate. He might be upset with her, but could he really turn a sick person away? She planned to take advantage of his innate decency.

First, though, she had to hide the prayer book.

A good forty yards from the back door of the Heritage Center, she dug a hole at the edge of the woods then placed the plastic-wrapped relic reverently in its new burial site.

“Just for now,” she whispered as though it were alive. “Until I figure out what to do with you. I’ll get you home somehow.”

She covered the package with soil and leaves and branches, and lastly, a large rock she pushed and pulled into place until her arms burned. Glancing around, she tried to memorize her position so she would know where to dig when she came back to retrieve it, but the rain, dusk and her fever messed with her eyesight. What if she made a mistake and wasn’t able to find it again? She would never forgive herself. She hung the trowel from the remainder of a broken tree branch where it sat against the trunk of the tree, above the new grave to mark the spot. No one would notice it here.

There. She’d done as much as she could tonight.

Her breath whooshing in and out of her, she leaned against the tree for a moment to regain enough strength to get into the Cathedral and up those stairs to Salem.

She managed to make it to the building and stepped out of the rain that was coming down harder now. If nothing had changed in the years she’d been gone, she should be able to avoid banging into display cases and follow that sole yellow lamp shining on the third floor.

Beside the door, she found the felt slippers that all visitors donned to protect the glass floors and stairs from grit and dirt. She slid her old hiking boots into the oversize slippers.

When she pressed the elevator button, nothing happened. Shut down for the night, she guessed.

She climbed the stairs gingerly, but her headache still worsened with every step.

The second floor, she knew, housed displays of gorgeous beaded and quilled moccasins as well as artifacts the Jordan land had yielded to both professional and student archaeologists.

At the moment she didn’t care. She’d spent too much time in the past and not enough paying attention to the present, to her self slipping away from her so slowly and subtly she’d been stripped bare without knowing it, left skinned and vulnerable with nowhere to turn but here.

So dizzy her stomach roiled, she clung to the banister. Her hands shook again, this time more from greed than illness.

I want...

She wasn’t sure what.

She knew only that she was exhausted with the struggle to keep herself in one piece.

She forced one foot in front of the other. On the second-floor landing, she stopped to catch her breath, like an old woman on her last legs, so close to finally achieving...what?

On the landing on the third floor, she stopped and stared at Salem through glass walls.

He bent over his desk, over a book, his attention focused and disciplined, as was his way. His dark straight hair hung in a braid down the center of his back.

This close to him, peace enveloped her. It settled over her with the softness of a flannel blanket. She watched him. This, he, was exactly who she needed. She wanted to lay her head and her troubles on his broad chest.

When she swayed, it alerted him to her presence.

His jaw fell, his expression equal parts shock and anger. She knew she’d flitted into and out of his life too many times. Oh, Salem, I’m home. For good.

He stood, dropping the book onto the desk.

His simple male beauty stunned her. Why had she stayed away when perfection had been here all along?

He came to the door. “Emily?” His deepening frown reminded her of their argument.

When are you going to stop running, Emily?

Now, she thought. I’m not going anywhere anymore. Honest.

She felt herself slipping, falling.

“Emily!” He caught her before she hit the floor, his arms strong and dependable and oh so welcome.

“Salem,” she whispered. “I’m sick.”

Salem lifted her and carried her off. Her head fell against his solid shoulder. She didn’t know where he took her. It didn’t matter.

She’d made it home.

* * *

EMILY. LIKE FIREWORKS, or shooting stars, Emily was here one moment, but gone the next. What was she doing here now?

God or the devil or both had a wicked sense of humor. Why did they keep sending her back to him? It messed with the balance he strived so hard for in his life.

He’d told her to stay away. After first asking her to stay here with you. After nearly asking her to marry you.

A moment of temporary insanity, of wanting life to go my way, even briefly. Of needing an end to the loneliness.

That night in the moonlight, Emily had looked like heaven.

He loved his daughters and respected the daylights out of his father, but missed having a woman around. Worse, he missed Emily. He’d married one woman while he’d wanted another, and had spent his married life suppressing his desire and trying to be a good husband. He had paid a price, and the currency had been longing, yearning and too much time spent alone.

He’d spent his married years tamping his emotions into a hard brick of denial, constantly controlling everything he said to his wife, and everything he did with Emily.

Then Annie had died.

That night last year, he’d gotten this crazy thought. There had been a long period of mourning, out of respect for the mother of his children. That time had passed. Now he and Emily could be together.

He had thought she would return his feelings and want to be with him, but despite telling her how he felt, she’d left anyway.

He’d blurted his heart’s desire. Thank the Lord, she’d said no. He’d dodged a bullet.

In his smarter moments, he knew it would never work between them. Emily loved adventure.

Salem glanced longingly at the book he’d been studying. Reason, intellect and learned discussion were his gods.

But now here she was, despite him telling her to never return, and everything inside him rebelled against turning her away sick. Em was smart. She would have known that when she came here. He disliked being used. But he couldn’t let her go.

He tamped down the emotions twisting in his belly like warring snakes, because she looked like hell. He didn’t want to worry about this woman who weighed next to nothing, but he did. She angered and frustrated him, but he couldn’t turn her away.

He laid her on the sofa in his office, where she had spent so many hours over the years when she came home from her digs sitting and pouring out her heart about Jean-Marc and his latest escapades. He’d heard her anger and pain, but he’d never interfered. Back then, he could never say, Leave him and come to me.

On all of her visits, he’d held a chunk of himself back—to protect both his peace of mind and his marriage. He might not have been in love with his wife, but he had been committed to her.

And so, restraint had become his middle name, and the act a habit, but sometimes these days, the restraints chafed and he wanted to bust out so badly.

When he finally did ask Emily to be with him, she’d said no. End of story.

“What’s wrong, Emily?”

When he tried to let her go, she grasped his shirt.

Even through her clothing, her skin burned. Just like Emily to come here like this, to bring mayhem into his well-ordered existence. She liked drama. He liked peace. She liked chaos. He needed order.

“Emily,” he said, keeping his voice low to soothe her as he would a skittish animal. “I need to get water.”

She nodded. “Yes. Water.”

Even so, she didn’t ease her grip.

“Let go.” He became stern. “I’ll come back.”

“Promise?” Her insecurity tore at him. Trouble roiled in her witchy blue-hazel eyes.

Where was his confident, brash Emily? What happened to you?

“I’m always here for you, Emily. You know that.” Even when it was hard, and even when he had vowed to break away from her, to sever all ties. She called to a part of him he had trouble denying.

She smiled so sweetly it broke his heart. Yes, he was always here for her, but she wasn’t always available for him.

He cut off the anger and bitterness. Now wasn’t the time.

At this moment, she needed him, and that was all that mattered. He would get rid of her when she was well.

She released him and he retrieved water and damp towels from the washroom. Just before he left the room, he noticed muddy handprints on his shirt where Emily had gripped it. Strange.

When he returned, he asked, “What is it? The flu?”

She shook her head. “Malaria.”

“Malaria?” He stilled his panic long enough to swab her face. “Isn’t that bad?”

She lifted a shaky finger to smooth the frown from his forehead, the smattering of freckles across her nose stark against her sickly white skin. “It’s okay. I’ve seen a doctor.”

“And?”

“And there’s nothing to do but wait. I felt a bit better for a while, but I shouldn’t have walked over here in the rain.”

“You walked here? Sick? From your dad’s?”

She nodded.

A flush of violence coursed through his blood. “So help me, Emily,” he muttered, swabbing her face too hard, “you are infuriating.”

She smiled, and it was weak, but sweet. “Wanted to see you.” He fought the urge to wrap his arms around her and never let go. No one could make him feel warm and fuzzy as Emily could, even while he wanted to shake her.

Why didn’t she take care of herself? Why hadn’t she learned to control her impulses?

“When did you get home?”

“About an hour ago.”

“And you rushed over here? Why not wait until morning?”

When his glance fell on her hands, the warm fuzzies came to a screeching halt. He grasped one. Mud caked her fingers. “What have you been up to?” Her nails were crammed with dirt. Digging? In the rain? Where? On this land?

Wanted to see me, my ass.

She pulled her hand out of his grasp.

“What did you do?” he asked, recrimination riding his tone like acid.

Her gaze slid away from his and she stared at the wall. “Nothing,” she said, voice small but defiant nonetheless.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“I can’t. It’s better if you don’t know.” He recognized the stubborn set of her jaw, so particular to Emily. There was no fighting her when she dug in her heels.

“I’m not getting any more out of you, am I?”

She shook her head.

“So I’m good enough to come to when you need your forehead wiped, but not good enough to trust. Is that it?”

She didn’t answer.

There’d been times when they’d been close, when there had been a connection he’d cherished, when he’d hoped...

Aw, forget about it.

“Let’s get you home.”

“Okay.”

“Have you had malaria before?”

“No. I won’t again. The medication will take care of that.”

“You’re taking medicine?”

“To prevent it from coming back.”

“Can you walk?”

“Sure. Help me up.”

He lifted her into his arms.

“Put me down. You can’t carry me that far.”

“Want to bet? What have you been eating? Feathers?” It angered him that she’d changed, that she wasn’t the woman he knew, a go-getter, determined and sharp. Hale and healthy. “Don’t you take care of yourself?”

“Not lately.” For the first time, Salem understood what a sardonic laugh sounded like. He didn’t like hearing this self-mockery from Emily.

At the elevator, he stood her on her feet for a minute while he used his key to start it up again. When the door opened and he moved to pick her up, she protested. “Love you holding me, but I can walk. Just let me lean on you.”

Love you holding me. Did she know what she was saying?

They made it to the car with Emily leaning on him heavily, with Salem rushing them through the rain to his Jeep, parked behind the resort. He put her into the passenger seat then climbed behind the wheel and swiped rainwater from his face.

“You picked a great night to come home.”

Emily laughed, but it sounded hollow, as though more than her body was ailing.

“What happened to you in Egypt?” He sounded as disgusted as he felt.

“The Sudan.”

“What?”

“Not Egypt this time. Too much political turmoil right now. Country’s torn apart. I was in the Sudan.”

“What happened?”

She didn’t answer and he glanced at her, but the country road was too dark. “Are you crying?”

“Nope,” she said, but the thickness in her voice betrayed her.

“Was it that boyfriend of yours? What did he do?”

“Screwed me over.” A bitter laugh barked out of her, but she said nothing else.

He didn’t want to know more, didn’t want to hear another word about the guy.

Out of the silence, Emily’s voice floated like a disembodied ghost. “I hit rock bottom.”

CHAPTER THREE

AIYANA PEARCE CREPT past the living room where her grandfather dozed in the flowered armchair.

Dad would hit the roof if he knew she was going out without his permission, but what Dad wanted didn’t matter. He wasn’t home, was he?

She couldn’t help being bitter. Dad used to be home in the evenings with her and Mika, but now he was usually at the Heritage Center, and then when he finally came home all he did was study for his college courses. He wanted to be an architect.

Dad said a person should have ambitions.

Gramps snored and Aiyana glanced at him. Gramps didn’t have ambitions, hadn’t even finished high school, but people still loved him anyway, didn’t they?

Having justified her defiance, Aiyana stepped outside and closed the door slowly. She was careful. There was no way Grandpa would hear the click of the lock catching.

Bypassing the creaky third step, she ran down the walkway to the street. The cool breeze took her by surprise and she zipped up her jacket. The air smelled like rain.

A sharp whistle from a couple of houses down caught her attention. Justin! Her heart rattled in her chest like a baby bird flapping its wings.

She raced toward the sound but squealed when he jumped out from behind a tree and wrapped his arms around her. “Did I scare you?”

“Yes.” She gasped and caught her breath. She smacked her boyfriend’s arm, but couldn’t be mad at him for long. Boyfriend. She liked the sound of that. Yesterday, he’d said he was hers and had invited her out tonight for the first time. Hers, he’d said, forever and ever.

Justin White, the most popular boy in school, wanted her for his girlfriend. How cool was that?

He wanted to keep it a secret, even though she wanted to shout it to the whole world. He said it felt good that it was their special news, only theirs, and they should hang on to it for a while.

Under the streetlight, his hair shone like gold. His blue eyes filled with humor. Grandpa would call it the devil’s mischief, but Aiyana knew Justin wasn’t like that. He was a good guy. Everyone at school liked him. And he belonged to her!

He threaded his fingers through hers, his palm warm and callused from shooting hoops for a couple of hours every day after school. Holding hands felt good.

She glanced over her shoulder, but no one was following her. Good. Grandpa was still asleep.

Dad thought she was too young to see boys, maybe because Mom got pregnant with Aiyana when she was a teenager. Mom and Dad had to get married.

But Aiyana was too smart for that to happen to her. Dad should learn to trust her. For Pete’s sake, in a few days, she would turn sixteen. Of course she was old enough to date. All the kids at school did.

Justin urged her toward the end of Marshall Avenue. “Come on.”

“Where to?”

When he smiled, one side of his mouth hiked up higher than the other. She liked his lips. “You’ll see.”

He led her to the path that went down into the ravine. She never went down there this close to nightfall. The wind had picked up and the sky was getting dark. She shivered and Justin wrapped his arm around her. “Cold, babe?”

Her heart hammered. “Why are we going down here?” Even to her own ears, even trying as hard as she could to sound sixteen already, her giggle sounded shaky.

“Someplace private,” Justin said, and the word both thrilled and scared her.

“I thought we were going for ice cream.”

“We are. After.”

“After what?”

“I made something special for you.” Special. Just for her.

They stumbled to the bottom of the ravine, where he stopped and pointed. “Look.”

In a hollow created by a boulder at the back and large old trees on either side, Justin had fashioned a makeshift tent of sorts. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was. A cubbyhole? Just a private spot? He’d stretched a piece of canvas five feet above the ground between the two trees. On the ground he’d covered a plastic sheet with a blanket with a vaguely Native American pattern. It didn’t look like Dad’s blankets at home.

An overturned milk crate had a bunch of stuff on top of it.

“I made this for us,” he said. “No one else knows about it.”

She would rather have gone out for ice cream than sit in the woods when it was getting dark, but Justin looked so proud of himself, she smiled.

Crawling in on her hands and knees, she noticed that he had everything—candles, a flashlight, potato chips—and beer. She didn’t drink. She’d already told him that yesterday.

The place smelled like dead leaves and damp earth, but at least the tarp overhead cut the wind.

He crawled in behind her and pulled the tab on a can of beer then sipped the foam that bubbled out. “It’s warm.” He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, handing her the can.

“I don’t drink, Justin.”

“I know, but it’s only one beer. No biggie.”

She sipped it but hated the taste. That put it mildly. He was right. It was warm and tasted like crap. When she handed the can back to him, he guzzled half the contents then belched.

She sat on the blanket not really knowing what to do with her hands or where to put her legs. The space was cozy and her knees kept bumping Justin’s thigh.

Every time they did, it felt as if electricity shot through her. She fidgeted.

“Relax,” he said, reclining onto the pillows at the back of the tent. They looked as if they belonged on somebody’s sofa.

He took her arm and urged her down beside him. She resisted, but his grip was strong. “Easy. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to keep you warm.”

She settled her head on his shoulder. It was solid and warm and felt nice.

He unzipped her jacket. When she tensed, he said, “I want see that necklace you always wear. What is the design? Does it have significance in your culture?” he asked, taking it between two fingers.

She was having trouble breathing. His heavy arm rested between her breasts. No boy had ever touched her there. He was strong. An athlete. A basketball player. He said Coach made them lift weights to keep fit.

“It was my mother’s necklace,” she finally answered when she thought her voice might be steady. “She did the beadwork herself. She’s dead now.”

“I know. The beading’s pretty.” He dropped the necklace. “Your name’s pretty, too. Aiyana. Does it mean something in English?”

“Eternal Blossom.”

Justin nodded. “Cool. Maybe I should call you Pretty Flower or Princess Blossom.”

No. She wanted a white name, like Tiffany or Brittany or Madison. Dad had chosen stupid Native American names for her and her sister.

“I’m not a princess. My dad isn’t a chief. I’m nothing.”

Justin smiled and popped the tab on another beer. After drinking a bunch, he set the can aside and wrapped his arm across her shoulders then curled his fingers around the back of her neck, gently urging her head forward. “You’re not nothing. You’re my girlfriend. You’re pretty.”

She knew that wasn’t true, but oh, it felt good that Justin thought she was.

He kissed her and his lips were gentle and sweet even if they did taste like beer. She liked his kiss, but wished he didn’t make it so hard so fast. When he put his tongue in her mouth, the taste of yeasty alcohol overpowered her and it was awful. He pushed his tongue in farther.

His hand touched her breast. It was nice. Sort of. He squeezed and moved his fingers over her nipple. She felt a pull in her belly and lower, excitement and itchiness.

Following the path of that itch, his hand rested on her there, the heel of his palm rubbing her and his fingers pressing the seam of her jeans into her.

He was moving too fast, not giving her time to catch up. Her pulse pounded inside her head. His fingers were at the button of her jeans and pulling down her zipper.

How? What? Wait!

His hand was on her belly inside her underwear. She grasped his wrist, but he kept moving.

His fingers were in her curls, touching her dampness. Stop.

She yanked her head away from his beery kiss.

“Justin, no.” She sounded breathless. Her chest heaved up and down and her breasts kept hitting his body. She put her hands between them and pushed, but he was strong.

Fear became a real thing bouncing around the tent.

“Hey, babe,” Justin said. “We’re just having fun.” He kissed the side of her face, and his hot breath whooshed past her ear.

She grabbed his wrist again, tried to pull his hand out of her pants, but his fingers were inside her.

“Stop!” she cried, her heartbeat as loud as a train engine in her ears.

“What?” Justin sounded frustrated.

“I don’t want to do this.”

“Can’t you feel what you do to me, Princess?” Something hard jutted against her thigh.

“Don’t call me princess.” Her voice shook. “I don’t want you touching me there.”

“You said you wanted to be my girlfriend.”

“I do.”

“This is what girlfriends do, Aiyana.”

“It’s too soon.”

“Grow up.” He pulled his hand out of her pants with a hard flick. It hurt and she winced.

“I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.” He downed the rest of the beer. How many beers made a boy drunk? She didn’t know. She wanted to get out of here, away from him.

“I went to a lot of trouble to make this place for us.” Justin adjusted himself inside his pants. His place didn’t feel safe, not to her, but more like a black hole in the dark woods.

“I want to go home.” Her fingers trembled when she pulled up her zipper, but they shook too much to do up her button. She yanked her jacket down over it. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” she begged. “I don’t want people to think I’m easy.”

He thrust his fingers through his hair. Even messed up it looked good. What she could see of it. There was hardly any light left in the tent.

“Easy,” he scoffed. “That’s a laugh. Find your own damn way home.” With that, he bolted.

Aiyana sat stunned. How could Justin do this? He’d seemed so nice. As though waking from a bad dream, she crawled out. The woods were almost completely dark and foreign. Hostile. Every rattling tree branch, every bush, was a monster coming to get her. Justin must have run up the hill because she couldn’t see or hear him. He’d left her alone in the ravine at nighttime. What kind of person did that? Terrified, she ran up the hill.

The rain started when she was only halfway up, scrambling in the darkness toward the patches of light from the streetlamps flickering through the trees. Something rustled the bushes beside her and she cried out, scrabbling to catch branches to help her up the steep incline.

Her feet slipped and slid in the muck.

Rain streamed down her face, ruining the makeup she’d put on to look good for Justin. At least the rain hid her tears.

She ran home, past their meeting place, and rushed into the house, careful to close the door quietly, even though she ached to throw and break things.

Grandpa was still sleeping. Thank goodness. If he’d woken up and seen her, all hell would have broken loose. She needed to get to her room, where she wanted to hide forever.

She was only halfway up the stairs when Gramps let out his “wakeup” snort and said, “What?” She stopped and tried to calm her runaway heart. He smacked his lips, part of his waking-up routine. She knew he’d be stretching his skinny body every which way to come awake. His spine would make popping sounds.

The sound of the TV turning on followed her up the rest of the stairs. She tiptoed along the hallway and into her room. Closing her bedroom door, she leaned against it and let her tears flow.

Justin hadn’t really wanted her. He’d just wanted an easy lay.

What made him think she would be? She didn’t go out with boys. She was quiet at school. Was it because of her heritage?

In her mirror, she saw the reflection of a girl with dark raccoon eyes because of her ruined mascara. She swiped it with tissues until it was all gone.

Her hair, usually shiny and straight, hung in wet strings. With the broad cheekbones she’d inherited from her dad, there was no mistaking her heritage.

Native American. Ute.

She hated her face and she hated her name.

Would Justin have attacked her if her name had been Brittany? Or Madison? If she were white, would he have tried to make her drink beer and have sex?

She grasped the corners of the heavy blankets decorated with the symbols of her heritage and hauled them from the bed, wadding them into a ball and tossing them into the corner.

It took forever to get out of her wet clothes, to tug the wet denim down her legs and to put on her long nightshirt. She crammed her jeans into her laundry basket. Dad would be mad that she hadn’t hung them to dry. So what? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

She curled into a ball on her plain white bedsheets and shivered.

* * *

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Salem asked, slowing the Jeep because they were near the turn onto her father’s property.

“I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m as low as I can go. I need a place to rest.”

He didn’t know what to say. He’d told her to leave him alone, but she hadn’t. She’d come to him sick. While he felt used, he also felt an odd sort of honor. In her father’s house, there would have been a dozen people willing to take care of her. She’d chosen him.

Or had she? He thought of her muddy hands.

“I’m dropping you off at your dad’s, right?”

He felt her roll her head on the headrest and watch him.

He glanced at her. “What?”

“I need a friend, Salem. I can’t go home tonight. Too many people there.”

No, he didn’t want her in his home. “There’s no room at my house. You know that, Emily.”

“I’ll take anything.”

Salem struggled to hold back his objections. This push-pull of love and anger was a struggle he’d lived with for too many years.

“Hey,” Emily said quietly. “Why aren’t you at Dad’s party? You two are good friends.”

“I meant to go after work, but started reading and lost track of time.”

Emily’s soft chuckle filled the interior of the car. He’d missed her laugh, and how it could lighten his darkest moments. “You’ve always been one for getting lost in a book. Remember when I used to sit in your office and say outrageous things about you and you would be so immersed in a book you wouldn’t hear a thing?”

He remembered, with enough pleasure that he drove right past the turnoff to her dad’s house to take her home with him.

Crazy fool, letting her use you like this.

Yes, I’m a fool, but I like having her close. This is just for tonight.

It had better be. You know how she breaks your heart when she leaves. Every time.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“I left him. For good. Just like you said I should.”

“What about work?”

“I left that, too.”

“For how long? A couple of weeks?”

“For good.”

She was leaving her career? The light from the dashboard wasn’t strong enough to tell much more than that she had her eyes closed.

The nature of the silence in the car changed, became laden with censure, as though Emily were holding up a giant No Trespassing sign, making it clear that she’d said as much as she was going to.

Salem didn’t know how he knew this when she hadn’t said a word, but he knew, and held his tongue. Did he believe she’d left Jean-Marc for good? Not a chance. Had she left archeology for good? Never.

On the far side of town, he turned down his street and pulled into his driveway, where he helped her into the house. He led her to the kitchen. She plopped onto a chair and rested her head on her folded hands on top of the table.

His father wandered in. “Emily, hello.”

She raised her head. “Hello, Mr. Pearce.”

“You don’t look good, girl.”

“Feel awful,” she said with a wan smile. Here in the brightly lit room she looked even worse than she had in the dim Heritage Center office. Her skin was as ghostly as her voice had sounded in the car. Fever painted round red spots like old-fashioned rouge on cheekbones that didn’t use to be so sharp. She put her head back down on fragile-looking wrists.

Salem should go to the Sudan and kill the bastard who did this to her, and that puzzled him. Emily had always been able to take care of herself. She’d never needed him to fight her battles for her.

“She has malaria, Dad.”

“You need fattening, girl,” Dad said. To Salem, he directed, “Warm her some of that soup I made yesterday.”

Salem took a container of chicken soup out of the refrigerator and heated a bowl in the microwave. Old wives’ tale or not, his father figured it was good for anything that ailed a body. He made a fresh pot every week.

Emily lifted a spoonful of soup, but the effort cost her. She needed to be in bed.

“Give me,” he said. He took the utensil from her and raised soup to her mouth.

“Not a child.”

“I know, but if I leave it to you, we’ll be here all night.” He got most of it into her before she batted his hand away.

“So tired,” she whispered.

“Okay, let’s get you to bed.” He carried the bowl to the sink to wash it, but his dad took it from him.

“Take care of her,” he said with a jut of his jaw toward Emily.

Salem led her upstairs to his bedroom and left her there while he went to the closet in the hallway to get fresh sheets. When he returned to his bedroom, Emily had stripped to her underwear—plain white cotton panties and bra.

He could probably wrap his fingers around her waist. There was a time when he’d craved her tight little body, but not tonight. Every part of Emily had been stripped down to bare essentials.

“Do you have a spare T-shirt?” She pulled back the covers.

“Of course.” He took one out of his dresser then turned his back while she finished undressing. He heard her climb into bed.

“Wait.”

She stopped with her knee on the mattress and watched him warily, her strange blue eyes with the odd hazel rings huge in her drawn face.

“I need to change the sheets.”

She made a sound—a cross between a raspberry and an old-fashioned pshaw—and finished scrambling under the blankets.

The second her head hit the pillow, she closed her eyes.

By the time Salem returned the clean sheets to the closet and came back to the bedroom, Emily was asleep.

He grabbed a T-shirt and flannel pants, and washed up and changed in the bathroom. When he finished, he laid a fresh towel and facecloth on the counter beside the sink and hoped neither of the girls used them in the morning before Emily got up, or before he could warn them he had a visitor.

From his supply of spare toiletries he kept under the counter—toothpaste, deodorant, tissues—he grabbed a toothbrush, unwrapped it and did a double-take. He held a child’s toothbrush in his hand. With a sick sensation, he realized he was still buying his girls small toothbrushes when they were no longer children. They were adolescents.

He placed the foolishly small brush onto the facecloth. He also needed a fresh bar of soap, but couldn’t find any under the counter. They were all out. He headed toward his younger daughter’s room. She owned a collection of small soaps.

The light bleeding around the partially closed door of his older daughter’s bedroom caught his attention. He pushed it open and said, “Hey, kid, time for lights-out.”

Aiyana slept in a tight fetal ball on top of her bedsheets, her fingers curled over her shoulders—an egg with hands and feet. Where were her blankets?

“What the heck?” They were a tangled mass in the corner. He picked them up, straightened them and covered her, tucking them close around her body until they cocooned her, as he used to do when she was little.

She used to giggle and say, “Make me a mummy, Daddy.”

She didn’t laugh with him these days. She no longer called him Daddy, but he still thought of her as his little baby, a child who was growing up too fast.

He stared down at his daughter. No, she wasn’t a child. She was becoming a woman, too quickly. He thought of those children’s toothbrushes he’d been buying. He knew Aiyana went to the store and bought her own feminine products. Yes, she was becoming a young woman.

He’d missed turning points in his daughters’ lives, and that made his chest ache.

When had he gotten so out of touch with them? With life around him?

Salem’s ambition to be an architect, and his part-time school studies, were admirable, but his children had grown up while he’d had his head buried in one book after another, studying for tests and writing papers. Had his ambition harmed his children?

When he finished tucking her in, he kissed her forehead and said softly, “Good night, Eternal Blossom.”

“Night, Daddy,” she whispered, but as asleep as she was, probably had no idea that she had. She would certainly forget by morning when she’d be prickly as a porcupine again, as she’d been for the past year.

He had no idea how to deal with her. All he could do was give her the creature comforts—food, clothing, a roof over her head—and hope it was enough.

Satisfied that she was warm and safe for the night, he left the room, turning out the light and closing the door behind him.

He checked in on Mika, who slept as though she hadn’t a care in the world. A turtle-shaped lamp on her bedside table sent a soft glow around the room, highlighting her collection of raccoon statues that friends and family had given her every birthday and Christmas since she was old enough to talk, to express her desires, which had been early.

There was nothing shy about his Mika. Intelligent Raccoon.

On her dresser, she kept a bowl of tiny soaps and bubble bath capsules in different shapes and sizes. Mika wouldn’t mind if he gave one to Emily. She’d inherited a generous spirit from her mother. Annie had been screwed up in many ways and her drug use was out of control at the end, but her generosity had been amazing.

For a split second, to his astonishment, he missed Annie, especially the good parts. Sure, she’d been neurotic at times, but she’d had a heart of gold. They hadn’t loved each other, but they had tried hard for respect.

For Emily, he chose a pink heart-shaped soap, because he was just that foolish. In case she might want a bath instead of a shower, he also took a gold bubble bath bead in the shape of a star.

Emily Jordan. His shooting star, here today and gone tomorrow.

He leaned forward and kissed Mika’s forehead. She still smelled like a kid, not like the perfume he’d detected on Aiyana.

He turned off the light before he left. She liked to fall asleep with it on, but she was a heavy sleeper. She wouldn’t need it for the rest of the night.

Salem smiled. No trouble with Mika yet, but then, she was only thirteen. Maybe adolescent hormones hadn’t kicked in yet.

Back in the bathroom, he placed the soap and bath bead beside the ridiculous toothbrush. Was it enough? It had been years since there’d been a grown woman in the house—four years since Annie’s death, and many more years since they’d had a guest. This wasn’t really a guest, though. It was only Emily.

That thought brought him up short. There wasn’t, never had been, and never would be anything only about Emily.

With one finger, he touched the pink heart soap that smelled like roses, and imagined her using it. He shook himself out of his foolish, romantic reverie, turned out the light and stepped into the hallway. Romance and Emily in the same thought? Dangerous.

“You sleeping downstairs?” His dad stood on the landing.

“Yep.”

“Good night, then.” His father entered the bedroom next to Salem’s.

Salem nodded and went downstairs, turning off the remaining lights as he went. In the living room, he gathered afghans and blankets from the backs of the two armchairs and made himself a bed on the sofa.

He stretched out, but his six-foot frame was too long for the furniture, so his feet hung over the arm.

Not the least bit comfortable, he eventually fell asleep, but was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder.

“Go take care of Emily.” His father stood over him, illuminated by the streetlamp shining through sheer curtains. “She’s making noise.”

Salem threw off his covers and took the stairs two at a time. Emily thrashed on the bed.

“Hey, hey,” he crooned, lifting her into a sitting position, but she sagged against his chest.

“Here,” he said, reaching for the glass of water he’d left beside the bed. She gulped it down, with him holding her head to still her shuddering. He laid her back against the pillow and got fresh water from the bathroom.

Leaving it on the bedside table, he stared down at her. He couldn’t leave her like this, too small and fragile. Too alone.

His Emily didn’t do fragile. What did he mean his Emily? She wasn’t his and never had been. She’d left too many times, dashing his hopes, for him to ever trust her again, the anger she inspired in him a constant throughout their relationship.

What relationship? You don’t have one.

Damn right.

Remember that, Salem.

But she was his friend; or rather, he was hers. Sort of. Maybe. Reluctantly.

She shivered. He crawled in under the covers and nestled her against his chest. Gradually, the shaking stopped and she settled into an easier sleep.

He, however, did not sleep, not while he held Emily Jordan in his arms.

* * *

“I’M NOT GOING to school tomorrow.” Aiyana stood in the doorway of the kitchen, scowling. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying. Dread hollowed out his gut. He couldn’t take tears. He could handle—had handled—a lot in life, but crying made him feel useless.

“Are you sick?” Salem hoped this was physical, something the magic of chicken soup could fix. “What is it? The flu?”

She shrugged. Her hair stood out in all directions. She must have washed it before bed and fallen asleep while it was still wet.

“Dad, how about heating some of your soup?” Salem finished doctoring his coffee and caught his two slices of toast as they popped out of the toaster.

“You got it.” His father retrieved the Tupperware.

“I don’t want soup.” Aiyana sounded like an odd mix of little-girl sulkiness and teenaged defiance.

Mika sat at the table eating her cereal, her brown eyes darting between him and Aiyana.

“How about toast?” Salem asked Aiyana. “You can have these and I’ll make more for myself.”

“No.”

“But...”

“I don’t want anything, okay?” she cried. “I just want to go back to bed. Just leave me alone today, okay?” She ran from the kitchen without waiting for anyone to respond.

Salem stared at her retreating back and what he could see of her feet running up the stairs.

His dad grunted. “I don’t think it’s the flu.”

“Pardon?” Salem asked.

“It ain’t the flu. It ain’t physical.”

That’s what he was afraid of. “Crap.”

“Why crap?”

“The flu or a cold would be easy. Soup, medication, hot tea. Boy or girlfriend or school trouble? Not so much. I don’t know how to talk to her anymore.”

Mika stood and picked up the present she’d wrapped yesterday. The social daughter, she was attending a friend’s birthday party for the day. Aiyana, the quiet studious one, was more like him than Salem suspected she wanted to be.

“Boys,” Mika said, with a nod of wisdom and a shrug that said, isn’t it obvious? “See you after the party, Grandpa. Bye, Daddy.” Then she was out the door and off to meet her friends down the street, so blessedly uncomplicated Salem thanked his lucky stars.

“What do I do about Aiyana?” Salem buttered his toast.

“Get your woman to talk to her.”

His knife clattered to the counter. Clumsy fingers. “She’s not my woman.”

“Ask her to talk to your daughter.”

“No.” He might have let Emily sleep here last night, and he might have held her while she slept, but he’d be damned if he would expose his daughter to Emily’s brand of heartache.

“She has been good to Aiyana since that girl was born.”

True. She had showered Aiyana, and later Mika, with gifts and stuffed animals and postcards from abroad. “I know, but—”

“And Aiyana loves her.”

Yes, he knew that, too, but maybe not so much lately. Anger at Emily had grown in Aiyana since her mother’s death. Perhaps she’d hoped Emily might replace her mom, but that hope had been dashed every time Emily left.

Aiyana used to adore Emily, used to trail around behind her imitating her every move, and singing all of the silly songs Emily taught her.

When Emily would leave at the end of her visits, it was okay because Aiyana had her mother. Once Annie started using, though, she became less and less available to her daughter. Aiyana looked forward to Emily’s visits too much after that, and was more devastated when she left.

Then, after Annie died, the questions started.

“Why is Emily going away? Doesn’t she want to be with me? When is she coming back?”

Salem explained about her career, but it was hard to be convincing, because he’d always suspected there was more to it than there appeared to be.

“Aiyana is angry with her,” his dad said, “but still loves her.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Who else is there?”

No one now that her mother was dead. They didn’t have an extended family.

“Ask her.” Dad could be as persistent as a bear in the mood for dinner.

“No.”

“Stubborn.” His father sniffed. “Like your mother.”

He was not. “Emily is trouble.”

“You need a little trouble.”

Salem rounded on his father. “How can you say that? You of all people? After everything Mom did to you? To us?”

“I loved your mother, warts and all.” His dad leaned back in his chair, crossed his feet and cupped the back of his head with his hands, as though they discussed nothing more serious than the weather. “Emily isn’t like your mother.”

Salem turned away and stared out the window.

“She isn’t Annie, either,” his dad said. “She is a different kind of lively. Not trouble trouble. Fun trouble.”

“So what?”

“Aiyana is unhappy,” Dad said. “Has been for a while.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“You would know more if you spent more time at home.”

“I work hard—”

His father cut him off with a shake of his head. “So what? Listen to what is important here. Something is wrong with Aiyana. I’m no good for her. You’re no good. She needs a woman to talk to.”

There wasn’t one—Annie was dead and Salem’s mother long dead—but damned if he would ask Emily to step in.

His mind cast about. “I’ll phone Laura, Nick Jordan’s wife.”

“Uh-huh. Sure, you can. She’s probably at the bakery right now serving customers, but you can call her and ask her to leave them and come right over.”

Of course he couldn’t. Weekend mornings were crazy busy at the café, Laura’s busiest time. “How about Emily’s sister, Pearl?”

“She won’t think that’s odd? You calling her while Emily is here in the house? And her knowing Aiyana idolizes Emily? That won’t look strange?”

It would look ridiculous, and Salem knew it.

Emily was here. Still...he couldn’t ask. He couldn’t open Aiyana to heartbreak. But Aiyana was unhappy about something, and wouldn’t confide in him.

His dad’s white eyebrows rose in an exaggerated circumflex, low on the sides and high in the middle, almost meeting at the midpoint, compelling Salem to set aside his fears and seek help for his daughter.

It stuck in his craw. He didn’t want Emily’s help. He could do this on his own. He wanted Emily out of his house and back in her own. Away from him. Away from his daughters.

“She won’t hurt them,” Dad said as though reading his mind. “She won’t lead them astray.”

His confusion with Aiyana, his utter...helplessness, had him swaying toward Dad’s point of view. He needed someone’s help. Emily was the only one available right now.

He’d made the decision to not see her again, to not think about her, to pretend she didn’t exist, and yet here she was in his house. And Aiyana needed someone at this moment. Salem could deal with the consequences later.

“Okay,” he said and trudged upstairs, footsteps heavy and slow like his thoughts.

At his closed bedroom door, he halted and glanced down the hallway toward Aiyana’s door, also closed.

So many doors were closed to him these days. About the only thing that wasn’t was school. No wonder he spent so much time buried in books. They opened pathways for him he couldn’t breach elsewhere in his life.

He knocked and Emily called for him to come in.

She stood beside the bed, her skin pale and gray like ash, using his brush to calm her hair. He loved its thickness and color, a medium brown warmed by glints of blond and red tones. Natural highlights. Or, he assumed they were natural since they’d already been there when she was twelve.

He still remembered the first time he ever saw her and thinking he’d gone crazy because he’d felt such an immediate kinship with a stranger, and her only twelve while he was a strapping eighteen.

For a while, he’d wondered if he was some kind of pervert before realizing his attraction wasn’t sexual. That had come later, when she was still too young at fifteen. It had driven him into the arms of another woman. Just his rotten luck their birth control had failed. No, that wasn’t true. He might have regretted his marriage, but never his daughters, even now when they were teenagers and he didn’t have a clue what to do with them.

“Are you okay?” he asked Emily.

“I’m fine,” she replied, but wasn’t.

He knew when Emily lied. She was lying now.

“What’s up?” she asked shyly. Emily, who could go anywhere, do anything, was never shy. “You look upset.”

“And you look a little better than last night. More like yourself. How do you feel?”

“Tired, but the fever broke during the night, thank goodness. The attack’s almost run its course.” She placed his hairbrush onto his dresser. “I’ve known others with this. I’ve seen the symptoms and how they progress. I’ll be better soon.”

“Do you need to be anywhere this morning? I have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Aiyana’s upset.”

Her head shot up. “Aiyana? What’s wrong?”

The request backed up in his throat, but the bottom line was that Aiyana needed help and Emily was here. Even with his father’s help, Salem had been coping as both parents for so long, and he was out of his depth. “I think maybe she needs to talk to a woman.”

Emily looked uncertain, another sign she wasn’t herself. In all the years he’d known her, Salem had admired her generosity of spirit and her self-confidence.

He stepped back. “If you don’t want to that’s okay.”

“No. I don’t mind. It’s just...”

“Just what?”

“What kind of help does she need? I mean, I don’t know if I can help.”

If she didn’t help him figure out the puzzle that was his daughter, who would?

“What exactly is the problem?”

Salem shook his head like a bewildered old man, so far out of his element. “Mika says it’s boys. She’s at that age, right?”

Emily tilted her head, thinking. “Aiyana’s what? Fourteen?”

“Fifteen. Almost sixteen.”

“Yeah.” Emily’s mouth twisted wryly. “It’s probably a boy.”

“So, you’ll talk to her?”

A wash of emotion that might have been sadness painted Emily’s features.

“Okay.” She seemed to rouse herself. “Where is she? In her bedroom?”

Salem nodded and went back downstairs, hoping he could deal with the repercussions of Emily leaving—again—later. Maybe. He hoped.

* * *

EMILY LEANED HER forehead against Aiyana’s door to summon her strength before entering. She had to help the girl however she could, even though her resources were depleted. She just didn’t know what she had to give. Damn this illness.

Aiyana, the girl who used to follow Emily around like a perky kitten, needed her. While Emily had completed high school, she’d spent time with Aiyana on the weekends, bringing her gifts—stuffed bunny rabbits, books and toys.

The child might have been born to another woman, and Emily might have resented Annie for marrying Salem, but Aiyana had been Salem’s daughter, and a darling. And Emily had loved her from the first moment she met her.

Funny that Annie hadn’t minded, but then, Annie had been a proud mother, and happy to show off her baby. She had even let Emily babysit.

When Emily had gone to college, she had sent Aiyana birthday cards and sweet little notes at Christmas, and more presents.

As an archeologist, she had mailed Aiyana postcards from all the exotic countries she had visited. So, Emily had enjoyed a correspondence both ways, with Maria in the Sudan when she was at home, and with Aiyana when she’d been away.

And now Aiyana was hurting.

Aware of how hypocritical it was to offer boy advice when her own love life was a mess, she knocked anyway, because Salem had asked her to. How could she say no?

“Go away, Dad.” The voice sounded sullen, as only a teenager could, but Emily heard more. Desolation.

“It’s Emily.”

“Emily?” Emily heard a nose being blown. “Oh, um, just a sec.”

Emily waited.

“Okay. Come in.” It sounded thick with tears.

Emily opened the door cautiously. Aiyana sat on her bed with her arms wrapped around an oversize teddy bear, looking so much like a female version of a teenaged Salem that it brought back memories, both warm and tough. Aiyana was too old for stuffed animals, but Emily remembered the misery of unrequited love. Salem came to mind. She approached the bed.

“Hi,” she said and smiled.

Aiyana didn’t respond. Strange.

“Your dad says something’s going on. Do you want to talk?”

Aiyana shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her nose was stuffed up, and her eyes bloodshot. “What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

Emily was taken aback by Aiyana’s vaguely belligerent tone. It used to be that the girl would run into Emily’s arms when she returned for her visits. But the past couple of years, Aiyana been a bit cool, and now this. Was it normal adolescence, or something deeper?

“I slept over last night.”

“Did you sleep with Dad?”

Whoa. Did Aiyana mean sleep sleep or have sex sleep? Emily was pretty sure she meant sex. Where had this come from?

Before Emily could react, Aiyana asked, “So, like, did you guys kiss and make up?”

Ohhhh. Was this about Emily and Salem fighting before she left last year? Aiyana must have picked up on the change in Salem’s attitude toward her.

Why did adults never think that kids understood what was happening around them?

“I slept here because I was sick last night. I fainted at the Cathedral and your dad brought me home and took care of me.”

“How long are you staying this time?”

Emily finally got what was going on. The daughter had the same issues as the father.

“I’m staying for good this time.”

Skeptical, Aiyana shrugged.

“You look really pale,” Aiyana said, begrudgingly, as though she cared, but didn’t want to. “Are you okay?” A glimmer of compassion softened the blunt edges of Aiyana’s teenaged pique. Maybe they would get through this after all.

“It’s the tail end of an attack of malaria.”

“Isn’t that really bad?”

“I’ll be okay in a few days.”

Emily tucked her hands into her pockets. She felt as lost as Aiyana looked miserable, and just as uncomfortable. She didn’t know what to say or do.

This kind of thing had been easier when Aiyana’s problems had been as simple as scraped knees and broken toys.

On the wall on the other side of the bed, Emily spotted a corkboard filled with all the postcards Emily had sent over the years. Oh. Aiyana had kept them, every last one.

Aiyana might as well have reached into Emily’s chest and petted her heart as she was doing with the teddy bear’s head. Emily had to find a way to help her. She wanted to regain what they used to have.

“You know, when your dad and I fought last year, it had nothing to do with you. I love you as much now as I ever have.”

At the word love, Aiyana’s expression softened even more.

Emily took advantage. “Maybe I can help you through this.” It sounded like a question instead of an offer of help because, honestly, she had no idea what to do. She knew how to be a good listener. Maybe that’s all it would take. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” Aiyana wailed. Oh, she must be hurting badly if she would consider confiding in Emily even though she was still so angry with her. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Did something happen to you?”

Aiyana buried her face in the bear’s head. “Sort of.”

Sort of? Oh, dear. “Can you explain what you mean?” Emily sat on the edge of the bed, but made sure she didn’t touch Aiyana. She didn’t want to invade the girl’s space if things weren’t fully right between them.

Aiyana covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know if I can. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Aiyana’s head jerked up at the depth of emotion in Emily’s voice.

Maybe in this situation, Emily would have to give before she would receive. “I broke up with my boyfriend three days ago when I left the Sudan to come home.”

“Oh, that’s so sad.”

“It was long overdue. We’d been together for six years, but he didn’t treat me well. I tolerated his behavior way longer than I should have. It was time for me to smarten up.”

Something about the phrase smarten up must have resonated with Aiyana, because she opened her mouth to speak, and the dam broke.

Through tears, haltingly, she told her story, about how she’d thought the boy had cared for her, about how she was honored and happy he’d asked her to be his girlfriend, about how last night he’d taken her into the ravine and had tried to pressure her to have sex.

He’d pushed her too hard too fast, but Aiyana hadn’t given in. Wow, strong girl for holding her own.

Emily was proud of her young friend. “That took guts. You have to feel the time and the boy are right before taking that big step. You’ll get over him.”

“I already have, as soon as I realized what a jerk he is. That’s not the problem. Look!” She jumped up from the bed. Anger vibrated in her slim frame. Good. Anger was a hell of a lot better than despair. Aiyana hit a few keys and her Twitter account came up. “Look what he did.”

Emily joined her, pressing her hand onto Aiyana’s shoulder. Oh, she had a bad feeling about this.

There, on the computer screen, tweets bounced around from the boy and his friends, and girls too, stating that she’d gone all the way with him last night...and that it hadn’t been the first time, and he hadn’t been the first boy, tweets like a hail of bullets cutting Aiyana down, too similar to Jean-Marc’s assault, but much, much worse.

Aiyana was too young, her defenses too undeveloped, to repel an attack like this. No wonder she needed help.

Damn the internet for making bullying so painfully public.

“It’s all lies,” Aiyana wailed. “I’m still a virgin.”

In Aiyana’s pain, Emily heard echoes of her own.

She fell back to sit on the bed, her past rushing toward her from a long dark tunnel, whooshing full speed ahead, the memories she’d worked so hard to submerge surfacing here where she had thought she would be safe.

She could handle Jean-Marc and his ugly innuendo miles and miles away, because she knew she could find a way to repair the damage, somehow, but this was here at home in Accord, and it was happening to a girl she loved, and it was happening in Emily’s old school. And that easily, the woman Emily had matured into was gone, and she was back to the lost and lonely girl she used to be.

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