She’d stopped believing in happy endings…

Widowed TV reporter Ellie King had given up on looking for heroes ever since her beloved husband was killed in a robbery gone wrong. Because she could have used one then, but there was no one around—or was there?

...until a hero walked back into her life.

Detective Colin Benteen had been the first on the scene to comfort Ellie’s husband, to hold his hand when it was clear his wounds were fatal. Now, years later, Ellie is interviewing the handsome officer when she realizes who he is—a single parent (to his niece), all-around good guy and proof that once in a lifetime can happen twice! But Colin might not be the only one who needs convincing...

She knew that she didn’t really owe him an explanation.

After all, he was a public servant and this had been done in the service of the public. The public had a right to know. But she had made him a promise, so she felt the need to explain why she’d gone back on it.

“I know I promised that you’d have the final say, but I’ve got people I answer to and they insisted that the segment go on tonight as is. It turned out pretty well, I thought.” She crossed her fingers that he saw it that way, too.

“You lied to me.” It wasn’t an accusation but a flat statement. It carried with it not anger, but a note of genuine disappointment. And that made her feel worse than if he’d launched into a tirade.

“I didn’t lie,” she replied. “I had every intention of showing you the clip first.” When he said nothing, she felt uncomfortable, despite the fact that this ultimately wasn’t really her fault. “The station manager wanted to air it before the other stations got it. I’m sorry, but these things happen. Listen, if you want me to make it up to you—” she began, not really certain where this would ultimately go.

He cut her short with two words. “I do.”

* * *

Matchmaking Mamas: Playing Cupid. Arranging dates. What are mothers for?

Twice a Hero, Always Her Man

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To Charlie

For stepping up

And

Taking care of me

When I couldn’t.

After all these years,

You still manage to surprise me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Oh, Maizie, it’s just breaking my heart, seeing her like this.”

Maizie Sommers quietly pushed the gaily decorated box of triple-ply tissues she kept on her desk toward her friend, waiting for the woman to collect herself. Connie Williams had called her first thing this morning, asking to see her.

Maizie knew from her friend’s tone of voice that she wasn’t asking to see her in her professional capacity—at least not in her professional capacity as an award-winning Realtor.

But Maizie had another vocation, an altruistic one that was near and dear to her heart, as it was to the hearts of her two dearest, lifelong friends, Theresa Manetti and Cecilia Parnell. All three were career women who did quite well in their respective chosen fields. But it was the one avocation that they had in common that brought them the most joy. The one that carried no monetary reward whatsoever, just one that made them feel good.

All three were matchmakers.

It had begun quite innocently enough. The three of them had been friends since the third grade. In the years that followed, they had gone through all the milestones of life together, great and small—not the least of which was widowhood. And all three were also blessed with children. Maizie had a daughter, as did Cecilia, while Theresa had a daughter and a son.

Their four children were all successful in their own rights—and they were also maddeningly single. Until Maizie decided that her daughter, an ob-gyn, needed more in her life than just delivering other people’s babies. She needed a private life of her own. Joining forces with her two friends, Maizie began to closely monitor and review the wide variety of people all three of them dealt with.

Thanks to their professions—Theresa ran a catering company, while Cecilia had a thriving housecleaning service—Maizie quickly and secretly found the perfect “someone” for her daughter.

Theresa and Cecilia were quick to follow her example, and soon all three of their children were matched to their soul mates, as well.

Nothing bred more success than initial success and so a passion was born. Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia began helping the children of other friends, all while always managing to keep the principals involved in the dark, thinking it was fate rather than three very artful women that had intervened in their lives for the better.

So it didn’t surprise Maizie at all to be sitting in her office today across from one of her friends, quietly waiting for the request she knew was coming. Connie wanted her to find someone for her daughter, a reporter with a prominent local news station.

Connie pulled out a tissue and wiped away the tears that had slid down her cheek despite her best efforts to the contrary.

“Ellie puts up a brave front and whenever I ask her, she tells me that she’s fine, but she’s not fine. A mother knows, Maizie,” the older woman insisted, stifling a sob.

Maizie offered her an understanding smile. “Truer words were never spoken,” she agreed. Then, gently, Maizie asked her friend, “How long has it been now?”

“Two years,” Connie answered. She didn’t even have to pause to think. She knew it to the exact day. Remembered how stricken her daughter had been when she’d found out that her husband, a recently discharged, highly decorated Marine sergeant had been killed while trying to save a couple who were being robbed at a convenience store.

“She goes on with her life, goes on with her career, but I know in my heart nothing’s changed. If anything, she works harder these days, spends long hours both in the field on assignment and at the studio, overseeing the editing of her work, but it’s like everything froze inside her since that day.”

Maizie nodded. “I can imagine how awful it must have been for Ellie to find out that the news story she was being sent to cover involved her own husband.”

There had been a mix-up when the story had come over the wire and the name of the hero of the piece had been accidentally switched for the name of the owner of the convenience store where the robbery had occurred. When Ellie and her cameraman had arrived on the scene, the ambulance had already come and gone. It wasn’t until she was in the middle of covering the story, talking to the two grateful people her husband had saved, that her cell phone had rung. Someone from the hospital was calling her to notify Ellie that her husband had been shot and had died en route.

“Ellie went numb when the call on her cell came in. The poor thing barely kept from fainting in front of everyone. Her studio was exceedingly sympathetic, and Ellie, well, she just froze up inside that awful, awful night and she still hasn’t come around, no matter what she tries to tell me to the contrary.”

Connie looked at the woman she was counting on to change things for her daughter, her eyes eloquently entreating her for help.

“Maizie, she’s only thirty years old. Thirty is much too young to resign from life the way she has. Ellie has so much to offer. It’s just killing me to see her like this.” Connie pressed her lips together. “If I say anything to her, she just smiles and tells me not to worry. How can I not worry?” she asked.

Maizie placed her hand over her friend’s in a comforting gesture, one mother reaching out to another. “I’m glad you came, Connie. Leave this to me.”

The woman hesitated, her gratitude warring with a host of other feelings—and one main one that she gave voice to now. “If Ellie knew I was trying to find someone for her—”

“You’re not,” Maizie pointed out. “Let me look into this and I’ll get back to you,” she promised. In her mind, she was already summoning her friends for an evening card game, happily telling them that they had a brand-new assignment of the heart.

Nothing was more satisfying to them—except, of course, for the successful execution of said operation.

Maizie couldn’t wait.

Chapter One

It felt as if mornings came earlier and earlier these days, even though the numbers on the clock registered the same from one day to the next. Even so, it just seemed harder for Elliana King to rouse herself, to kick off her covers and find a way to greet the world that was waiting for her just outside her front door.

It wasn’t always this way, she thought sadly. There was a time that she felt sleeping was a waste of precious hours. Those were the days when she would bounce up long before the alarm’s shrill bell officially went off, calling an end to any restful sleep she might have been engaged in.

But everything had changed two years ago.

These days, her dreams were sadly all empty, devoid of anything. The first year after Brett had been taken from her, she’d look forward to sleep because that was when he visited her. Every night, she dreamed of Brett, of the times they’d spent together, and it was as if she’d never lost him. All she had to do was close her eyes and within a few minutes, he was there. His smile, his voice, the touch of his hand. Everything.

She’d been more alive in sleep than while awake.

And then, just like that, he wasn’t. Wasn’t there no matter how hard she tried to summon him back. And getting up to face the day, face a life that no longer had Brett in it, became progressively harder for her.

Ellie sat up in bed, dragging her hand through blue-black hair Brett always referred to as silky. She was trying to dig up the will to actually put her feet on the floor and begin her day, a day that promised to be filled from one end to the other with nothing but ongoing work. Work that was meant to keep her busy and not thinking—not feeling.

Especially not feeling.

Work was her salvation—but first she had to get there.

Still trying to summon the energy to start, Ellie glanced at the nightstand on her left. The nightstand that held her phone, the lamp that was the first piece of furnishings Brett and she had chosen together—and the framed photograph of Brett wearing his uniform.

A ghost of a smile barely curved her lips as she reached out to touch the face that was looking back at her in the photograph.

And without warning, Ellie found herself blinking back tears.

“Still miss you,” she murmured to the man who had been her whole world. She sighed and shook her head. “Almost wish I didn’t,” she told him because she had never been anything but truthful with Brett. “Because it hurts too much, loving you,” she admitted.

Closing her eyes, Ellie pushed herself up off the bed, taking the first step into her day.

The other steps would come. Not easily, but at least easier. It was always that first step that was a killer, she thought, doing her best to get in gear.

She went through the rest of her morning routine by rote, hardly aware of what she was doing or how she got from point A to point B and so on. But she did, and eventually, Ellie was dressed and ready, standing at her front door, the consummate reporter prepared to undertake a full day of stories that needed to be engagingly framed for the public.

She knew how to put on a happy face for the camera.

No one except those who were very close to her—her mother; Jerry Ross, her cameraman; and maybe Marty Stern, the program manager who gave her her assignments—knew that she was always running on half-empty, because her reason for everything was no longer there.

Several times Ellie had toyed with the idea of just bowing out. Of not getting up, not going through the motions any longer. But she knew what that would do to her mother and she just couldn’t do that to her, so she kept up the pretense. Her mother, widowed shortly before Brett had been killed, would be devastated if anything happened to her, so Ellie made sure nothing “happened” to her, made sure she kept putting one foot in front of the other.

And just kept going.

“But sometimes it’s so hard,” she admitted out loud to the spirit of the man she felt was always with her even if she could no longer touch him.

Ellie took a deep breath as she opened the front door. It was fall and the weather was beautiful, as usual. “Another day in paradise,” she murmured to herself.

Locking the door behind her, she forced herself to focus on what she had to do today—even though a very large part of her wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over her head.

* * *

“I know that look,” Cecilia Parnell said the moment she sat down at the card table in Maizie’s family room and took in her friend’s face. “This isn’t about playing cards, is it?”

Maizie was already seated and she was dealing out the cards. She raised an eyebrow in Cilia’s direction and smiled.

“Not entirely,” Maizie replied vaguely.

Theresa Manetti looked from Cilia to Maizie. She picked up the cards that Maizie had dealt her, but she didn’t even bother fanning them out in her hand or looking at them. Cilia, Theresa knew, was right.

“Not at all,” Theresa countered. “You’ve got a new case, don’t you?” She did her best to contain her excitement. It had been a while now and she missed the thrill of bringing two soul mates together.

“You mean a new listing?” Maizie asked her innocently. “Yes, I just put up three new signs. As a matter of fact, there’s one in your neighborhood, Theresa,” she added.

“Oh, stop,” Cilia begged, rolling her eyes. “You know that’s not what Theresa and I are saying.” She leaned closer over the small rectangular table that had seen so many of their card games over the years as well as borne witness to so many secrets that had been shared during that time. “Spill it. Male or female?”

“Female,” Maizie replied. She smiled mysteriously. “Actually, you two know her.”

Cilia and Theresa exchanged puzzled glances. “Personally?” Cilia asked.

Maizie raised a shoulder as if to indicate that she wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually spoken with her friend’s daughter.

“From TV.”

Cilia, the more impatient one of the group, frowned. “We’ve been friends for over fifty years, Maizie. This isn’t the time to start talking in riddles.”

She supposed they were right. She didn’t usually draw things out this way. Momentarily placing her own cards down, she looked at her friends as she told them, “It’s Elliana King.”

Theresa seemed surprised. “You mean the reporter on Channel—?”

Theresa didn’t get a chance to mention the station. Maizie dispensed with that necessity by immediately cutting to the chase.

“Yes,” she said with enthusiasm.

“She didn’t actually come to you, did she?” Cilia asked in surprise.

“A girl that pretty shouldn’t have any trouble—” Theresa began.

“No, no,” Maizie answered, doing away with any further need for speculation. “Her mother did. Connie Williams,” she told them for good measure. Both women were casually acquainted with Connie. “You remember,” Maizie continued, “Ellie was the one who tragically found out on the air that her husband had been killed saving a couple being held up at gunpoint.”

Theresa closed her eyes and shivered as she recalled the details. “I remember. I read that her station’s ratings went through the roof while people watched that poor girl struggling to cope.”

“That’s the one,” Maizie confirmed. “As I said, her mother is worried about her and wants us to find someone for Ellie.”

“Tall order,” Cilia commented, thinking that, given the trauma the young woman had gone through, it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Brave woman,” Maizie responded.

“No argument there,” Theresa agreed.

Both women turned toward Cilia, who had gone strangely silent.

“Cilia?” Theresa asked, wondering what was going on in their friend’s head.

Maizie zeroed in on what she believed was the cause of Cilia’s uncharacteristic silence. Maizie was very proud of her gut instincts.

“You have something?” she asked.

Looking up, Cilia blinked as if she was coming out of deep thought.

“Maybe,” she allowed. “One of the women who work for me was just telling me about her neighbor the other day. Actually,” Cilia amended, “Olga was making a confession.”

“Why?” Theresa asked, puzzled.

Maizie went to the heart of the matter. “What kind of a confession?” she pressed.

“She told me she offered to clean the young man’s apartment for free because it was in such a state of chaos,” she explained. “And Olga felt she was betraying me somehow with that offer.”

Theresa still wasn’t sure she was clear about what was going on. “Why did she offer to clean his place? Was it like a trade agreement?” she asked. “She did something for him, then he did something for her?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Cilia quickly corrected, guessing at what her friend was inferring was behind the offer. “She told me that she felt sorry for the guy. He’s a police detective who’s suddenly become the guardian of his ten-year-old niece.”

Maizie was instantly interested. “How did that happen?”

“His brother and sister-in-law were in this horrific skiing accident. Specifically, there was an avalanche and they were buried in it. By the time the rescuers could get to them, they were both dead,” Cilia told her friends. “Apparently there’s no other family to take care of the girl except for Olga’s neighbor.”

Theresa looked sufficiently impressed. “Sounds like a good man,” she commented.

“Sounds like a man who could use a little help,” Maizie interjected thoughtfully.

Maizie took off her glasses and gazed around the table at her friends. Ideas were rapidly forming and taking shape in her very fertile brain.

“Ladies,” she announced with a smile, “we have homework to do.”

* * *

“But I don’t need a babysitter,” Heather Benteen vehemently protested.

“I told you, kid, she’s not a babysitter,” Colin Benteen told his highly precious niece, a girl he’d known and loved since birth. Life had been a great deal easier when the only role he occupied was that of her friend, her coconspirator. This parenting thing definitely had a downside. “If you want to call her something, call her a young-girl-sitter,” he told Heather, choosing his words carefully.

“I don’t need one of those, either,” Heather shot back. “I’ll be perfectly fine coming home and doing my homework even if you’re not here.” She glared accusingly at her uncle, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” Colin countered with feeling.

Heather fisted her hands and dug them into her hips. “Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” he told his niece patiently, “that I know the temptation that’s out there.” He gave her a knowing look. “I was just like you once.”

“You were a ten-year-old girl?” Heather challenged.

“No, I was a ten-year-old boy, wise guy,” he told her, affectionately tugging on one of her two thick braids. “Now, humor me. Olga offered to be here when you come home and hang around until I get off.”

She tried again. “Look, Uncle Colin, I don’t want to give you a hard time—”

“Then don’t,” he said, cutting Heather off as he grabbed a slice of toast.

Heather was obviously not going to give up easily. “I don’t like having someone spy on me.”

“Here’s an idea,” he proposed, taking his gun out of the lockbox on the bookshelf where he always deposited his weapon when he came home at night. “You can get your revenge by not doing anything noteworthy and boring her to death.”

The preteen scowled at him. “So not the point,” she insisted.

He wasn’t about to get roped into a long philosophical discussion with his niece. She had to get to school and he needed to be at work.

“Exactly the point,” he replied. “Olga will be here when I’m not, just as she has been these last few weeks—and we’re lucky to have her. End of discussion,” he told her firmly.

“For there to have been a discussion, I would have had to voice my side of it,” she pointed out, all but scowling at him in a silent challenge that said she had yet to frame her argument.

Colin paused for a moment as he laughed and shook his head. “Sue me. I’ve never raised a ten-year-old before and I want to get this right.”

The impatient look faded from her face and Heather smiled. She knew that they were both groping around in the dark, trying to find their way. Her uncle had always been very important to her, even before she’d woken up to find that the parameters of her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

She gave him a quick hug, as if she knew what was really on his mind. Concern. “We’ll be all right, Uncle Colin.”

“Yes, we will,” he agreed. He pointed toward the front door. “Now let’s go.”

For the sake of pretense, Heather sighed dramatically and then marched right out of his ground-floor garden apartment.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Colin found himself halfway around the city, tackling a would-be art thief who was trying to make off with an original painting he’d stolen from someone’s private collection in the more exclusive side of Bedford.

The call had gone out and he’d caught it quite by accident because his new morning route—he had to drop Heather off at school—now took him three miles out of his way and, as it so happened today, right into the path of the escaping art thief.

Waiting for the light to change, Colin saw a car streak by less than ten feet away from him. It matched the description that had come on over the precinct’s two-way radio.

“Son of a gun,” he muttered in disbelief. The guy had almost run him over. “Dispatch, I see the vehicle in question and I’m pursuing it now.”

Turning his wheel sharply, he made a U-turn and proceeded to give chase. Despite his adrenaline pumping, he hated these chases, hated thinking of what was liable to happen if the utmost care as well as luck weren’t at play here.

He held his breath even as he mentally crossed his fingers.

After a short time and some rather tricky, harrowing driving, he pursued the thief right into a storage-unit facility.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. Did the guy actually believe he was going to lose him here? Talk about dumb moves...

He supposed he had to be grateful for that. Had the thief hit the open road, he might have lost him or someone might have gotten hit—possibly fatally—during the pursuit.

As it was, he managed to corner the man. Colin jumped out of his car and completed the chase on foot, congratulating himself that all those days at the gym paid off. He caught up to the thief, who had unintentionally led him not only to where he had planned on hiding this painting that he’d purloined but to a number of others that apparently had been stolen at some earlier date.

It took a moment to sink in. When it did, Colin tried not to let his jaw drop. Things like this didn’t usually happen in Bedford, which, while not a sleepy little town, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, either.

“Wow, you’ve been quite the eager beaver, haven’t you?” Colin remarked as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on the thief’s wrists.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief declared. “Never saw these other paintings before in my life,” he swore, disavowing any previous connection.

“And yet you came here to hide the one you stole this morning,” Colin pointed out. “Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

“I never saw these before!” the slight man repeated loudly.

Colin shook his head as he led the thief out to his waiting car. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to lie?” he asked.

“I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” the thief announced, and dramatically closed his mouth.

“Good move,” Colin said in approval. “Not much left to say anyway, seeing as how all these paintings speak for themselves.”

Desperate, the thief made one last attempt to move Colin as he was being put into the backseat. “Look, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

“Uh-huh.”

Panic had entered the man’s face, making Colin wonder if he was working for someone else, someone he feared. “I can make it worth your while if you just look the other way, let me go. I’ll leave the paintings. You can just tell everyone you found them.”

Colin smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him just how dumb some people could be. “Maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you started putting this private collection together for yourself.” He saw the thief opening his mouth and sensed there was just more of the same coming. “Too late now,” he told the man.

With that, he took out his cell phone and called in to the station for backup to come and collect all the paintings. There were going to be a lot of happy art owners today, he mused. They wouldn’t be reunited with their paintings immediately, since for now, the pieces were all being kept as evidence, but at least they knew the art had been recovered and was safe.

He glanced at his watch as he waited for his call to go through.

It was just nine thirty, he realized. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. His week was off and running.

Chapter Two

Maizie put as much stock in fate as the next person. She didn’t, however, sit back and just assume that fate would step in and handle all the small details that were always involved in making things happen. That was up to her.

Which was why she was on the phone that morning calling Edward Blake, an old friend of her late husband’s as well as a recent client she’d brought to Theresa’s attention. The latter had involved Edward’s youngest daughter, Sophia. Theresa had catered her wedding reception at less than her usual going rate.

Maizie used that as her opening when she placed her call to the news station’s story director.

What had prompted her call was a story she heard on her radio as she was driving into work. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up. That, she felt, had been fate’s part. The rest would require her help.

“Edward,” she said cheerfully the moment she heard him respond on the other end of the line, “this is Maizie Sommers.”

There was a pause, and then recognition set in. “Maizie, of course. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you,” she replied as if she had all the time in the world rather than what she assumed was a clock ticking the minutes away. She knew how the news world worked. “I just called to see how the newlyweds were doing.”

“Fine, fine,” Blake asserted in his booming baritone voice. “They’re not looking for a house yet, though,” he told her, obviously assuming that was why she was checking in with him.

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” she answered with a laugh. “It’s much too early to start thinking about dealing with things like escrow and closing costs and homeowner associations.” She paused for just a beat, then forged ahead. “But I did call to ask you a favor.”

Their friendship dated back to the final year in college. Edward had been a friend of her late husband’s. They had pulled all-nighters, helping each other study and pass final exams. “Name it.”

“That news reporter you have working for you, Elliana King,” Maizie began, then paused so that the woman’s name sank in.

“Ah, yes, great girl, hardest worker I’ve ever had,” the station manager testified fondly with feeling. “What about her?”

“I just heard about what could be a good human-interest story for your station and thought you could send the King girl to cover it.”

“Go on,” Blake encouraged, intrigued. He genuinely liked and respected Maizie and was open to anything she had to pass on.

“According to the news blurb, a police detective in Bedford chased down this supposedly small-time art thief and wound up uncovering an entire cache of paintings in a storage unit that had been stolen in the last eighteen months. I thought you might want to send someone down to the precinct to interview this detective.” And then she played what she felt was her ace card in this little venture. “So little of the news we hear is upbeat these days.”

“Don’t I know it,” Blake said with a sigh. And then he chuckled. “So you’re passing on assignments to me now, Maizie?”

“Just this one, Edward.”

There was more to this and he knew it. Moreover, he knew that Maizie knew he knew, but he played his line out slowly like a fisherman intent on reeling in an elusive catch than a station manager in a newsroom that moved sometimes faster than the speed of light. “And you think I should assign King to follow up on it.”

“Absolutely,” Maizie enthused, adding, “She has a nice way about her.”

“Oh, I agree with you. She definitely has a rapport with her audience,” Blake said. When he heard nothing more illuminating on the other end, he asked, “Okay, what’s really going on, Maizie? Is this some kind of a matchmaking thing?”

“I have no idea what you mean, Edward,” Maizie told him in far too innocent a voice.

“Right. Belinda told me what you and your friends are up to in your spare time,” Blake said, referring to his wife. And then he became serious. “If you think you’ve found a way to get the pain out of King’s eyes, go for it. You’ve got my vote.”

Relieved that the man was so easily on board, Maizie tactfully pointed out, “What we need is your assignment, Edward.”

“That, too. Okay, give me the details one more time,” he instructed, pulling over a pad and pencil, two staples of his work desk that he absolutely refused to surrender no matter how many electronic gadgets littered his desk and his office. His defense was that a pad and pencil never failed.

* * *

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Jerry Ross warned Ellie just as she sank down behind her desk in the overly crowded newsroom.

The six-two onetime linebacker for a third-string minor-league football team strode over to the woman he followed around with his camera a good part of each day, sometimes successfully, sometimes only to see his footage ignobly die on the cutting room floor.

“Up and at ’em, Ellie,” he coaxed. “We’ve got ourselves an assignment.”

Ellie had just begun to sit down but instantly bounced back up to her feet again. She was more than ready to go wherever the assignment took them.

Two years ago it would have been because each story represented a fresh opportunity to put her stamp on something that was unfolding. Now it was because each story necessitated her having to abandon her private thoughts and focus on whatever the news report required from her. The first casualty was her social life, which she more than willingly surrendered. She really didn’t have one to speak of now that Brett was no longer in her life.

“Where to?” Ellie asked.

Jerry held up the written directive he’d just received for them. “Blake wants us to do a story about this police detective at the police station.”

“Blake?” she questioned, puzzled. She fell into step beside her cameraman as he went out of the building and to the parking lot where their news van was waiting for them. “You mean Marty, don’t you?” Marty Stern was the one who handed out their assignments, not the station manager.

“No,” Jerry insisted, “I mean Blake.” It had struck him as odd as it did her, but he’d learned not to question things that came from on high. “This assignment came down from Edward Blake himself.”

She hurried down the steps into the lot without even looking at them. “Why?”

Reaching the van, Jerry shrugged as he got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over his shoulder to check that his equipment was where he had put it earlier. It was a nervous habit of his since there was no place else his camera and the rest of his gear could be. The cameraman always packed it into the van first thing on arrival each morning. But checking on its position was somehow comforting to him.

Satisfied that it was there, he turned forward again. “That’s above my pay grade,” he told her. “I’m just relating the message and telling you what he said he wanted.”

After putting the key into the ignition, Jerry turned it and the van hummed to life.

“All I know is that this detective had just swung by Los Naranjos Elementary School to drop off his kid—a niece, I think Blake said—and he almost tripped over the thief. Who cut him off as he raced by.” Jerry told her with disbelief. “Anyway, when the detective followed the guy, he wound up cornering him in a storage unit. Guess what else was in the storage unit.”

Ellie was watching the cluster of residential streets pass by her side window. The tranquil scene wasn’t even registering. She felt more tired than usual and it was hard for her to work up any enthusiasm for what she was hearing, even the fake kind.

“It’s Monday, Jerry. I don’t do guessing games until Tuesday,” she told the cameraman as if it was a rule written somewhere.

Undaunted, Jerry continued his riveting edge-of-her-seat story. “The detective found a bunch of other paintings stored there that, it turns out, had been stolen over the last eighteen months. It’s your favorite,” the cameraman pointed out. “Namely, a happy-ending story.”

“Not for the thief,” Ellie murmured under her breath.

Jerry heard her. “That’s not the lede Blake wants us to go with,” he told her. “Turns out that this isn’t this detective’s first brush with being in the right place at the right time.”

“Oh?” Ellie did her best to sound interested, but she was really having trouble raising her spirits this morning. She’d resigned herself to the fact that some mornings were just going to be worse than others and this was one of those mornings. She needed to work on that, Ellie told herself silently. Jerry didn’t deserve to be sitting next to a morose woman.

Maybe coffee would help, she reasoned.

“Yeah,” Jerry was saying as he navigated the streets, heading for the precinct. “I didn’t get the details to that. Figure maybe you could do a follow-up when you do the interview.”

She nodded absently, still not focused on the story. Out of sheer desperation, Ellie forced herself to make a few notes. Something had to spark her. “What’s the detective’s name?”

Jerry shrugged. “Blake said we’re supposed to ask the desk sergeant to speak to the detective who uncovered the stolen paintings.”

“In other words, you don’t have a name,” she concluded.

The curly-headed cameraman spared her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Blake seemed in a hurry for us to get there. Said the story had already been carried on the radio station. Wanted us there before another news station beat us to it.”

Well, that was par for the course, Ellie thought. She sighed. “Why is it that every story is the story—until it’s not?”

She received a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile in response. “Beats me. All I know is that all this competition is good for my paycheck. I’ve got a college tuition to fund.”

“Jackie is only five,” she reminded him, referring to the cameraman’s only child.

Jerry nodded, acting as if she had made his point for him. “Exactly. I can’t let the grass grow beneath my feet.”

Jerry stepped on the gas.

* * *

The police department was housed in a modern-looking building that was barely seven years old. Prior to that, the city’s core had been domiciled in an old building that dated back to the ’50s and had once contained farm supplies. People still called the present location the new precinct. Centrally located, it was less than five miles from the news station. They got there in no time flat, even though every light had been against them.

Ellie got out first, but Jerry’s legs were longer and he reached the building’s front entrance several strides ahead of her.

“Ladies first,” the cameraman told her, holding the door open for Ellie.

She smiled as she passed him and headed straight for the desk sergeant’s desk. She made sure she took out her credentials and showed them to the dour-faced man before she identified herself.

Even so, the desk sergeant, a snow-white-haired man whose shoulders had assumed a permanent slump, presumably from the weight of the job, took his time looking up at the duo.

The moment he did, Ellie began talking. “I’m Ellie King and this is my cameraman, Jerry Ross.” She told him the name of her news studio, then explained, “We’re here to interview one of your detectives.”

White bushy eyebrows gathered together in what seemed to be a preset scowl as the desk sergeant squinted at her credentials.

“Any particular one?” he asked in a voice that was so low it sounded as if he was filtering it over rocks.

“Detective,” he said a bit more loudly when she didn’t answer his question. “You want to interview any particular one?” His voice did not become any friendlier as it grew in volume.

“The one who caught that art thief,” Jerry answered, speaking up.

The desk sergeant, Sergeant Nolan according to the name plate on his desk, scowled just a tad less as he nodded. “You wanna talk to Benteen,” he told them.

The moment Nolan said the name, it all but echoed inside her head.

It couldn’t be, Ellie thought. Breathe, Ellie, breathe!

“Excuse me,” she said out loud, feeling like someone in the middle of a trance. “Did you say Benteen?”

“Yeah. Detective Colin Benteen,” the desk sergeant confirmed, acting as if each word he uttered had come from some private collection he was loath to share with invasive civilians. Nolan turned to look at a patrolman on his right. “Mallory, tell Benteen to come down here. There’re some people here who want to talk to him.”

Having sent the patrolman on his errand, the sergeant turned his attention to the people from the news station. “You two wait over there,” he growled, pointing to an area by the front window that was empty. “And don’t get in the way,” he warned.

“Friendly man,” Jerry commented, moving to the space that the sergeant had indicated. When he turned around to glance at Ellie, he saw that she’d suddenly gone very pale. A measure of concern entered his eyes. “You feeling all right, Ellie?”

“Yes,” she responded. Her voice sounded hollow to her ears.

It was an automatic response, but the thing was that she wasn’t all right. She’d recognized the name of the detective, and for a moment, everything had frozen within her. She tried to tell herself it was just an odd coincidence. Maybe it was just a relative. After all, Benteen wasn’t that uncommon a name.

It had been a patrolman with that last name who had come to the scene of the robbery that had stolen Brett from her. This was a detective they were waiting for.

Because of the circumstances that had been involved and the fact that she had removed herself from the scene, Ellie had never actually met the policeman who had arrived shortly after Brett had foiled the robbery. The patrolman, she was later told, who’d tried—and failed—to save Brett’s life.

But she knew his name and at the time had promised herself that as soon as she was up to it, she would seek out this Officer Benteen and thank him for what he had tried to do—even if he had ultimately failed.

But a day had turned into a week and a week had turned into a month.

After several of those had passed, she gave up the notion of finding the policeman to thank him for his efforts.

After a while, the thought of talking to the man who had watched Brett’s life ebb away only brought back the scene to her in vivid colors. A scene she was still trying, even at this point, to come to grips with. She honestly didn’t think that she was up to it. So eventually she avoided pursuing the man altogether.

Jerry was watching her with concern. “You don’t look fine. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you look like you’re about to break into a cold sweat.”

“Jerry, I already have a mother,” she told him, an annoyed edge in her voice—she didn’t like being read so easily. “I said I’m fine.”

He was not convinced and was about to say as much when she turned away from him and toward the man she saw walking toward them. The expression on her face had Jerry turning, as well. If anything, she appeared even paler than she had a moment ago.

“You look like you’re seeing a ghost,” he remarked uneasily.

The universe was sending her a message, she thought. It was time to tie up this loose end.

“Not a ghost,” she answered. “Just someone I never got to thank properly.”

The moment she said that, Jerry knew. The name the desk sergeant had said had been nagging at him. He knew it from somewhere...

“Oh God, you mean that’s him?” Jerry cried. “The policeman who...?”

She waved the cameraman into silence, her attention fully focused on the tall, athletic-looking man in the navy jacket, gray shirt and jeans who was walking toward them.

He had a confident walk, she noted, like someone who felt he had the angels on his side. Maybe he did, she thought.

Ellie unconsciously squared her shoulders as the detective drew closer.

It was time to make up for her omission. The only thing that was left to decide was whether she would do it before they began the interview so she could get it out of the way or wait until after the interview was over so that it wouldn’t make the man feel awkward or uncomfortable. Viewers were always quick to pick up on awkwardness and she didn’t want to cause the detective any undue discomfort. It didn’t make for a good segment, and after all, wasn’t that why she was here?

Ellie made up her mind. The information as to who they were to one another could wait until after she finished talking to him, for the benefit of the home audience.

It took a great deal of effort for her, but by now she was used to playing a part.

Ellie forced a welcoming smile to her face and put out her hand to the detective as he came forward. Her entire attention was now on making the hero of the moment feel comfortable.

“Hi,” she greeted him. “I’m Ellie and this is Jerry, and we’d like to ask you a few questions about those paintings you uncovered.”

Chapter Three

The woman standing by the front window next to the pleasant-faced hulk with the unruly hair was cute.

Beyond cute, Colin amended. There was something appealing about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. As best as he could analyze it, he sensed an intriguing combination of sadness mixed with an undercurrent of energy radiating from her.

And, more startling and thus far more important, he realized that for the first time in months, he found himself both attracted and interested.

There’d been a time when his older brother, Ryan, had called him a ladies’ man, a “babe magnet” and a number of less flattering but equally descriptive terms. And at the time, they had all been rather accurate.

But all that had been before life had abruptly changed for him. Before his brother and sister-in-law, Jennifer, had been involved in that freak skiing accident that had resulted in their being swallowed up by an avalanche. Who could have predicted this outcome when Ryan and Jennifer had gone on a last-minute spur-of-the-moment vacation because a late-season unexpected snowfall had occurred and they were both avid skiers?

Just like that, in the blink of an eye, he suddenly found himself the only family that their only daughter, Heather, had left.

His personality, not to mention his priorities, had changed overnight. He hadn’t been on so much as a date since he’d had to fly to Aspen to identify Ryan and Jennifer’s bodies and to pick up his niece. Heather had been in bed asleep when it had all happened. Her parents had opted to sneak in a quick early-morning ski run before she woke up—not thinking that it would be the last thing that they would ever do.

Stunned, Colin had never thought twice about assuming this new responsibility. He turned his entire life around, then and there, vowing that Heather would always come first.

He couldn’t give up what he did for a living—he’d worked too hard to get to where he was. It came with its own set of dangers, and that couldn’t be helped. But he could definitely make sure that any time outside his job would go to being with Heather, to making sure that she wouldn’t be permanently scarred by the loss of her parents. He’d vowed that he would always be there when Heather needed him to make the night terrors go away.

But just for a moment, this petite woman standing before him took Colin back to the man he had been before all of this had happened to change his life. It made him remember just how he’d felt when a really attractive woman crossed his path.

“Detective?” Ellie prodded when he didn’t seem to have heard her, or at least wasn’t attempting to respond to her greeting.

“Sorry,” Colin apologized, rousing himself out of the temporary mental revelry he’d fallen into. He flashed a smile at her that one of his former girlfriends had called “naturally sexy.” “I got distracted for a moment.”

She was about to ask him if it was because he recalled who she was, but then she remembered that she had given him only her first name. Even if she’d told him her full name, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that the detective would remember her husband and that fatal night at the convenience store.

Or even if he did recall every moment of that night, there was no reason to believe that he would make the connection between her and the man he couldn’t save. King was, after all, a common enough name. Most likely, Benteen probably hadn’t even gotten Brett’s name after everything had gone back to normal—or as normal as it could have gone back to, she silently corrected.

No, if the detective was distracted on her account, he was probably trying to place where he’d seen her before.

As if the presence of a cameraman wasn’t enough of a clue, she thought wryly.

“No problem,” Ellie told the detective. In her opinion, that was a throwaway line that blanketed a lot of territory. She just wanted to do this story and move on. “Your CO told us we could take up a little of your time and ask you about the huge coup you just scored.”

Colin looked at her puzzled, not quite following the sexy reporter. “Excuse me?”

“The paintings,” Ellie prompted. “The stolen paintings that were in the storage unit you found.”

Colin nodded in response but said nothing.

“Well?” she asked, waiting for him to start speaking. Talk about having to pull words out of someone’s mouth. The detective was either exceptionally modest or exceedingly camera shy.

“That about covers it,” he told her.

She could see by the look that Jerry gave her that he had the same thought as she did. This wasn’t going to film well, not unless she could find a way to make this detective come around and start talking. She had a feeling that he would engage the audience once he got comfortable.

“You’re being modest,” she said, her voice coaxing him to elaborate.

He surprised her by saying, “Bragging rights aren’t a part of this job.”

Okay, she thought. He did need to be coaxed. A lot. She had to admit that this wasn’t what she’d expected. Some people, once they got in front of a camera, wouldn’t stop talking. This one seemed reluctant to even start.

“Still, I’m sure that it’s not every police detective who gets to take down an art thief who’s been plaguing the city.”

“I really can’t take any kind of credit for what happened. It’s not as if this was the result of long hours of planning.” He shrugged. “This was all actually just a big accident,” Colin told her.

The job had made her somewhat cynical. It wasn’t anything that she was particularly proud of, just a fact. But Ellie was beginning to believe that the detective was being serious. He was the genuine article. And because of this, she found herself trying to reach out to Benteen.

“There’s that modesty again,” she said. “I tell you what—why don’t you walk me through exactly what happened and we’ll go from there?”

She could see by the look on the detective’s face that he was about to dismiss the whole incident. It made him a rare find in her book. Most men couldn’t stop talking about themselves. But the station manager obviously was expecting a story and she wasn’t about to come back empty-handed. It wasn’t advisable.

“Word for word,” Ellie urged again. “Paint a picture for me, so to speak.”

Colin glared at the camera in Jerry’s hands. It was clearly the enemy. “Are you going to film this?”

“That is the idea,” Ellie said breezily. “Jerry’s just going to keep on filming and when we’re done, it’ll be edited down to about a minute of airtime. Two, tops,” she promised. She could see that the detective was wavering. All he needed was a little push that would send him over to her side. She felt she had just the thing. “You get final say on the footage.”

“I do?” Colin asked, not entirely certain that she was on the level. He was aware of how badly some of his fellow detectives had been portrayed to the public. He wanted no part of that.

“Maybe this’ll convince you,” she said, trying again. “Your CO signed off on this because he knew this would create a positive image of the Bedford PD. And my station manager thought this would be a feel-good piece that would really go over well, especially since those pieces are so few and far between.”

“Well, I guess I’m sold, then,” Colin told her. What he was sold on, he admitted, was the way her clear blue eyes seemed to sparkle as she tried to convince him. That alone was worth the price of admission.

Ellie smiled at the detective.

“Good.” She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Jerry had the camera in position. He did. “All right, just tell me what happened.”

“Tell you?” he asked, thinking he was supposed to talk to the camera.

“Just me,” she assured him. “Talk to me.”

That made it easier. She had a face that invited conversation—as well as a number of other stray thoughts. “I’d just dropped off my niece, Heather, at school—”

Her ears instantly perked up. “Is that a usual thing for you?” The man was beginning to sound like a Boy Scout.

“It is ever since I became her sole guardian,” Colin answered matter-of-factly.

As a human-interest story, this was just getting better and better, Ellie thought. She made a mental note to ask him more questions regarding that situation so she could annotate her commentary once the film had been edited.

“Go on,” she urged.

“An APB came on over the two-way radio about a B and E that had just gone down less than three blocks away from Heather’s school,” he said.

She wanted to get back to that, but first she wanted him to explain some of the terminology he’d just used. “An APB and B and E?” she asked, waiting for him to spell the words out. She knew what he was saying, but the audience might not.

“All points bulletin and breaking and entering,” the detective explained. He was so used to those terms and others being tossed around that it didn’t occur to him that someone might not know what he was talking about.

“Okay. Go on,” she said, smiling at him.

It was a smile he caught himself thinking he could follow to the ends of the earth.

But not anymore, remember?

“The homeowner called 911 to say that he’d heard a noise and when he woke up, he saw a man running across his lawn carrying off his painting. Apparently, the thief had broken in while the guy was still asleep.”

She nodded, focusing on the image of a thief dashing across a lawn with a stolen painting clutched in his hands.

“Definitely not something you see every day,” Ellie agreed drolly.

Colin nodded. “That’s when I saw this guy driving a van that matched the description dispatch had put out. So I followed him. Turns out it wasn’t all that far away,” he added. “He took the painting to a local storage unit. As I watched him, he stashed the painting he’d just stolen in an ordinary storage unit. When I came up behind him, I saw that he had what amounted to fifteen other paintings inside the unit.” Colin paused in his narrative to tell her, “There’ve been a rash of paintings stolen in Bedford in the last eighteen months.”

She looked at him, waiting for more. When he didn’t continue or make any attempt to brag, she asked, “And the paintings that you saw, were they the ones that had been stolen?”

He nodded. “One and the same.”

She tried to get more details. “Was this guy part of a gang?”

“Not from anything that I could ascertain,” Colin told her. “When I questioned him, he said he had taken all the paintings. I think he was telling the truth.”

“And he hadn’t tried to fence any of them?” she asked. It didn’t seem possible.

Colin laughed softly. “Turns out that the guy just likes works of art and he didn’t have the money to buy any of his own, so he came up with this plan.” Colin shrugged. “Takes all kinds,” was his comment.

It certainly did, Ellie silently agreed. “That almost sounds too easy,” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “But sometimes everything just falls into place at the right time and the right way. It doesn’t happen often,” Colin allowed. “But it does happen.”

“Well, apparently, it did for you,” Ellie observed. She all but expected to see the detective kick the dust and murmur, “Ah, shucks.”

Colin turned out not to be as clueless as she momentarily thought him to be. A knowing smile curved his mouth as he guessed, “You’re not convinced.”

The smile came of its own volition. “It’s my doubting-Thomas side,” she admitted.

“We’re checking the guy for priors,” Colin told her. “Right now he’s clean, but we’re not finished. I could give you an update later,” he offered.

“I would appreciate it,” she said, then turned toward something that she knew would interest her viewers. “Tell me more about your niece. How long have you been her guardian?”

The question caught him off guard. They were just talking about the thief’s lack of priors. “Is that important?” he asked, unclear as to why it should be, especially in this context.

If nothing else, Ellie knew her audience and how to make a story appealing to them. “The viewers love to hear details like that about selfless heroes.”

“I’m not a hero and I’m not selfless,” he told her, his manner saying that he wasn’t just mouthing platitudes or what he felt passed for just the right amount of humility. His tone told Ellie that this detective was being straightforward with her, which she had to admit impressed her. He could have just as easily allowed her to build him up without protest.

“Why don’t we leave that to the viewer to decide?” Ellie suggested. “Now, how long have you been your niece’s guardian?”

“Six months,” he told her.

Again, he didn’t elaborate or tell her any more than the bare minimum. Was he being modest? Or was that a highly developed sense of privacy taking over?

Either way, her job was to push the boundaries a little in order to get him to open up. “What happened?” she asked.

He didn’t look annoyed, but he did ask, “Is this really necessary?”

She was honest with him, sensing that the detective would appreciate it. “For the story? No. This is just me asking.”

That brought up another host of questions in his mind. “Why?”

She wanted him to trust her. She needed to know the kind of man her husband had spent the last seconds of his life with. Only then would she know if he had done all that he could to try to save Brett. She was aware that he had probably said he had and filled out a report to that effect, but she wanted to be convinced.

“Shut off the camera, Jerry,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at her cameraman. “We’ve got our story. I’ll meet you at the van.”

Jerry looked at her skeptically, still worried about her. She hadn’t told the detective of their connection yet, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to, and when she did, she might need someone there for her.

But he couldn’t say anything, because it wasn’t his place. And if he did say anything, he knew that Ellie would put him in his place because she refused to tolerate anything remotely resembling pity, even if it came in the guise of sympathy.

All he could do was ask, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” The words Now go were implied if not said out loud.

Shaking his head, Jerry took his camera and walked out.

“See you around, Detective,” he said by way of a parting comment.

Turning back to the detective, Ellie picked up the conversation where she’d left it. “You asked me why before.”

Colin had just assumed that she’d forgotten and would go off on another topic. That she didn’t raised his estimation of her. And he really had to say that so far, he liked what he saw. Liked it a lot. Maybe there was hope for him yet. At least, he’d like to think so.

“Yes, I did.” His tone gave her an opening to continue her line of thinking.

“Because I am one of those people who has to know everything,” she told him simply. “That doesn’t mean I repeat everything I hear or everything I know, but I need to know it. And once I have all the information and can process it, then I can move on.”

He looked at her and made a judgment call. “So this really isn’t for your ‘story’?” he asked.

“No. Not directly.” And then she qualified her statement. “That doesn’t mean that I won’t use a piece of what you tell me—but again, we’ll run it by you first. You’ll get the final okay.”

He had to admit that he thought it a generous way to proceed. “Is this your normal procedure?”

Ellie laughed. She had no idea that he found the sound captivating. “There is no such thing as ‘normal’ procedure. It is what it is at the moment.”

Colin paused, considering her words and if he believed her.

Like a lot of true dyed-in-the-wool detectives, he had “gut feelings.”

“Gut feelings” that saw him through a lot and, on occasion, kept him safe. His gut feeling told him that the woman with the deep crystal-blue eyes was telling him the truth.

He took a chance. “They died in an avalanche.”

“That had to be terrible for you,” she said. It was certainly different from the usual car crash or drive-by shooting. She managed to control her reaction so he wasn’t aware that what he said had affected her.

“It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for Heather, either,” he pointed out.

“You were the one who broke the news to her?” Even as Ellie asked the question, she knew that he would have taken it upon himself to tell his niece. Benteen struck her as that sort of person. She was filled with empathy for both the detective and his niece, knowing what being told news like that felt like.

“I wasn’t about to let anyone else do it,” he said.

No, I wouldn’t have thought so.

Without her realizing it, her estimation of the detective rose up yet another notch.

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