A man of his word

Dr. Bloom Freelander thought it was safe to breathe again when Detective Sam Larson put her abusive ex away for good. She’s been moving on, running a private practice and providing psychiatry services to The Lemonade Stand women’s shelter. But now that her ex is a free man, she’s in danger once again.

Forced into protective custody, Bloom can’t help but fall for her protector. But she has every reason to doubt the handsome detective’s word. Sam broke his promise to her once. Who says he won’t break it again—along with her heart this time?

He was there for a reason...

“Sam—” she used his first name, though he’d never told her to “—what’s going on? Can I help?”

When he shook his head, her heart sank. Please, God, don’t let this man have done something bad enough to put him in jail. A world without him in it. Santa Raquel without him keeping it safe.

The idea left her bereft.

His expression cleared. “Yes, you can help.” He seemed to have fought some internal battle and...won?

“Okay.” She smiled. Couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him. Wanted to put her hand on his knee where it rested close to hers. Or on the hand he had resting on it. “What can I do?”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure. Fine. What?” This was Sam Larson. He’d saved her life. She owed him far more than she’d ever be able to repay.

“I need you to pack up whatever keepsakes and possessions you most value, along with clothes and personal items, and be ready for me to pick you up late tomorrow afternoon.”

Dear Reader,

I’m a bit envious of you. You have this story ahead of you. I’ve already finished it. For me it’s one of those books that leaves you feeling bereft at the end because it’s over. I can’t really even tell you why. I love Sam. He’s not perfect. Far from it. But he’s completely honest. With himself. And with others. He stands by what he says. Does what he says he’s going to do.

And then...he finds out that he’s not in control of the whole world...that sometimes he can’t do as he says because it’s out of his control. He does not take this news well.

And Bloom, she’s an incarnation of so many things. She’s a genius, like the one I raised. But beyond what I was personally bringing to the story, Bloom...bloomed...into so much more than these little details that I knew about her. She found an inner strength that I didn’t know existed, but that I’ve taken upon myself. Mostly I love her because she found a way to walk through the fire with an open heart.

I hope you enjoy your time in Santa Raquel, and that you come back to visit often. We’re giving you many “vacation” opportunities. But rest assured, each “package” takes you, in some way, through The Lemonade Stand, Where Secrets are Safe. Welcome!

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

All the best,

Tara

www.TaraTaylorQuinn.com

The Promise He Made Her
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

An author of more than seventy novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering emotional and psychologically astute novels of suspense and romance. 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 Reviewer’s 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.

MILLS & BOON

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For Rachel: You chose a difficult path to help many and keep us safe. May you also always be able to walk through the fire with your heart open. All my love, forever. Ma

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

INTRODUCTION

Dear Reader

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

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

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

PHYSICAL BRUISES HEAL. It’s the mental ones that can kill you. Bloom shook her head and hit the delete key. Looked for a more genteel way to get her point across. She didn’t want to lose her audience during the first minute of the two-hour-long psychology symposium. They’d given her a room with seating for three hundred, which could feel cavernous if she failed to entertain.

Back in her old life, her teaching life, she’d have filled the screen with visual aids, provided a handout—and probably pens, too. She’d have sent around a bowl filled with individually wrapped peppermints. All actions designed to increase memory retention in lecture situations, and she’d have been content to get 5 percent retention after seven days.

But those were the old days. Her associate college professor days. Funny how so much could change in just three years.

Physical bruises heal. It’s the mental ones that can kill you. Her second try ended up exactly the same as the first.

And if she started her keynote address at the psychiatric conference that way, people might not physically exit in droves, but she might lose her credibility.

One in four of the audience members—the current statistic for the number of the victims of domestic violence in the United States—might even take offense. Get angry.

How could she belittle the bruises that took so many lives? How could she say that “bruises heal,” dismissing the fact that intimate partners lifted fists to those who loved them?

She had two hours to impress upon her peers the very real disease that ate away at more of the population than any other disease. Domestic violence.

Medical personnel had been made more aware of intimate partner violence in recent years. After all, some professional sports leagues had been forced to shine light on the problem as a way of warding off the negative press that resulted from some of their stars being abusers.

But the fact that every minute twenty-four people were victims of intimate partner abuse in the United States was not just a problem for police and hospitals, doctors and nurses. Her profession—psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors—needed to step up to the plate.

Because bruises, broken bones, even cracked skulls healed over time. But without awareness, without help, without a “movement” to tend to the mental bruises left by domestic violence, not enough of the victims of that violence were going to heal...

The soapbox is not going to work with these people.

Bloom’s self-talk was trying to help. She knew that.

But...unhealed mental wounds often drove victims to the other side—they became abusers.

Preaching, teaching, prophesying or statisticizing wasn’t going to reach her peers.

She deleted again.

Sitting behind her mahogany desk, Bloom looked over the top of her laptop screen to survey her office, as though the words she needed were there. The couch and two recliners that faced each other with her favorite old claw-footed chair—an inheritance from the maternal grandmother she’d adored—offered...nothing. There was the coffee table with a floral tissue box holder in the middle of it. Wall hangings, all carefully chosen, in shades of muted reds, oranges, yellows, a splash of purple. Some hearts quilted together. Some quotations in the midst of abstract art.

Clearly a woman’s office. She made no apology for that. She was a woman.

Her patients were predominantly women.

A lot of whom were living healthy, productive lives.

But there were so many more out there. And she was booked to the hilt. Beyond the hilt, really, not that she minded the evening hours she put in three nights a week in addition to fully booked days.

Dr. Bloom Freelander, Psy.D, had a thriving private practice.

And it wasn’t enough.

She couldn’t even come close to serving the needs of all of those calling her office for help.

Nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. Her last patient had been gone almost an hour. Susan, her receptionist, soon after that. She had a 7:00 in the morning—Latoya Markham, who had to be at work by 8:00 a.m. And here she sat, needing to write the speech that she’d be giving at the University of California in just two days.

Physical bruises heal. It’s the mental ones that can kill you.

No!

The truth was...true. Physical bruises did heal. In some fashion. They’d fade and disappear. Broken bones reset. Some attacks resulted in death, too. It was the most unfortunate fact of all. One that she was trying desperately to avoid as often as humanly possible. The way to prevent domestic violence deaths was to heal the person. As well as the bruises.

She typed.

The way to prevent domestic violence deaths is to heal the person. Not just the bruises.

She read what she’d typed. Nodded. Yes. There.

She still had two hours left to fill.

She read her words again. One sentence. Her fingers lifted to the keys. Began to move. And Bloom quit fighting them.

* * *

WTF.

Detective Samuel Larson, thirty-seven-year-old semistar of the Santa Raquel Police Department, leaned back in the old squeaky desk chair he’d inherited, along with the scarred desk, when he’d been awarded his detective’s shield.

He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the desk. Never had. He stared at the emailed report he’d just opened.

Two years? The asshole was out in two years?

How was he going to... “Damn.”

“Something wrong?” Brand-new detective Chantel Harris, who’d recently transferred from a beat cop to internet crime investigation, happened to be walking by Sam’s desk as that last expletive slipped out.

Sam knew Chantel. Not from any work they’d done together on the job, but because they were both members of the Santa Raquel High Risk Team—an organization of professionals in all fields who came into contact with victims of domestic violence. From nurses to school counselors, cops, doctors, lawyers, the team had formed an intricate communication system geared solely to prevent domestic violence deaths.

“Yeah, something’s wrong,” he said, running a hand through blond hair that was too long by department standards. No one seemed to care. Least of all him. “One of our High Risk cases just threw up on us.”

In silk pants and a jacket that looked like it had cost a year of his car payments, the no-nonsense, no makeup, blond-hair-tied-back cop sat down hard in the varnishless wooden chair beside his desk.

“Which one?” Her lips were white with tension.

“This one was before your time,” he quickly assured her.

“But not before yours.”

“Right.” He looked at his screen again, seething angry energy. Rocking back and forth in the swivel chair that had seen better days, leaning on one elbow as he chewed the side of his finger.

Chantel glanced at the screen. “Arrested three years ago, sentenced to life in prison a year later and now released on a technicality,” she read the portion he’d scrolled to.

“The lawyer who prosecuted him was Trevor Banyon.” He chewed harder.

Chantel’s drawn out curse was only slightly less harsh than his mental one. “How many are they up to now? Twenty-four? I can’t believe that many cases have been overturned. A top prosecutor with an illegal gun trade on the side.” She shook her head. “The guy should be shot.”

With one of his own weapons, Sam agreed silently.

“I thought all of his cases were drug related.” Chantel leaned over and, taking charge of his mouse, scrolled some more. “What was he doing on one of our cases?”

“The perp was a professor of psychology at U of C. The victim, his wife, was an associate professor he’d mentored.”

“The authority figure.” Chantel’s tone dripped disrespect. He knew it because it was a sentiment he shared.

Answering to a boss was one thing—having someone assume that they knew what was best for you better than you did, or thought that they had the right to force their will onto another—the idea pissed him off. Royally.

“So why were we on it?” Chantel, apparently finding nothing pertinent in the brief report, sat back. “U of C is out of our jurisdiction.”

“The couple owned a home here on the beach and commuted.” An hour and a half four days a week. He remembered the details. Every one of them.

“Still, doesn’t explain Banyon’s involvement.”

“The professor also had a private practice. He was a licensed psychiatrist. He’d been slowly drugging his wife.”

“He was killing her?”

“Nothing that kind.” Sam shook his head, feeling his lunch threaten to come back up on him. “He’d made up his own little cocktail. Just to dumb her down enough that she wouldn’t surpass him.”

“He drugged her to keep her in his control?”

“She’s genius-level intelligent,” Sam said, remembering the woman he’d spent two years trying to forget. Because forgetting was the right thing to do.

She’d been so vulnerable when he’d known her. Nothing like the person she’d been born to be. The person he hoped she’d become after she’d gotten her life back. “He was afraid she was going to take his job.” Chantel cut right to the chase. “Or surpass him in his field.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he hit her, too?”

“Hard enough to break her jaw.” And the crooked smile he’d left behind would be her constant reminder of what the man she’d adored, idolized and trusted had done to her.

“He’s due out next Monday. That’s four days,” Chantel said, frowning.

“I know.”

“When are you going to tell her?”

It was Thursday morning. He was thinking about...maybe...Sunday night. Give her as much peace of mind as he could.

Give himself some way to figure out how to get the asshole back behind bars before he’d had a chance to take a step out.

“With his conviction overturned there won’t even be a probation period.”

He knew that.

“What about a restraining order?” Chantel asked the question even as she shook her head.

“Not until he approaches her again,” he said what they both already knew. When a case went away, so did all of the painfully collected evidence. At least in theory.

“She needs time to make arrangements.”

She had a point. Maybe Sunday night was leaving it a little late. Still, he needed time to make a plan.

“Is she still local?”

“Yeah. She’s in private practice now. Has an office in that professional plaza across the street from the hospital.” Still living in the beach house she’d bought with the bastard. That was one of the first things they were going to have to fix.

They. As though she was going to want to have anything to do with him when she found out that he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to her that once she testified the man who’d hurt her so cruelly would spend the rest of his life behind bars. That if she testified he, Detective Sam Larson, would guarantee her safety.

Not that Banyon’s sins were on him. But the fact that the asshole professor’s wife had testified against him when everything in her had told her not to do so—that was on Sam. He’d ridden her hard.

He’d needed her testimony to make his case.

To keep her safe.

Well, he’d sure as hell screwed that one up.

CHAPTER TWO

“I HAD A degree in psychology from Stanford University when I was seventeen. My master’s by the time I was nineteen. And my doctorate at twenty-one.”

Bloom spoke with authority. Because when it came to her own life, she was the expert. And that was okay.

“I’m smart. Aware. And a talented right brain, as well.” She could talk about her paintings. The artwork on her office walls. She didn’t. They weren’t pertinent and she had a job to do. A task to get through.

“Unlike many geniuses, I was also gifted with a good bit of common sense. When I was little my mother could get me through most unwanted tasks by telling me that Baby—a rubber doll from which I was inseparable—had to go through them, too. Baby had to get a shot, so I was fine getting one. If it was nap time, Baby had to take a nap, and so I would, too...”

Audience members were looking at her, nodding. A few of them even bore little grins.

“She tells the story that when I was eighteen months old, I announced from the bathtub one morning that I wanted chocolate for breakfast. At which point she informed me that we didn’t eat chocolate for breakfast. I frowned for a moment, picked up Baby—who, of course, was in the bath with me—and announced that Baby wanted chocolate for breakfast.”

Yep. Three hundred faces were upturned in her direction. Bloom just kept on doing what she was doing. Because she’d told herself to do so.

“My mother told me to tell Baby that we didn’t eat chocolate for breakfast. She was one step ahead of me the whole way. Until I held my rubber doll up to her nose and pointed out that ‘Baby doesn’t have any ears.’”

The entire room erupted in laughter. Bloom started to sweat. It was those bright lights.

She was successful. Capable. And in control.

But she looked to the right, anyway. To the seat at the very end of the front row. She’d arrived early specifically to put a reserved sign on that chair. Lila McDaniel didn’t have a lot of time. But when Bloom had called the director of The Lemonade Stand—the unique women’s shelter where she’d lived for the weeks it had taken her to come back to herself after it had been discovered that her husband had been drugging her for months—to ask for support for the Friday morning keynote session, for backup statistics and a small informational speech to her colleagues about shelter work, Lila had immediately appointed herself to attend.

As the laughter died down around them, Lila nodded. She wasn’t smiling. Yet there was no doubting the warmth in her expression. And it empowered Bloom.

“Mom recovered before I was out of the tub,” she continued. The room, when she paused to take a breath, was completely silent. She was speaking to interested bodies. Not walls...

“She explained to me that if I gave Baby chocolate for breakfast I would make her sick. And I told her that she couldn’t give me chocolate for breakfast because she’d feel bad if she made me sick.”

A collective sigh moved around the room. There were men there. Many of them. All with psychiatric doctoral credentials.

She glanced at Lila again. The woman just looked at her without even so much as another nod of encouragement. To anyone in the room, Lila was just another attendee. To Bloom, she was fresh air in her lungs.

“I can stand up here and fill the next two hours with my mother’s tales of my greatness. I can talk about the long-distance call I made when I was five to reassure my grandmother, whose purse had just been stolen, that she would be just fine because I loved her and so did other people, so she hadn’t lost what mattered. I can entertain you all day long. To a room full of psychiatrists, my childhood is fascinating stuff. But entertaining you is not my purpose here today.” Heads tilted, a few people frowned, all eyes were still on her.

It could be, a small voice inside her said. She could wing this. Be a huge success. But this invitation—to keynote for her peers on whatever topic she chose—gave her a chance to fulfill a higher purpose.

And to grow as a person, too. To take back another piece of herself that the bastard had tried to steal from her.

“I’m a smart woman. A wise woman. And a victim of domestic violence.”

Many of them knew. Bloom’s husband had been an esteemed colleague to some of them. Even if just through professional organization memberships.

Knowing and wanting to hear were two different things.

She forced herself to look out at them. To continue to connect. All but a few heads were turned away or bowed. People were suddenly interested in loose threads in their clothing. Their shoes. The carpet. A clock on the wall.

“I am also a survivor,” she said, her voice imbued with emotion. “I am strong and capable, successful and healthy. Because I was able to get out. To get help. Because I had a counselor who was educated to my specific needs, who not only knew the kinds of things I was experiencing, but who knew what would most likely come as well, who was able to prepare me to handle those things, sometimes even on my own, when they did come.

“It’s been two years since my recovery, ladies and gentlemen. And I stand before you today, a fully alive, contributing woman who truly enjoys life. My life. I got lucky. I landed in a perfect place—The Lemonade Stand—a place you all will hear about before this session is through.

“But first, my challenge to each and every one of you is to listen. To hear what I have to say. And to look inside yourselves. To ask yourselves the tough questions. And for those of you who receive positive answers, to help. Even if you are in the field you need to be in, you can still help raise awareness of the need for counselors who specialize in intimate partner violence. And for those who don’t have special training in that particular field, you can help by being willing to refer their own clients to those who do...”

Bloom was on a roll. Confident. She gave statistics. Mixed in with difficult, but potent personal anecdotes. She grabbed her scholarly audience by the throat. Figuratively.

Much like she’d once been grabbed physically.

She took them down her road with her. As a victim and also as a psychiatrist with a successful practice.

Sparing them nothing, she made them feel her pain.

And brought them to her happy ending.

Thanks to a counselor who was a specialist in treating intimate partner violence, she was no longer a victim.

She was a survivor.

And it was up to all of them—herself included—to save every other victim out there.

* * *

SAM’S HOUSE WASN’T MUCH. The fact that it was a cottage not far from the beach was the nicest part. Inside, the floors were linoleum—old linoleum that, before his time, had likely been laid for its ability to withstand sand and water more than for its ambience.

For his current purposes, however, the house was near perfect. Set up on a cliff, on private land, with only a skinny, private, fenced path down to the beach, it was the perfect place to hide.

Or to have someone else hide.

He’d spent Saturday morning cleaning the floors, the bathroom. Changed the sheets on both beds—his own and the one in the spare room. She could use whichever one she wanted.

He’d even thrown the rug in the front room, the one Lucy thought was hers, in the wash.

Probably should have given the Irish setter a trip to the tub, too, but his five-year-old mistress preferred to take her baths in the ocean—an arrangement which benefitted his bathroom walls—and he’d run out of time to make it down there.

He’d stocked the fridge with vegetables and several salad dressings, eggs and milk. Chosen two different kinds of bread. Brought in a box of sensible cereal and a box of sugared, too. Three types of crackers, microwavable popcorn and ice cream bars. Colombian dark coffee and breakfast blend.

He’d bought a new set of towels, two kinds of body wash, extra tissues, paper towels and toilet paper.

He’d packed a bag. Found a room he could rent by the week where Lucy would be tolerated.

And if he didn’t get his ass in gear, it would all be for naught.

He had a plan. Possibly not his best, but the only one that was going to work.

And just a little more than twenty-four hours to put it in motion.

A little over twenty-four hours to convince a confident, intelligent, determined woman-in-charge that she was going to have to leave her home, her life and do exactly as he said.

* * *

BLOOM WAS IN her office late Saturday morning, just a few miles from The Lemonade Stand, having finished with her last client. She had a busy day planned—shopping to do, friends to meet in LA for a coffee house concert one of the women was playing in, a run on the beach—but was taking a moment to reflect.

To breathe. And be present.

Her speech the day before—and the lunch following—had been successful beyond her hopes. Lila had names of volunteers, counselors had Lila’s card and many of her peers had exchanged cards with each other—those with specific domestic violence training and those without. She’d given out contact names for members of the High Risk Team.

And she’d talked Lila in to staying for lunch, her treat. She’d seen the woman, who was in her fifties, smile more that day than she could ever remember.

And hoped it wasn’t just a reflection of the success of the morning. Bloom had no idea what Lila’s personal life looked like. The woman was like a phantom—at the Stand seven days a week and some nights. She had an apartment someplace close by, but didn’t appear to have any family. Or friends.

Which wasn’t natural. And raised Bloom’s professional radar above comfort level.

If anyone deserved to be happy, it was Lila.

And she hoped she was.

Because she had a few minutes before she had to leave for the city, Bloom caught up on enough world and state news that she’d be able to contribute to conversation at dinner that night.

A headline caught her eye. Because of the name. There couldn’t be too many prosecuting attorneys named Trevor Banyon in Southern California.

He’d been arrested on gun running charges. She wanted to open the article. Like a bystander wanted to get closer to a car accident. You just had to see. To know.

But she knew better. Reentering any part of Banyon’s life would take her places she didn’t need or want to go. She’d left her past behind. And wasn’t going to let it pull her back.

The past was an unhealthy place for her. The present, which contained her hopes for the future, was the road she was consciously traveling. A road that was already giving her a happy life.

Closing the news app, she gathered her things, planning to leave straight for LA from the office. Her overnight bag was in the trunk of her six-year-old hunter green Jaguar.

A gift from Ken—Dr. Kenneth Freelander—after he’d verbally brutalized her the first time. Before he’d started drugging her to keep her in line. She loved the car, as she’d once loved him. And kept it as a reminder that lemons could always be made into lemonade. That thorns had roses.

That it was up to her what she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning.

Out of the office, door locked, she nodded at a couple of people she knew, professionals who shared her office building, as she walked down the hall. Shared the elevator with a woman and a young girl, presumably patients, as they’d pushed the button for the fourth floor, which housed all pediatric and dental specialties.

Bloom exited the elevator and then the building, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight. Even in July the California coastal air wasn’t smoldering with heat. But it was warm enough to be a comfort to her skin after spending several hours in air conditioning.

A man approached her on the sidewalk. She moved to one side in preparation for their eventual passing, not really noticing him any more than she noticed any of the other patients who came and went.

But she noticed enough to take a second look. Did she know him? Was he, perhaps, the husband of one of her patients? The tempo of her heart upping just a small notch, she looked more closely. If he was an ex...

Hand on the jeweled canister of mace attached to her key ring, Bloom made one deft move with her thumb, unlocking the release.

And almost as quickly returned the safety catch. She did know the man. But not because of any of her patients.

She knew him because of herself.

Detective Samuel Larson was the man who’d saved her life.

CHAPTER THREE

HE ALMOST DIDN’T recognize her. Hell, what was he thinking? If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d memorized every bone in that face when he’d studied the crime scene photos, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Her high cheekbones and that little bit of a squaring off of her chin gave her away.

That and the slight bit of crookedness on one side of her jaw.

That auburn hair, more brown than red but with a hint of fire that had drawn his attention every time, was longer now. Softly curled.

Her body stood straighter, was fuller without losing the slenderness that drew eyes to her when she walked.

Bloom Freelander had...bloomed. His body took note.

WTF.

Had he left his mind back at the cottage? In the toilet he’d cleaned?

Still several yards away she didn’t appear to have seen him yet. Which gave him time to get his head out of the plumbing and back to the case at hand.

Maybe the fact that he was dreading the next minutes, the fact that her life could very well depend on his ability to force her to do his bidding, was the reason he’d gone so far south.

He’d thought about her often over the past couple of years. Had wanted to check in on her. But he’d had no reason. No right.

Had thought it was not good or fair to remind her of the time in her life she was working so hard to escape.

Maybe he’d hoped he’d run into her. Maybe, when he’d been at the beach, or the grocery store, he’d kept an eye out for her.

Fate hadn’t seen fit to bring them together.

But it had damned sure seen fit to put her in danger again.

He was no fonder of the fates at the moment than he was of his overresponsive nether region.

No doubting now that she’d seen him. She was staring right at him.

As if she couldn’t believe it was he? Or was trying to place him?

Didn’t matter.

Either way, it was showtime.

* * *

“DETECTIVE LARSON.” Bloom slowed down, stepped off the walk into the grass as he drew closer, so as not to block traffic into and out of the building. If he had a medical appointment, she couldn’t keep him. But...she’d thought of him so often during her months of healing. Wanted to let him know that he’d helped. A lot.

“Dr. Freelander...” He stepped off the walk, too.

“I told you,” she said with an easy smile—something she’d been unable to give him when he’d known her. “Call me Bloom. Dr. Freelander is someone else in my mind. My former self. And the nemesis of my former self, too.”

“Did you get your divorce?”

From anyone else the question would have been rude. But Sam Larson had been in every intimate crevice of her life as he’d built the case that had put her diabolically intelligent and demonic husband behind bars.

“I did,” she told him, smiling again. “It was final just last month.” Because Ken had fought it tooth and nail. From the throne he seemed to think he sat on in his prison cell.

Detective Larson’s frown was something she remembered well. It gave her stomach a sexy little jolt to see it now.

Not an altogether comfortable experience. She was healthy. Happy. Just as she was. Without sex. Been there, done that. Didn’t want the complication. The physical experience just wasn’t worth what it put you through, exposed you to, made you vulnerable to...

Besides, she was professional enough to recognize that any feeling she might have for this particular man was transference—a former captive gravitating toward the safety net offered by her rescuer.

“I thought you were going to change your name.”

The fact that he remembered gave her another jolt. Nice to know that of all of his many cases she’d been...memorable.

Or he just had one hell of a memory. Which was impressive, too.

“I was,” she told him. “But it’s on my degree. My doctoral certificate. And on the deed to the house I was just awarded as part of my settlement.”

And that was enough about her. “You look good,” she told him, smiling again.

“Thank you. So do you.” He would know, as closely as he was looking her over.

Just as he’d done in the past. As though he didn’t miss a single freckle. She’d thought the intensity of his regard had been due to the fact that he’d been the detective in charge of investigating her case.

But there it was, two years later, still searching out her secrets...

“I imagine you have an appointment to keep,” she told him, pulling the strap of her black leather satchel more closely to her body. “I just wanted to thank you. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought of you since Kenneth went to prison and I could begin to heal, and I wanted to let you know what a difference you’ve made in my life. That you helped. So much. That the work you do...it matters so much...”

It wasn’t like her to babble. Those brooding brown eyes of his, the flop of blond hair that never seemed to be in place, they were...familiar. As though she took them with her everywhere she went.

The idea was shocking, and yet recognizable, too. His calm, his strength, they’d been like examples of a parent to her. Something she’d been emulating as she rebuilt her life.

Rescuer, rescuee. Safety net. Sense of security.

“I don’t have an appointment,” the detective said, rocking back on the heels of the black slip-ons he’d always worn. They looked like the exact same ones from back then. Did he buy several pairs at a time? Were they some kind of detective issue? Uniform to go with the dress slacks and button-down shirts he’d always worn? With a sedate tie in varying shades of blah.

“You’re here on a call?” she asked now, adrenaline rushing to the fore. Knocking out the other...inappropriate emotions his unexpected presence had raised in her. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you.”

Even as she said the words she realized that if he’d been on an emergency call he most likely would have had a partner with him and wouldn’t have stopped to chat.

Which meant he was following up on a lead of some kind. Investigating every angle. Just like always.

“You might say I’m here on a call.”

Sliding his hands in his pockets, he continued to peruse her, an odd glint to his eyes. Sadness?

What? She didn’t look recovered enough to him?

The thought left her wanting to march him straight upstairs to her third-floor office, show him her walls and furniture and big mahogany desk. The drawers of patient files, proof of her success, and the awards that were hanging on the walls of the private bathroom attached to her suite. They were there so she would see them several times a day to remind her who she was. And so only she would see them. She wanted to instill a sense of comfort in her clients. Not intimidate them. Not to spill her ego over onto others.

“I’m here to see you, Bloom. Is there someplace we can go?”

Bloom. She liked the inflection he put on her name. Liked that he’d finally used it. Honoring her request.

Liked the fleeting sense of power that it gave her. But knew it for what it was. A change from her past when he’d insisted that he wasn’t comfortable using her first name. That he needed the distance of formality between them.

Because she’d looked horrible with a broken jaw, drug-blurred eyes and black-and-blue skin?

He’d seen her later, too. Physically healed and pretty enough to turn heads...

“Bloom? Is there someplace we can go?”

She didn’t move. Inside or out. “Why do you need to see me?”

The part of her life where she had a detective in it was done. Forever. No more trouble with the law. Of any kind. She’d promised herself. Never again.

“I just... Is there someplace we can go to talk?”

They could go back up to her office. But she didn’t want him there anymore. Her car? No better.

She took him to a bench out in the yard behind the building. It was in a garden. With several benches. And a winding walkway with trees for shade. She chose to sit in the sun.

“What’s going on?”

Even as she asked the question, she had a flash of the news headline she’d seen less than an hour before.

Trevor Banyon.

Had the jerk said something untoward about her? Released some confidential information pertaining to her case? Were his files being turned over as part of the investigation against him? Was there something incriminating to her reputation there? Something that would embarrass her professionally?

“I assume you’ve heard about Trevor Banyon...”

She started to breathe again. Relaxed against the seat. That was it then. Something from her case was going to be exposed.

She wouldn’t wish for it. But didn’t care all that much, either. In her new life she kept no secrets. So there was nothing to hold over her. And thus, nothing to fear.

Not that he’d know that. The Bloom Freelander he’d known had been afraid of her own shadow. When she was even aware of it following her around.

“I just saw something this morning,” she said, looking him over again, glad to have a few minutes with him now that she knew she had nothing to worry about. He was there as a courtesy. She got that now. And liked him all the more for it. It was so like him to follow up. “Something about him running illegal guns on the side?”

Sam Larson nodded. That flop of blond hair coming down on his forehead. The man had to be nearing forty, but you wouldn’t know it by his hairline.

Maybe the lines at the edges of his mouth gave a hint of experience...

“Do you think he’ll go to jail?” she asked now, trying to keep her mind on topic—something that usually came naturally to her these days. “Locked up with all those people he put away...” She didn’t wish it on him.

The man had done her a great service—putting Ken behind bars. He’d fought hard for her.

“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”

“What does Trevor Banyon going to jail have to do with me? Do they need me to testify on his behalf? To talk about the good he’s done? The lives he’s saved? Because while I don’t condone anything to do with illegal arms, he really did help save my life...and I’m sure many others. Are they thinking that if they have enough mitigating circumstances he’ll just get probation?”

She had no idea how serious the charges were against the man because she’d closed the app without reading the article.

It was about that time, when her voice dropped off and nothing else filled the silence, that Bloom realized part of the reason she’d been rambling so much. He was letting her. His long silences almost begging her to ramble.

“What’s going on?” Was he in trouble? Did he have something to do with Banyon’s side career?

She’d never have thought so. Couldn’t believe it.

Maybe Banyon had something on him?

He was clearly having difficulty saying whatever it was he’d come to say...

Just like that she switched from a previously needy woman with her earthly savior to psychiatrist mode. Wanting to help him as he’d helped her. Whatever he needed...

“Sam...” she used his first name, though he’d never invited her to do so. “What’s going on? Can I help?”

He was there for a reason.

When he shook his head, her heart sank. Please, God, don’t let this man have done something bad enough to put him in jail. A world without him in it, Santa Raquel without him out there keeping it safe...

The idea left her bereft.

His expression cleared. “Yes, you can help.” He seemed to have fought some internal battle and...won?

“Okay.” She smiled. Couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him. Wanted to put her hand on his knee where it rested close to hers. Or on the hand he had resting on it. “What can I do?”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure. Fine. What?” This was Sam Larson. He’d saved her life. She owed him far more than she’d ever be able to repay.

“I need you to pack up whatever keepsakes and possessions you most value, along with clothes and personal items, and be ready for me to pick you up late tomorrow afternoon.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Didn’t know her mouth was hanging open until she felt the dryness on her tongue.

“You’re abducting me?” They were the first words that came to her mind. He was in that much trouble?

“Of course not!” He shifted next to her and she felt the holstered gun he always wore under his jacket. He’d have one strapped to his ankle, too. “Well, not in the way you make it sound.”

“But you are planning to take me away against my will.” Her insides were frozen. Not shaking. She wasn’t even sure her heart was still beating.

And she didn’t give him time to answer. “I trusted you.”

He was wearing his badge. She’d seen that hooked to his belt, too, when he’d first taken a seat. He was on the job. Not committing a crime.

Didn’t feel any different to her.

When he bowed his head, she started to shake. Just her hands. Nothing else.

“Banyon.” She managed the one word past the sting in her throat. A tainted prosecuting attorney.

“He was selling guns to certain disreputable persons while prosecuting their competition. Twenty-four of his cases have been thrown out,” Detective Larson was saying. “Drug dealers are going to be back out on the street.”

“I don’t know any drug dealers.”

“You know someone who provided drugs to one in exchange for protection in prison. Drugs he’d been slowly, illegally, siphoning for years.”

To use on her. And others?

“Ken gave away the evidence.”

After a lot of intricate tracking of hidden trails, Sam Larson had found proof that Ken had been writing prescriptions for the various ingredients in the cocktail he’d been feeding her. But they’d never found drugs that correlated with the prescriptions. If he’d fed them all to her, she’d have been dead.

Her mind was working on facts. The rest of her was silent.

Gone.

“I need you to come with me, Bloom. Just for a few weeks.”

“I’m not running from him. I won’t let him make me a prisoner in my own life. Not again.”

“I’m not suggesting that you quit living your life. I’ll have someone posted to watch you at work and anywhere else you want to go. I just need you out of that house. Word came up from his cell block that he has plans for the place...”

“So I’ll sell it.”

“That’s fine. I need you safe in the meantime.”

She wasn’t afraid. Didn’t he get that? At least not of Ken hurting her. What scared her most was giving up control of her life again.

“No. If I run, he wins.”

“If he hurts you, he wins.”

She saw a friend of hers, Dr. Molly Higley, a woman who had an office on her floor, leave the building and get in her car. Bloom wanted to be as free as Molly was. Free to get in her car and drive off to a normal Saturday afternoon.

“I...know some people...inside...”

He had informants. Who’d say anything for favors.

“Word is that he’s going to see you pay...”

But, of course, there was no evidence that Freelander had said such a thing. No way to restrain a man before he committed a crime.

“I need time to build another case against him. Without any of the evidence Banyon presented.”

“With what then?”

“We’ve got this new information about him ditching the drugs to a dealer, for one.”

In exchange for protection in prison.

“Let me guess, some thug’s going to testify to that.” She’d learned how it all worked. Knew far too much.

His shrug wasn’t enough. Because he didn’t have enough.

“And you want me to believe that a thug’s word that a respected professor gave him drugs is going to be enough to convict Ken in court?”

When two and a half years before only her testimony would have been strong enough? And now they wouldn’t have that. Double jeopardy wouldn’t allow it.

“It won’t be enough. No. But it’s a start.” His gaze was piercing. “You’re in danger, Dr. Freelander.”

So they were going with formality again. Fine by her.

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“That depends.”

She hadn’t been asking a question. She’d been stating a fact. She knew what he was doing. What he’d done from the first time she’d met him in the emergency room. Frightened her so much she’d felt she had no choice but to appear in court, face her ex-husband, the man she’d given not only her heart, but her entire future, and talk about how he’d been responsible for her broken jaw. The detective had been right to ask things of her then. She’d taken the stand and taken back her life.

“Depends on what?”

“On whether or not it’s working. I need your cooperation on this, Bloom.”

Bloom again. Back and forth. Push and back off. Forcing her and then letting her choose. He knew how to manipulate, that was for sure.

“How long do you propose keeping me hostage?” She wasn’t going. At least not with him. Maybe she’d check herself into a hotel. Until she could figure out what else to do.

“Not long.”

She studied him. Wanting to trust him. But she’d trusted him when she’d been adamant about not testifying against Ken, and Sam had assured her that they had such an airtight case that nothing could possibly go wrong.

She’d trusted him when he’d told her that the way to ensure freedom from Ken for the rest of her life was to testify...

She’d trusted Ken, too, when he’d promised to love and honor her.

Turned out he’d been more threatened by her intelligence, her ability to surpass him in their chosen field, than in love with her.

And the self-admitted wedded-to-his-job detective needed her to close his case. Again.

Two very different men. Both serving their internal drive to be the brightest stars in their career universes.

“How can you sit there and calmly tell me that it won’t be long? If what you say is true, you can’t possibly know how long it will be before Ken does something else to get himself in hot water. Because if what you’re telling me is true, he’s going to be after me until he finds me, right? If you have your way, he doesn’t find me at all. Which means I have to stay hidden forever.”

Or be found.

She might be slow to see some things, but she was not stupid. Far from it.

“I have a plan.”

It wasn’t the look on Sam Larson’s face that stopped Bloom’s thoughts cold. Or even the words. It was the tone of his voice.

Like he wasn’t bullshitting her at all.

Like he was deadly serious.

“Will you at least give me a chance to lay it out for you before you decide?”

The choice was hers. To listen or not. To decide her course of action. Either with him or not.

It would be stupid not to avail herself of all the information.

“I’ll listen,” she told him. And she would.

But listening did not mean agreeing with what she heard.

It did not mean doing what she was told.

She was no longer a woman who could do that.

She’d rather die first.

CHAPTER FOUR

SAM HAD HER. He always knew when a subject he was interviewing was going to give him what he wanted. It was some kind of sixth sense he’d been given.

Sick sense, his ex-wife used to say. After she’d fallen out of love with him.

Whatever. He hadn’t asked for it. And he used it for good.

This wasn’t about having her. It had been. But now that he’d crossed that hurdle, he faced another.

How to make her think capitulation was her idea? How to make it her idea? Because the second he’d seen the spark of fear return to her eyes he’d known what he didn’t want to have to do. Control her. Manipulate her. Scare her back into the woman he’d met in that hospital emergency room.

“First, I have a place you can stay that will cost you nothing...”

“I’m not a charity case,” she interrupted, and he swore silently, giving her time to add, “I can afford to pay my own way. And then some.”

“I expect you can afford to pay my way, too,” he told her with complete honesty. “And then some. This isn’t about what you can afford. It’s about not letting that bastard take another thing from you. Or cost you more than the thousands you already spent on legal fees and counseling...”

She knew he knew the intimate details. So why did he feel as though he’d just knocked on the bathroom door while she was inside?

“And you think leaving my home won’t do that?”

He didn’t like feeling like a failure in an interview. Had no practice at it. “It also has to do with making you less easy to trace,” he said. “Hear me out, please?” Demanding was going to defeat his purpose.

The one where she was the one in charge and still chose his course of action.

“The place I have, it’s everything you told me you love about your house. It’s right on the ocean—closer than your house actually. It’s not as big—you’d said that you always thought that house was too much space just for you and the bastard. It’s higher up so you have the view you’d said was most important to you. And...it’s more private.”

She’d pictured a more peaceful setting for their beach home, but Ken had needed people around him. Rich people. All the time. At least that was what she’d told him close to three years before when he’d asked her permission to search her home without a warrant.

“You remember every word I ever said? Or have you been reading my case file?”

“My notes aren’t that good. Did you catch the part about this place being private, Bloom? It’s set up on a cliff, on private property. Fenced property. There’s a small trail down to the ocean. One that can be easily guarded. You’ll be safe there.”

Her expression softened. Everything in him pushed for the close. He gritted his teeth and sat there.

“I don’t like how easily you can play me,” she told him. And he started to look for angles again. Was much more comfortable doing so.

So...his angle was to get her to agree without losing any sense of the control she’d gained over her life.

“Are you telling me it doesn’t sound good to you?”

“It sounds heavenly.”

Good. Hopefully he could get her to agree before she actually saw the place.

“But I need to be right here in the city. I’ve got early morning appointments and sometimes I don’t get home until nine o’clock at night as it is...”

Hours he could relate to. And didn’t like to hear her keeping. As if she had no life...

“It is right here in the city.”

“A place like that, here in the city, and it’s available?” Her tone had lightened. He took that as a win.

“Yes.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

Not as hard as she thought. As she’d soon find out. He’d gotten the place for a steal, on foreclosure, after years of neglect and abuse.

The toilets had been replaced. And the faucets. Structurally it was fine. He’d added braces beneath the porch. Done some painting—so far only on the inside. And covered holes in the walls with cheap prints...

“So, do you think it’s a good idea for you to stay there where it’ll be easier to keep you safe? At least for the time being?”

The way she stuck her out lower lip, as though she was considering, that was new. Drew attention to how full that lip was...

“So that’s your plan?” Her disapproving tone didn’t coincide with his thoughts at all. “To have me move to a safer place? Be guarded? Held hostage for the unforeseeable future, in case someday Ken decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?”

He’d made it. Sam was 100 percent certain of that.

He just had no proof. Yet.

“You honestly expect me to believe if you aren’t guarded that you won’t be looking over your shoulder every second of every day, living in fear, in case someday the bastard decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?” The words burst from him. He’d rather scare her than have her beat up again. Or worse.

She had to move. Within the next twenty-four hours. Period.

He’d made a promise to her to keep her safe and he was damn well going to keep it.

* * *

HER INSIDES MIGHT be clenching to the point of pain, but Bloom was not going to give in. Fear would not rule her life. Ever again.

Sure, she’d experience the emotion now and then. It was an inevitable part of the human experience. But that didn’t mean she had to live it.

Feel it. Breathe. Move on. And it would pass. Fact. Not just theory. Or wishful thinking.

Nor was she going to dumb herself down by refusing to see, or to think about, the fearful challenges that could be in front of her. Having once been robbed of that chance against her will, without even knowing that it was happening to her, she now cherished her ability to face situations and make her own choices in how to deal with them.

“I won’t be living in fear,” she said after a minute of careful thinking, in answer to the detective’s challenge. “And I already look over my shoulder. Unless my back is against the wall,” she added. A timeless “gift” from her past. An awareness that there is always that which is unseen acting upon you.

His expression didn’t change. Nor did his posture. But she knew he was changing tactics even before he spoke. Because she was trained to hear the things people didn’t or couldn’t say. To see the things that they didn’t know were there.

Except for where Kenneth Freelander was concerned. That’s what love had done to her. It had used her to prove the truth in the old adage “love is blind...”

“My plan doesn’t end with getting you to a safe house.”

She was listening.

“A batterer will batter if he’s met with the provocation that brings out that tendency in him,” he continued.

Now he was in her territory. “Unless he’s had counseling and learned how to redirect those tendencies,” she said. “Or to recognize the circumstances that prompt them and distance himself from them before they get out of hand.”

Not all abusers were destined to lives of abuse. Science told her that. And she believed it, too. On a professional level. Personally, she couldn’t be objective...

“Kenneth has had no counseling.”

He’d know what she’d had no way of finding out.

Bloom looked at his shoes. Those uneventful black loafers. And flashed back to a gray-and-white-tiled floor. Industrial tile. Hospital floor tile. She’d been in the emergency room. Unable to make herself look up from the floor. She’d been too drugged to care enough to try.

And too embarrassed by what had happened to her to face another human being eye to eye. She’d listened as medical personnel spoke to her. She’d heard the voices. The kindness in them had only made everything that much more difficult to bear. She hadn’t felt like she’d deserved their kindness. She’d been a fool. The worst kind. Because she’d had the intelligence to know better...

His shoes had been her indication that someone else had entered the room. He’d said something about being on call for the High Risk Team. It was the first she’d heard the term. And had thought he was a doctor. Called in either because she was suspected to have brain damage and could hemorrhage. Or because they’d thought she was a suicide risk.

“I’m Detective Larson,” he’d said then. “And I need you to look at me.” There’d been no kindness in his voice. No demand, either, really. She’d never understood why that voice had moved her. Why she’d raised her head.

Or why she’d instantly trusted him.

“Bloom?”

She looked at him.

“I’m going to see that Kenneth is met with the provocation that will force him to hang himself.”

“That’s entrapment.” She was in his territory, but she’d learned a lot since her debut in the court system. Knowledge was power. And inner power led to healing. With her IQ Bloom had had a head start to healthy living.

“Not if it’s done right,” he said. “I’ve already spoken with a detective who is also on the High Risk Team...”

She knew the term now. Intimately. The team, comprised of industry professionals—if you could call intimate partner abuse an industry—was designed to prevent death due to domestic violence.

She’d been in danger of death. At Kenneth’s hands. The thought came with the same internal hiccup as always. It was possible her mind would never completely wrap around that truth. She could live with hiccups.

“...Chantel did some undercover work for the team a few months ago...” Sam was saying.

Bloom didn’t like that she’d missed part of what he’d been saying. A residual from her drugged days. Already he was sending her back.

Kenneth. And Sam, too.

“I read recently about this village in Northern Kenya,” she said, consciously switching focus, taking control of her thoughts. “Umoja, that’s the name of the village...”

She looked Sam Larson in the eye, challenging him to leave her alone.

“It’s fully inhabited by women and children, only. No men allowed.”

His eyes narrowed.

“And before you doubt its veracity, you should know that it’s thriving, as much as any village in that region thrives. It was founded in 1990 by fifteen women who’d been victims of rape. In Kenya, when a woman is raped, she is blamed, considered unclean and unfit for marriage. If she was unlucky enough to be married at the time of the rape, she is oftentimes subjected to beatings by her husband...”

Drawing a shaky breath, Bloom turned her head, focusing on the flowering bush several yards away. Filled with reds and oranges, the plants reminded her of the paintings in her office. Bold. Vibrant. Sunrise and sunset. The circle of life.

“Women are survivors, Detective,” she said when she could speak calmly. “Many of us have not yet learned our strengths. We aren’t raised to know about the core of steel inside of us. But it’s there. We nurture. We spread softness, and care for our own, but don’t mistake us as being incapable of taking care of ourselves.”

“When I first met you, you said there was no one I could call,” he responded immediately. “That you had no family close by. But I need to know if you have any family, period. Anyone Freelander might contact.”

The tiny voice crying out inside her had to be diminished. She would not crumble. Would not allow Kenneth to have squeezed the heart and soul out of her. She was smart, but she was so much more than a mind that made people curious. Her whole life people had concentrated on that part of her. Her own parents had shipped her off to a university to be raised as a lab rat.

No...she reined in her thoughts again. Those were Kenneth’s words, hurled at her in one of his many verbal attacks when she’d been to blame for something he’d done. Carl and Betty, as she’d always called her parents, had loved her to distraction. And had given her some of the best memories of her life during her summer vacations and holidays with them. Betty had sobbed every single time they’d had to say goodbye. And there’d always been moisture in Carl’s eyes, too, as he’d stood there with one hand on the big golden retriever they’d purchased the year after she left and who’d been a “child” more suited to the older couple, and the other hand at his wife’s waist.

Maybe, if they’d been younger when they’d had her...or prepared to ever have a child...

“My parents are both alive. And I have an aunt and uncle and some cousins. All older than me.”

She never talked to anyone anymore about who she’d been before she’d attracted the attention of the handsome and charming star of the university psych department.

“Are they local?”

She stared at him. Thinking of Ken contacting Betty and Carl. And knowing he wouldn’t.

“Because if they are, we need to make certain that they’re safe, too...”

“They live in Oklahoma,” she said now, still watching him. “They have a house, and a couple of acres on the farm my father’s family owns.”

Her father and father’s older brother jointly owned and worked the farm. The final decision to ship her off had been made by the two of them. She’d been six.

Sam nodded. “Good.”

She nodded, too. It was good. And maybe in the fall, if her schedule slowed a little bit, she’d make time to spend a week on the farm. To get back to her roots and know that, no matter what, she was okay. Because she mattered to them all.

They didn’t understand her. They were always afraid they were going to do or say the wrong thing. They were intimidated by her. At least her father and uncle were. But they did love her.

And she had to get to LA. Missing an evening out with her friends—most especially because of Ken—would be as unhealthy for her as a heart patient neglecting to take her beta-blocker.

She stood. “Tell me what time you’ll get me tomorrow and I will be packed and ready,” she said, facing the detective as he stood, as well. His shoulders were broad. She liked them, anyway. “But I will only go on one condition...”

He hadn’t been smiling. His expression still fell.

“What...”

“...I will be the provocation used to drive Kenneth Freelander to his rewards.”

There was no other option.

CHAPTER FIVE

SAM DIDN’T LIKE misleading her. And he damned straight wasn’t going to lie to her. He’d tell her the truth—that there was no way he was letting her get anywhere near that bastard ex-husband of hers again—as soon as he had her safely out of that house.

He made the promise to himself, and silently to her, Sunday afternoon during the entire fifteen minutes it took him to get from the foot of his dirt drive to the fancy winding street that housed the two-acre beach lots where Freelander had brought her to live. With a stop at the room he’d rented to drop off Lucy.

The girl had not been pleased with him. At all. Hadn’t cared a whit about the meaty bone he’d left her. No, she’d been 100 percent into the guilt. Giving him that big brown-eyed stare, the drooped ears and lips.

Just like a female...

Sam shook his head. Lucy was the best. Loyal. A great companion. And best of all...forgiving.

She might be displeased with him at the moment, but she’d be as thrilled as hell when he got back. And she didn’t hold a grudge.

Bloom was not outside waiting for him. Her car wasn’t in the driveway.

In his usual cotton dress pants, shirt and loafers, he stepped out of the car, straightening his tie as he prepared for battle.

When he knocked, she had to unlock the front door to let him in. But she did so. And stood there looking more gorgeous than ever with her long legs mostly covered by the calf-length, short-sleeved, multicolored T-shirt-style dress she was wearing. With sandals.

She’d pulled her hair back, loosely. Was wearing no earrings—though he noted a second piercing in both of her ears—and stepped back to let him in.

He’d have told her he liked what she’d done with the place, except that she’d thrown white sheets over everything minus the shiny wood floors.

“You have bags for me to carry?” He wanted to get this done. With as little conversation—and chance for something to go backward on him—as possible.

“They’re out in my car. And before you tell me I have to leave that, too, I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to.”

The damned Jaguar. “Why you hang on to a car he bought you, I have no idea.” Sam shut his mouth so fast he almost bit his tongue. See, these were the things that could go wrong, he reminded himself.

“Make no mistake, Detective...”

He didn’t like the formality one bit.

“...I paid for that car. Dearly.”

Still, who held on to anything that was a part of, or came from, someone who’d brutalized you so cruelly...

Unless, in spite of everything, she wasn’t really over Kenneth Freelander. Was possibly even still in love with him. It happened. He knew only too well from his work with the High Risk Team.

And if she did still hold feelings for her ex...his job just got that much more difficult.

“I didn’t ever intend for you to give up your car,” he said now, hoping he could backpedal enough to get her safely ensconced in his home.

His temporary ex-home. For as long as this took.

“I just figured you’d need to put some things in my SUV. It’s bigger.”

“I’ve got what I need.”

Had she understood? “You won’t be coming back here. Not even to pick things up.”

“Unless the laws have changed overnight, or I’m under arrest, I can go anywhere I please. Whenever I please.”

True. But...

“However, I’ve agreed to be under protection, with the understanding that I am your bait, dangled in front of my ex-husband under your auspices, not his. And I’m good for my word. I expect, if Kenneth really is out to get me, he’ll take our bait fairly quickly and this will all be over. If not, it will be over anyway because I won’t be in any danger.”

“I don’t expect him to jump on you the second he’s out, Bloom. You know him better than I do, but from what I’ve gleaned, he’s a man who plans carefully before he brushes his teeth in the morning.”

A bit of an exaggeration. But not much.

“That’s true,” she said, eyeing him with something that looked a little bit like respect. It was the first time she’d met his gaze since she’d let him in the door.

“So...if I find I need something I’ve left behind, I’ll let you know and you can come get it for me. How does that work?”

He could live with that. And wanted to leave it alone from there. But...

“Do you at least have everything that means something to you?” he pressed. “As in, if this house were to burn down, you’d have everything that was irreplaceable?”

Freelander had threatened to burn down the place. But he could just as easily trash it, or anything that mattered to her, depending on his mood.

“Most of what I can’t live without, along with my will and all important papers, are locked in a safe in my office.” She’d surprised him again. Wasn’t nearly as naive as she’d been when he’d known her before. But then, she wasn’t drugged anymore, either.

He made a mental note not to underestimate her again.

“I’ve got the rest in the car.”

Picturing the backseat of the Jaguar, he wondered what she’d put there. Wanted to know what she couldn’t live without.

Crazy. Other than Lucy, he wasn’t even sure what he couldn’t live without.

“You ready, then?” He didn’t want to admit to a case of nerves. You had to have nerves to get nervous. But there was no kidding himself. Getting her out of there was the easy part of this day.

“I’ll follow you,” she told him. She had to follow him. She couldn’t very well lead when she didn’t know where he was going.

And she could turn off at any point, which was why Chantel was a half block down, waiting to follow Bloom in the old Mustang Chantel insisted on driving even now that she was engaged to a millionaire. Chantel was as adamant as Sam that Bloom get moved to a safe house.

Sam always had a backup plan. It was the only way to stay alive in his business.

* * *

BLOOM WASN’T AS unsettled as she probably should have been. Leaving the home she loved...

She’d return soon enough. And appreciate it all the more. Absence made the heart grow fonder.

“I’m having an adventure,” she said aloud to the Jaguar’s interior. And wondered if, in the spirit of adventure, when she got back, she should get a bird. Something that would talk back to her on occasion.

Probably not, though. A bird would need care and company and Bloom gave everything she had to her job.

Keeping the detective in sight was proving a bit more difficult than it could have been. There was no way she was going more than five miles above the speed limit—being led by a cop or not. The law was the law.

She’d have expected him to be a bit more thoughtful, though. To be aware that if the light was soon to turn yellow, he should stop, because she’d have to do so. Or wait until there was enough of a clearing in the traffic for both of them before making a turn.

He got better at it, though. After he’d twice had to pull over to wait for her. She almost smiled, but then worried that he’d see her in the rearview mirror and find her odd, smiling alone in her car.

She didn’t really care what he thought about her.

Ah...ah...ah. Her internal companion butted in. So yeah, okay, she cared a little bit. She was entrusting herself to his care for the next brief window in time. And would be trusting him with her life when she became Ken bait.

The idea didn’t scare her as she’d have assumed it would. Pausing in the thought, Bloom waited for the small voice inside of her to chime in. Surprised when she was met with only silence. She really wasn’t afraid of Ken as much as she was driven to take this step. To stand up to him. Free herself of any power he’d ever had over her, free her heart from that last vestige of tenderness for having once loved the man so completely.

With the help of Sam Larson. That internal voice of honesty that was what she placed her trust in now added to her thought.

And she knew it was right. Without Sam Larson’s backup, his protection, his willingness to do what it took to get Ken back in jail, his drive to make Ken pay for his crimes, she wouldn’t be able to face Ken and succeed.

Not because she thought she’d cave in. But because she wasn’t powerful enough. Ken had the superior physical strength. Friends in low places. And he had friends in high places where the court was concerned, as well.

Not high enough to defeat the law, though. Or a detective set on upholding the law. Especially not in Santa Raquel. While Ken was busy building an army of thugs in prison, the Santa Raquel police force had been cleaning up house. Some people with money had been getting favors, to the point of a privileged son getting away with rape and, with the help of an undercover beat cop, a way of life that had been going on for decades had been stopped. The commissioner had been exposed. A rapist was awaiting trial. And Chantel Harris, the cop, was now a detective.

Like everyone else in Santa Raquel, Bloom had followed the whole thing on the news. Perhaps not everyone had followed as closely as she had. The rape hadn’t been the only cover-up. A powerful man had been getting away with raping women within his society. One of them was now one of Bloom’s patients.

Bloom wasn’t Sam Larson’s compliant, needy charge anymore, though. She wasn’t going to sit back and let him take care of her as she had in the past. Which was why she wasn’t telling him about the number that had shown up on her caller ID that morning. The call she hadn’t answered.

Ken had called her a few times from prison. The first time she’d taken the call because she hadn’t recognized the number. The second time, she’d taken it because she’d still been under his manipulative influence. And probably still a bit in love with the man she’d thought him to be.

She hadn’t actually spoken with him, other than that first time. After that she’d just answered the calls and as soon as she’d heard his voice she’d hung up.

This most recent time she’d just let it ring. He hadn’t left a message.

And Bloom wasn’t telling Sam. The detective already believed that Ken was a threat to her. That he wanted her. And she was giving him no reason, no excuse, not to use her as the bait that would reel him in.

Sam Larson turned his nondescript SUV. Bloom turned the Jaguar. They weren’t far from her house. A few miles, maybe. But the meticulously manicured landscape that stretched along all of the roads around her part of town had disappeared, giving way to tangled growth, underbrush with thorns, weeds and as much roadside trash as there ever was anywhere in Santa Raquel city limits. Because this area, on the outskirts to the north of town, was last on the day’s cleanup schedule.

Curiosity rose inside her. Maybe even a hint of excitement. She was a thinker. And like Ken—worse than Ken—a planner. Her mind never rested.

Which left very little room for anything akin to adventure.

Still, north of town? With beaches that were more rocky than sandy and cliffs that prevented easy access to the water, the area was only popular with those who could afford no better.

On the coastal road, she sped up as the speed limit increased, thinking about pushing the button on the steering wheel that would allow her to make a call and find out just where Detective Larson was taking her.

She’d stressed to him her working hours. Her need to be close to the office. And as far as she knew, there were no other habitable places in this direction until they came to the next town, more than ten miles away. She saw nothing but roadway ahead, lined on the right by brush and trees and on the left, hills and cliff face that fronted the ocean down below. He signaled a left turn.

There was no road to the left. He slowed, anyway. Almost to a stop. Heart pounding, Bloom wondered what was wrong. And wondered why she was overreacting so much since she wasn’t afraid.

She saw the two dirt tire track paths as he turned onto them. And because he was Detective Sam Larson, the man who’d saved her life, figuratively if not literally, she followed him. The track wound back and forth up the hill beneath a thick canopy of trees that were growing so close to the track that branches scraped against her car.

Clearly the detective hadn’t driven a Jaguar lately. He should have warned her that getting where they were going could scratch the paint job on a vehicle she couldn’t afford to purchase a second time. If she was going to drive her dream car—a Jaguar—this was it.

She worried about the car so that she didn’t have to think about where they might end up. He’d said the house had private beach access. Or rather, what he’d said was that there was a single path down to the water and that the property was fenced off.

They hadn’t driven through a fence. Anyone could access the road from down below. They wouldn’t be able to hang out down there, though. The busy highway didn’t have enough shoulder to allow anyone to hang out without being noticed. And in the way.

Almost as though he’d read her mind, Larson pulled to a stop, and when she crept up as close to his bumper as she could get without hitting him, she saw the newish-looking double-story gate that had prevented him from going any farther. The iron bars were slowly opening.

Looking to the right and left of that gate, she also saw the ten-foot-high fencing that went as far as she could see. Iron poles that were cemented into the ground, placed only an inch apart, crisscrossing at the top. No way for anyone to climb the fence, or shimmy up a pole, either, since there wasn’t enough room in between them to wrap an arm around.

Holy crap, she thought. He hadn’t been kidding about getting her someplace safe. He’d lied to her when he’d promised her that, if she testified, she’d never have to deal with Ken Freelander again. Not that a crooked prosecuting attorney was anything he could have predicted or prevented.

But the point was, he made promises he couldn’t possibly keep.

Like promising her that he’d protect her this time around. He was only one man. So many things were out of his control. So much could go wrong.

Still, at the moment, she was better with him than without him. And it was good to know that he hadn’t lied about the place being protected from easy intrusion.

Keeping her mind focused on the goal in mind—getting Ken back behind bars—she followed the detective through the gate.

CHAPTER SIX

THE...HOUSE...WAS a shock. Gray boards, peeling slivers of wood in places, had long since lost their paint. Leaving everything but her purse—which held her cell phone—and pepper spray key chain, she climbed out of the Jaguar and stood for a moment, staring at the smallish building.

It wasn’t the Taj Mahal. It wasn’t even as nice as the freshman dorm she’d lived in in college. Or the tract home she’d visited the previous week to see a client whose bones were not yet healed enough to allow her comfortable travel to Bloom’s office.

Sam Larson wasn’t looking to her for approval or even a reaction. He was all business as he headed up decaying steps toward a door. Bloom stepped gingerly forward—not sure she trusted the steps, in spite of the fact that a man twice her size had just bounded up them—until she noticed the new boards giving support underneath the porch.

For some reason that small sign of repair, of attention and care, gave her the impetus to focus on Ken behind bars, and not on the fact that this place was supposed to be her new home. Albeit temporarily. Stepping with as much authority as she could muster, she made it to the front door without shaking.

Or even feeling like shaking.

The door was as ancient-looking as the rest of the house, but it was solid. And bore new dead bolt locks. Two of them. He unlocked them and handed her the keys.

To say the inside wasn’t what she’d been expecting would be a huge understatement. Nor did it resemble anything like any of the places she’d lived over the last two decades. But it was...doable. Reminded her of the little place her folks had lived in on the farm when they’d first married. Before they’d built their current, more modern, fancier home. Also on the farm. The old place was a guest house now, of sorts. Nothing fancy. Isolated. But clean if you didn’t look too closely.

Sam’s choice of safe house was certainly off the beaten path. So far off Ken would never believe she’d inhabit such a place. Or probably ever visit himself. But those trees, the snarls of weedy undergrowth, the dirt road, the...dirt...in general, wouldn’t be an impediment to the types of people Ken had supposedly befriended.

“There are two bedrooms,” the detective was saying, heading from the entry, past a galley kitchen, through the great room toward a hallway at the back. “One has its own bathroom, the other uses the bath here off the hall.” He was opening doors as he went, showing her an iron tub that reminded her, again, of that old house on the farm. It had been a place she’d gravitated to when she’d been home for summer vacations. More home to her than the house she’d lived in with her parents before her uncle and father had decided to ship her away for being too smart.

Before her mother had chosen to side with them.

Plush white towels in varying sizes hung on the rods. She caught sight of a price tag on the back of one of them. The toilet was new. Linoleum, like that in the other parts she’d seen of the cottage, was yellowed and curled around the base of the new white porcelain.

Three types of shampoo, a full bar of soap and a container of body wash lined the back wall of the tub. The shower curtain still had creases in it from being packaged.

Had the house just been made habitable for her purposes? And if so, who’d paid for it?

Could they somehow stick Prosecutor Trevor Banyon with the tab?

The bedroom immediately across the hall was small, but as clean as the rest of the house. An old double bed sat on scarred linoleum. The comforter and pillow cases resembled the shower curtain in their even creases. A window faced the front yard. It was a little low for her liking.

“It’s bolted shut,” Larson said, observant as always, apparently. She’d been eying the old latch and wondering...

“It’s completely reinforced with rebar.”

“Rebar?”

“It’s steel bar used in construction to reinforce concrete.”

She nodded. Feeling a bit cramped standing there alone with him in the small room. She noted a dresser. A door that she assumed opened to a closet. And she moved toward the hall, grateful when he stepped aside to give her clear passage.

Her wedge sandals had a two-inch sole, but her eyes only came to his nose as she passed. She didn’t look closely.

Instead, she concentrated on what had to be new paint in the hallway. The same off-color, not bright enough to be white and not golden enough to be beige—that she’d noted on walls in the front room.

He led her to the second bedroom. Stood back while she looked around. A charging station sat on a nightstand on one side of the king-size bed. The comforter, a nondescript beige, had no crease marks. If anything, it was slightly wrinkled, as though it had been crammed into a dryer that was too small for it. A couple of paintings hung on the walls. They were washed-out prints of boats that looked as though they’d come from a dollar store.

They made Bloom want to paint. The entire place cried for her brushes. For color.

I choose joy, her inner voice piped up unexpectedly. Yes. She consciously always chose color—in her clothes, her adornments, her walls, because color brought her joy.

In the bathroom she noticed a used bar of soap in the shower. Along with identical bottles of everything she’d seen in the other, smaller bathroom off the hall. Even the new towels were there. Minus any visible tags.

And the toilet paper roll, as in the other room, was full, as though it hadn’t had a single sheet torn off from it.

But that soap...

“Is this someone’s room?” she asked.

“Not currently, why?”

“The soap in the shower.”

He blinked, looked a tad put out and retrieved the bar. “That shouldn’t have been left there,” he said, sounding apologetic.

Or annoyed. She couldn’t tell which. Unlike Ken, Sam Larson kept his emotions well in check.

He’d said she could have either bedroom.

“You’re sure I’m not putting somebody out of a home?”

“Positive.”

There’d been new towels in both bathrooms. As though both were expected to be used.

“I’m not staying here alone am I?” For a brief second her heart rate sped up.

She didn’t want Detective Larson to stay with her. He hadn’t offered, either. But for a second there...

“No, you’re not,” he said, as though brooking no argument.

The place was remote. And while she prided herself on being self-sufficient, the place was...remote. And yet...she didn’t want to stay alone with him.

Transference was a powerful tool the mind used to emulate the sense of safety and security that was on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Right behind physiological. She was noticing him. Noting odd sensations. She couldn’t afford a personal setback. Most particularly not with Ken soon to be back in her picture, however briefly.

“Who’s going to be staying here with me?”

“Detective Chantel Harris,” he said. “She’s giving us some time to get you settled and then she’ll be along. I’ll introduce you before I go.”

She could pretend she wasn’t disappointed. Though she’d like to think that for her own good she’d have refused to stay there alone with him. But her inner voice wouldn’t let her get away with lying to herself, so she went ahead and dealt with the feeling of dismay right then and there. He was her safety net. What she was feeling was normal. She nodded.

She thought about Ken being free and needed him back behind bars. Those bars that held him had given her her life back. Had taught her about freedom. Given her the first real taste of it she’d ever known.

“So what is this, someone’s summer home?” she asked, following Sam back out into the great room. She could see dishes stacked on shelves that a cupboard door had once covered. “If it is, they’ll be needing it soon.”

It was July. Summer visitors were already there in full force. Ever since Memorial Day the beaches—and bed-and-breakfasts that lined the streets around them—had been filled.

“This house is yours for as long as you need it,” he stated, clearly undaunted.

“I’m not going to need it long,” she pushed back.

He studied her. Put his hands in his pockets. And said nothing.

Bloom understood the tactic. And didn’t like the response.

At all.

* * *

AS SOON AS Sam heard Chantel’s car coming up the drive, he started to breathe easier. His associate had promised him that she wouldn’t say anything to Bloom about the cottage being his house. He knew she’d refuse to stay.

And there was no place else safe enough, that he could afford, that was also close to her work. He’d yet to receive financial approval from the department for his plan, but with Freelander’s imminent release, he hadn’t been able to wait for it.

Lucky for him he heard the old Mustang just as Bloom was letting him know that she wouldn’t be in his house long. All he had to do was hold his tongue for thirty seconds or so and be home free.

He told himself that he’d cut out a minute after introductions because Lucy was alone in a one-room...room, and would need to be let out. And added that Chantel and Bloom were better off getting to know each other on their own.

He was happy with both points. Sam’s conscience had learned long ago to leave well enough alone.

He spent the evening with Lucy, walking on the beach. Because Bloom was his responsibility, he chose the stretch directly below his cottage. He’d had to drive through the gate, but had left his vehicle there and then hiked to the side path that led down to the beach. Lucy loved bounding through the trees almost as much as she liked running in the sand, spraying it up behind her. He was glad to see lights flickering through the trees.

Glad, too, to verify that he couldn’t see enough of the window to make out anything, or anyone, inside.

He talked to Chantel just before bed. And again the next morning when she showed up for work after tailing Bloom to her office.

Freelander wasn’t out of prison yet, but word was that he’d specifically stated that he was going to have the pleasure of watching his wife find out that he was in charge as he taught her about proper respect.

Sam and Chantel were setting their routine for the days to come—when Freelander would be out. Taking it through a dry run. They’d put in a request for a guard to be placed with Bloom throughout the day. For round-the-clock protection.

“So far so good,” the unadorned blonde said as, in brown tweed pants, a white shirt and a matching jacket that only partially blocked her holster and gun from view, she slouched down in the chair beside his desk. They weren’t partners. Didn’t even work in the same area. But High Risk Team aside, he’d heard incredible things about her.

She was tough. She didn’t give up.

And she’d risk her life to help someone she believed deserved help. The job aside.

“How’d last night go?” The eagerness with which he awaited her response left him feeling slightly voyeuristic.

“Good. Fine. She worked. I watched TV.”

“What do you think?”

“I like her. She’s nice.”

“I meant about our chances of keeping her safe until we can figure out a way to get the guy to make the mistake that will send him back to jail.”

Chantel’s pause gave him indigestion.

“You get the idea she’s not going to cooperate for long?” He put the concern right out there. He had her in the house. She was cooperating. But keeping her there...

“I get the idea she has a mind of her own and doesn’t plan to let that creep husband of hers hold her hostage.”

Minor discomfort became not so minor. “Meaning?”

Shaking her head, her ponytail swaying, Chantel twisted her mouth and said, “I don’t know, Sam. She’s a hard one to read.”

Not if you knew her well enough.

The thought came unbidden to his head. He held on to it.

“Anyway, I’ve got a thing with Colin tonight and I know you wanted to be with Bloom when Freelander’s officially released, so can you get her from work? Stay with her until I get there?”

He welcomed the chance. “Any idea how late you’re going to be?” he asked, because it seemed like an expected response.

“If that rich and powerful fiancé of mine had his way it would be all night. But I’ve already told him I’ll attend his fund-raiser with him as long as he has me back to my car by eleven.”

Which would put her at the house by eleven-fifteen. Give or take five.

“You going to show up in your finery?” He’d heard talk around the station of the astonishing change she could pull off in very few minutes, but he’d never seen it for himself. From what he’d heard, she’d never seen it either until she’d been forced, while working as an undercover dilettante, to buy some designer clothes and learn how to wear makeup.

“I’m stopping by my place to change,” she said, shrugging. And then grinned. “It drives Colin nuts, and it’s good to keep him on his toes,” she said. “Keeps him from taking me for granted.”

He harrumphed. Had no interest in being privy to any romantic entanglements between...anyone.

“I thought you were living with him.” He only thought about the arrangement because she’d been the talk of the station a few months before. A real Cinderella tale. And he’d had his doubts about how a beat cop tomboy would fit in with the highfalutin lawyer’s fanciness. Eating off fine china every day.

“Him and his sister, at the family estate,” she said. “But I kept my place, too. Colin’s actually started to like slumming with me a night or two a week. Gives us time alone. And gives Julie, his sister, a chance to entertain without us around.”

He’d heard about the girl only enough to know she’d been a victim of date rape. He nodded politely, ready to move on, and noticed his captain coming toward them.

The grim look on the black man’s face didn’t bode well. If it was a case that was going to take him out of commission he’d have to pull some kind of favor and get out of it.

“You’ll be getting the email shortly, but I wanted to tell you personally, you didn’t get the approval for extra coverage,” Captain Salyers said. He didn’t sound happy. “With the new regime, with everyone looking, we can’t pull favors. Most particularly not for the town’s elite.”

The words running through Sam’s mind weren’t for speaking.

Chantel’s booted feet landed on the floor. “How is it a favor to protect a woman whose ex has threatened her life and who’s getting out of jail on a technicality? How is that not a given?”

“That’s just it,” the captain said, looking between the two of them. “The threat against her life hasn’t been substantiated in any official way. And the reversal on the case wasn’t our mistake. The commissioner said to take it up with the prosecutor’s office. Get them to come up with the money for off-duty cops. If the prosecutor’s office does it, it’s fair pay for wrongdoing. If the commissioner allots funds, without wrongdoing on the part of the police department, it’ll look like he’s doing favors.”

And the new commissioner had some heavy footsteps to obliterate.

“Because we don’t have a crime here,” Sam said succinctly. Nodding. He understood. Cops weren’t officially in the business of prevention. Only cleanup. It was messed up.

But nothing he was going to change in time for his purposes.

Salyers made a couple of suggestions regarding requests made to the district attorney’s office, who to contact, what he might want to say. Sam could feel Chantel’s gaze on him as he listened to his superior. He nodded, took down a name and thanked him.

“You think the DA’s office will move on this today?” she asked as soon as Salyers was out of earshot.

“I’m not going to risk it,” he told her. He’d put in the request. Stupid not to. And if approval came at some point, great. But in the meantime, “I’m on to plan B,” he told her.

“You can’t afford to pay for round-the-clock protection on your own, Sam.”

“I made a promise to that woman. I promised that if she testified she’d be safe.”

“You promised her her ex would be in prison for the rest of his life.”

Chin jutted, he nodded slowly. “He will be. And I intend to keep her safe until that happens.”

“I’ll talk to Colin...”

Sam’s head shot up. “I did not ask you to help me with this to get money out of that rich fiancé of yours.”

“You didn’t ask, period, Larson. I’m on the High Risk Team, too, remember? I offered. And Colin donates money all over the state. He’s giving regularly to The Lemonade Stand now...”

A unique women’s shelter in town that was changing the world one life at a time. Sam had been there several times, interviewing victims. It was a good place. Necessary. Deserving of any monies it could get.

Bloom had spent time there after the trial...

“Colin’s sister was a victim of an unethical police commissioner,” Chantel reminded him. “He’ll gladly support someone who is now caught in the system due to the commissioner’s professional demise. And even if he wouldn’t, Julie would. She has half of the Fairbanks fortune.”

Sam wasn’t feeling charitable. Mostly because he couldn’t afford to be as charitable as Chantel’s intended. Or Bloom’s ex.

Or Bloom, either, for that matter.

All night he’d been aware of the fact that he’d taken the lovely princess out of her castle. Wondering how Bloom was acclimating.

She was “slumming it,” as Chantel had just said about Colin. And Sam’s home was the slum.

The dichotomy was not lost on him.

And shouldn’t matter. He was in her life to do a job. Period.

“I’ll make some calls,” he told Chantel. “Get a crew together. I’ll plan to pay them. If you come up with donations, they’ll be appreciated.”

He’d only been married once. Hadn’t made any more money than his wife had so he hadn’t had to pay alimony. He’d acquired the cottage at a steal. Lucy didn’t care about diamonds or furs; she ate out of a forty-pound bag. And he made a good salary and had enough put away to pay for protection. For a while, at least.

Plus, he had years ahead of him to rebuild his heirless savings.

What good was a safety net if it couldn’t be used to keep someone safe?

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