A second chance for Joy

While recovering at a remote cabin, Dr. Simon Walsh stumbles across Cara Amos. Injured and left for dead, Cara is harboring dark secrets. Yet Simon can’t help falling for his mysterious patient. As her memory returns and her injuries fade under his gentle care, he vows to help her find her missing daughter.

At The Lemonade Stand shelter, managing director Lila McDaniels is helping Cara’s estranged father, Edward Mantle, bond with his traumatized granddaughter, Joy. And his feelings extend well beyond gratitude.

Bringing this family together seems impossible... Luckily, Christmas is the season of miracles.

“I’m sorry, Cara, I can’t do it.”

Her gaze shot to his. Wide-eyed. Filled with fear.

“I’m not going to hold you hostage,” Simon quickly assured her. “You’re free to go. But if you do leave, I have to call the authorities. To alert them to the fact that I am aware of a domestic-violence situation. As a doctor, I’m under legal obligation to do so.”

Not technically. He wasn’t licensed to practice medicine in Nevada—his helping her was legal only under the Good Samaritan law. And because initially it had been an emergency situation and she’d refused outside medical care.

Her gaze hadn’t wavered. The panic was there, almost blindingly so, reminding him of a deer in headlights.

“I mean you no harm,” he told her. “To the contrary. Nor am I particularly welcoming of the company. I’m here alone by choice. My reasons for that choice have not changed.”

She blinked.

“But I can’t let you just walk out of here.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to a very, very special story in my Where Secrets are Safe series. If you’ve never been to The Lemonade Stand—please, come in. Visitors to the Stand are transitory, so you’ll fit right in with the rest of the current batch of residents, who are also new here. If you’ve been here before, buckle your seat belts, because you’re in for a double treat.

This story is very different from anything I’ve done before. It’s two full romances—taking place simultaneously in two states—that, unknown to the heroes and heroines, are intertwined. You, the reader, will see the way these people, from opposite sides of a very sad story, give their hearts and souls to try to find sense in a world that makes no sense.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe. Sometimes our thoughts are born through our own perspectives that might not always be completely accurate. Sometimes we act on those thoughts with the best of intentions, and end up places we never meant to be.

Sometimes all we can do is listen to our hearts—like we did as children. Sometimes it takes a child to show us the way...

I love to hear from my readers. Please find me at www.tarataylorquinn.com, Facebook.com/tarataylorquinn and on Twitter, @tarataylorquinn. Or join my open Friendship board on Pinterest, Pinterest.com/tarataylorquinn/friendship!

All the best,

Tara

A Family for Christmas

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Having written over eighty novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America. She has won a Readers’ Choice Award and is a five-time finalist for an RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for a Reviewers’ Choice Award and a Booksellers’ Best Award. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you or someone you know might be a victim of domestic violence in the United States, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

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For my daughter, Rachel (Marie) Stoddard,

and her daughter, Morgan Marie.

I love you both more than life.

Cast of Characters

Wife by Design (Book 1)

Lynn Duncan—Resident nurse at TLS. She has a three-year-old daughter, Kara.

Grant Bishop—Landscape developer hired by TLS.

Maddie Estes—Permanent TLS resident. Childcare provider.

Darin Bishop—Resident at TLS. Works for his brother, Grant. Has a mental disability.

Once a Family (Book 2)

Sedona (Campbell) Malone—Lawyer who volunteers at TLS.

Tanner Malone—Vintner. Brother to Tatum and Talia Malone.

Tatum Malone—Fifteen-year-old resident at TLS.

Husband by Choice (Book 3)

Meredith (Meri) Bennet—Speech therapist. Mother to two-year-old son, Caleb.

Max Bennet—Pediatrician.

Chantel Harris—Police officer. Friend to Max and his deceased first wife.

Child by Chance (Book 4)

Talia Malone—TLS volunteer. Public-school scrapbook therapist. Student of fashion design.

Sherman Paulson—Political campaign manager. Widower. Single father of adopted ten-year-old son, Kent.

Mother by Fate (Book 5)

Sara Havens—Full-time TLS counselor.

Michael Edwin—Bounty hunter. Widower. Single father to six-year-old daughter, Mari.

The Good Father (Book 6)

Ella Ackerman—Charge nurse at Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital. Member of the high-risk team. Divorced.

Brett Ackerman—TLS Founder. National accreditation business owner. Divorced.

Love by Association (Book 7)

Chantel Harris—Santa Raquel detective. Member of the high-risk team.

Colin Fairbanks—Lawyer. Member of Santa Raquel’s most elite society. Principal of high-end law firm. Brother to Julie Fairbanks.

His First Choice (Book 8)

Lacey Hamilton—Social worker. Member of the high-risk team. Child star. Identical twin to daytime-soap-opera star Kacey Hamilton.

Jeremiah (Jem) Bridges—Private contractor with his own business. Divorced. Has custody of four-year-old son, Levi.

The Promise He Made Her (Book 9)

Bloom Larson—Psychiatrist in Santa Raquel. Domestic violence therapist. Divorced.

Samuel Larson—Santa Raquel high-ranking detective. Widower.

Her Secret Life (Book 10)

Kacey Hamilton—Daytime-soap-opera star. Identical twin to Lacey Hamilton. Volunteer at TLS.

Michael Valentine—Cybersecurity expert. TLS volunteer. Shooting victim.

The Fireman’s Son (Book 11)

Faye Walker—Paramedic. Divorced. Sole custody of eight-year-old son, Elliott, who is in counseling at TLS.

Reese Bristow—Santa Raquel fire chief.

For Joy’s Sake (Book 12)

Julie Fairbanks—Philanthropist and children’s author. Sister to Colin Fairbanks.

Hunter Rafferty—Owns Elite Professional event-planning business, specializing in charity fund-raisers. TLS is one of his clients.

A Family for Christmas (Book 13)

Lila McDaniels—Managing director of The Lemonade Stand (TLS). She has an apartment at the Stand.

Edward Mantle—Primary-care physician. Grandfather to seven-year-old Joy Amos. Father to Cara Amos.

Cara Amos—On the run from abusive ex. Joy’s mother.

Simon Walsh—Pediatric thoracic surgeon. Partially blind.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Cast of Characters

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Prospector, Nevada

“DAMN.” TAKING HIS stinging toe with him, Dr. Simon Walsh carefully and deliberately lifted his right foot and took another step forward. Landed it successfully. Then picked up the left. Success. And the right. Stepping slowly. Adding roots camouflaged by dirt and other ground cover to his list of possible dangers.

After four days of traipsing around several times a day in the forest that served as the borders for his self-imposed captivity, he’d amassed a list that could have been overwhelming if he cared to believe that it would be a permanent part of his life.

He wasn’t giving it that much credence.

His left eye stared belligerently at the black patch he’d placed upon it, while his right strained to make out a shape in the cloud cover that had become its vision.

Cloud was better than nothing, which was what he’d had when he’d made it to the emergency room four weeks prior. He had six months to a year before he’d know what good his injured right optic nerve would be, if any. More than four hours of pressure due to swelling would usually be the kiss of death. His had sustained at least five hours. But death meant no sight at all. He had clouds.

And...whack! Taking an involuntary step back, Simon lifted a hand to his forehead to inspect for any damage. He was either sweating or bleeding. Didn’t feel much of a gash. Not enough to require stitches, at any rate.

His outstretched hands—one holding a stick like a blind man’s cane—had missed a branch hanging above shoulder level. And his damned eye...nothing but clouds.

His pits were wet. Long sleeves and jeans in seventy-degree weather tended to do that to a guy exerting himself. It had been forty when he’d gotten up that morning. And in the woods he wasn’t ready to trust bare limbs to his right eye.

“Whoever thought this was a good idea?” He asked the question aloud. Talking to himself. When you were a hermit, living alone in a godforsaken wasteland, you tended to do that, he’d learned.

And didn’t bother to answer himself. Something else he’d learned...your conversational skills changed when there was only one of you.

It had been his idea to cover his one good eye four times a day to force the weaker one to work. Everyone knew that muscles had to be exercised to stay strong.

Not that an optic nerve was a muscle, of course. But he couldn’t let his brain go soft. He had to keep things working so that if the nerve managed to kick into gear, the rest of him would be ready and able to support it.

His forehead stung.

Lifting the patch off his good eye long enough to get a peek at his fingers, he saw blood. But he’d seen more than that on patients four days postsurgery. He snapped the piece of black cloth back into place.

He wasn’t stopping now.

Feeling like a damned freak, he continued staring at white fog, stepping gingerly and making his way. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his day.

Or his life.

A one-eyed surgeon wasn’t going to...cut it.

So much for an attempt at humor. He kicked at the ground. Just to show that he could. That he wasn’t afraid to express himself. He threw away his stick. Took two steps. And lifted the patch long enough to find and retrieve the walking aid.

“If they could see me now.”

Once one of LA’s top children’s thoracic surgeons, now unshaven, wearing jeans he’d stained with jelly that morning when he’d made his right eye get him through breakfast, wandering around in a wooded valley in the northern Nevada mountains.

Until a month ago, his idea of camping out had been a room at a moderately priced chain hotel—as opposed to his more likely choice of a suite in an upscale resort. That had been before he’d needed to prove self-sufficiency.

As his spirits continued to sink, he pushed forward. Reminded himself that he was a lucky bastard. That he sure as hell had no right to feel sorry for himself.

He had a good eye. He could see. Watch TV. Read. Hell, he could even drive.

He was alive.

He just couldn’t be a surgeon.

And he couldn’t ever laugh with little Opus again. Thoughts of his adopted daughter brought him shame at his own selfishness. If ever there’d been a child who’d taken it on the chin and come up with a grin, it had been that feisty little six-year-old.

What did it mean when a guy started thinking in rhymed clichés?

In his case, it meant he wasn’t ready to think about Opus, not even after a year.

Jabbing his stick hard into the ground, Simon stood in place. Staring. Willing his eye to see something. Anything. To make out enough of a shape in the shadows to discern what it was. Just as he’d been doing pretty much every waking moment of the month he’d been holed up in his newly purchased cabin.

He’d found the place on the internet. It came furnished, with its own well and electricity provided by solar panels, wind and a generator for backup. Completely off the grid. There was only one way in—a mile-long private road. His nearest neighbor was five miles or more away. The seller was a lawyer handling an estate bequeathed to charity. No one to care. He’d paid cash on the spot. Left his cell phone at home.

He had too many well-meaning friends and peers who thought they knew better for him than he knew for himself. He had a burner phone, though. He wasn’t foolish. Careless. Or irresponsible.

He wanted to be left completely alone.

At least until he knew his options. Maybe longer. Maybe he wasn’t ever going back...

Simon’s stick hit something on the ground in front of him. Something solid...and yet not hard like a rock. Playing a game with himself, he stared in the general direction of the object, tapping around it to fill in the blanks. It was long. More than five feet. When he pushed it, it had some give, but didn’t really move. A fallen tree perhaps? What kind of tree?

He continued to follow the mass. Didn’t find obvious branches. Apparently a grown man, a surgeon, no less, could be entertained by a fallen tree.

“Now, isn’t that one for the books?”

What books he wasn’t sure. He was tempted to take off his patch—to take the easy way out and see what was blocking his path. Or just step over it. But he wasn’t letting his right eye off that easy. If he’d given up on his young patients as easily as he seemed to want to give up these days, there would be far fewer homes filled with laughter in the Los Angeles valley.

Give him a chest cavity and he could delineate every nerve, vein and muscle. But trees? In Nevada? He knew next to nothing about them. So he thought about fruit. Oranges grew in Nevada. But they’d still be at the little green ball stage this early in the fall. And there were no orange trees in his new yard. Not like a tree with oranges actually growing on it would be fallen over on the ground. More likely it was some kind of cactus.

How far was he from the cabin?

He’d been out about an hour. Didn’t think he’d turned enough to be headed back. But at his pace, even walking straight, he wouldn’t have gone that far.

He came to one end of whatever was blocking the path.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, as though solving some great conundrum. In his current world, this was one. A fact that might bother him later, when darkness set in and he looked back over his day. At the moment, he was occupied.

Challenging his brain.

He took a small step forward. His walking tool gave suddenly. Stumbling, Simon let go of the stick. The log had to be rotted, which meant any number of things could be living in it. Stepping back, he straightened, instinctively yanking off the eye patch. The first thing he saw was his cabin fifty yards away.

“Damn.” He was right back where he’d started.

And then he looked down.

“Holy shit.” He hadn’t been identifying a log.

He’d prodded a body. A body! Feminine. A hooded, long-sleeved sweater covered the top half of her.

He noticed the jeans, the sweater. The feminine curve of hips. But only briefly. Cursorily. His trained good eye had already seen the moving rib cage, indicating life, as he dropped down to the woman lying on her stomach. Her dark hair was long, tangled. Dirty.

And she hadn’t said a word.

Of their own accord, his fingers reached for her pulse, registering a steady, strong beat. Yet she made no sound. No reaction to being touched.

She was sweating, though. In a thick sweater, exposed to the sun, so sweat by itself wasn’t alarming.

“What the hell...”

He needed to see her face, some age identifier, to look at her eyes, her pupils, her lips, but he didn’t dare move her. Not until he knew that her neck was okay...

Already feeling for breaks, he gave an inward shudder as he pictured his idiot self, prodding this poor person with his walking stick.

What had he been thinking?

Finding no obvious breaks, he leaned down, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’m going to roll you over now,” he said. “I’m a doctor and I’m here to help you.”

She appeared comatose, but many could hear while in that state.

Lying beside her, he used himself to support her entire body, and turned with her. Then, sliding aside, he sat up. She had major maxillofacial trauma. Severe facial edema. Her face was badly bruised, so swollen he couldn’t make out her normal features, with open lacerations on the right cheek and chin. Medical terms came to him, but as a doctor of children who had to remember he was speaking to children even in tense or emergency situations, he’d begun translating in his thoughts as well as his words. Her lips were oddly healthy looking, considering the rest of her face, with no cuts or signs of bleeding. He lifted her lids enough to note pupil activity. Gums had good color. No immediate sign of oxygen deprivation.

Breathing was shallow. Skin warm, but not hot.

Lifting up her sweater, he made a cursory check of her torso, finding nothing unusual.

He couldn’t be sure about internal injuries. What he was sure about was getting her inside. Assessing more thoroughly. Doing what he could in the moment.

And then, as loath as he was to expose himself to anyone, anywhere—he was going to have to call for an ambulance to come get her.

Either that or pray that she regained consciousness and could tell him who to call on her behalf.

CHAPTER TWO

HIS ARMS WERE GENTLE. Lying inert, as much by instinct and habit as anything else, Cara remained limp as she awoke to feel him lifting her. He settled her against his body.

Her head shrieked with pain. Please God, let him be in a good mood.

Shawn was kind to her, caring, when he wasn’t tense.

He’d changed his shirt. The day before he’d had on the denim one over his T-shirt, but this one was softer. Must be the blue flannel she’d bought him for his birthday...

The fact that he was carrying her so carefully boded well. Her head fell sideways, settling against his chest and she almost drifted out again.

But the smell. It was unfamiliar.

Shawn didn’t wear aftershave. Or cologne. But they’d been on the run. Maybe he’d stolen a bar of soap from someplace?

He smelled like more than just different toiletries. Nothing that she recognized. Why such a small detail was keeping her conscious, she didn’t know. She kept trying to place the scent.

She liked it.

A lot.

It reminded her of something. She had no idea what. But it felt...safe.

He felt safe.

So maybe he was in a good mood. Maybe she’d be okay for a while. At least long enough to sleep off the headache so she could figure out what she was going to do...

* * *

“OKAY, MY DEAR, let’s get you more comfortable so I can get a look at you.” Simon spoke aloud more out of habit than because he expected a response.

The reaction of the woman in his arms was an instantaneous stiffening. She didn’t fight him as he carried her through the cabin’s main room to the one bedroom. Didn’t say a word. She could still be unconscious, but she was coming back to him.

So he kept talking.

“I’m just going to lay you down on the bed,” he said, leaning over to keep her against him until the bed took her weight. Slowly, watching as her face came into view, searching for signs of consciousness, he stood up. Cursing the right eye that hindered the normal speed of his initial assessment.

She was older than his usual patients, to be sure, but not old. “You look to be about thirty,” he told her. Maybe late twenties. It was hard to tell with the state of her face. In the light from the ceiling fixture he saw something else.

Two things registered at once.

Her eyes had moved beneath her closed lids. Which meant she was conscious.

And the bruises on her face weren’t all recent.

“You’ve been hurt before,” he said softly, his mind racing with possibilities. The obvious first one...a spouse hitting her? If they lived off the grid, as he was doing, it could have been happening for years without anyone being the wiser.

It could also mean that the son of a bitch could turn up at his cabin at any time. Looking for his “goods.”

“Recently, too,” he added, looking for other explanations for the varying degrees of discoloration on her. He could come up with nothing but deliberate torture of some kind. Some of the bruises and lacerations were more than a week old. Maybe even two or three. Some only a day or so.

He’d need to get them cleaned up...

He caught another eyelid movement. Not a twitch. More like an attempt to remain still. And he thought of how this might seem to her. A man carrying her, telling her he was laying her on the bed...

“My name’s Dr. Simon Walsh,” he said, wishing he’d paid more attention when peers at work had mentioned abused patients. They rarely ended up with heart injuries so hadn’t been in his area of expertise. And with his peers, the patients had been children. “I’m a thoracic surgeon. On...vacation,” he added when he realized the absurdity of his current life within the explanation he felt obliged to give. “I just bought this cabin, came up here a month ago.”

He added the latter in case, as he suspected, she was from the area. Probably living somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Nevada.

A lot of the residents he’d seen in the nearest burg, Prospector—less than a town, but more than nothing—had been Native American. He was living on the border of their reservation.

His current patient was clearly Caucasian.

“I need to see how badly you’re hurt,” he said next. He wanted to remove her outerwear. To make certain that her limbs weren’t misshapen—indicating breaks—or swollen—indicating any number of other things. He needed to see if there were worse lacerations. He needed to call someone.

But first, he grabbed the bag he never traveled without. Pulled out a blood pressure cuff and, pushing up the sleeve of her sweater, wrapped it around her arm and pumped. If her vitals told him this was an emergency, he wouldn’t have time to wait for help.

Simon was concentrating so completely on the simple blood-pressure reading—his first medical action since he was attacked and something he hadn’t done himself in years—that he was startled to glance at her face and see her watching him.

She was cognizant. Her gaze was clear. Assessing.

She glanced at the cuff, as if asking, Who travels to a cabin on vacation with a blood-pressure cuff?

“My bag’s on the floor,” he told her. And then said again, “I’m a doctor. Dr. Simon Walsh,” in case she hadn’t been fully aware during his earlier introduction.

“A thoracic surgeon, you said.” Her voice was soft, a bit rough, her mouth barely moving. Almost as though her throat was sore—and her jaw broken. He looked at the sweater zipped up around her neck, wondering if he’d find marks on her throat, too.

Had someone tried to kill her?

Repeatedly? Based on the bruises.

Or was she into something he probably didn’t want to know about?

What if she was the bad guy?

He took off the cuff and pulled a stethoscope out of his bag.

“What’s your name?”

“Cara.”

Pretty sure that a Cara what? would garner him nothing, he nodded. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Eight years younger than he was.

“I’d like to listen to your heart, if that’s okay with you?”

She nodded slightly, timidly. Not like someone who was contemplating some nefarious deed or getaway.

Not that he’d really know. He spent his life with children. Sick children.

Children he’d been forced to leave behind because he could no longer help them...

Leaving her zipper up, he slid the stethoscope chestpiece under the T-shirt he found under her sweater. Her heartbeat was a little fast—nothing to be concerned about, considering the circumstances. Steady. Clear. Even when she took deep breaths as he instructed.

“Can I feel your abdomen? Check for internal injuries?”

She gave the barely discernable nod a second time. But added slowly, “He doesn’t ever hit me there.”

Simon’s fingers didn’t miss a beat. His heart did. His first guess had been accurate. She’d been beaten.

By a man.

Her husband?

An accomplice?

Someone trying to rob her?

A kidnapper?

“What about your extremities? Where do you hurt?”

She shook her head. Started to sit up. “I need to go,” she said. “My arms and legs are fine. Some bruises, maybe. I fell. But I can walk.”

With gentle hands used to coddling children, Simon urged her back down. Felt around both sides of her jaw bone. There were no obvious fractures.

“I can’t just let you walk away from here,” he told her. “The Hippocratic Oath and all.” He could recite the entire thing.

“It’s no longer binding,” she told him. Talking brought obvious discomfort, based on her small movements and the expression on her face, but didn’t seem to hinder her significantly.

Because she was used to the pain?

He studied her. “You were unconscious when I found you. You should have a CAT scan. And an MRI.”

She closed her eyes. Waited a couple of seconds and opened them again.

“I’m an able adult. If you called an ambulance, I would simply leave before it got here.” She started to sit up again. “I actually think I’ve outstayed my welcome as it is. I’ll just go ahead and...”

She winced as she rose up, and Simon lowered her back to the bed once again, pulling a second pillow behind her head.

“You’ve obviously suffered severe trauma to your head. You could have a brain bleed.” Her speech told him she was educated—and perhaps not suffering from serious brain damage.

“My vision’s not blurred. I’m not slurring my words.”

Her Hippocratic Oath comment came back to him. She was right, of course, about how it was no longer binding. Not everyone knew that. “You a doctor?” he asked. Could explain why she was living on or near an Indian reservation.

“No.”

“You work in the medical field?”

“No.”

The woman had no problem withholding information.

Her pupils weren’t enlarged. They were identical in size. And when he shone his light in her eyes, they both responded normally.

“How bad is your headache?” He wasn’t giving her a chance to tell him she didn’t have one.

“On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a six.”

Medical professionals commonly asked patients to rate their pain on the one to ten scale. But a scale of one to ten was used so much it was almost cliché, too.

“Who hit you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

He wanted to push. Didn’t want her to leave. Legally, he couldn’t make her stay. He could only call for emergency service and hope that she didn’t get far enough that they couldn’t find her. But she could refuse to go with them even if he did that.

And what if she did manage to escape? And then died out in the wilderness?

“You need to get checked out at a hospital.”

“You think the doctors there are better than you?”

They could see with both eyes. He didn’t speak aloud. For what he was doing there with her...one eye was plenty.

“They have the equipment to do the proper tests,” he told her. He had to advise her. It was his job. His life’s work.

“I’m not going to any hospital.”

She also didn’t try to sit up again.

“So...I’ll make a deal with you,” he told her, talking on the fly. “You agree to let me get you cleaned up, get a good look at you, do what I can here...you agree to let me take your vitals regularly and to watch you for any sign of more serious injury...and I won’t make any calls. For now.”

“Okay,” she said. Closing her eyes again and opening them. “For now.”

She was watching him but looked like the effort to do so was costing her.

He couldn’t help but wonder what she was really thinking. But he was pretty sure it had to do with leaving as soon as she could.

“You can trust me,” he told her. And then, reaching down into his bag, he pulled out his ID, showing it to her.

She read. “Los Angeles Children’s?”

He nodded and was left with the impression that she knew of the place. Los Angeles was a good ten-hour drive from Prospector, with only enough stops to pee and gas up. Did she know someone from there? Or someone who’d been treated there?

“Do you have any other questions?” He couldn’t guarantee he’d answer them, but if he could prove that he wouldn’t hurt her, he’d do his best.

“No.”

He had questions. And wondered if she’d declined his invitation to ask him anything so that he wouldn’t feel free to do the same.

“Who hit you?”

She turned her head.

“You said he doesn’t ever hit you in the abdomen.”

“Nor on the mouth.”

“Your bruises show signs of previous abuse.”

“He gets tense and...”

“Who is he?” Simon was pretty sure he knew. But he had to make sure. Had to know what he was letting himself in for.

What he might have to protect them both against.

He had a hunting rifle with him. A basic .22 in case of unwanted varmints.

“My husband.”

His heart dropped. Confirmation...and yet...wow. She was so young. With such soulful, intelligent eyes.

And a face swollen almost out of recognition.

“Is he coming after you?” He had to know.

“I don’t think so.” For the first time, she looked away when she answered him.

“I need to know the truth.”

Glancing back at him, she said, “That is the truth. I think he thinks I’m as good as dead, if not gone already. I slurred my words. Started walking crooked. Talking crazy. Told him he had two faces.”

Symptoms of a brain bleed. “You need to get to a hospital.”

“I lied and faked it all. I just wanted him to quit hitting me.”

He had a feeling it hadn’t been nearly as easy to fool the bastard as she made it sound.

“Won’t he get suspicious when he finds you gone?”

“He drove me up here, hauled me out into the woods and left me there. That was sometime yesterday. I think.”

Holy hell! What kind of a beast did that to his own wife?

Studying her face, seeing small lines in her stretched skin, indicating previously healed lacerations, he knew he’d already answered his own silent question. Only a beast would do something like that.

He’d left her to die. And...

Their gazes met. For the first time, he saw stark fear in hers. It was almost as though he’d heard her words before she said them aloud. “He can’t know I’m still alive. If you alert anyone, he might find out...”

Simon wasn’t in the market for company. At all. Of any kind.

But he wasn’t turning her away.

He might be half-blind. A failure. He was not cruel.

“If you stay here, I won’t alert anyone. If you go, I will.”

“How long do plan to keep me prisoner?” The unflappable voice was back.

Maybe he should have seen the question coming. Figured a woman who was used to beatings might think that way. He was used to trying to put himself in young minds when it came to his patients.

“As a doctor, I can’t just let you walk out of here in this condition. You die and it’s on me. Believe me, I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now. I want you to stay here for as long as it takes to get you healthy. I need to start you on antibiotics, too,” he told her, hurrying there at the end.

He’d said too much. I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now.

Clearly, he was out of practice when it came to acting like a rational member of society, or even holding a normal conversation.

Hence his extended trip to the woods. And...maybe...a little bit because of it.

She was studying him. He waited for some takedown regarding his guilt comment. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “Fair enough, Dr. Walsh. I don’t leave, you don’t call. Just until I’m recovered enough to disappear on my own.”

Simon nodded, not sure if he’d come out from the conversation—the day—unscathed. He’d load his gun—just in case her story didn’t hold up. Or whoever had beaten her came looking.

He’d tend to his patient, and then he’d send her on her way. Without alerting anyone to her presence.

From there, she was on her own.

And so would he be.

Just as he’d planned.

CHAPTER THREE

CARA SWALLOWED THE water held to her lips. Whenever the doctor was in the room, she mustered up the wherewithal to speak as though nothing was wrong. Years of practice protecting Shawn—but mostly she had been protecting...

No, she couldn’t go there—had honed her ability to continue on through the pain. As though it didn’t exist.

Sometimes she wondered if pain was just a figment of the imagination. Thought a lot about the power of mind over matter.

She could deal with living in a body that hurt with every move she made.

It was the emotional stuff that she wasn’t so sure about. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to try anymore.

What was the point?

Except that...she wasn’t dead. Shawn had left her for dead. As she’d traipsed through the Nevada wilderness, hungry, hurting, nearly freezing to death at night until she’d found a ditch to huddle in, finding not even a path on which to walk, she’d accepted that she was going to die.

Had come to peace with doing so.

So why wasn’t she dead? Why was she lying on a nice mattress under a soft comforter, wearing a makeshift hospital gown?

The doctor had cut the sleeves off a man’s shirt and instructed her to put it on backward, buttoned only halfway up. He’d said nothing about her undies, and though she’d have liked a change, she’d left them on.

She’d shuddered a time or two as he ran his practiced hands over her body, feeling for breaks, discussing his findings. Her ankle was a little swollen—her doing. As was the bruise on her knee and the bit of swelling on her right wrist. The cuts on her arms and face—all of which he’d carefully cleaned, covered with some kind of ointment and then bandaged where applicable—were compliments of Shawn. The arm abrasions had come when she’d held them up to protect her face.

He’d tended to the bruises and cuts on her legs, too. Left there by the steel-toed tips of the boots her husband wore when he wasn’t surfing. Since moving to the West Coast he’d begun to fancy himself as some kind of cowboy surfer dude.

In the beginning, she’d thought he looked damned cute in his tight jeans and Western shirts unbuttoned to the navel. But somewhere along the way, everything about Shawn had ceased being a turn-on.

According to him he was the one who’d brought joy back to her life, which had been something she hadn’t felt since before her mother got sick and life had become a series of doctors. With her father’s contacts, there’d been a never-ending stream of them. Over and over he’d put her mother through examinations and treatments. All he’d really done was deliver them boatloads of dashed hopes. And...

No, she knew better than to open a door that she’d spent years nailing shut.

Funny, here she was, ready to go herself, and she’d been rescued by a doctor, of all people.

What did that mean?

“Get some rest...” Dr. Walsh had finished tending to her and was pulling the sheet and comforter up to her chin. She’d practically choked getting down the antibiotic and painkiller he’d given her.

A huge believer in accountability and in Karma, Cara decided against thinking for the next few hours. Just long enough to sleep.

Sleep brought clarity, which she needed to figure out what her still being alive meant.

It had been so long since she’d really slept. Without senses on alert. Without fear.

She had nothing else to fear now.

And she really just wanted to sleep.

For as long as he’d let her.

* * *

HE WOKE HER in the late afternoon. Checked her vitals. Shone the light in her eyes again. Gave her more to drink. Cara complied with words of thanks. Hoping to slip back into the forgetfulness of sleep.

“You need to eat.”

Her burning throat was barely handling the liquid, not that she wanted him to know that. “I’m not hungry.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to have an appetite,” the doctor’s kind voice came back at her. “But you’ve gone over twenty-four hours, at least, without sustenance, and I have no way of starting an IV here. So...you eat...or I make a call.”

“You call, I die.” Without forethought she played on the guilt he’d exposed earlier. Men sometimes gave you tells.

Still, her words were thick. She was groggy. She couldn’t believe she still had fight in her. Probably just habit. It would dissipate.

Dr. Simon Walsh was trying to save her life.

She had no life to live. No intention of walking back into the world again. Ever.

Odd that, having made that determination, Karma had seen fit to deliver her up to a doctor. There was that fact staring her in the face again. Even after sleep. Did fate have a shadow side?

Or a twisted sense of humor?

Of course, she didn’t really believe that this doctor, if he was one, which, based on his care, she was pretty sure he was, was really on vacation. He’d said he’d been there a month already. Doctors—especially surgeons—didn’t take off that kind of time. And he obviously wasn’t planning on leaving in the next little bit, since he’d had no problem with keeping her there with him for as “long as it took.”

He couldn’t handle a death on his conscience. Pretty obvious he already had one there.

Ha! What if Karma had delivered her up to a doctor who was also a murderer? That one fit better. More like Fate and Karma were working together.

Which was always how she’d thought life worked. Until she’d learned that it didn’t. That no matter how good you were, how kind, how many good deeds you did or how hard you tried, love didn’t win in the end.

“I’ve got canned soup—pretty much any kind you’d want. I’d suggest starting with chicken noodle.”

She didn’t want any soup. Nourishment would only prolong things. But she didn’t want to be delivered back to Shawn, either. She’d much rather Walsh killed her. Inject her with something and be done with it.

Now, that would be good Karma. So maybe her good deeds wouldn’t go unpunished...

Lord knew, a needle and drifting off to sleep would be better than being locked up in a jail cell. Which was what she deserved.

If she could only wrap her mind around that truth.

“’Kay.” She’d eat his soup.

So he could get on with things. Even if, for now, it was just to go away and let her get back to sleep.

* * *

IT WAS DARK outside when he woke her again. Ironically, this time Cara felt hungry. Probably because of the whole bowl of soup he’d spooned into her mouth before. She’d had to keep her eyes closed while she swallowed, lest he see the tears that the resulting pain brought to her eyes. She couldn’t risk him figuring he’d have to call someone to do something about it.

It would go away in a few days. It always did. Her throat muscles just needed enough time to heal from Shawn’s strangling grasp. He never went far enough to do actual damage. Only enough to instill fear. And pain.

Which was why, once she’d known there was no reason to stay with him any longer, she’d had the idea to fake alarming symptoms. He’d been so careful to make certain she never really needed medical attention. Which told her he was afraid of her needing medical attention. She knew him well. Had pegged it right.

Up until the part where she’d been found out in the middle of nowhere by a surgeon on extended vacation with someone’s soul on his conscience...

He put water to her lips. She drank, her throat muscles throbbing with pain at every swallow. Took another pain pill. The antibiotic, he’d said, was only twice a day.

“You need to use the restroom?”

She shook her head. Not badly enough to get up. Or have him carry her there then wait around while she did her business.

Though why she should care made no sense, either.

Still, she’d go when she could get there by herself. She’d once held it for thirty-six hours when Shawn had been on a particularly brutal bender and she’d had Joy safely hidden in the dog house that Shawn had later torn down. Joy, poor little thing, had had to wear torn pieces of Cara’s clothes as diapers until her father had sobered up.

Then he’d bought them both new wardrobes. And reminded her, with tenderness, that as a respected business owner, he would be believed when he told people the fight had been her fault. If she said anything. Reminded her, too, the hell he’d rescued her from. How he’d supported her. How he still provided for her and Joy—everything either of them could ever want. He’d been wonderful for over a year after that time...

“Can I get you anything else?”

The doctor had taken her vitals. Shone the light in her eyes again. Must have been satisfied. She supposed that was fine. If he knew she was on her deathbed, he’d make his damned call.

“No, thank you.” Her parents had been sticklers for manners. She had to be polite. Even at the end.

Denying her hunger felt right.

It was dark out and the doctor was wearing sweats. Another flannel shirt. She wondered if it was the middle of the night. Wondered where he was sleeping.

Wondered if he’d set some kind of timer to check on her. Figured by the spike in his short hair and the stubble on his chin that he must have.

What a nice thing to have done.

Santa Raquel, California

THE PHONE WAS RINGING. Lila McDaniels, managing director of The Lemonade Stand, a unique women’s shelter on the coast of California, sat straight up in bed. Being awoken in the middle of the night wasn’t an oddity in her line of work. It also didn’t often happen to her at home, in her condo. Her sacred space.

It was her cell phone. Only a few people had the number. Heart pounding, she grabbed it before she could get her glasses on to see who was calling.

“Hello.” Her tone was all business. It was all she knew how to be.

“Lila? I need your help.”

Edward. Her heart gave a little leap of a different kind—yet just as unsettling—when she recognized his voice. She’d known him over a month. Had spent a lot of time helping him with his granddaughter. It was not outlandish that she’d know his voice.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, already out of bed and pulling on a pair of brown pants. With her career—tending to the needs of abused and at-risk women and children—she was always ready to go.

“Joy’s crying and I can’t get her stop. She keeps asking for her mother. Wants to know where Julie is. Asking me if Hunter’s home. Obviously she wasn’t ready to stay with me. I’ve tried rocking her. Talking to her. Gave her some warm milk. Turned on the TV. Nothing’s working. Can I bring her back? Please?”

She’d worried that it might be too soon for Edward’s new-to-him seven-year-old granddaughter to spend the night in his hotel suite—a night away from The Lemonade Stand where she’d been living since she’d seen her father beat up her aunt and then cart her mother away.

But he’d been granted temporary custody and would be given full custody in the event that his daughter’s body was found. Sara, Joy’s counselor, had felt that the sooner the little girl found security within her new family unit, the better. Especially since her father’s arrest.

Shawn Amos had been the last one seen with his wife. Beating her. Hauling her away from their house by her hair. The same day he’d beaten his sister to death. The man was in jail on charges of first-degree murder. His wife, Joy’s mother, Cara, was missing—and the man claimed to have no idea where she was. Police were actively searching for her, but many assumed the worst. That they were seeking a dead body, not a live one.

Especially after days had passed since Shawn Amos’s arrest and Cara hadn’t turned up. If she were able, she’d certainly have sought help. By all accounts, she’d lived for Joy. Nothing would stop her from getting back to her daughter. If she was able.

“I can hear the tension in your voice,” Lila said, having pulled the phone away only long enough to slide the beige turtleneck over her head and step into low-heeled brown shoes as she grabbed her jacket.

“I don’t know what to do,” Edward, a general practitioner from Florida, said. “I love this child more than I thought possible. I’m blowing it already...”

“If I can hear the tension in your voice, so can she,” Lila said, keys in hand. “Ask her if she wants to come back to The Lemonade Stand. Talk to her like she’s one of your young patients. I’ll hold.”

She could hear Edward call Joy’s name. Hear his impersonal yet kind tone as he did as Lila requested.

Lila heard no response. But no crying, either.

“She nodded.” Edward came back on the line.

“Don’t bother changing her out of her pajamas,” Lila said. “Wrap her in a blanket and carry her down to the lobby. Call for your car first. Talk to her. Doesn’t matter what about. Your voice will be reassurance. Your body warmth gives her a sense of security. Make sure she’s buckled up. Drive carefully and I’ll see you there.”

She didn’t have to go in. She could call Lynn Bishop, the full-time nurse who lived on the premises. Lynn would get Sara in. Lila could handle the rest in the morning. Any other time, with any other resident under these circumstances—no lives at risk—she would have done so.

But she didn’t. For the first time since she’d come to The Lemonade Stand she’d let something get personal.

Edward needed her.

And damn her for needing to be there for him.

CHAPTER FOUR

Prospector, Nevada

CARA SLEPT FOR two days. Two days in which Simon knew moments of peace, of pleasure, and moments when he sank into pure hell. Tending to a patient again—yeah, of course there’d be moments of pleasure. He was a doctor. Doctoring was all he’d ever wanted to do. From the time he was in junior high he’d known his course.

Peace...now, that had surprised him a bit. Sitting in that cabin in the evening, with the light down low and a book in his lap...and upon first waking in the morning, knowing that someone was in the next room, having to keep a schedule, having something to do at a particular time...had brought peace. He should have known. Should have been able to figure out that he needed structure. Human Nature 101.

And sinking into hell—well, that had pretty much been the rest of the time that he wasn’t climbing his way back out of it.

His patient, on the morning of her third day with him, woke him when she moved quietly through the body of the cabin to the restroom she’d visited a few times in the previous two days, with him right behind her in case she felt weak. On those occasions, he’d left her at the door. She’d called out to him when she was ready for him to come get her.

When he’d seen her underwear hanging wet and obviously cleaned on the far towel bar the previous morning, he’d taken it out to dry in the sunshine after he’d seen her back to bed. Everything had been right where she left it when she’d made her next trip, and had disappeared from the bar right after.

She’d consumed three cans of soup. Half a cracker. And a couple of glasses of orange juice. Along with more than a quart of water. The previous evening he’d removed the makeshift butterfly bandages he’d put on her face and was encouraged by the pink skin surrounding her worst abrasions. Her skin had been cool to the touch since day one. She was healing nicely with no sign of infection.

Pretending to remain asleep on the pullout as he listened to her cross the floor, move down the short hall and close the bathroom door behind her, Simon considered what the day would bring. She was able to get up, move about without any slowness of step or obvious signs of dizziness. It was time for her to resume minimal activity. Another full day in bed was not going to be good for her.

A woman up and about his cabin, needing another day or two of rest, but no longer requiring the direct supervision of a physician, was not good for him.

As a patient, she’d either been asleep, answering his questions or following his orders. He’d kept his questions strictly professional. And his orders—a couple more bites, deep breath, please—even more so.

He needed her gone so he could get back to the business of getting back to his life. Getting back out in the woods. Challenging himself more than closing one eye indoors would do. He hadn’t worn the eye patch since he’d found her.

She had no idea she was dealing with a one-eyed man, and he had every intention of having that state of affairs remain just as it was. But with that, his right eye could grow weaker, letting the left eye do all of its work. Not wanting to leave her alone in the cabin—not completely sure she wouldn’t bolt on him—he’d had to settle for closing his left eye and watching the old television set that worked only with the DVD player attached. He’d kept the sound low, so as not to disturb his patient, and was pretty sure that the time he’d thought he’d seen a shadow move across the screen had not been a brain trick brought on by the fact that a female voice in the movie had just said come here. He was pretty sure he’d seen that shadow.

And was antsy to get outside in the daylight and test himself.

Just as antsy as he was to have the woman out of his house.

Wanting to no longer have a patient to care for...well, with his usual self-honesty, he had to admit that he wasn’t eager for that part of this little time warp to end.

Simon was sitting up, in the sweats and flannel shirt he kept by the couch to put on when he had to tend to his patient during the night, with the bed already folded away by the time Cara came back through the front room. He’d been keeping the place toastier at night, in deference to his patient, but even if he hadn’t been, he was a sleep-in-the-buff guy.

She’d dressed herself. That first day, he’d washed her clothes. Left them on top of the wooden trunk at the end of the bed. Her long dark hair was in a ponytail. He didn’t know where she’d found the rubber band. The first morning she’d woken in his cabin, he’d offered her a spare comb and toothbrush. She’d brushed but had been too weak, or in pain, to shower. She’d obviously taken care of that this morning.

“You found your clothes.” What did you say to a woman you barely knew when she was standing in the middle of your remote hideaway cabin before you’d even been to the bathroom in the morning?

“Yes.” Her body faced the bedroom, but she stood halfway between it and the bathroom, looking at him. Sort of. Her gaze wandered toward the floor.

She appeared to have no curiosity about her surroundings. But then, she’d had two days’ worth of trips back and forth to the bathroom to check it out. He hadn’t noticed her looking around then, either.

“Uh, thank you. For washing them.” She glanced at him, held his gaze and then wavered again.

He couldn’t figure her out. The more she recovered, the more docile she seemed to become. Why would a woman have more fight in her when she was physically weak than when her strength had started to return?

“You’re welcome,” her said after a moment of studying her. “I’m fixing oatmeal and toast for breakfast. You should eat at the table this morning.” Because she couldn’t spend another full day in bed.

His thoughts were repeating themselves. She had to be up and about. He didn’t want her about. She was too weak to hike out of there on her own. And neither of them relished the idea of visitors. All things they had to talk about.

She didn’t seem to have anything to say. With a nod, she turned away, entered her room and the cabin grew silent. She hadn’t closed the door. He could go look in and see what she was doing.

He made oatmeal, instead.

* * *

CARA WASN’T AFRAID. If she’d ever in a million years imagined herself in her current position, she’d have figured herself for terrified, but she wasn’t. Her heart was calm. Resigned. At peace. Karma had been fulfilled, and life and death would be what they were.

Fate had led her to this path. Her way was clear. She was completely, utterly alone now.

No one to miss her, either, which made it all easier. Except Mary. But Mary would be much happier now. Shawn loved his sister. Looked out for her. The two had formed a blessed bond during their difficult upbringing. Shawn never spoke harshly to Mary, never lifted a hand to her except when she was interceding on Cara’s behalf. Without Cara there...

Shawn. A vision of her husband’s smiling sun-drenched face, windblown hair, came to mind. She’d met him on the beach in Florida. His confidence and joy in living had captivated her...

No. These last minutes, last hours, last day or two at the most, were hers. They were days to find her essence. To cling to it. To slide away with her heart firmly attached to its goal and get to those waiting for her on the other side.

If she got there—where they were. Surely she was paying her price here. Bowing her head, she prayed to all that was, to angels and stars and heavens, begging to let her earthly life be the penance. The thought of being anywhere in eternity but with those she’d loved with all her heart who’d gone before her...

Clang! It sounded like a pan had dropped on the old linoleum floor in the kitchen. Picturing the scarred red pattern in her mind, she imagined the doctor picking up whatever he’d dropped. And paused to wonder whether those unsteady fingers had cause him to lose a life.

Staring ahead, she straightened. She couldn’t control the future. Or what would happen to her when she passed. She could only have faith. Keep her mind on what must be. She’d escaped Shawn. That had been answer enough for her. She was meant to die out here.

Shawn had thrown her driver’s license on the ground near her body—so authorities would be able to identify her, she knew. When she’d started her trek in the woods, she’d slid it inside the cup of her bra. Now it lay in the back pocket of her jeans. She was ready to be identified.

But first, she had to get away from the man hell bent on keeping her alive to salvage his own soul.

Sitting quietly, almost numbly, on the side of the bed, she waited to go eat oatmeal.

* * *

SIMON HAD VERY carefully set his place at the end of the wooden table that sat four. Placing her bowl and spoon directly on his left, the brown sugar and plate of buttered toast in front of them, left his uncooperative right eye with little responsibility. He’d called her to the table, set to pouring milk into a pitcher, heard the scrape of her chair and turned to see her sitting in his seat.

What guest took the seat at the head of the table?

The table was oblong. She’d taken the seat closest to the kitchen. And he was screwed. Failing to come up with a reason to move the second place across the table, Simon set the pitcher of milk next to the toast and took her chair, leaving his nearly blind right eye as his leading man.

* * *

KNOWING THAT SHE wasn’t going to get away without his sending out a search party unless she convinced the doctor that she was fine, Cara ate every bite of cereal in her bowl. At least swallowing no longer hurt. She had a piece of toast. And felt guilty for doing so. She was only prolonging a life meant to end. She wouldn’t take her own life. Her mother had taught her well, and killing yourself, no matter how imminent death might be, was wrong.

Karma, Fate—they could use you right up until your last breath. Even the way you took your last breath could be used—to help someone else. You had to let nature take its course. And she would. Just as soon as she could get away from her current predicament.

“That was good, thank you.” Her manners, another reflection of her mother, were ingrained. Funny how she was thinking of Mom so much. Must be because being in her company again was so imminent. She felt comfort and then knew guilt again. She didn’t deserve comfort. She was scum of the earth. Worse than Shawn and...

“You’re shaking.”

Cara came out of her personal hell to see the doctor studying her. With that way he had of tilting his head a bit to the side. She’d noticed it the first day. Kind of liked it.

She would pay for her mistakes by Fate’s plan. In Fate’s time. Peace settled over her again.

“Finish up your juice and we’ll get you settled on the couch,” the doctor said, nodding at her glass. His voice was...tender. She responded to it. Knew she shouldn’t. His kindness was wasted on her.

“I was planning to leave today.”

With a small frown, he shook his head. “We agreed you’d stay until you were better.”

“We said a few days.” Funny how absence of fear freed up voice. She didn’t know the doctor. She figured he had a death on his conscience. And that he was hiding away from something. There were six months’ worth of soap and other supplies in the big laundry closet at the back of the bathroom. He’d been gentle and respectful in his care of her. Professional. But it could just be until she was well enough to serve another need.

Men had those needs. Didn’t seem to matter what was going on in their lives. And one as hot as he was, a doctor, no less, probably wasn’t used to going without.

Still, she knew no fear. Had nothing left to lose...

“...you’re still weak, as evidenced by your shaking, but after two days in bed, with only a bit of soup to eat, you will be weak. You’ve been badly beaten. Repeatedly, in my opinion. Your body is pulling all of your energy into the healing process. For this reason, I cannot, in good conscience, let you wander out there on your own. I will, however, drive you to the closest town if there’s somewhere else you’d rather be.”

Town! Shawn could be there. Her heart pounded. Shawn couldn’t know she was still alive. She couldn’t go back to him. She’d rather kill herself. Shawn...he knew her weaknesses, her issues. Her mistakes... He’d use them against her...

So much for no fear. The same sense of purpose that had come over her the night she’d convinced Shawn she had a brain bleed took root again.

Sitting up straight, she said, “I’m fine. Really. Let me prove it to you. I’ll...” she looked around “...clean the cabin for you today. I’ll stay busy all day. And when you see that I don’t pass out or have a heart attack, you agree to let me go.”

“You are not cleaning my cabin.” He glanced around, turning his body as though he had to inspect every corner of the building. “In the first place, it doesn’t need to be cleaned. I have a system...a schedule.” He shook his head, as though he wasn’t sure what he was saying. Or maybe why. And then, with more of the gentle bossiness she was used to, he said, “What kind of a doctor would I be if I let you overextend yourself, cleaning up after me?”

The words reminded her of his earlier statement. Something about not being able to afford another life on his conscience.

“I’d like you to spend the day out here, on the couch, sitting up, except for naps if you feel the need, with some light activity. You have no broken bones, but you’re still badly bruised. And the blows to your face were severe. We need to give the swelling some more time to dissipate, inside and out.”

She hadn’t studied her face in the mirror. Had actually avoiding even looking at herself, other than to focus on individual cuts as she’d tended to them. She’d felt all of the bruising, though, and the bumps, as she’d washed her face in the shower. She’d felt the sting as the soap and water sluiced over some of the deeper cuts.

“I put the salve on the wounds after I washed, just as you instructed.” Antagonizing him, in any way, would be counterproductive.

He nodded. “I can see that.”

“Thank you for the butterflies. The cuts are healing nicely.” Unlike some of the other cuts Shawn had inflicted over the years, calling them surfing accidents and then insisting that she didn’t need medical attention. Of course, he’d taken advantage of her doctor phobia on that one. She didn’t go to them.

Except for...well, Mary had helped her find...had gone with her...

Mary. Sweet Mary. Sometimes she wondered if part of Shawn’s appeal all along had been the younger sister he’d protected so fiercely. From the time they were ten and fourteen it had been just the two of them, growing up in foster care.

She hoped that Mary, her sister-in-law, best friend and salvation, was going to be happy now that Shawn had no reason to be upset with her.

“You’re tired. Let’s get you to the couch.”

Blinking, Cara realized she’d been fazing out while the doctor had been watching her. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did need a bit more rest.

Just a short nap.

“I feel badly leaving you with the dishes.” She’d had an earlier thought that she’d do them before she left...

“I wouldn’t have let you do them if you tried, so this just saves us wasting your energy on another argument,” he said as he led her away from the table.

She didn’t want to lie on the couch with him sitting there. Didn’t want to sleep in the open...

“I’d be less of an intrusion if I napped in the other room,” she said, and when he paused, added, “I promise to sit on the couch the rest of the day and follow your instructions without argument.”

She didn’t want to spend another whole day in his cabin. Prolonging the inevitable. But she needed the bed. Her head was starting to hurt and she was feeling a bit nauseous, too. She shouldn’t have had that last piece of toast.

“I’m going to hold you to that promise,” the doctor said as he saw her to the door of the room and let her walk alone to the bed.

“I know.”

He stood there until she was settled on the four-poster she’d made that morning with a cover from the trunk over her.

“Sleep well, Cara.”

She kind of thought he’d smiled at her as he left the room.

Clearly, the man needed her to be a successful project.

CHAPTER FIVE

THERE WAS NOT a hell of a lot to do in a cabin that had only one main room and only burner-phone contact with the outside world. He’d been so busy sending himself on hikes, even on the one day it had rained since he’d been there, and bumbling blindly around the interior of the place, making his right eye work—or else—that he’d failed to consider that the hours would be long and excruciatingly empty with a patient sharing the space.

He offered her the option to choose a book from the library he’d brought up with him. It covered an entire wall of the cabin. She did, and they read for a while. Until lunch, which she’d offered to help him make. He hoped his refusal didn’t come out sounding as desperate as it felt. He’d been looking forward to the ten minutes alone in the little kitchen that it would take him to grill up some cheese sandwiches.

Out of habit, when they first sat down, he studied the bruises and cuts on her face, making certain there was no sign of infection.

“You really don’t have to look at me right before you eat,” she said. “I’m fine with you looking away.”

“You say that as if you wouldn’t find it painful to have someone look at you and need to look away.”

Her shrug touched him. The ease with which she blew off pain bothered him, too.

“You’re used to walking around with bruises on your face.”

“You can see the scars, Doctor. They aren’t all that noticeable when I have makeup on, but you know this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. Which is why I know I’m fine. I’ve never taken even so much as a morning off from work in the past.”

“You weren’t left for dead in the past. Hadn’t faced a night of exposure. And you’re right, I’ve seen the scars. A couple of the cuts you have right now, most particularly the one on your lateral left cheek, had I not butterflied it, would have left a much deeper scar than the ones already there.”

“I thanked you for them. The butterflies.”

“I’m not looking for thanks.” He wasn’t looking for anything. But he got kind of frustrated when she silently finished half a sandwich. Some answers would be nice.

“I’m of the opinion that these current injuries are worse than those left from previous beatings.”

She didn’t respond.

“How did you go to work...on those mornings you didn’t take off?” His conversational skills definitely rusty, he filled his mouth with sandwich.

“Shawn owns a surfing school. I run...ran...the business end. Taking registrations, billing, scheduling, that kind of thing. A lot of it I could do from home.”

He focused on the way the bruise to the right of her lip moved when she spoke. It was showing no signs of the yellowing that would tell him it was healing with the rest of them.

He didn’t have to know her story. Her health was the only thing that concerned him. Still, they had to do something. “So, you hid out until you looked better. What about the scars?” he asked even as he remembered her mention of makeup.

“I didn’t always hide out,” she said. “Everyone knew that I sucked at surfing. As many times as Shawn tried to teach me, I just couldn’t make myself stay up on the board. Anytime I had bruises, he’d just say I’d tried to go surfing again.”

“And doctors believed him? What about the reports...”

“No doctors,” she said, her tone firm. Then she glanced at him, almost apologetically, it seemed, and said, “I’m not real fond of those who work in your profession.”

Interesting.

“No offense,” she added, biting into the second half of her sandwich. “You’ve been great. I feel fine. Well enough to leave...”

He raised his eyebrow, glad that the right side of his face, including the eye itself, still moved along with the left.

“...I know,” she said after a second under his silent look. “I promised I’d stay at least until tomorrow.”

They finished eating. He didn’t ask why she disliked doctors. She didn’t talk about leaving. He let her help him clean up—because it consisted of throwing away the napkins on which he’d set their sandwiches and washing out the glasses they’d used for their tea.

All that was left, then, was moving back to the living area—she on the couch, he with his book in the easy chair next to a side table with a lamp. He could read just fine. He could do most things just fine.

His right eye wasn’t getting the exercise it needed, though. Every hour mattered.

* * *

CARA COULDN’T STOP looking at him. The first time had been an accident. He’d turned a page; she’d looked up and caught his eye. Sort of. He hadn’t been focused on her, but she’d been in his line of vision. Usually a person would have fully focused, once caught out with that kind of sideways glance, right?

Without even a hint that he’d seen her, he looked out the window to the left of him. She’d waited for him to say something. Eventually he’d gone back to his reading.

And so had she.

She wouldn’t have expected that a woman so close to leaving the earth would care at all about broadening her mind, but the book she’d chosen—mostly because he’d been waiting for her to make a choice and it had been right in front of her—dealt with international espionage. Nothing she had any familiarity with whatsoever. The writing style was good. And the story was actually interesting enough to take her mind off the interminable wait.

Except for the break she took every ten minutes or so to look at him. Mostly, he was reading. Or staring out that window.

Maybe he saw something in the dry desert landscaping in the front yard that she was missing. Lots of sagebrush. Trees, because they were up on a mountain. But it was mostly rock and dirt with patches of weedy grass. Rough ground, all of it.

As she well knew. Cold ground, too, where it wasn’t exposed to direct sunlight.

He was doing it again. Turning his eyes enough that he had to see her watching him. Saying nothing.

He definitely had his secrets.

But that was fine. So did she.

Santa Raquel, California

LILA WAS IN her office, tending to a pile of paperwork—state compliance forms—early Friday evening. It had been two days since the near all-nighter she’d pulled pursuant to Edward’s call for help. She’d slept nearly twelve hours straight on Thursday after work, but she still didn’t feel rested.

Weariness had been slowly creeping up on her over the past few weeks, interspersed with bits of almost excitement-laced hours of energy. So unlike her. If things persisted, maybe she’d call her doctor.

The Stand was unusually busy. They’d added twenty more beds over the past year and still were almost filled to capacity. So much violence. So much pain.

It was no wonder she was tired.

And yet...with her right hand hovering over a signature line, she paused, took hold of her mouse in her left hand and opened a private folder on her computer. From day one she’d been saving pictures—taken with permission and for her personal use only—of recovered residents, survivors who were living happy, productive lives. Some of them for the first time.

As her gaze passed from one to another, she was filled again with the same sense of peace, knowing that she was not only where she was needed, but where she needed to be. Wanted to be.

Her gaze came to rest on the digital picture collages she’d made of the children who had come through the Stand—some with their mothers and a few alone. Looking at those smiles settled her entire being. She hadn’t been able to save her own little girl. But there was no doubt in Lila’s mind or heart that from her place in heaven, her own sweet girl watched over every single one of the TLS children. Lila and her baby girl were in partnership on this one.

People thought she lived alone. That, other than work, she spent her entire life alone. She knew some of her closest associates had concerns about her lack of outside life. She knew that, with loving hearts, they wondered about her. And every day, when she went out on the premises and offered smiles, when she brought calm to traumatic situations and gave peace to destroyed hearts, she also knew that she wasn’t alone. That she didn’t live alone. She and her baby girl, her precious daughter who’d only made it to the age of twelve, were in this together...

A knock sounded on her office door, and the pen she’d been holding over a form left a jagged mark on the signature line.

“Come in.” With her left hand still on the mouse, she quickly clicked out of the folder.

An impressive-looking suited man stepped halfway into her office. His short graying hair was impeccably in place, as was the silk tie inside his buttoned jacket. His features, while handsome, weren’t outwardly remarkable. Her stomach jolted anyway.

“Edward! I thought you’d gone. You have your dinner tonight...” Dr. Edward Mantle had been invited by a group of doctors he’d met at a recent hospital charity event to join them for their biweekly boys’ night out.

She’d thought he’d left without stopping in to say goodbye.

Not that he was required to do so. But he’d been in court that morning. She’d just kind of expected, since she’d been a rather major part of this journey with him and his family, that he’d fill her in.

She’d kind of expected him to let her know how lunch went with Joy, too. Instead of taking his new-to-him granddaughter overnight right away, they’d decided to try several more day outings first. Because he was from Florida, not familiar with Santa Raquel and staying in a hotel, Lila had been more involved with him than she might otherwise have been.

Most of her participation, however, had been exactly what she’d have done for any other child who’d just lost all of the family she’d ever known in a horrifically traumatic experience.

“I sent my regrets for this evening’s gathering,” Edward was saying. “You got a minute, or would you like me to catch up with you later?”

“Of course I have a minute.” Pushing aside the forms, Lila set down her pen and rose. “Have a seat.” She indicated the couch and took the armchair perpendicular to it. Her families always came first.

“I’ve just left Joy,” he said. Lila was not pleased by the rush of...lightness...at his remark. He’d come straight to her. As though they were somehow partners in the whole Mantle/Amos trauma.

In a sense they were, of course, partners. With boundaries. Professional boundaries.

Her only job was to facilitate as happy an outcome as she could. To be looking out for Joy’s well-being first and foremost.

She wasn’t faltering there. Joy came first. It was just...she cared, more than she felt comfortable with...about Joy’s grandfather’s feelings, too.

A widower whose only child was missing and presumed dead, the man was completely, utterly bereft.

Lila knew what that felt like. The loneliness. The burying of your own daughter. The loss of family. Of love.

And this wasn’t about her.

Edward wasn’t saying anything. He’d just left Joy. And was sitting in her office, on her couch, his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together.

The doctor who’d, overnight, left his practice in Florida to fly to California to find his daughter and take charge of his granddaughter, was clearly at a loss.

He’d come to her.

Her job was to comfort.

Leaning forward, Lila touched the top of his hand. Touching was not her job. She sat back but had his attention.

“Tell me about lunch with Joy.”

She needed to know what had happened in court that morning, too. Shawn Amos, Joy’s father and Cara’s husband, was supposed to have been indicted. And Chantel Fairbanks, a Santa Raquel detective and a member of the High Risk team that had been formed through The Lemonade Stand to help prevent domestic violence deaths, had put in a request for a meeting with the inmate before he was transported back to prison.

Chantel had wanted to speak with Shawn Amos, one on one, alone in a courthouse conference room, to see if she, a female alone, could get any more of a reaction out of him than any of the officers—both male and female—who’d questioned him repeatedly at the police station and in prison. But Joy came first. Edward had taken her to lunch.

“Not much to tell,” Edward said, looking at her, then back at his hands that were plastered together. “I took her to Uncle Bob’s.” A burger joint on the beach with an oversize sandbox. A favorite with most of the Santa Raquel kids Joy’s age. “When I asked her if she wanted to play in the sandbox, she shook her head...” His tired gaze settled on Lila and she couldn’t help but look for the light of quiet strength she’d come to associate with him. Finding it, she nodded at him to continue, clasping her own hands together to keep herself from reaching for him again.

“Did she hold your hand as you walked inside?” Lila asked. They’d been working on it all week. Edward holding out his hand to the little girl. Repeatedly. Hoping she’d take it.

He shook his head.

Joy went with Edward when she was told to do so. But she’d only ever spoken directly to him when she’d been defending Julie Fairbanks—a TLS volunteer whom Joy seemed to have adopted as a surrogate mother. She’d told him that he could not be her grandfather if he didn’t believe that Julie was the author of the children’s books Joy had clung to since arriving at the Stand.

Julie had penned—and drawn—the stories, but until Joy’s announcement, only the child and a few others had known that the twenty-nine-year-old philanthropist was also a successful author.

Until Julie worked with Joy, the little girl hadn’t spoken a word after she’d been brought to The Lemonade Stand. Julie, through Amy, the character in her books, had connected with the child enough for her to tell them that she’d witnessed her father beating her aunt and mother. That her mother had told her aunt to take Joy and run, and that the aunt had hidden with the child behind an old dog pen. From there, Joy had seen her father haul her mother away by her hair.

The aunt, Mary Amos, had then run with Joy to the neighbors for help, after which the woman had been rushed to the hospital where she’d later died.

Joy spoke to those caring for her at The Lemonade Stand now. She spoke to Julie and to Hunter, Edward’s nephew, fairly regularly, too. Spoke when spoken to. Or to make requests. But other than when she was at Edward’s and crying out for others, she never spoke to Edward.

“I ordered a burger and fries, and she ate every bite,” he said in the reserved way he had, taking his time.

Lila could see how strangers might see Edward as somewhat cold. And had no idea why she was so certain that a solid core of warmth ran deeply through him.

“That’s good, Edward.” Lila’s job was to help this family help the child, she reminded herself as she leaned forward, too, needing the widower to know he wasn’t alone. “If she wasn’t somewhat comfortable with you, she wouldn’t have a healthy appetite.”

“I took her to the toy store. I told her she could have anything she wanted.”

“Did she pick something?”

He shook his head again. “We walked every aisle.”

“That must have taken a long time.”

His grin made her heart leap. Because she needed so badly for this family to find healing. “Two hours,” he told her. “She touched a lot of things, studied some, but each time I asked her if she wanted it, she shook her head.”

“We don’t know what kind of conditioning she’s had,” Lila quickly pointed out, not wanting to let go of that smile. “Oftentimes, after an abuser has hurt his victim, he overcompensates by buying things.”

Edward nodded. “I know. I’ve read everything you’ve given me since Cara first went missing weeks ago. I just... I’ve never so much as frowned at Joy, so I didn’t think...surely children of abusers have others in their lives who buy them things just because they care about them.”

“Most do, of course. But until you win Joy’s trust, you aren’t, in her mind, in the category of those who care about her.”

He knew what they were dealing with. He, like everyone else caring for Joy, was in counseling with Sara Edwin, one of the Stand’s full-time counselors.

“When we got back here, I read to her. She sat next to me and watched as I turned the pages.”

“Amy books?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Lila nodded.

“I couldn’t bring myself to leave her.”

“Did she seem distressed, having you there?”

“No.”

“Then this is progress.”

His gaze was direct this time. “I know. But I fear that I’m being selfish, as well. If I’m staying because I can’t bear leaving, is it her I’m putting first, or myself?”

“The fact that you’re asking the question is your answer. You can’t help loving her, needing to be with her. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be good for her. Joy needs to know that there is someone who adores her, who will be there for her, no matter what. Someone who belongs to her. If you were forcing your presence on her when she showed signs of distress, that might be different.”

His smile was larger this time. Filled with the warmth that he didn’t often show—at least, not in the time she’d known him. She smiled back. It just came naturally.

And was something she did with others, too. So why did her heart suddenly feel such an acute stab of guilt? She was crossing a line that could not be crossed. Ever. With anyone. Anywhere.

“Have dinner with me.” His question intensified her guilt.

“I can’t.” She blurted the words. Completely unlike herself. Stared at him, afraid of what he might see within her.

“But I’ve got some wine and cheese in my suite here,” she said, effecting as much of her usual calm as she could muster. “I’m...staying here tonight...” she said—the truth, but she wasn’t staying because she had to. Only because she’d been planning to use the evening to catch up on the paperwork she’d just shoved aside on her desk.

“The wine—it can be tea, if you’d prefer—and I’ve got what’s left of a platter of meats and cheeses from a function earlier today. I’d been planning to indulge myself with it in lieu of dinner.”

She’d just invited a man to visit with her in her suite. What in the hell was happening to her?

Her suite at the Stand. Where she was always on call when she was in residence. And was often called. As opposed to alone with him, like a date, out...in the world. Where it was possible they could end up either at his hotel or her condo. Wasn’t going to happen, but the possibility made her more uncomfortable than wine and cheese at the Stand.

Okay...she had things more under control than she’d first thought.

“I’d like that very much.” Edward’s warm glance—not quite a smile, but bordering on personal—sent her into a tizzy all over again. As much as Lila ever got in a tizzy.

“Please, don’t misunderstand. I am not issuing an invi...”

His hand on hers cut her off. “I understand, Lila.” He looked her directly in the eye as he said the words. “I’d like to tell you about court this morning, if I may, and we both need sustenance. I would greatly enjoy a glass of wine to take the edge off a dreadful day, and will in no way compromise the friendship you’ve shown me by making more of it than it is.”

Her heart dropped. Jumped up and...just that, up and down, over and over, pounding in her chest. His words took her air, and brought it back in a whoosh. Ridiculous.

Unprovoked.

He considered her a friend.

And she wasn’t in danger of breaking her promise to herself.

The promise to never, ever, let anyone get close enough that he or she could be hurt.

Lila would rather be dead than be a danger to another living soul again.

CHAPTER SIX

Prospector, Nevada

HIS PATIENT ASKED if he minded if she went to bed to read as soon as the dinner dishes were done on Friday. Boxed macaroni and cheese with hotdogs and peas were his offering that night. He’d prepared it all. She’d eaten everything on her plate. And cleared and wiped the table while he’d washed up.

If he were planning to keep the cabin—to ever visit it again once his eye was better—he’d put in a dishwasher. Telling her he thought it was a good idea that she lie down, though it was still early in the evening, he watched her walk away. The woman bothered him.

He knew she was hurting. The way she held her book...turned pages...when she’d wiped off the table...her left wrist was bothering her. And her neck or shoulder was, too.

She was tired, but had been sleeping well, so he let it go for the night. He’d have a look at her in the morning. And in the meantime, he was past due for his drops. Six and six, every day, a.m. and p.m. Two drops each time.

In the bathroom, he tried not to notice the towel his patient had used that morning as he grabbed the drops from the zipped leather duffel under the sink that contained antibiotics, cold medicine, pain relievers and anything else he might need.

The drops were prescription. To relieve pressure on the eye. Pressure caused by swelling. Pressure that could prevent him from regaining his eyesight. Or could cause the process to happen more slowly.

Positioning himself in front of the mirror above the sink, he focused on his nose. Reached up over his head with his left hand, careful to keep his arm visible in the mirror to the only eye that could guide him and held open the lid of his right eye. The right hand had the easy part: lift until his hand was exactly half an inch from his nose and squeeze gently.

A drop fell to his cheek. Just under his eye.

Cursing his vision, he leaned his head back a second time, kept his nose in view in the mirror, measured the distance from the dropper and squeezed again. The drop hit his lower lid. He lifted his hand only slightly and tried one more time. He got the corner of his eye. He’d failed to measure from his nose that time.

If his damned nose wasn’t so big he could see the right eye from the corner of his left, could aim better. You’d think, after weeks of daily drops, he’d be a pro.

Especially for a surgeon with hands as steady as his were.

It was a mental block. He’d thought, when he’d first diagnosed the problem a while back, that the acknowledgment would take care of it. It hadn’t.

And so, after letting his arms rest for a moment, he once again got a fix on his nose in the mirror, raised his left arm over his head, slid his hand past his forehead to open his right lid and lifted the dropper to squeeze gently. Missed for a fourth time. His best was two attempts. His worst was nine. But he’d had a beer that night...

“What on earth are you doing?”

Two drops fell in quick succession, trailing down his right cheekbone. Arms coming down, Simon held the dropper and turned to face his patient. Still in her jeans and T-shirt, but minus the zipped sweater she’d had on all day, she was watching him.

He might have noticed her approach if he’d had peripheral vision in his right eye.

“Putting drops in my eye,” he said when he’d determined that doing so could be for something as simple as dry or itchy eyes.

“I’d have thought a surgeon would have a steadier hand.” She looked slightly down as she said the words. Such a funny combination of sassy and demure. Not that he was interested in her personality.

Or in anything other than her health. And then her departure.

“My hand’s plenty steady.” Childish of him to rise to her taunt, but her remark about not liking doctors was still ringing in his ears.

“Then you’re just a bad aim.”

“I blink.”

“No, you don’t.”

He didn’t think so. But he was damned well not going to tell her that he was temporarily blind in one eye. He’d come to the cabin to get away from the naysayers. Those who didn’t believe he’d ever see from that eye again. Those who thought that his recovery meant accepting the blindness and moving on. He didn’t want to hear another person tell him there were many things he could do besides be a surgeon. He couldn’t afford to listen. To let doubts creep in. He was going to see again. It was a matter of will, now.

So many times, the difference between a patient surviving or not depended not on medical skills or science, but on the patient’s will to live. Lucky for him that his patients were so young—they almost all had that will. In spades.

“You want help?”

As opposed to having her stand there watching him play his nightly game of drop ball?

“Yes.” He handed her the dropper. Told her he needed two drops, directly into the middle of the eye. Then bent down and leaned his head back so she could deliver them.

“Wow, you didn’t blink either time. How do you do that? I always blink when something’s coming at my eye.”

She was getting chattier. Good sign in terms of her recovery.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the dropper from her. She didn’t leave. And he realized that she’d been coming to use the restroom.

“If you’d like to leave your clothes outside your door when you go to bed, I’ll throw them in the wash again,” he told her. “Tomorrow we can see about getting you a T-shirt of mine to wear, too. Or a flannel. It’ll be long, but you can roll up the sleeves.”

“I’ll leave my clothes, thanks.”

He had a feeling that having him do her laundry wasn’t on the top of her list of desires, but what else could she do but sit around in the hospital gown he’d made for her or stand naked in the bathroom while the washer and dryer ran through their cycles?

Catching sight of the bruise closest to her mouth, he reached behind her neck and pulled her closer. Under the bright light of the bathroom he could get a better...

“Don’t.” She jerked away from him. And stood there, meeting his gaze and then looking away. “I’m s—”

“No,” Simon stepped back. “I am so sorry, Cara. My bedside manner is usually impeccable. I should have told you I’d like to have a closer look at your face...”

It was then that it dawned on him that she hadn’t just been reacting to his pulling her forward, but that she’d thought he had something else entirely on his mind.

As if he’d take advantage...

“Why do you need a closer look at my face?”

“That bruise to the side of your mouth...its color is a little suspicious...” There’d been a slight cut there. If he hadn’t cleaned it out well enough, an infection could have developed.

She stepped closer to him, but didn’t look at herself in the mirror.

“Have at it, Doc,” she said, sounding completely not at ease. So much so that Simon felt sorry for her.

The woman had a lot of spunk for someone who’d been a regular punching bag for her lowlife husband.

He checked her bruise. Suspected that the swelling on the left side of her face indicated a minor zygoma—cheek—fracture but from all signs, including lack of displacement, nose bleeds or undue pain, he believed it was one that would heal itself.

As long as nothing happened to displace it.

He told her his findings.

Then left the bathroom to her.

But something had changed in those moments back there. Something that was going to have some impact. He’d realized something.

Something big. And problematic.

There was no way he was going to let her just walk away, to go back out into the world all alone, to go back to the life she’d led, and let that bastard hit her again.

Santa Raquel, California

EDWARD TOOK OFF his jacket, hung it over the back of a chair at Lila’s small dinette. She’d seen him in golf attire a couple of times, but she wasn’t used to seeing him in a dress shirt without his suitcoat on. Why he’d suddenly seem more vulnerable, she had no idea, and wasn’t sure enough of herself where he was concerned to risk delving any further.

In the fourteen years since her previous life had ended, Lila had never, ever, not once, been even remotely tempted to notice a man’s...attributes. Hadn’t been physically activated by the sight of man for much longer than that.

She’d shown him to the small table instead of to the sitting area that was where she’d occasionally invited other special guests over the years, because the table had felt more formal. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“I like your place,” he told her. Looking around, she had to wonder. A man with his financial success...a man in general...couldn’t possibly feel comfortable in her small, completely feminine apartment. The place really only consisted of one room divided into living room and kitchenette by the table at which they sat. There was a separate bedroom. And a bath. The entire place was decorated with lace and roses; prints of places she’d once dreamed of traveling to were framed on the walls. Her dishes were china. A gift from Brett Ackerman, founder of The Lemonade Stand.

Ashamed that it made her feel good to be able to impress him with her crystal wineglasses—wanting him to notice them—she opened the bottle and poured, carried both glasses to the table and then retrieved the deli tray out of the refrigerator. Pouring crackers into a lacy cloth-lined basket, she reached into a drawer for two rose-and-lace napkins—ones that matched the placemats on the table—and slid two dessert plates out of another cupboard.

All was done with silent, deliberate movements. Edward Mantle needed a friend. And Lila had to find her peace.

“Did you decorate this place yourself?” he asked as she sat down across from him, careful to keep enough of a distance that their knees didn’t touch.

She and Sara had shared a meal at the table a time or two. Mostly, she sat there alone.

“Yes.” She took a sip of wine before he could think about offering a toast. Afraid that he’d toast to their friendship and her heart would react again. Or that he wouldn’t. And her heart would react again.

“It reminds me of a cross between a tea room my mother used to go to when I was a kid and the Florida room my wife had at home.”

His wife. Cara’s mother. Lila didn’t know much about the other woman except that she’d passed away when Cara was in high school.

“Do you still live in the same house?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Cara was already exhibiting signs of extreme anger and rebellion by the time my wife passed and I felt that getting her out of that environment, reminders of the eighteen months she spent watching her mother slowly fade away, would be better for her. She loved the beach so much and our old home was a twenty-minute drive...”

“Your house on the beach... You bought it for her.” Edward had first mentioned the house in front of Joy, thinking he’d pique the little girl’s interest, but the gambit had failed miserably. Joy had withdrawn at the mere mention of the beach.

“Yes.”

“How long did the two of you live there before she moved to California with Shawn?” Ran off with him was more like it. Edward’s daughter had disappeared into the night without warning or word. As Lila understood it, the two of them had been barely speaking at that point—Cara blaming Edward for her every unhappiness, accusing him of hating Shawn.

“We lived there together for two years,” Edward said, no rancor in his tone. “Her room is still just as she left it.”

That news—evidence of Edward’s hidden emotional depths—didn’t surprise Lila.

Cara had met the guy who ran a surfing school shortly after her mother died—Edward had been certain the school was a front for drugs, but the more he questioned, the more Cara pulled away, saying that he didn’t want her to be happy.

Once they were out of the state, Shawn had contacted Edward and let him know where they were living, that they’d married on the way across the country and that Edward was not to contact his daughter.

Edward had insisted on speaking with Cara—which he had—and Cara had, not kindly, reiterated her new husband’s words. She’d been eighteen at the time. Shawn had been several years older. They’d opened a surfing school in California.

From what she understood from Edward’s nephew, Hunter, Edward had hoped the business was legitimate, that Cara was healthy and happy. Cara hadn’t contacted him in years—or responded to any of his efforts to contact her. When Shawn Amos had warned Edward to leave Cara alone, he’d said that Edward did nothing but make her unhappy. And apparently Edward had begun to take all of the blame for the breakdown between them upon himself. He’d been too distant—too involved in his career for most of her childhood—was all he’d said to Lila.

“I was so certain that Shawn was the biggest problem between Cara and I,” the man said now. “She was young, grieving, lashing out and was far too vulnerable. I should never have moved her to the beach.”

“If she was as rebellious as you say, she’d have found some other way to put distance between you...”

“I tried to tell Cara that there were things about Amos that weren’t quite right. He was too controlling, for one thing. She had to text him every time she got home from somewhere. And every night before she went to sleep. And he refused to come to our house for dinner. Or hang out with any of Cara’s friends. But any time I said anything that could be even slightly construed as a criticism of Shawn, Cara shut down on me.”

Lila understood his need to talk. To confide in someone. What she didn’t understand was the strong urge she had to take his head to her breast and run her fingers through that short, graying hair.

“What happened today when you saw him?” That was the real question now. Neither of them had touched the food. Or their wine after the initial sip.

“I only saw the back of him. He was in an orange jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back. He never turned around. Was in and out in less than a minute. He was indicted on charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping. Pleaded not guilty, said that he would be hiring an attorney to replace his court-appointed one, was remanded and held without bail, and they led him away.”

About the best-case scenario, given the current circumstances. But Edward’s frown, his fingers rubbing across his palm over and over, indicated otherwise.

Lila’s stomach tightened. “Did Chantel speak with him?”

Something had happened. That much was for sure. And Edward had internalized it, whatever it was. He’d dealt with it by staying close to the granddaughter who, like her mother, didn’t give any sign of returning his affection. One might think that Cara had soured her daughter against Edward, except that Joy had not known, until she’d been told several weeks ago, that he’d even existed.

“He agreed to speak with Chantel,” Edward said now, his fingers still busy against his palm. When Lila barely caught herself before reaching out to take that hand in her own, she slid her hands under her thighs.

“The first thing he did was ask Chantel if anyone had found his wife. Chantel was convinced that he was honestly worried about Cara. That he has no idea where she is. She said he had tears in his eyes when she told him that no one had reported seeing her.”

“So...if Shawn didn’t kill her, this means she’s probably still alive.” Lila tried to keep the excitement out of her voice. She was relied upon to instill calm.

Edward merely shrugged. “If he didn’t kill her, where is she? And why hasn’t she contacted anyone? By all accounts, my daughter doted on her daughter. From everything we’ve heard, Cara would die before she’d abandon Joy.”

“Maybe she thinks Joy is safe with Mary.”

He shook his head. “It’s been all over the news in both Nevada and California that Shawn is in jail—partially due to the alert put out about Cara’s abduction and the vehicle they were in.”

“Maybe she’s in the hospital someplace with amnesia...” She was grasping. But she had this strong urge to ease his pain. To give him hope.

When she knew that her responsibility was to help him accept what was and find a way to move forward.

Hope was the basis of all healing. But relying on false hope meant avoiding that healing. She, of all people, knew that.

“There’s more.” He sounded the same as he had all along. But she was sitting close enough to see the nuances on his face, the tightening of the cords in his neck as though he was struggling to hold back tears.

It was then that Lila knew Edward needed a friend that night. And that she was going to have to get whatever was going on with her under control, because she couldn’t turn her back on a family member in need.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“SHAWN CLAIMS THAT he didn’t hurt Mary. He admits that he and Cara were fighting. Mary grabbed Joy and was taking her away so that she wouldn’t witness the altercation between her parents. He says that Cara lunged after her, to keep Joy with her, and that she tripped, knocking into Mary who lost her balance and fell face-first down their front steps.”

“Mary’s injuries were consistent with being hit. They weren’t consistent with a fall.”

Edward nodded. “When Chantel asked him to explain why there weren’t scrapes or bruises on her legs or back or shoulders, he says that Cara, in an attempt to save Mary, fell with her and took the brunt of the impact.”

“An explanation for the injuries to her when she’s found.”

Jutting his chin, Edward said, “He’s either a psychopath—and, if so, I fear for my daughter more than ever—or he’s telling the truth, according to Chantel. She said that when they initially told him his sister was dead, tears rolled down his face. He’d have to be a damned good actor to cry on cue like that.”

Lila took a sip of wine because she simply didn’t know what else to do. Nothing felt right. “So, you think now that he didn’t hurt Cara? That she’s gone of her own accord for some reason?”

“He says that when Cara saw how badly Mary was hurt she panicked. She begged him to take her away like he did when they left Florida. He said that he went a little nuts himself at that point, leaving his sister like that and running off with his wife. He says that he didn’t want to lose Cara and that’s why he took his friend’s van. He says he can’t imagine life without Cara. Chantel believed he meant it.”

Lila didn’t want to believe any part of the scenario was possible. Not for Edward or for Joy.

“How does he explain being alone in the van when he was found?”

“He says they’d pulled off to the side of the road to get some sleep, and when he woke up she was gone. Vanished. He has no idea what happened to her, but suggested that maybe she’d gotten out of the van to relieve herself. He says he looked all over the area but never found her.”

“And what about Joy’s account? What about the monster she talked about hurting her mommy? She said the monster’s name was Daddy.”

Edward nodded. Shrugged.

Could they convict a man solely on the testimony of a seven-year-old girl? By the time Mary had shown up with Joy at the neighbors’, Mary had been bleeding profusely and starting to slur her words. They hadn’t been able to get much out of her. Who was to say that Cara and Shawn hadn’t run off, as Shawn claimed? Mary had died before she could tell anyone what really happened that morning in the Amos home.

“Surely the authorities believe he killed his sister or they wouldn’t have indicted him.”

“There was enough evidence for a grand jury to indict. That doesn’t mean a prosecutor will be able to prove enough to get a conviction. Not unless we find Cara. Or Joy can lead us to more clues. There were no medical or other records to establish a pattern of abuse. If the case proceeds, it could come down to watching the defense tear apart Joy’s testimony.”

“They wouldn’t put her on the stand. Most particularly not to testify against her father.”

Edward shook his head. “They’d tape a session with her. She wouldn’t know it was for court or to get her father in trouble.”

And that clearly wasn’t what was bothering Edward.

“Did Chantel indicate to you what she believes about all of this?”

“She said she didn’t honestly know. That since she’s never met Cara, and since I’ve had virtually no contact with her for the past ten years, we have no way of knowing what she’s like now. What she’s capable of doing. Or could have done.”

“But...”

He shook his head, his look intense as he met her gaze. “She has shown a history of turning her back on family, on me, her father, without looking back.”

“I understand that,” Lila said, knowing exactly what to say now. “But look at Joy, Edward. That little girl is sweet and precious. She didn’t just get that way. She’s a product of your daughter’s love and care.”

“What if Mary was the one who raised her?”

Lila shook her head. “Joy very clearly said that her mama told Mary to take her.”

“She’s seven. She could easily have confused or transposed the situation in her mind, making it what she needed it to be.”

He was a man of science. She wasn’t going to help ease his torment with her current line of thought.

“What do you feel inside, Edward? Do you think Cara stumbled into Mary, rolled with her down the stairs and left her to run off with her husband?”

Edward continued to meet her gaze. His eyes looked...weary now. And moist.

“Why would she do that?” she asked him. “Why would she run off and leave the successful business they’d built?”

“They left his school in Florida. Just up and left.”

“To get away from you, it sounds like. So, why now?”

“Because they could see how badly Mary was hurt and they were frightened. Didn’t know if Cara would be sent to jail.”

“Why leave Joy?”

“They’d be harder to trace without a child.”

“So why, after Shawn left with her, would Cara suddenly leave him?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“So, where is she?”

He didn’t answer. And didn’t look like he felt any better, either.

Lila could only give him what she had. “Do you believe she did this, Edward?”

“No. But...”

Lila shook her head. “No buts right now. If you believe Joy over Shawn, then you need to focus on that. Focus on helping Joy. On finding Cara. And keeping Shawn behind bars.”

Because that was what Edward needed. Focus. He nodded. Took a sip of wine. And, eventually, gave her a long slow smile that scared her to death.

Prospector, Nevada

CARA WOKE UP Saturday morning with a sense of purpose. Feeling a thousand times better than she could remember, more rested and alert than she’d felt in a while, with energy pulsing through her veins. She’d...

Nothing. Lying inert, on the verge of wakefulness, she hadn’t known any better. All it took was a move of her sore wrist, a touch to her face, and she was fully awake.

There was no longer a purpose to her life. She was in a life she had no right to continue living.

Because of what she’d done.

So maybe she was physically better. That strength, while wasted, gave her the ability to look beyond the immediate pain. To think clearly.

To face the horrible truth.

With a pre-dawn grayness shining in from the window across from her bed, she couldn’t keep her mind at bay any longer. She’d committed murder. If Shawn found her, she either had to go on living with him, putting up with the more and more frequent blasts of violent anger, tiptoeing around so she didn’t inadvertently set off an attack...

Or he’d turn her in.

It all came pouring back to her. He’d given her the option in the van that last afternoon they were together. However long ago that had been now. She wasn’t sure anymore. Had lost track of time and days sometime during her weeks of captivity with Shawn. He’d told her that as long as she stayed with him, she’d be safe. He’d keep her safe. And if she tried to leave, he’d turn her in...

Except Shawn hadn’t kept her safe. Not for years and years.

Maybe not ever.

No one had kept Cara safe. Not since Mom got sick. And then Mom hadn’t been kept safe, either...

Which was why she’d promised herself she’d always keep Joy safe.

And then Shawn had started hitting Cara harder.

Another memory flashed. When she’d first awoken in that van, her entire body hurting, she’d been looking for Joy, inconsolable in her panic. That was when Shawn had told her that they’d lost Joy forever because of her, because of what she’d done. She’d wanted to die right then and there, but he wouldn’t let her. He’d kept telling her how much he needed her. He’d held her as she’d sobbed...

“Cara? You awake?”

Still reeling, Cara turned her head toward the door. If she pretended to be asleep would he go away? Or come in and wake her?

“Yes.”

“It’s time for your antibiotic.” For a while there he’d been waking her to take her pills. The day before, she’d been up to use the restroom before the pill was due. And now he stood outside the door and called to her?

What had changed?

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she told him, throwing off the covers and grabbing...nothing. She’d left her clothes outside the door to be washed the night before. Was wearing the makeshift gown he’d crafted for her.

“I left your clothes just outside the door for you,” he said, almost as though he could read her mind. Who knew what she might have told him when she’d been out of her head with pain?

She didn’t think she’d said anything. She hadn’t been out of her head. She’d been beaten to a pulp and exhausted. “Thank you,” she called back and, giving him a second to retreat, went to reach her arm around the door for her clothes.

The underwear was there, the bra and jeans, and three shirts. Hers and two others. T-shirts, both of them. A purple and a blue. From different years for the same Heart-Run. They’d be too big for her.

But better than the bloodstained T-shirt of Shawn’s she’d had on under her sweater jacket.

She chose the purple one. Because, in the color world, purple was known for bringing spiritual peace. For assisting in honest, deep, true thought. She’d lost any hope of good Karma having her back. She was well and truly on her own now.

She had to be able to count on her own mind.

As she pulled the shirt down over her torso, she suffered a stab of guilt. Purple was a healing color. Violet vibrated at the highest frequency and, as such, healers believed it to be a potent tool. Cara might have an aversion to doctors, but she’d done a lot of reading. Studying. Learning.

For Joy’s sake and for her own, too.

Joy.

Her heart caught, her throat tightened. Tears sprang to her eyes. And her mind closed in.

No. She’d lost any right she’d had to think of...

She had no business healing. So the purple shirt was the wrong one.

Taking it off, she replaced it with her own. Bloodstains were her style now. She couldn’t pretend otherwise.

With a last look around the room that had offered solace to a criminal, she went out to face the doctor. To convince him that she was just fine and could be on her way that morning.

As soon as she got back out on the mountain, she’d figure out what that way would be.

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