Kitabı oku: «Confessions Bundle»

Confessions Bundle

What Daddy Doesn’t Know

The Rogue’s Return

Truth or Dare

The A&E Consultant’s Secret

Her Guilty Secret

Millionaire Next Door

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

What Daddy Doesn’t Know

By Tara Taylor Quinn

The Rogue’s Return

By Margaret Moore

Truth or Dare

By Jo Leigh

The A&E Consultant’s Secret

By Lilian Darcy

Her Guilty Secret

By Anne Mather

Millionaire Next Door

By Kara Lennox

What Daddy Doesn’t Know

By Tara Taylor Quinn

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

“MS. MCNEIL, your daughter spit at her teacher. We don’t tolerate things like that at Tyler Elementary.”

After one quick exchange of glances with her eight-year-old daughter, Juliet McNeil understood that Mary Jane’s story was different from the principal’s. She fought the feeling of dread seeping through her. If Mrs. Cummings kicked Mary Jane out, Juliet’s child would be facing the fourth new school in her brief, three-year educational career.

“Mary Jane will apologize to her teacher,” she said for the third time that Friday morning. “And she and I will speak more about this when we get home.”

The woman leaned forward, not a strand of her clearly dyed reddish-brown hair moving out of place. Probably didn’t dare to. “I hesitate to say this in front of the child, Ms. McNeil…”

Juliet looked at the raised face of her simple but elegant gold watch, trying to distract herself from the panic that threatened to make her sound harsher than she intended.

“Anything you have to say to me regarding Mary Jane can be said in front of her,” she said calmly. That calm was hard to come by when what she wanted to do was yell. Or cry. “I try not to hide things from my daughter and it seems to work well for us.”

Mary Jane had only been in this San Diego public school since the January semester change, and after two months the writing was already on the wall. The child was too intelligent for her own good, a free spirit, too outspoken—all of which made it hard for her to fit in with other kids her age.

She also had a father who didn’t know she existed.

“Yes, well, then.” The principal turned from Juliet to the fine-boned child sitting in a vinyl chair next to her mother, her skinny legs, mostly covered by an ankle-length denim skirt, sticking straight out in front of her. Mary Jane, her hands folded across her stomach and her short dark hair a riot of curls framing her cherub cheeks, looked the epitome of innocence. And in Juliet’s opinion, that was exactly what she was.

“The thing is, Ms. McNeil,” the woman started again a full thirty seconds later, “I’m not so sure these talks you have with your child are doing much good. Nor do I think a simple apology will do it this time.”

“Spitting was wrong, I agree,” Juliet said in a conciliatory tone. As a private defense attorney, she’d had a lot of experience reading jurors’ faces. Mrs. Cummings had already made up her mind on this one. Juliet brushed an auburn curl over her shoulder and continued anyway. “It’s also not something Mary Jane has ever done before. I wonder, has anyone asked her about the incident?”

The older woman, her forehead creased in a clear expression of impatience, said, “Yes, I have the complete report from Mrs. Thacker.”

“What reason did Mary Jane give for spitting at her teacher?”

A heavy sigh came from the seat next to Juliet. Her daughter’s ankle-length black boots bobbed. Juliet didn’t dare look over. She couldn’t afford the distraction.

She also didn’t have time to find another school right now.

But even without that look of confirmation from her daughter earlier, Juliet couldn’t believe Mary Jane would really do such a thing. Drop something and break it, spill something, trip over something, probably. But spit at her teacher? The child was never deliberately mean.

“She spit on her teacher!” Mrs. Cummings said. “I really think the reason is irrelevant.”

“Maybe.”

Mary Jane could take the truth, but she was still a child. Her feelings could be hurt by thoughtless adults passing judgment without knowledge or understanding.

“Do you mind if we just ask her?” The whisper brush of hose against hose as Juliet crossed one ankle over the other sounded loud. “The first amendment to the Constitution of this country states that everyone has a right to a trial.”

Her hands locked on the top of her desk, Mrs. Cummings didn’t move. Though her smile was rather ghostly, it remained in place as she studied Juliet. Then, slowly, she turned her gaze to the little girl whose wide-eyed look almost lost her mother the ground she’d just won.

“Okay, Mary Jane, can you tell me why you spit on Mrs. Thacker?”

“I didn’t actually spit on her.” Mary Jane’s voice, though somewhat subdued as she stared her principal in the eye, was her usual peculiar combination of childhood lisp and adultlike delivery.

Mrs. Cummings sat up straighter, her lips pinched with disapproval. “We have witnesses, several of them.”

“I did spit and it did get on her,” Mary Jane explained, eyes sincere. “I just didn’t mean it to get on her. She walked around the corner and I couldn’t make it stop coming out.”

God, Juliet loved this child. “Why did you spit at all?” she asked.

Mary Jane glanced down, moving her boots back and forth against each other. “Jeff Turner said that I was backward because there were lots of things I don’t know how to do ’cause I don’t have a dad to teach me.”

She and Mary Jane were happy together. Why couldn’t the world just let them be?

“Things like spitting?” Juliet asked.

Mary Jane nodded. “So I told him I could too spit, as good as anyone with a dad. And he told me to prove it, so that’s what I was doing when Mrs. Thacker came to call us in from recess.”

Trying not to smile at that image, or to think about the hurtful things kids did to each other, Juliet looked back at the principal. And waited. This was her call.

“The point is—” Mrs. Cummings, hands together, leaned toward Juliet “—that your daughter, whether she meant to or not, spit on her teacher in front of all the other children. We can’t just ignore that fact. Maintaining the discipline required to prevent mayhem with six hundred students all in one building for six hours every day takes diligence and carefully protected boundaries.”

“I understand, but—”

“I was quite willing to sign the necessary forms to allow Mary Jane to attend this institution even though she lives outside our boundaries, but she has not lived up to her side of the agreement. I’m going to—”

She couldn’t bear to see Mary Jane become the outsider again as a new kid in yet another school. “Please, Mrs. Cummings.” Juliet sat forward. She’d beg if she had to. She was just beginning jury selection on the biggest trial of her career—opposing Paul Schuster, a prosecutor who put far much more value on winning than on truth.

“She’s explained that the spitting wasn’t intentional,” Juliet said quietly.

The frown on the principal’s plain face was not encouraging. Even if Juliet won this one, they lost. She couldn’t feel good about sending Mary Jane to a school that didn’t want her.

The child was uncharacteristically still beside her as Mrs. Cummings sat back, eyes lowered. Silent.

There was a time to speak, and a time to let the facts speak for themselves. Watching her imp of a daughter sitting so solemnly beside her, chin sliding lower on her chest as the seconds passed, Juliet willed the facts to speak quickly.

“I don’t know how I could explain this to a classroom full of third-graders.” The principal finally looked up, her gaze pinned on Juliet. “If I let Mary Jane back into class, they’re going to think that what she did was okay.”

“I don’t work with kids all day long like you do,” Juliet said, “but it seems to me that they’ll think what you tell them to think. Couldn’t this be a lesson in how things are not always what they seem? Or an example of how telling the truth can get you out of trouble?”

“Spitting at all is against school rules.”

Filling with desperation, Juliet spoke urgently. “I know, ma’am, and I’m sure no one’s sorrier than Mary Jane. But spitting on the playground can’t be a reason for expulsion, can it?”

“No,” Mrs. Cummings said, eyebrows raised. “Not by itself. But this isn’t Mary Jane’s first infraction.” She looked over at the girl. “And I’m sorry Jeff Turner was bothering you. I’ll have another talk with his father, but I just don’t see how I can overlook the fact that you’re in this office more frequently than anyone else in your class.”

Juliet leaned forward. “The other incidents are in the past,” she said, finding it difficult to breathe around the tightness in her chest. “Mary Jane accepted her punishment and made all necessary reparations. All we have on the table today is spitting and, judging by your own words, that’s not punishable by expulsion.”

The principal sat for a long time, and then her face softened slightly. “All right, I’ll give her one more chance. But if there’s a next time…”

Thank you, God. Juliet didn’t hear the rest of the warning. The bottom line was that Mary Jane couldn’t make any more mistakes.

“But you’re going to have to stay after school for a week, young lady, and clean Mrs. Thacker’s blackboards for her as punishment.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And apologize to her in front of your classmates.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

With that, Mrs. Cummings nodded.

Juliet gave her daughter a hug and a whispered “I love you,” and hurried back to her office at Truman and Associates, one of the city’s leading law firms. They’d had a narrow escape.

“MR. RAMSDEN, I’m Paul Schuster. Thank you for seeing me.”

Blake took the older man’s hand, was surprised by his weak grip, and indicated one of the two lush navy leather chairs in front of his desk.

“It’s not often I get a call from an assistant attorney general,” he said, curious. He’d read about Schuster; the man was one of the state’s “winningest” prosecutors, according to the papers.

There were some who said innocent people were rotting away in prison because of that.

“As a matter of fact,” Blake added, taking the man’s business card, “this is a first.”

“It’s the first time I’ve been in the Ramsden Building, too,” Schuster said, lifting the back of his black-and-white tweed jacket as he set down his soft-sided leather briefcase and sat. “Like everyone else in San Diego, I’ve driven by it countless times.”

Blake nodded. The building was one of the first things he’d done after his return to the States—and the family business—five years before. One thing he’d learned during his four-year sojourn abroad was that image was everything. Show them you’re big and impressive, and you will be. He’d also gained an almost spiritual appreciation for the artistry of the architecture he’d spent five years in college analyzing.

“It’s as interesting inside as it is out. The spirals and columns are fascinating,” the prosecutor added.

“You’ve never been to Barcelona, I take it?”

Schuster’s frown held more question than anything. “No, why?”

“They’re based on the Sagrada Familia, a famous Gaudi church.” He could bore the man with all the other architectural details represented in the new home of Ramsden Enterprises, one of the state’s oldest and most elite custom-home builders—and now its leading commercial builder as well—but he wouldn’t. “Gaudi was an innovator, part of the art nouveau movement. He created fairy tales out of rubbish. And this particular project is one he never finished.”

To his credit, Schuster appeared interested.

Rocking back in his chair, Blake placed his hands on his thighs. After five years, he still wasn’t used to the creased dress slacks he wore.

“You’re a busy man, Schuster. I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss architecture. Unless you’re in the market for a new one-of-a-kind home?”

“What do you know about the Terracotta Foundation?”

“Only what I’ve read in the papers. It’s a privately owned and administered foundation whose alleged purpose is to raise funds, through investments and donations, and disperse them to third-world countries.”

“How about Semaphor?”

Resisting the urge to adopt a less relaxed position, Blake said, “It’s a nonprofit organization that raises public awareness of charitable foundations.”

“Your father was on the board.”

Blake knew that. The open position had been offered to Blake five years before, when he’d flown home in shock to take up the reins of the family business.

“Is there a problem here?” he asked as he leaned forward, putting his feet firmly on the floor and resting his forearms on the edge of his desk. The glass was cool on the skin left bare by the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt.

Schuster shook his graying head. “Not with you, no.” The pockmarks on the man’s face gave a hint of fierceness to his serious expression.

“And not with my father, either.” Of that Blake was certain. Walter Ramsden might have been obsessive, inflexible, and impossible to live with, but he had been as honest as they came. In all his dealings.

“How well do you know Eaton James?”

CEO of Terracotta Industries, which owned the Terracotta Foundation. “Well enough.”

Schuster raised one eyebrow. Blake looked away and stared out the twelfth-floor wall of windows that flanked the west side of his office, giving him a view that—if all civilization were wiped away—would take him straight to the ocean. Having it so close, that vast place of mystery and life, somehow calmed him.

“The man tried to swindle my father.” Blake gave Schuster dates. Times. Quotes from an investment agreement. Accounts. “That’s what I mean by well enough.”

“Are you willing to testify to this?”

Of course. If he had to. The one thing that held steady in his life was his compulsion to tell the truth. To tell it and to live it. But he didn’t relish showing his late father for the fool he’d apparently been in that incident, particularly since it was the only time in the man’s entire life that he’d been led by sentiment rather than logic.

“I have a paper trail outlining a series of investment frauds that, with your validation, could nail James to the wall,” Schuster said. “Without your testimony—the explanation that will tie all the paper evidence together—he could walk.”

“When do you need me in court?”

“YOU SURE LOOK gloomy.”

Leaning her head against the back of the seat, Mary Jane nodded.

“Was it rough, apologizing in front of everyone?”

“Nah.” She hadn’t cared. She was sorry she’d spit on Mrs. Thacker.

“Then what?”

“I just wish I didn’t have to go to any dumb school.”

What she wished was that she could stay home where Mom always knew what she meant, knew that she wouldn’t do bad things on purpose, and didn’t think it was weird that she didn’t know her dad.

She wished she’d never told that to dumb Jeff Turner anyway. But he’d made her really mad when he’d said her dad didn’t want her because her hair was so curly and she said weird stuff.

At least she hadn’t told Jeff that her dad didn’t know her, either—didn’t even know about her.

“School’s not dumb, Mary Jane. You’re a very smart little girl, but if you don’t learn facts and information, that intelligence isn’t going to do you a lot of good.”

“You could teach me at home.”

“Honey, you know I have to work.”

“Well, I can stay home alone and teach myself.”

“Did someone say something mean to you after I left?”

Thank goodness it had been yesterday when Jeff had said her dad didn’t want her. Because she couldn’t lie to her mom, and she didn’t want to tell her what he’d said.

“No.”

What if the thing Jeff said was true? What if her father didn’t want her?

“You sure?” Mom’s face was all soft and kind of smiling when she looked over at Mary Jane.

She nodded. And looked out the window for a while, thinking about her dad. Mom had told her a long time ago who he was. Her mom didn’t keep it a secret, because her grandma had kept secrets from Mom and Aunt Marcie that had turned out to hurt them a lot.

That big building downtown was her dad’s. And she was glad he didn’t know about her. If a man came to live with them, it would just mess up the best life she’d ever had. Still…

“Do you think Blake Ramsden woulda wanted me if you’d told him I was born?”

“He wasn’t anywhere where I could have told him,” Mom said. “You know that.”

“But when he did get somewhere, do you think he woulda wanted me?”

Mom was quiet for a while and that scared Mary Jane. If Jeff Turner was right about this, was he right about the other dumb stuff he said, too? Did everyone really hate Mary Jane and laugh at her behind her back because she mostly got all the answers?

Did they say they didn’t want to be her friend?

“I believe that if he knew you, he’d love you as much as I do,” Mom finally said.

That was good. “But would he want me?”

“I can’t speak for him, sweetie,” Mom said. “But I don’t see how he couldn’t want you. I’ve told you before that I would contact him for you if you wanted me to,” she added. “Would that help?”

“No!”

The trees were going by really fast and it made her a little dizzy, staring out at them. She liked them though. They were too big to be hurt by just about anything, ’cept lightning, and they helped you breathe.

“Did you want me?” She’d hadn’t planned to ask that.

Mom pulled into their street and into their carport and stopped the car, but she didn’t open her door. Mary Jane didn’t either.

“Why all the questions about being wanted?” Mom asked, frowning a little.

She shrugged. A shrug wasn’t a lie.

“When I first found out I was pregnant with you, I was scared to death.” That was something Mary Jane had never heard before. She stared at her mom.

“You were?” She’d never seen Mom scared of anything. Usually she made the scary stuff better.

“Uh-huh.”

“Scared of me, a little baby? How come?”

Mom’s fingers pushed curls off Mary Jane’s forehead. She liked it when Mom did that.

“I wasn’t afraid of you. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take care of you. I was alone and not even a real lawyer yet because I hadn’t taken the bar exam. I had no idea how I’d support us.”

Oh. That kind of stuff. “But you did.”

Mom smiled. “Yes, I did.”

“So then did you want me?”

“Very much.”

That was enough. But Mary Jane liked talking about this. It made her feel good. Like she really was special and not a loser like Jeff Turner said.

“When did you first know you wanted me?” she asked, still sitting with her seat belt on even though she was getting pretty hungry.

Mom had kind of a faraway look, and Mary Jane knew she was remembering. She wished she could remember, too.

“I always wanted you,” she said, her voice soft like she was telling a dream. “But the first time I knew you were going to be more important to me than anything else in my life was the first time I felt you move.”

“In your stomach?”

“Yep.”

Mary Jane grinned. “What did it feel like?”

“Like a tiny little butterfly fluttering its wings.”

That wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t ever going to have babies herself. That would be too gross.

But she was sure glad Mom had.

CHAPTER TWO

“MY PAWN TO your king,” Blake muttered to himself. Still in the gray suit and coordinating gray, black-and-white tie he’d worn to the office that day, he stood at the computer in his glass-walled home office the last Wednesday night in March. He pushed a couple of keys, hit Enter, took one final look at the game on the screen, and left the room. His opponent, a man he’d met in Kashmir, India, several years before, would be at least an hour figuring his way out of that one.

He had guests coming for dinner, Donkor and Jamila Rahman. A Christian father and daughter he’d lived with for a while in Egypt—before his marriage to Jamila’s closest friend.

After checking the last-minute details on the dinner his housekeeper had prepared for him that afternoon, Blake moved from the kitchen, with its shiny black appliances, granite countertops and double oven, to the side of his house that didn’t overlook the ocean. In contrast to the western side, these rooms didn’t have windows. The house was built into the side of a cliff in the quaint village of La Jolla.

The east side was where he’d put his treasure room—a museum with track lighting, built-in shelves and marble tables that housed all the artifacts and souvenirs of his travels. It was also where he housed his wine cellar.

The cellar—more of a wall-size wine closet—had been his wife’s idea.

A woman who’d been orphaned young, Amunet had grown up half Egyptian, half French and later, a New Yorker. She’d been visiting Egypt when Blake was there helping to rebuild a small village that had been hit hard by weather and poverty. Donkor, a man of means and a charitable heart, had been the largest donor and overseer of the project.

Blake chose the wine, checking the year, although he knew there was not one bottle in the house that wasn’t worthy of a fine restaurant.

Donkor and Jamila had been the only “family” present at the urban Egyptian wedding Amunet had wanted. From the car parade with all the flowers and ribbons and honking of horns, through the ancient tradition of the Zaffa, a human parade of belly dancers and drummers singing to them, to the Kosha, two bedecked seats in front of the waiting guests where he and Amunet had exchanged rings, his lovely bride had been in her element. Surrounded by noise, excitement, beauty, dancing and activity, and enough people to distract her from anything that might have been missing.

Of course, Blake hadn’t seen it that way then. He’d just been crazy in love with the unusual woman who loved him so intensely. And she’d been completely open to whatever path his heart directed him to take.

Or so he’d thought.

Putting the wine on ice, Blake carried it through the kitchen to the dining room, which also sported a wall of windows that overlooked the ocean. He lit the candles, dimmed the lights, and flipped a switch that turned on the CD of soft flute and guitar music that would play throughout the evening.

He hadn’t seen either of the Rahmans since his divorce four years earlier.

He was ready for their arrival with a good twenty minutes to spare. Not at all like him. Moving back through the kitchen and Amunet’s garden room to his office, Blake looked in on his chess game.

It was exactly as he’d left it.

Then he picked up the newspaper he’d been avoiding since he’d come home. On the front page, in the very center and large enough for him to see the dimple at the corner of her cheek, was a photograph of Juliet McNeil, one of the partners at Truman and Eaton James’s defense attorney.

He hadn’t known, when he’d agreed to be Paul Schuster’s witness, that Juliet would be opposing. Not that it would’ve mattered. Eaton James had broken the law. He had to be held accountable.

He hadn’t seen her in almost a decade, except for a cursory conversation when they’d passed each other on the sidewalk a few years ago.

Still, if Blake was going to meet the lady again, he’d rather it be in more agreeable circumstances—or at least on the same side of the fence. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see her at work, against a man like Paul Schuster.

She didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. And, as he remembered it, Juliet wasn’t a woman who easily accepted defeat.

He grinned, dropping the paper as the doorbell chimed.

“WE DIDN’T COME JUST to have dinner with you,” Donkor, dressed in his usual garb of sedate suit and tie, announced as he pushed back his empty dinner plate. He’d had second helpings of the chicken cordon bleu and spinach salad Pru Duncan had prepared.

Jamila glanced up and then away. Blake had known, since she’d failed to meet his eyes when they’d kissed and hugged hello, that something was wrong. He’d also known that he’d have to wait to find out what it was until Donkor felt the time was right for talking.

“Is there something I can help you with? You need a place to stay while you’re here in the States? You’re always welcome to stay with me as long as you like. You know that. I have more bedrooms than I need.” More solitude than he needed, too.

Donkor shook his head.

“We have to fly out tomorrow.” Jamila’s normally effusive voice was subdued. Dabbing at her lips with the cloth napkin, she gave him a brief smile.

“I thought you just arrived last night.” He’d sent a car to the Los Angeles airport to pick them up. They’d stayed in the city due to the late hour.

“We did.” She looked as beautiful as ever with her long dark hair up in a twist that left ringlets escaping down the sides of her face. Her olive skin was smooth and made up to perfection, her slim figure outlined but not openly displayed in her silk pantsuit.

“We have some news.” Donkor’s deep voice was as solemn as his daughter’s had been.

And that was when it hit him. “You’ve heard from Amunet.”

“Yes.”

No one sipped wine. Or moved. Blake glanced from one to the other. They’d been completely sympathetic to both him and Amunet during the divorce. They’d understood that needs neither he nor Amunet had been able to alter had driven them apart. Certainly that wasn’t about to change.

“You’re here to tell me she’s remarrying?” Donkor had been the only person, other than Amunet herself, who’d known quite how hard Blake had fallen. “Because it’s really okay. She was a part of a dream—an unreal life that was destined to end. I think, at least in part, I must have known that all along.”

“You would never have married her if you’d known that.” Donkor’s tone brooked no argument. “That’s not your way.”

Blake would never have taken vows he didn’t intend to uphold. He’d forgotten, for a moment, that Donkor knew a lot more about him than how much he’d loved his wife.

Jamila wiped her mouth again. This time missing, and dabbing her eye instead. Her eye?

Blake looked over at her. She was crying.

Donkor spoke.

“Amunet is dead, son. Her funeral is on Saturday. In New York. We wanted to tell you in person.”

SHE’D COMMITTED SUICIDE. His ex-wife, a woman who’d raised him to levels of emotion—both good and bad—that he’d never really understood, was dead. And while neither Donkor nor Jamila would ever have said so, the implication was that her death was partly because of him.

While she hadn’t been able to bear the humdrum life of an executive’s wife, trapped in one city, hosting cocktail parties and doing lunch, neither had she been happy as a divorcée. She’d been so contradictory, such a strange blend of modern and ancient, forward thinking and traditional. She’d traveled the world, first by herself and later with Blake—unmarried, uncaring what people thought. Going wherever the mood took her, to the grotto in Paris, a fishermen’s bar in Ireland, the wilds of Africa. Nannying. Doing temporary office work. Dancing for food. But she’d been a virgin on their wedding night.

God, what a night that had been.

Sipping warm whiskey from a highball glass, Blake sat alone in his living room on a chair of the softest fabric, looking out over the shadows to the dim lights of ships on the ocean. Waiting for Paul Schuster’s call. He’d told Schuster he’d be available to testify on Friday morning.

And he was going to be in New York.

Shaking his head, Blake took another sip. And stared. A light had been bobbing out in the distance for half an hour. The boat was headed in the direction of Alaska. A chilly place.

This was a night for chilled hearts.

He’d been prepared to receive an invitation to Amunet’s third wedding. He’d missed the second, a Las Vegas quickie that had ended almost as soon as it had begun. And he’d already decided to attend the third, whenever it came along. He was over her—or he understood, at least, that they were never meant to be forever. They were from very different worlds, finding happiness in completely opposite things. He wished her well. Wanted her happy.

He’d never expected to be attending her funeral.

“I APPRECIATE the phone call,” Paul Schuster said when he and Blake finally connected. He was as agreeable and friendly as he’d been the two other times Blake had spoken with him in the past weeks.

“Obviously I’ve been following the trial,” Blake told the other man, still sitting in the dark, sipping whiskey—his third—and watching the ships. Sliding down, head against the back of the chair, he lifted an ankle to the opposite knee. “You’re doing a great job. I’m sorry to be putting a damper on things.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Paul said, with as much energy at ten o’clock at night as he’d probably had at ten in the morning. “Actually, I haven’t even declared you as a witness yet.”

“Juliet McNeil doesn’t know I’m testifying?” He’d been wondering what she would think about seeing him again.

They’d had one incredible night together once.

A long time ago.

“No one knows you’re testifying, including my staff,” Schuster said, surprising him.

Blake sipped and nodded, his eyes half closed as he watched another ship approach. “I thought you had to declare as soon as you turned up new evidence. Give the defense a chance to review the information.”

“I haven’t seen the evidence yet, so technically I don’t have any. I’d been hoping to get the paperwork today, which is why I had you on hold for Friday. The way it’s looking now, it’s probably going to be Monday.”

“What are the chances of the records not turning up?”

“Slim to none.”

“But there’s a chance.”

“Not one I’m willing to acknowledge.”

If Blake had been a little more clearheaded, he might have continued to push for percentages. He liked things on the table, in black and white or not at all.

“I’m glad I don’t have your job,” he said instead.

Schuster laughed. “Just call when you’re back in town.”

Blake said he would.

He dropped the phone. Took another sip—a small one. It was going to be a long night and he needed to be up at the crack of dawn to get his business affairs in order before he left for New York.

But for now, there was nothing to do but sit. And wait. And think.

“JULES?”

Instantly awake as she recognized the voice on the other end of the line, Juliet sat up. It was late Thursday night, the first of April.

“Marce? What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing. You’ve been crying.” It wasn’t something Juliet could ignore in the nonidentical twin sister she’d been watching out for all their lives.

Marcie laughed, sniffed, laughed again. “It really is nothing, Jules, I promise. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just lying here having a hard time falling asleep and suddenly I start thinking about you, missing you and before I know it, I’m blubbering like an idiot.”

“You need to get out of that town.” Unlike Juliet, who’d left Maple Valley behind the second she’d graduated from high school, Marcie at thirty-four was still living in the small, mostly trailer-populated northern California town.

That fact scared Juliet every time she thought about it. She’d seen what being cooped up in Maple Valley had done to their mother.

Marcie, in contrast to their destitute mother, was one of the more well-to-do inhabitants in town, having made a success of the local beauty shop. But still…

“I know,” her sister said. “I do need to get away.”

Where Marcie lived was Marcie’s decision. They both knew that and had acknowledged it many times. But that didn’t stop Juliet from caring, or worrying, or helping where she could help.

It would be different if Marcie was happy in Maple Valley. But with her proclamations of dissatisfaction, she constantly reaffirmed Juliet’s fears. If she didn’t get out of that town with its limited possibilities, she would wither and prematurely age as their mother had.

“So come to San Diego for the weekend.”

While Marcie didn’t visit as often as Juliet and Mary Jane would like, she was a fairly frequent occupant of their Mission Beach cottage.

“I don’t know. Hank has a big sale going at the hardware.”

Juliet started counting. She had to at least get to ten before she’d be able to rein in the frustration that she had no right to unleash on her sister. She made it to four. And a half.

“So?”

“Well, it’s hard on him. He’ll be exhausted. I should be here.”

“Why in hell should you be there?” She sat up in bed, pulling a pillow over her as the covers fell to reveal the spaghetti-strap shirt and bikini briefs she slept in. Their mother’s life had been ruined by her choice to sacrifice herself, her needs and desires, for a man. Why couldn’t Marcie see that she was doing exactly the same thing?

“Do you have clients on Saturday?” Juliet asked.

“Not that I can’t reschedule.”

“So come.”

“Hank will be disappointed.”

“Marcie! For God’s sake! You aren’t married to the guy!”

Last Juliet had heard, Hank still hadn’t asked, after more than fifteen years of dating.

“I know.”

“You don’t even live with him.”

“I know.”

In the dark, Juliet stared out her bedroom window to the beach beyond. When the weather was warm enough, she loved to sit in her room late at night with the window up, listening to the waves as they crashed along the distant shore.

“He’s not there, is he?”

“No.”

“So come.”

“Okay.”

Blinking, Juliet pushed the pillow aside. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Great! Mary Jane will be thrilled! We’ll go to Seaport Village.” It might be considered touristy by most San Diegans, but Juliet, Mary Jane and most especially Marcie loved walking through the shops and restaurants along the waterfront. “Bring your in-line skates. Mary Jane’s been practicing and I think she’s ready to go out with us.”

More than anything, Juliet was ready to spend some time with her sister.

“Okay,” Marcie said, her voice losing the weak thread of tears. “And how about I throw in a nice dress, too, and treat us all to a decadent dinner in Beverly Hills?”

“Throw in the dress. You don’t need to treat.”

“I know,” Marcie said, her voice soft. “But I want to, Jules. Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Being you.”

“Thanks for being you, too,” she said, the reply never growing old, no matter how many times it was repeated.

“Love you.”

“You, too.”

Juliet hung up the phone, a weight she hadn’t even known she was carrying lifted from her shoulders. A weekend with Marce and Mary Jane, playing, having a late-night glass of wine or two with her sister, was just what she needed.

And after once again discussing the possibility of a life change for Marcie, perhaps she’d have a chance to talk to her sister about Mary Jane. The child had been a model student since the spitting incident the previous month. But the episode had brought back a fear to Juliet’s heart that, this time, would not be so easily eradicated.

She thanked God for Mary Jane’s ability to see all kinds of truths, to be aware of truth in different lights. And she was worrying herself sick about whether her daughter could fit into a society that preferred conformity to originality.

Sliding down in bed, she punched the pillow, leaned back and watched the shadows and occasional bobbing light on the ocean. She knew exactly what Marcie would say. Mary Jane was well adjusted, more secure than any kid either of them had ever known—certainly more secure than either of them had been, in spite of the fact that they’d always had each other—and there was no mistaking that the kid was genuinely happy. Hell, perfect strangers would glance at Mary Jane on the street and smile.

Marcie was going to tell Juliet she was raising her daughter well.

Juliet closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. She had another long day in court to get through before Marcie arrived. She was probably just tired from so many days of sitting through the prosecution’s portion of the Terracotta case. Waiting for her turn had always been the hardest part of her job.

Yeah, that was it. She was just tired.

So why, then, was she finding it so impossible to get to sleep?

BLAKE LEFT NEW YORK as soon as the funeral ended. A small affair, hosted by the adoptive parents Amunet hadn’t seen in ten years prior to this last trip home, it lasted less than half an hour. Jamila gave the eulogy. There were a couple of songs. An Egyptian poem was read. And then it was over.

That quickly, a life that had been too vibrant for this world was gone. Forever. It was the third time in five years that he’d buried those closest to him. First his parents, after the car accident, and now Amunet.

He called Paul Schuster from the airport to let him know he’d be back in plenty of time to appear in court on Monday, then boarded his plane.

With only one glass of cheap whiskey to deaden the uneasiness in his heart, he sat back in the blue leather first-class seat and tried not to think about life, or death, or the past couple of days.

In spite of everything, it had been good to see Donkor and Jamila. It was such a shame their lives kept them so far apart from him, in spite of how much they missed each other.

The whiskey didn’t help much, nor did the movie they were showing on the six-hour flight. He’d already seen it. Twice. And there sure as hell wasn’t a lot to look at through the window. Not when you were flying above the clouds at thirty-two thousand feet.

He would have picked a brighter color than the royal blue Amunet’s parents had chosen for the inside of her casket. And dressed her in something long, white and flowing.

For the first time since he’d known him, Donkor had looked tired. Old.

The flight attendant came by and Blake asked for a bottle of water to make his whiskey last a little longer. He talked to her about the flight, and asked if she had to turn around and go right back to New York or if she’d be flying somewhere else first.

He didn’t hear her answer.

He went to the rest room.

And he remembered the last time he’d flown with his ex-wife. They’d been on the way to California to bury his parents.

That led him along a painful road of memories, mostly of his father. The dictator. The honorable husband and father. The honest businessman. He thought about Eaton James, and his father’s heart attack.

Finally, in desperation, head lying against the padded rest, he turned his thoughts to the upcoming trial. Testifying was something he could actually do.

And from there, with the hum of the airplane cocooning him in his own little world, he thought about Juliet McNeil and the night they’d met.

Though he’d never known her well, since they’d talked far more about their separate futures than any past experiences that would have defined them, he’d felt a particular affinity with her, borne of their one incredible night together. He’d been a very young twenty-three to her much more mature and focused twenty-five. She’d been preparing to sit for the bar exam, after winning enough scholarship money to put herself through the elite University of Virginia School of Law, and had made it very clear that she was not going to be swayed from her goals by entangling herself in a relationship that could only distract her. Having just completed his MBA, after earning a degree in architecture, Blake had been in the final stages of preparing for what was supposed to have been a year of world travel, a prerequisite his father had set for Blake’s employment with the family business.

For Blake, the journey had been much more. It had been a time to finally achieve the freedom that had consumed his thoughts for years. A time to get out from under his father’s expectations—and his own—that he live up to the old man. When he was growing up, he’d constantly had to prove his intelligence and worth. The trip had been a time to find out what he really wanted to do with his life…or slowly die without ever having been alive.

During his last weekend at home, he’d met Juliet at a bar on the beach.

“Would you like some wine with your steak?” Blake was a bit surprised by the disappointment that shot through him as the flight attendant he’d practically clung to for diversion earlier interrupted his reminiscing with a dinner that smelled delicious.

“Thanks.” He nodded, holding up his arms as she placed dishes, silverware and a full wineglass before him.

The steak was good. And the other passengers were more talkative as they all shared dinner in their own little world. That was just as well, he thought, listening to the woman on the other side of the aisle as she told him about the grandson she’d just left behind in New York.

There was no point in making anything significant out of an encounter that had happened nine years before. Because if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that his memories of that night—the fabulous sex he and Juliet had shared, the conversation and laughter—were more a result of the amount of alcohol they’d consumed than anything else.

And Blake Ramsden was always honest with himself.

CHAPTER THREE

THEY’D JUST COME IN from a bike ride along the beach on Sunday, planning to have a quick lunch before Marcie had to leave for the airport, when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it!” Mary Jane ran off to the study.

“I’d hope it was one of her school friends calling except that she doesn’t have any,” Juliet mumbled.

“It’s probably Hank, forgetting what time my flight gets in. He offered to come pick me up so I didn’t have to pay to park my car.” With her long blond hair up on top of her head in a claw clip, her face clear of makeup and her slim leggy figure dressed in Juliet’s white terry-cloth sweat suit, Marcie looked beautiful, healthy and vibrant. She barely resembled the worn-looking woman who’d met Juliet and an exuberant Mary Jane at the San Diego airport two nights before.

“Oh come on,” Juliet teased her sister. “You kidding? A trip all the way to San Francisco? An adventure in the big city? He’s probably been up since dawn.”

Marcie chuckled and punched Juliet on the arm. “Hank’s not that bad. He’s taken me to dinner in San Francisco twice since Christmas!”

“Mom! It’s for you!” Mary Jane called.

The sisters, as identical in size and shape as they were opposite in coloring, shrugged and grinned.

“I’ll be right back.” Leaving her sister to start lunch, Juliet took the call.

“WHAT’S UP?”

Marcie’s question was immediate when Juliet, still wearing her black Lycra pants, sweatshirt and tennis shoes, returned to the kitchen five minutes later. The side trip to her room to breathe probably would have worked if she’d been facing anyone but the other two McNeil women.

“You’ve got that weird look on your face,” Mary Jane piped up, her mouth full of peanut butter and jelly as she watched her mother come into the kitchen and take her seat. “The one where something might be wrong but you’re going to pretend it isn’t.”

“Eat,” Marcie said.

“I am eating.”

With her short dark curls, Mary Jane might bear no resemblance to her blond aunt, but there was no doubting the adoration the two had for each other. When Mary Jane had found out her aunt was borrowing the white sweatsuit, she’d immediately run in and changed into her identical—if slightly more stained—one.

“Eat your chicken salad,” Marcie turned to Juliet, indicating the plate waiting in front of her. “The protein will do you good.”

It wasn’t a large portion, about as much as Marcie had given herself. Juliet stared out the bay window of the kitchen alcove, telling herself that she was nervous for nothing.

She’d made some very difficult choices in her life. And while she’d also adopted the very annoying habit of second-guessing herself about one or two of them, she knew, deep inside, that she’d done the best that she could. She’d seen him a few years ago and the encounter had run exactly as she’d have scripted it, had she known ahead of time it was going to happen: quick, impersonal and uneventful.

He’d been married. And thankful that he didn’t have children.

“You know that case I told you I was working on?”

Marcie watched her closely. “Eaton James.” She stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork. “He’s so big he’s your only client right now.”

Juliet nodded. Her sister always kept track.

“Blake Ramsden is going to be in court tomorrow, as a witness for the prosecution.”

Mary Jane took another bite of her sandwich, adding a potato chip to the wad in her mouth. She chewed and swung her feet while she watched her mother, and listened.

Fork midmouth, Marcie stared. “How do you feel about that?”

“Obviously uneasy.” Juliet focused on calm. Normalcy. She took a bite of chicken. “Surprise evidence is never welcome, particularly in a case as convoluted as this one is. True to form, Paul Schuster is attempting to confuse the jury with a paper trail that probably took years to accumulate, only half of which is really relevant.”

“Can’t you object?”

“She does.” Picking up her glass of milk, Mary Jane rolled her eyes. “The prosecution talks pseudo-logic, huh, Mom?”

“Yeah.” Juliet smiled. The milk mustache only slightly detracted from the maturity of her daughter’s contribution to the conversation.

“Doesn’t it present a conflict of interest having him as a witness for the other side?”

“No.” Juliet shook her head. “I certainly have no personal relationship with him!”

“Still…”

“I’ll explain to Eaton James that I met Blake Ramsden in a bar years ago, but that there’s been nothing between us since. He’s not going to care.”

“So what’s Ramsden got to do with the Terracotta Foundation?”

“I have no idea. Schuster’s faxing me a copy of the evidence he plans to present. I know that Ramsden’s father donated a substantial sum of money to Terracotta several years ago to be put in some land investment that didn’t pay off. Terracotta, and those particular investors, lost everything they put into the project. But no one has ever suggested any evidence of fraud. Eaton James was up front with everyone about the risk involved.”

“Mr. Ramsden died when I was a little kid,” Mary Jane reminded them all. “And Blake was still gone then, right, Mom?”

Juliet nodded.

“But he’s been back a long time,” Mary Jane added.

Marcie looked from one to the other of them, pushed the chicken salad around on her plate with a fork and took a small bite. Then she put down her fork.

“Okay,” she said, crossing her arms. “Nice try, but we both know the court case isn’t what I was asking about. Are you going to tell me how you feel about seeing him again?”

“You don’t care, do you, Mom?”

Juliet looked at her sister. “You have a plane to catch.”

“We don’t have to leave for another half hour. At least.”

If not for the somewhat questioning look in her daughter’s eyes, Juliet might still not have answered. Truth was, she didn’t have an answer.

“I guess I’m a little uneasy,” she said. “I mean, I did know him briefly. It could be kind of awkward.”

“Know him briefly? He’s the father of your child!”

“Biological, only.” Mary Jane was chewing again. She’d finished one-half of her sandwich, leaving the crusts, and had started on the other.

“A child whom, I might add, he knows nothing about.”

Pulling her hair down out of its ponytail, Juliet shook her head. “That’s a decision I made a long time ago.”

“I know. And I understand why. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.”

“I don’t want it changed!” There was nothing childlike in the small body at the opposite end of the small table from her mother. “It’s always just been the two of us and I like it that way. Besides, it’s not like he wanted to marry my mom.”

With a quick frown in Juliet’s direction, Marcie leaned toward Mary Jane. “I know he didn’t, honey, and I know you like it with just you and your mom, but maybe you only feel that way because you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Missing?” The look the girl gave her aunt was similar to one that Mrs. Cummings had bestowed on Mary Jane in her office the previous month. “You think I want to be like Tommy Benson at school? Or Sarah Carmichael? Or Tanya Buddinsky?”

“Buddinsky?” Marcie asked Juliet.

“Her last name is Buehla.” Juliet lowered her head a notch as she looked at Mary Jane. Her daughter knew better than to demean herself with name-calling. She couldn’t quite keep the twitch of a grin from her lips, however. Tanya had had a field day with Mary Jane’s possible expulsion from school the month before. She had spread some fairly inventive stories about Juliet and their little cottage on the beach as well.

Picking up her silverware, Marcie reached for Juliet’s plate and put it on top of her own. “So why don’t you want to be like these other kids?”

“They’re splits!”

“Splits?”

“Their parents are divorced,” Juliet translated.

“Yeah and they have to go part of the time to one house and part of the time to the other and their stuff is always getting left in the wrong place. And there’s the holidays.” Mary Jane’s forceful tone made it sound as though those would explain themselves.

“The holidays?”

“One at one house and one at another and everyone’s constantly fighting about it.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not always that way,” Marcie said.

“Mostly it is, and anyway, how would you like to open your Christmas presents and then have to leave them right away and go someplace else?”

“To get more presents? That might be cool.”

“Who needs more presents if you don’t get to play with them?”

With one raised eyebrow, Juliet asked her sister if she’d had enough.

“How about needing more love?” Marcie asked softly, sending a stab to Juliet’s stomach.

“You guys love me.” Mary Jane didn’t miss a beat. “More than most kids in my class are loved, I’ll bet, even those with two parents married. Some houses are good with dads. This one is good without one.”

“You sure about that, honey?” Juliet didn’t know where the question came from. She’d been very open with Mary Jane from the beginning, telling the child that she would contact her father anytime she wanted her to.

Getting up, Mary Jane dropped her plate on top of her aunt’s. “Positive.” She picked up all three plates and carried them over to the sink. “Now, would you two just go on talking about Mom and quit worrying about me?”

Juliet loved her daughter, but how in the hell she’d ever produced such a precocious and outspoken one was beyond her.

With her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table, Marcie looked at her. “So?”

“So what?” Juliet fingered the edge of her tweed place mat.

“How does Mom feel about seeing Blake Ramsden again?”

Shrugging, she looked at her daughter getting water all over the counter and floor as she sprayed the three plates and put them in the open dishwasher beside her.

“He never contacted me after that one time together. Never followed up on the event to find out if there’d been any consequences. You know, hurt feelings, disease, and—even though we’d started out taking precautions—a baby…”

“I know.”

“He should have.”

“I agree.”

Marcie always had. Juliet would never be able to repay her sister for all the support she’d offered, then and now. She remembered the nights Marcie had sat on the bathroom floor with her, helping her study for her bar exam. Juliet had fought an almost constant battle between mind and body in those days. She’d often thought she could have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the length of time she’d suffered from a morning sickness that had never been limited to mornings.

“Besides, he was out of reach,” she added, sitting back to give Mary Jane access to the table she was attempting to wipe down with a sopping-wet cloth. The place mats would soak up the extra moisture when the child put them back. “For years. He’d mentioned that he was leaving for one, but it was closer to four.”

“I know.”

Of course Marcie knew. Her sister’s patience was unending when she was listening to Juliet agonize over a decision made so many years before. Would she ever be completely free from guilt?

“I might’ve been able to reach him through his father,” she continued, watching the little girl whose face was so serious as she folded the dishcloth and hung it on the rack inside the cupboard door. Mary Jane had a lot of energy, yet she concentrated fiercely on even the smallest tasks. “But he’d been so adamant about the fact that he had to have that time away from his father. I respected that.”

“And you didn’t want him to know you were pregnant,” Marcie added.

With a quick kiss to her mother’s cheek, Mary Jane ran off toward the bedrooms in the back of the house.

“I didn’t want the entanglement of a relationship with him,” Juliet agreed, only slightly defensive. “Do you think I was wrong?”

“No.” That opinion had never changed.

“I just couldn’t do it.” The words were torn from her as she remembered back, felt the crushing weight that had been a constant burden during those months of tormenting herself with a decision she hadn’t been prepared to make. “The only thing I knew about life back then was that I couldn’t, at any cost, repeat Mom’s mistakes. Because, really, who did she help, Marce? Us? Dad? Herself? Dad never wanted us. We’d have been better off not knowing that. He never wanted her, either. She lost every dream she’d ever had. And we paid for that, too. I couldn’t do that. Not to me, or to my baby.”

Marcie’s hand, as it covered Juliet’s, was warm and soft. Grounding. “It’s okay, Jules, you don’t have to tell me. I get it. We both saw what Mom went through marrying Daddy just because she was pregnant with us, everything she gave up. And Lord knows, we learned from everything that came after that. Why do you think I’m thirty-four years old and still living alone?”

“Because Hank hasn’t asked you to marry him.”

“Well,” Marcie looked away—and then back. “There is that.”

“Move to San Diego, Marce. You’ve said so many times that you want to. Mary Jane and I have room here.”

“I’m half-owner of…a salon that—”

“Can be sold,” Juliet interrupted. She turned her hand over, grabbing her sister’s. “That place has been running for fifty years and just like you bought it when Miss Molly had her stroke, so will someone else when you leave. If you loved it, that would be one thing, but you talk about it like it’s a lead ball around your neck.”

“Maybe…”

“We hated what the divorce did to Mom, having no money, no way to support us. We hated that town, the way life just stopped there. The way Mom slowly gave up. And sometimes it seems like, instead of doing the opposite of what she did, you’re letting the lure of security snag you, too. It scares me to death when I think of you there in Maple Grove, living in a trailer—albeit much nicer than Mom’s—watching television every night. I can’t bear the thought of seeing the same thing that happened to her happen to you…”

Marcie met her gaze head-on, eyes moist with emotion. “That’s not going to happen, Jules. I’m not Mom.”

She’d love to be convinced. But what if Marcie was just too close to the situation to see the similarities? Their mother certainly hadn’t seemed to be aware that she’d needed help.

“You’re more of an artist than a hairdresser, Marce. You’ve already had an offer from a Hollywood studio at that hair show, who knows what else could turn up if you looked. And you’d probably make three times the money you’re making.”

“Maybe.”

For the first time, as she watched the thoughts play across her sister’s face, Juliet allowed herself to hope. “Will you at least think about it?”

“Yeah.” A couple of tears slid down Marcie’s face. And then she smiled. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.”

Standing, Juliet felt better, a little bit in control of her life again.

“And you, sis—” Marcie stood as well, eye to eye with Juliet “—you going to tell Blake Ramsden he has a child?”

She opened her mouth to say no. Adamantly.

“How many more schools you going to go through before you realize you have to do something different?” Marcie pressed, her face close enough for Juliet to see the white flecks in her twin’s blue eyes.

“Different doesn’t have to mean telling Ramsden he fathered a kid nine years ago. Telling him won’t make any difference at all if he doesn’t want her. Mom pretended Dad wanted us and look how horrible it was when we found out the truth. I’m not going to risk putting Mary Jane through that.”

“But you’re considering telling him.”

As they’d been doing since they were babies sharing the same crib, Juliet and her sister locked gazes, speaking on a level more intense than words. A conversation that permitted nothing but the deepest truth.

“I don’t know.”

SHE WASN’T DOING anything more than sitting with her back to him behind a table at the front of the room, but Blake could still feel the energy pulsing around Juliet McNeil as he walked into the courtroom Monday morning. It had been that way in the bar on the beach all those years ago, too.

He didn’t know what it was about her, but the woman did not allow herself to be ignored.

Taking a seat in the last row of the courtroom, he leaned back, making his six-foot-two-inch body as inconspicuous as possible. Schuster had thought he’d be calling Blake to the stand about an hour into the one o’clock session. He’d waited until one-fifty to show up, hoping to be in and out in half an hour, forty-five minutes tops.

Having left for New York so unexpectedly, without an opportunity to prepare anyone to stand in for him, he still had catching up to do.

Two-thirty rolled around and still Blake sat. Schuster was better in person than the papers had ever painted him. Intelligent. Methodical. Bringing out every intricate detail that the jurors might otherwise have missed.

Details that meant nothing to Blake. The paper trail of mock companies, false invoices and nonexistent vendors that Schuster was laying was far too convoluted to follow without having started at the beginning.

That fact left Blake with far too much time and too little diversion to avoid the thoughts that continued to plague him in spite of his ordering himself to stop.

If he’d been here in San Diego five years ago, could he have prevented the events that followed? The deaths of his parents? If he’d come home when he’d originally said he would, could he have saved the life of the very beautiful and very lost free spirit he’d seen buried just two days before?

“I object! A personal land purchase made before my client was appointed director of the Terracotta Foundation is irrelevant to this case.”

The judge, an older, slightly overweight man who looked to be in his mid-fifties, looked atop his reading glasses toward Paul Schuster. “Counsel?”

“If it pleases the court, Your Honor, I am attempting to establish a pattern of business dealings that has followed the defendant through most of his adult life—a pattern that is directly related to the case at hand.”

Blake wasn’t sure that Schuster had said anything relevant at all, but figured he had when the judge nodded. “You may continue.”

Those were pretty much the same words Blake’s father had said to him the first time he’d called home—a year to the date from when he’d left—to tell his father he wasn’t through with traveling. The old man had taught Blake well and he’d presented his case so logically that there was no room for argument. He could feel his father’s displeasure from halfway around the world, and knew that the elder Ramsden’s acquiescence had been offered in a way meant to manipulate Blake right back to the fold.

He’d taken it at face value instead, thus successfully meeting one of the challenges he knew his time away had been meant to help him to master—standing up for what was right, even in the face of conflict.

Growing up under the thumb of Walter Ramsden had taught him to avoid conflict at any cost. It had taken Blake a long time to break the hold his father had over him. And more, to see that it wasn’t himself who was so lacking.

The time away, while much longer than originally intended, had been fraught with painful introspection, introspection that had taken him many places, taught him what mattered and what did not.

“Ms. McNeil, do you have any questions?”

Schuster had finished with his second witness of the afternoon.

Juliet stood, her long body as gorgeous as he remembered, even in the sedate brownish skirt and matching jacket. Her arms were long and slender and she moved with such conviction.

“Not at this time, Your Honor.”

Juliet sat, leaned over to whisper something to a suited man on her right. A member of her team?

Eaton James, the man Blake considered an accomplice with himself in his father’s death, was seated on her left.

The judge turned to the elderly man on the stand. “You may step down.” He asked Schuster to call his next witness.

Blake sat up, ready to go.

He leaned back with a deliberately deep inhalation as a name other than his was called. Lifting the sleeve of his jacket where it rested against his leg, he had to stifle the groan of frustration. It was three o’clock. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he wasn’t going to make it to the McGaffey site before work shut down for the day. The site check had been scheduled for the previous Friday.

He wondered what Juliet McNeil was thinking as she sat there watching the proceedings. What she’d whispered to her colleague. While Blake didn’t know her well, he’d bet a year’s income that her relaxed, almost bored, stance disguised a mind that was racing as fast as Schuster’s.

Amunet had had a mind that was unable to slow down. Always thinking, planning, wondering, she’d had a hard time staying in one place for long without growing bored. With a trust fund left by her long-deceased French father, and a wanderlust in her soul to match his, she’d quickly become travel companion to him, playmate, and then wife.

That tug at his stomach was back. It happened every time he thought of the irrevocable step he’d taken, so sure, in his youth and arrogance, that he was absolutely doing the right thing. He’d been honest with her; he was a man who was looking for meaning in the sometimes meaningless acts he saw, trying to understand violence, starving children, death. And love. A man looking for answers with no way to predict where they might lead…. So why did he feel guilty about being led back home?

This time when the judge asked Juliet if she had any questions, she shook her head. Then she began gathering up her papers, sliding them into a leather briefcase.

“Then this court is adjourned until tomorrow morning, 8:30 sharp.” The gavel came down hard, resounding around the courtroom, as if to emphasize the fact that Blake had just wasted an entire afternoon he couldn’t afford to waste.

As people rose around him and shuffled out, Blake felt impatient to be with them. Juliet McNeil was busy speaking with the men at her table. Blake looked for Paul Schuster.

“I’ll need you here first thing in the morning,” the man said after coming down the side of the courtroom and joining Blake.

Blake nodded.

“You’re next,” Schuster added, “so it should go fairly fast.”

With one last glance at the woman to whom he did not want to speak, Blake nodded again and, as a reporter approached Schuster, quietly left.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHY ARE YOU CHANGING?”

With her arm half in and half out of one of her favorite navy silk-lined suit jackets, Juliet turned to see a fully dressed Mary Jane standing in the doorway of her closet Tuesday morning. She finished removing the jacket.

“You look cute,” she told the child. Today Mary Jane had on a short denim skirt, an orange long-sleeved sweater, orange socks and tennis shoes. The kid had her own sense of style. Even in this, she stood out from the crowd.

“Thanks,” she said, coming in to hold Juliet’s jacket while she stepped out of the navy skirt. It had to go on the hanger first.

The child stood, unusually silent, watching while Juliet stepped into one of her most expensive suits—black skirt and tailored red jacket with black silk piping.

“What was wrong with the first one?”

“Nothing.”

Pulling her favorite black pumps from their slot, Juliet did a mental run-through of the questions she had for Eaton James that morning in light of the new evidence the prosecution would be introducing. And of the first witnesses she’d be calling when the prosecution finally rested.

Mary Jane was looking in her jewelry box, pulling out the eighteen-karat gold-and-diamond heart necklace, bracelet and earrings she usually wore with this suit.

“Are you going to see my father this morning?” She handed them to her mother.

“Yes.” Schuster was winding up and so far, he hadn’t given them anything she couldn’t rebut. They weren’t arguing about the facts, but about whether or not Eaton James’s intentions were fraudulent. There was no personal gain to give truth to that claim. The man might have been desperate and stupid, but he hadn’t done anything with the intent to steal from his investors.

“Is that why you’re wearing the red power suit?”

“No!”

With her head slightly lowered, Mary Jane peered up at Juliet, her full lips puckered disapprovingly.

“Okay, okay, yes, maybe that’s why. I’m really trying not to think about it.” She held out her bracelet and her wrist. “He’s just a guy.”

“Don’t tell him about me, okay?” The girl’s forehead creased as her little fingers fumbled with the clasp.

“Of course not, imp. I’d never do something like that without telling you.”

“Promise?” Wide green eyes stared up at her.

“Yes.” Unequivocally.

Pulling the little girl into her arms, Juliet knew there was at least one thing in her life she’d gotten completely right.

And that she’d give her life for it.

For her.

JULIET WAS LETTING THE prosecution lay everything out on the table, waiting for Schuster to show all his cards so that, when her turn came to explain those cards, she could do so without confusing the jury. The tactic didn’t always work, but in a case as convoluted with paper trails as this one, it was an almost sure win.

That was why she’d let every single witness pass unquestioned by the defense. Those she needed, if any, she’d call back.

It was also why Judge Lockhard didn’t have much patience with her. Judges didn’t like it when defense attorneys refused to cross-examine.

And then Schuster called his last witness that Tuesday morning in early April. As she’d been doing for a couple of weeks, she waited while Schuster questioned Blake Ramsden, revealing to the twelve-member jury that until his death, Walter Ramsden had held a seat on the board of Semaphor—along with Eaton James. Semaphor served as a clearinghouse of sorts, collecting and providing data to potential contributors all over the world. Schuster maintained that James used this connection to find his prey.

“Objection!” Juliet stood, her gaze solidly on the judge. “Your Honor, the prosecution is leading the witness.”

Judge Henry Lockhard sighed, frowned and said, “Objection sustained. Jury, please disregard the last remark and it will be stricken from the record. Counsel, you may continue.”

Juliet sat. She reminded Eaton not to show any emotion other than respect, or perhaps any distress he might be feeling at the tarnishing of his good name. She waited for his nod and returned her attention to the notepad on the table in front of her.

She had no reason to size up this witness. She already knew his size.

Eaton James, when she’d disclosed her very brief association with the witness, had seemed more pleased than distressed.

“Mr. Ramsden, what do you know about Eaton Estates?” Schuster continued.

“It was a land development project in the Cayman Islands. Eaton James approached my father with an investment plan that projected at least a double return on any monies spent. In addition, three percent of all profits were to go to the Terracotta Foundation, specifically to feed orphans in Honduras. The Foundation made much of its money through such investments.”

His voice hadn’t changed.

“And did your father invest?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Half a million dollars.”

“What happened?”

He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt and maroon-white-and-gray striped tie. His shoes were Italian leather—or something that appeared just as expensive. She’d noticed them when he’d approached the witness stand. Other than that, Juliet didn’t look at Blake Ramsden. There was no point in studying the father of her child for evidence of genetic similarities.

“I was in the Cayman Islands at the time. My mother called, telling me she was concerned because my father had been getting the runaround from James, and she asked me to check out Eaton Estates.”

“And did the development exist?”

Schuster’s shoes brushed the floor softly as he walked back and forth from the jurors’ box to the witness stand a few feet away.

“Yes. It was a plot of land that was sinking into the sea.”

The footsteps stopped.

“So, completely useless.”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

Schuster began to pace again. Juliet knew by heart the expressions the man was wearing for the jurors’ benefit. But hers would be the ones they took with them into deliberation.

“I called my mother and she relayed the information to my father, who confronted James. She called the next day to tell me James had admitted the land was worthless, but claimed that he’d only just discovered that himself. He’d been swindled with the rest of his investors.”

“Mr. Ramsden, would you say your father was a savvy businessman?”

“Absolutely.”

“As a matter of fact, he’d never made a bad investment in his life, had he?”

“This was a first.”

“Why do you think he was so successful in that area? Luck?”

Blake gave a humorless chuckle and Juliet glanced up instinctively. And then quickly away. He wasn’t smiling, his lips were twisted into an “I know better” quirk that Juliet recognized all too well. She’d seen it directed at her just that morning, from a pair of eight-year-old lips in her closet at home.

“Walter Ramsden would never have given up control of his life, or his money, to something as capricious as luck. He was successful because he had an uncanny talent for evaluating people—as though he had a second ear that heard what a person wasn’t saying as clearly as what he was.”

“And what did your father have to say about the Eaton Estates deal?”

“When I spoke to my mother after my father’s meeting with Eaton, she said he was certain James was lying. That the man had known before he bought the property that it was wasteland. And that he’d paid a fraction of the cost claimed on the notes he’d passed on to my father. He also said there was no way of proving his suspicion, that Eaton had his bases all very well covered, including the fact that no extra money had turned up anywhere else.”

“So, how do you explain, if your father was this talented…” Schuster paused and approached the jurors.

Juliet gave the man full marks for the little bit of emphasis he put on that word, leading the jury right to the thought they were already going to have, that perhaps Walter Ramsden wasn’t as gifted as his son claimed, thus voiding the value of Blake’s testimony. She knew, too, that whatever was coming next would plant in their minds something that would discount that suspicion. In a detached, analytical way, she waited to see how he pulled it off.

“…if Walter Ramsden did indeed have the ability to sense the potential legitimacy of his business associates, why did he invest in Eaton Estates?”

Surprised when Blake didn’t immediately answer, Juliet looked up and saw the hesitation in his eyes, eyes that stared out but weren’t focused. Pen to tablet, she scribbled.

“I know why. I’d been abroad at the time, studying architecture—and volunteering on various development projects. According to my mother, my father followed my progress from country to country.”

He paused. Juliet was staring. This was nothing like the man she’d known that night so long ago. That Blake Ramsden had come close to hating his father—or at least the tyranny with which the old man had ruled his son.

“At the time the Eaton offer was first made, I was in Honduras, helping modernize a village whose population was three children to every adult. They were all hungry, poverty stricken. Eaton offered to feed those kids.”

Damn. The jurors were swimming right toward Schuster. He was good. Almost as good as she’d heard.

And she knew what was coming next.

“If it pleases the court, I’d like to submit Exhibit double Z into the records.” Schuster pulled out the document he had faxed to Juliet’s home Sunday night. “This is a record of a land assessment inspection showing that the property was sinking.

“Please note, further,” Schuster said softly, “the date of the investment is the month before the sale date.” He walked the document over to Blake Ramsden. “Can you confirm this is the same document you saw?”

A long pause followed. Juliet shifted in her seat. Glanced at the judge. The jurors. Tapped her pen against the back of her left hand.

Eaton moved beside her, breathing heavily. Reaching over, Blake handed back the document. “Yes.”

Juliet put her hand on Eaton’s knee. “It’s okay. Sit still. We get the ball last.”

He sat back, but he wasn’t calm. No one was. It was another five minutes before Judge Lockhard offered her the witness for cross-examination.

This time, Juliet accepted the offer. She had no desire to spend a second day in court with Blake Ramsden.

Picking up her black leather-bound tablet, Juliet rose. She didn’t need the notes. She could recite them—and everything in between the lines—by rote. But she needed something to look at.

It felt good to stand. To move around after so many hours of sitting.

She was going to have to connect with the witness if she wanted the jury to connect to the response she drew from him.

With a long slow breath, she approached the witness stand. Looked up. Smiled.

And had to swallow when he smiled back.

Mary Jane’s smile.

“Mr. Ramsden, I’m sure you understand, as does the jury, that the point in question here is not whether Eaton James had various business interests that showed no profit or loss, or even any movement. Anyone can establish a business and then not do anything with it. It is, as the prosecutor has so adeptly shown, just a matter of paperwork. The question is one of intent. Did Eaton James intend to rob people of their money? Or was he just an honest businessman who didn’t have the luck of one as talented as, say, your father?”

She paused. Stood right in front of him and didn’t look away. His tie was slightly lopsided, made to appear more so by the way the wider maroon stripe came around the left side, while the right was flanked by a skinnier gray one.

“According to your testimony, you believe that the former was the case, is this correct?”

“It is.”

His eyes were different. Older. And though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, more compelling.

Not that it mattered. She was older, too. Different things caught her attention these days.

Things like the conversation she’d be having with Mary Jane that night at the dinner table. Her daughter was going to grill her. And Juliet had to be able to give straight answers.

“Tell me, Mr. Ramsden, how long did your father expect you to stay abroad?”

His eyes narrowed. “A year.”

“And how long, in fact, were you away?”

“Almost four years.”

“Four years.”

She stood there, palms on the stand, nodding. “Did you ever come home for a visit during that time?”

“No.” Blake’s face was impassive.

“But you spoke with your father often? Holidays, Sundays, and so on. You were, after all, his only child.”

“I was, yes.”

Bingo. He hadn’t answered the first question. Her interpretation of the expression she’d read earlier had been right on. It was a talent she’d come to rely on and breathed a sigh of relief every time it came through for her.

“And did you speak with him often?”

“No.”

“You didn’t?” She sounded shocked. “Well, how often then? Once a month? Twice, maybe?”

“I spoke to him once.”

“Once a year?”

“Once. Period.”

“In four years you spoke to your father only once?”

“Objection, Your Honor!”

It had taken him long enough.

“Your Honor—” Juliet stepped up to the bench “—Mr. Schuster’s line of questioning was based on Mr. Ramsden’s opinion of his father. I’m only clarifying the relationship upon which that opinion was based.”

“Sustained.”

In the early days, Juliet would have turned around to see Schuster’s reaction. Such things didn’t matter anymore.

“Just out of curiosity, would you mind telling the court when that one phone call took place?”

“A year after I’d left.”

“When you were due to come home.”

“That is correct.” He nodded once, his gaze steady on hers. The challenge only spurred a rush of adrenaline that had given her the edge up most of her life.

“So…if your father’s business acumen had changed, say, due to old age, or perhaps a growing forgetfulness or loneliness for his only son, maybe you wouldn’t have known.”

The room was silent. Juliet could feel the jurors’ eyes, but even more, the force of their attention.

“I was in touch with my mother. She never indicated that was the case.”

Had she been playing a game of mock court, as she’d done with members of her study group in law school, she’d have issued a polite and grinning thank you very much for the opening he’d just given her.

“Ah, your mother. How did she take your absence?”

“Naturally, she missed me.”

“Naturally. As, I assume, did your father.”

Blake didn’t answer. She didn’t push.

“Would you think it possible, knowing your mother as well as you did, realizing the difficult position she must have been in, that she could have colored the truth just a bit? Perhaps she focused on the Honduran children as your father’s reason for the purchase just to play on your sympathies, to bridge the gap between the two of you. To make you feel you still had his support?”

“My mother did not lie.”

“I didn’t say she did, Mr. Ramsden. I asked if it was possible that certain aspects of the Eaton deal took on more significance for her than others?”

He stared straight at her. And there was anger in his eyes.

“Please answer the question.”

“It’s possible.”

“That said, it’s also possible that she misinterpreted the other things she relayed about this particular business transaction. Perhaps even to use it as leverage to bring you home.”

“No.”

“Did you know, Mr. Ramsden, that a letter was sent from Eaton James to all the Eaton Estates investors, telling them of their loss?”

“Yes, it arrived a couple of days after my mother called to ask me to visit the property.”

“It was postmarked two days before.”

“It arrived two days after.”

“Or not.” Juliet stepped back. “It’s possible, Mr. Ramsden, that your mother already knew the land was worthless when she called to have you check it out, isn’t it?”

“It’s highly unlikely.”

“But possible.”

His chin dropped again, more slowly this time. And then rose again. “Yes.”

Juliet turned, as though going back to her seat. And then, three-quarters of the way there, she turned back.

“One other thing.” She saved lives by playing the barracuda. And right now, the future of an admittedly stupid but innocent businessman was on the line. “Your father died of a heart attack the next year, did he not?”

“He did.”

“He was driving at the time.”

“Yes.”

“And your mother was in the car.”

“Yes.”

“You lost them both. I’m so sorry.” She looked down. Thought about Eaton’s wife—and teenage children—sitting behind them. The lives she was attempting to save.

Blake said nothing.

“Did you realize your mother knew about your father’s bad heart?”

“Not until I got home.”

“But she knew. Had known for almost two years.”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t you think that knowing her husband could go at any moment might be motivation enough to do whatever it took to get her only son home?”

She’d done what she’d been hired to do. She’d discredited his testimony. And lost his respect.

For the first time in her life, Juliet hated her job.

“No more questions, Your Honor.”

CHAPTER FIVE

JULIET MCNEIL HUNG around for a long time. Schuster had gone. The press had gone. Even Eaton James and his family had ridden down the elevator to the first floor of the California Superior Court. Still, though he had no real logical reason for doing so, Blake stood there at the bank of elevators and waited.

He was done here. Unless called for further testimony, he’d been dismissed and wouldn’t be back. He’d lived in the same town with Juliet McNeil for five years and found no reason to be in touch with her. Had had nothing to say to her.

Voices came from down the hall. Male. And one very distinctive female. The men came around the corner from the courtroom. Nodded at Blake, pushed the down button. Juliet must have stopped off in the women’s room at the juncture of the two hallways.

An elevator came. The two men, apparently attorneys on Juliet’s staff, held the door, looking at him. Blake shook his head. And they were gone.

It was better this way, with no one around. Just a quick acknowledgment, for old times’ sake. Something he might not have bothered with if not for the funeral he’d attended over the weekend—and all the memories aroused by the past week.

Hearing the swish of a door, Blake stood upright, hands in the pockets of his gray slacks, facing the hall. Her head pulled back a bit when she saw him, but her step didn’t falter. She had to be the most confident woman he’d ever met.

That confidence had attracted Blake nine years ago. And attracted him now.

“I thought you’d be long gone.” That was another thing he remembered quite clearly about that foggy night so long ago. The woman had a habit of saying what was on her mind rather than couching her thoughts in platitudes. Disconcerting.

And yet, delightfully refreshing in that he’d known where he stood with her. There’d been no game playing. No social dishonesty.

“I never had the chance to say hello.” He pushed the down button. “And didn’t want to go without at least saying goodbye.”

“Oh.” Her hair was still long—the gold-streaked auburn color striking—and curled past her shoulders. “Well, I wish it could have been under different circumstances, but it was nice seeing you,” she said. She didn’t avoid looking at him, but gave equal attention to the lighted bar atop the elevator, indicating the car’s current floor.

“You look good.”

“You, too.” Except that she wasn’t really looking. And then she did. “I watched your office building go up. Impressive. You’re doing very well.”

Blake nodded. “I had good teachers.” Including his father, the man he’d spoken of so harshly that night just before he’d left the country. Was that what this was about? A need to correct any misconceptions? He’d been a kid then. Too concerned with his own rights and far too insensitive to those of others.

“I’m…uh…sorry.” She tilted her head in the direction of the courtroom from which they’d come. “For back there.”

“We were on opposite sides of the fence,” he told her—as though neither of them could have expected anything different.

The elevator came. Blake held open the door while she stepped inside, then joined her. Standing against the side wall, her briefcase held with both hands down in front, she’d already pushed the first-floor button.

“Still,” she said, glancing over at him, “I wouldn’t blame you if there were some hard feelings.”

“Oh, there are definitely those,” he admitted, thinking of James. “Just not directed at you.”

The quick tilt of her chin, more even than the light in her eyes, gave away her surprise. “Well, thank you.” She smiled.

And he knew he wasn’t done yet.

“How would you feel about getting a bite to eat?”

The elevator stopped and she got out, frowning. “Tonight?”

“Doesn’t have to be.” He followed her over to a decorative column off to the side of the building’s entryway and leaned against it.

“I…”

Blake could sense a refusal coming. “Or just a drink sometime,” he offered. “For old times’ sake.”

“You’ve been home five years. Old times have taken quite a while to come calling.” The easy grin on her face took any sting out of the words.

She was right.

“I…my ex-wife died last week.” Blake was uncomfortable with the personal admission. “I hadn’t seen her in years, but that, plus the whole Eaton James thing, has brought up a lot of old memories. I feel like I have some things to set straight. Unfinished business, maybe.”

“We finished our business.” Her head tilted up at him, those green eyes with their mysterious brown flecks, had him thinking otherwise.

“I’m not arguing with that,” he offered. “I guess I’m just looking for some closure on that whole phase of my life. Think you could humor me long enough for a conversation?”

“I guess.”

He wondered at her hesitancy. “You have a significant other out there who might not understand?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not married or otherwise significantly, uh, connected.”

“Because you’re still afraid that a relationship would take away your freedom?”

When he’d married Amunet, he hadn’t thought he’d robbed his wife of her liberty, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Their marriage had certainly trapped her. Or changed her, anyway. Enough so that she’d eventually been driven to suicide?

“Not really,” Juliet said, her gaze clear. “Anyway, it wasn’t my freedom I was protecting back then. I just needed to know that I could provide for myself before I relied on anyone else. I needed to believe in me.”

He nodded. That he understood. It had taken four years away and more time back home before he’d discovered that.

“Are you dating someone?”

She shook her head, lower lip protruding slightly. “No. You?”

“No.” He couldn’t tell if his reply had any effect on her. Not that it mattered.

“So what about that drink?”

“If you can make it early, say, four o’clock or so, I can do Thursday this week. Just once. For old times’ sake.”

Right after court.

Blake nodded. “Thursday it is.”

HAVING BUILT a successful career on finding different ways to present the truth, Juliet failed miserably, over the next two days, to come up with a truth that would suffice as a plausible excuse to cancel her drink date with Blake Ramsden.

She just couldn’t find a way to say, “I don’t want to see you ever again because you’re the father of my daughter and I don’t want you to know that.”

“You’re wearing red again.” Mary Jane was sitting at the kitchen table Thursday morning, chewing her favorite marshmallow-and-oat cereal, her legs bouncing beneath her.

“It’s my third day on the hot seat.”

“That’s green day.”

The kid knew her too well. She was too predictable. Had life really become so obsessively the same that someone could predict her day based on the colors she chose? Or was it just Mary Jane who’d always been too perceptive?

“I’m having a drink with Blake Ramsden after court this afternoon.”

“While I’m at Brownies,” Mary Jane said, nodding, her attention still on her cereal. “Good thinking.”

Juliet dropped into the chair closest to her daughter, reaching over to push curls back from the girl’s cheek, knowing they were going to spring right back.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m meeting him?”

Wide eyes, such a strange contrast of all-knowing adult and unsure little girl, stared up at her. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you worried?”

“How can I be? I just found out about it.”

“Are you mad?”

“No.”

“But?”

“I don’t want a dad. I like us just the way we are.”

Life just never quit getting harder. No matter how many hurdles she maneuvered through successfully. “I like us just the way we are, too.”

Frowning, Mary Jane pushed away her not-quite-empty bowl. “You promised you wouldn’t tell him about me.”

“I’m not going to tell him.” She paused to assess the doubts that had been plaguing her for almost a week. Everything happened for a reason and the timing of Blake Ramsden’s return to her life had occurred just as she was struggling to help Mary Jane find her place in the world.

Every day, when she dropped the child off at school, she waited for a phone call. And every afternoon, when she picked her up, she breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t normal.

Picking up the bowl, she took it to the sink, rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher. “Here’s your lunch,” she said, taking the brown bag out of the refrigerator.

Mary Jane reached for the bag, looking up, her expression not quite as open as usual.

“Hey, remember our deal,” Juliet said, holding her daughter’s free hand.

“What?”

“If ever there comes a time that you want to meet Blake, you let me know.”

“I won’t—”

“And,” Juliet interrupted, “if ever there is a time when I think I have to tell him about you, I’ll discuss it with you first. I promised, Mary Jane, and I’ve never broken a promise to you.”

It took a moment for the clouds to disappear, but after a little bit of thought the little girl smiled up at her.

“I know,” she said.

Juliet just hoped she didn’t live to regret having made that promise.

WALKING INTO the upscale downtown bar on Thursday, Juliet took a cursory glance around, hoping Blake would be late. She could say she’d been there and leave before he showed up.

It would be the truth—and the best version of it she’d managed to concoct.

Her second best idea had been to look, but not very hard, only enough to say she’d been there and hadn’t seen him, and then get the hell out before he saw her.

Her third and final hope had been that he wouldn’t show.

She saw him as soon as her eyes adjusted from the day’s bright sunshine to the bar’s interior. Sitting in a rather secluded booth for two, he should have been easy to miss. But no, her eyes were drawn right to him.

“Hi.” Juliet slid in across from him, trying not to notice how broad his shoulders looked minus the suit coat he’d been wearing the other day.

“Red, again,” he greeted her with a curious smile. “A brave move for a redhead.”

“My hair’s not—”

“I know, I was teasing,” he admitted. “Your hair is auburn.”

They’d had that conversation nine years before. When she’d been wearing nothing at all and he’d been playing with her hair against her breasts, telling her he’d never seen anything quite like it.

It had been right after they’d made love the second time with the first condom—the time, she’d long ago decided, that she had conceived Mary Jane.

“And the suit looks great,” he said when she didn’t respond. “Beautiful in fact.”

She wished he’d stop catching her off guard. “Thank you.” It had been a long time since she’d felt desirable, and life was much more under control that way.

They ordered drinks, the bar’s specialty, a mixture of rum, vodka and a couple of exotic fruits. Blake added an order of chips and salsa.

“We’re driving,” he explained as the waiter left. “It’s not good to drink on an empty stomach.”

She appreciated the forethought.

“Fine by me,” she told him. “I missed lunch today and I’m starving.” She’d been busy calming Kelly James, who was beginning to panic. That was the worst thing Eaton’s wife could do. This trial was all about character—and proving that neither James nor his family or associates had any doubts about his.

Blake asked about the trial while they waited for their drinks. She felt like a Democrat talking to a Republican. Or a Republican talking to a Democrat. They both wanted justice to be done, wanted what was best for society at large and saw the way to get there on opposite ends of the spectrum.

“It’s obvious the man is guilty,” Blake told her fifteen minutes into the conversation. “If you really want to serve the Constitution, you’d see that and help him get the fairest punishment.”

“He’s not guilty until proven so beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Juliet reminded him. “And until that happens, he deserves to be treated that way. As though he’s not guilty. Meaning, I believe what he tells me and my job is to try to persuade those sitting in judgment to do the same.”

“Regardless of what you think personally.”

“Personally, I know it’s possible that he’s a good man and a rotten businessman who didn’t knowingly defraud anyone.”

“Establishing bogus companies is against the law. Ignorance is no excuse for criminal action.”

“He claims they weren’t bogus but, rather, ventures that never got off the ground.”

“So why are there invoices for goods purchased from vendors that don’t exist?”

“He was told the vendors did exist. He established the companies with the belief that his associates were on the up-and-up and he was helping them all get started.”

“With that theory, you could free up just about anyone for a white-collar crime.”

“The jury has to be convinced,” Juliet told him. “Ultimately, the truth must speak for itself.”

“The truth?” he asked, munching on the chips that she had hardly noticed appear. “Or some twisted bits of fact and fiction that pose as the truth?”

A topic close to her heart. “How do you define fact and fiction?” she asked. “Some people believe in angels. They’d pass a lie detector test claiming that angels exist. That they’ve actually seen an angel. For others, reality is completely devoid of such possibilities. Who’s right?”

“If someone can prove that angels exist, show a picture of ones they’ve seen—” He stopped, smiled. “I’m digging myself in deeper than I care to be at the moment.”

She didn’t know if it was the drink or if there really was something about this man’s presence that affected her, but that strange mixture of anticipation and appeal she’d felt nine years ago was settling over her again.

All these years she’d blamed it on the drinks. She’d had several back then.

Today she’d had three sips. So far.

“Okay, well, think about this,” she said. “You don’t have to buy into it, just try it on long enough to see how it feels.” She helped herself to a chip.

“I’m game.”

“Truth is the means by which human beings try to define reality, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.” His nod was accompanied by a slow smile. “Most of us anyway.”

“So the issue is defining reality.”

“Maybe.” He took another chip, his eyes narrowed.

“But any psychiatrist will tell you that for every single human being there is a different version of reality. Our realities are shaped by the belief systems we were raised with.” She took another sip. “Say, for instance, from the time I’m a little girl, my mother punishes me for saying the word ain’t. So I end up thinking it’s a bad word. Just like damn. Or worse.”

“Okay.” His enjoyment of the conversation was obvious. His eyes lit up, just as his daughter’s did when Juliet debated with her. Much the way they had that long-ago night, when Juliet and Blake had talked until the bar closed and they had to go somewhere else.

Juliet wasn’t sure there’d been another man in her life who’d risen to the challenge without feeling challenged, without feeling a need to assert male superiority or authority, without ego being involved.

“So then I meet a friend whose mother uses the word ain’t regularly. My friend uses the word. I’m absolutely convinced that she swears.”

“A little feeble, but I get where you’re going with that. I still don’t see the application to Eaton James. In his case, reality is clearly defined by irrefutable documents.”

“The documents aren’t on trial. A man’s intentions are on trial. You look at those documents and attach your meaning to them. But just because it’s your version doesn’t mean it’s the real version. How can he be guilty of defrauding people if he didn’t deliberately mislead them?”

“He invoiced mock companies for goods that were never produced. Those invoices were paid.”

“And he was under the understanding that the goods had been shipped.”

“There was no proof of that. No confirmation of sales. No receipts.”

“So he was too trusting. That’s not a crime.”

Blake shook his head. “I didn’t ask you here to debate Eaton James.”

Neither had she accepted for that reason, though she was content to do so if it kept her out of more dangerous territory. “Here’s the thing,” she said, returning to what she’d started to say earlier. “We all have different views of reality—which, as long as we follow society’s rules, is just fine. And when it’s perceived that someone breaks one of those rules, society’s reality is determined by a vote from the majority. That’s justice. In this case, the majority comprises the twelve people sitting in that jury box. Schuster presented the state’s reality, I present James’s, and it’s up to those twelve individuals to determine which version is true.”

“I’ll say this for you,” Blake said, shaking his head. “You sure have a colorful way of looking at it all.”

“As opposed to you, who sees everything in black and white?” She couldn’t stop herself from issuing the challenge, probably because she somehow knew it would be taken in the manner intended—without defensiveness.

“I do like things to be clearly defined.”

“I remember that about you.” She took a chip, dipped it in salsa, brought it slowly to her mouth.

“What?” The corner of Blake’s mouth twisted slightly.

“That morning, after…you know.” What in the hell was she doing? She paused before continuing. “You were quite serious about making sure that we both clearly agreed about what had and hadn’t happened. And about what couldn’t happen again. You wanted it all spelled out. We wouldn’t exchange information because we weren’t going to contact each other.”

“I was leaving the country!”

“And I would’ve shot myself before I’d have become entangled with a man.”

With both hands around his glass on the table in front of him, he looked over at her, a smile in his eyes, but his mouth was serious. “It was damn good for what it was, though.”

She floundered. Wished she’d downed her drink the moment it came. Where was a safe version of the truth when she needed it?

“Yeah.”

“YOU MENTIONED your ex-wife,” Juliet ventured at the beginning of her second drink. They’d ordered a platter of ribs and chicken appetizers with veggies.

Mary Jane’s Brownie troop was going to Sea World that afternoon, and she wouldn’t be dropped off until bedtime. Juliet had no reason to hurry home. And it wasn’t as though she’d ever have cause to see this man again.

“I didn’t realize you were divorced.”

The one time she’d run into him, he’d just returned to the States five years before—with a wife. Mary Jane had been about three at the time. Marcie had been visiting and Juliet had just run out to pick up some wine for the two of them to have with dinner. Blake had been over in her part of town looking at a prospective building site and had stopped for a six-pack of beer.

He loosened his tie. “She didn’t like San Diego.”

“How can anyone not like San Diego?”

He tried to smile, but failed rather miserably, in her opinion. “Guess that proves your point about individual reality, huh?”

There was more he wasn’t saying. A lot more.

“So I guess you were right back then when you said it was a blessing you didn’t have kids.” Some dormant form of masochism had made her ask him about children that night.

“Until that point Amunet and I had lived a rather unconventional life. And neither of us was completely sure we wanted that to change. We were both fairly disoriented when we first settled in San Diego. Adjusting to a life of routine and stability is rougher than it sounds.”

“Especially after living without it for so long.”

There was gratitude in the blue eyes looking back at her.

“In the long run, I adjusted. Amunet did not.”

There was more to that story, too. But Blake Ramsden’s heartache was not any of Juliet McNeil’s business or concern.

It couldn’t be. It didn’t fit into her version of their reality.

CHAPTER SIX

AT SIX, two hours after she’d arrived at the bar, Blake ordered a third drink. Juliet didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave, still nibbling on the half-eaten ribs and chicken.

And Lord knew he had nothing to go home to that night but more of the same mental battles he’d been fighting for several days. Amunet’s death had nothing to do with him. In his head he knew that. Just as he wasn’t in any real way responsible for his father’s heart attack or the car accident that had robbed him of all his living family, before he’d grown up enough to realize how much he’d loved them. Needed them.

“I can’t say that I remember parts of that night on the beach all that clearly,” he dropped into the silence that had finally fallen between them. Picking up a piece of celery, he bit into it. “But I seem to remember being pretty down on my father.”

Juliet’s smile was soft. “Young people have a way of doing that.”

The tenderness in her words reminded him of a moment that night nine years ago, just before they’d made love. He’d been about to tell her he couldn’t, that he had nothing to offer beyond the moment and that it wasn’t fair to her. She’d silenced him with a finger to his lips, said the words for him, and told him that even if he offered, she wouldn’t accept anything. Couldn’t accept anything. Rather than judging him and finding him wanting, she’d understood him.

“It’s only when we’ve lived long enough that we begin to see that our parents really aren’t stupid at all,” she continued.

“Unfortunately, I lived long enough. My parents didn’t.”

“You had no way of knowing your father was ill.”

Blake sipped, turned in his seat, lifting an ankle across his knee. “Logically, I realize that,” he admitted. In five years’ time, he hadn’t been able to say that to anyone else. It was only recently he’d acknowledged it to himself. “And then I think about the fact that if I’d made one different choice in my life, come home after that year instead of making the phone call that turned out to be the last time I ever spoke with the old man, lives might have been saved.”

It was a thought that wouldn’t let go.

“Lives?”

A middle-aged couple was being seated in the booth behind them. They were the third party to have that table since he and Juliet had arrived.

“My father’s, my mother’s, Amunet’s.”

“You think you’re that powerful?” Her words were soft, but her eyes gave him no mercy.

“I don’t feel powerful at all.”

She took a sip of a drink that must have been very watered down. She was still on her second and it was more than an hour old. She picked up a chicken wing, bit off a piece, chewed.

“Your father had a bad heart,” she went on. “You didn’t cause that. Nor could you have cured it.”

He appreciated hearing the words. “I say that to myself every night, about two in the morning or so.”

“You think your leaving him to deal with the business all alone shortened his life?”

He shrugged, studied the condensation forming on the outside of his glass. A couple of men at the bar were feeling no pain, their laughter growing louder with each beer they downed.

“It’s also possible that his heart was going to go whether he was puttering around the yard at home or sitting in a high-rise office.”

“Likely not as soon.”

“Maybe not for a lot of men, but the man you described your father to be would never have been content slowing down. The stress of having to sit back and watch someone else run things would surely have killed him.”

Blake raised his head and stared at her. “All the hours I’ve spent going around and around with myself about this, I never came up with that one. Not that I’m going to let myself off the hook that easily, but at least now I have a solid argument to make the mental war more interesting.”

“You wouldn’t be the man you obviously are if you let yourself off the hook easily,” she said. “Perhaps it took someone who didn’t know your father personally to see that less responsibility might not have been the answer.”

His smile was slow in coming, but sincere. “I was actually feeling bad about having spoken so poorly of him to you. I hated that the only view you had of him was as a tyrant. And that I was responsible for that.”

“Being an only son—an only child—to a successful, demanding parent is difficult, isn’t it?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Not only did you have to deal with all the expectations that were strangling you nine years ago, but you had—and have—the responsibility of being the only one to carry on.”

Shaking his head, Blake took a long, cold sip. “You’re in the wrong profession.”

She raised an eyebrow in question, finishing off the chicken wing and licking her fingers.

“You should have been a damn psychologist.”

Juliet, breaking a chip into several pieces on her plate, looked down. “It’s easy to see other people’s problems,” she said. “It’s your own that bog you down.”

“Not you.” Blake grinned. “The formidable Ms. McNeil getting bogged down? It’ll never happen.”

He expected her to smile, to shoot off some sassy remark. She didn’t.

“It’s happened.”

“When?” He’d meant the word to be playful. It came out honestly interested instead.

She shrugged, and with one hand broke another chip, slowly, methodically, into small triangular pieces. “Various times.”

“Any examples?”

“Not tonight.”

Another time then?

“Does it have anything to do with your being single?”

“Not really.” She paused as the waiter stopped by and dropped off their check, and Blake half expected her to say she had to go. “Unless I’m so bogged down I don’t see it, there’s no particular issue that’s responsible for my single state.” He was surprised when she continued. “I just haven’t met a man I want to spend the rest of my life looking at.”

“Oh.” He switched to the glass of water in front of him. Sipping. “So it’s all in the looks, huh?”

“Damn right it is.” Juliet grinned and then her eyes grew serious. “I haven’t ever been with a man I thought I wanted to look at first thing in the morning, or across the dinner table at night, until the day I die.”

He was a little surprised at the instant disappointment her words aroused.

“So maybe you just aren’t the marrying kind.”

“Maybe.” Her smile was sad. “I don’t think so, though. Looking at an empty pillow, an empty chair, instead, is a pretty lonely prospect.”

“You’re a beautiful woman, Juliet McNeil. If you want to find someone, you will.” A beautiful woman. A passionate, smart, funny, strong woman. What man wouldn’t want her if he were in a position to want anybody?

“I’m opinionated and willful and far too outspoken sometimes. And I expect a man to give as good as I hand out. I’m not sure such a man exists.”

Grinning, Blake nodded. “I see what you mean about getting bogged down until you can’t see straight. Because you sure have that one wrong.”

“You think so?” She peered at him, head cocked to one side.

“I do.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it. And hope that if I run into you again in another nine years, I won’t have to call you a liar.”

“A liar is one thing I’ll never be. At least not consciously.”

SHE HAD TO GO. Mary Jane was going to be home in another hour or so. “You said your ex-wife died. What happened? Cancer?” She had no idea why she asked. She’d already decided his heartache wasn’t her concern.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t offer comfort, especially since she had the idea he needed some. And he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

He glanced down, then back up, focusing just beyond her. If at all. “Suicide.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that at all. When was she ever going to learn to keep her big mouth shut?

“Apparently she’d decided that because of the choices she’d already made, her life was never going to be what she wanted. She’d blown her chance and didn’t want to settle for anything less.”

For Juliet it was almost an instant replay of another time in her life. And the second time around was no less sad. Or wrong. “You never know what might be waiting around the corner,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

She’d learned that one firsthand.

If she’d had any idea what dimensions Mary Jane would bring to her life, she sure as hell wouldn’t have spent the nine months of her pregnancy afraid that life, as she wanted it to be, was over.

“For all her wild ideas, her free spirit, Amunet held a pretty strong belief that marriage was forever. And that a woman should only marry once.”

“So once you divorced she couldn’t marry again?” Pretty outdated, but Juliet certainly understood that different things mattered to different people. Look at her own twin.

“She did marry again. Quickly. I think to try to escape the state of being divorced.”

“So she was married when she died?”

He shook his head, still focused someplace else—someplace inside. “It didn’t last. And then, to her way of thinking, she had two strikes against her.”

Juliet’s breath caught as he finally glanced at her.

“You blame yourself for this, too.”

“Not completely.”

“Yes, you do.”

He finished his drink. Pushed the glass to the end of the table for their waiter to pick up on his way past. “I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in a couple of years. I certainly had nothing to do with the bottle of pills she got hold of. Or the fact that she took them.”

“Of course you didn’t. But you blame yourself anyway.”

His gaze was certain. “I made some choices in my life that were selfish, thoughtless. I married a woman I barely knew at a time I didn’t even know myself. I promised her forever when I had no idea where I was going to be, who I was going to be, the next week. Sometimes I think the only thing I did right back then was refuse to have children when she asked me. I’d hate to think what the kid’s life would’ve been like being raised by a mother who felt trapped by his or her presence.”

“I guess it would depend on the role you played in the child’s life.” Her stomach knotted. She had to go.

His slow grin surprised her. It wasn’t effusive, or filled with humor, but it was genuine. “It’s been good seeing you again,” he said.

“Yeah, you, too.” She really had to go.

“You wouldn’t want to do it again sometime, would you?”

Probably. And no, never.

“How do you go from that night nine years ago to settling for an occasional drink?”

They couldn’t. That night was there. Between them. Incredible. Time out of time. They’d be driven to do it again. And then…

“You probably don’t,” he admitted.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Anything more than an occasional drink wouldn’t be right. We hardly know each other.”

“Too much too soon.” Too much, period. She had a life. One that didn’t—couldn’t—include him. A life that, if he knew about it, could make him hate her. And what kind of effect would it have on him? He was already bearing an unrealistic responsibility for three deaths due to his youthful quest for self-discovery. He’d told her that night on the beach that he didn’t want children, didn’t want to be in a position to have such control over another individual that he might affect another person as his father had affected him. If he knew that, in his zeal to run, he’d run from his own daughter, he might never fully recover. And always, most important, was Mary Jane. What if Blake knew the truth and still didn’t want kids? His abandonment would devastate Mary Jane.

“It’s probably best that we just leave it as a great memory,” he said.

God, she hated how that sounded. So final. “I think so.”

He was quiet for a moment, then paid the check that the waiter brought. “For now, I think so, too.”

Relief caused her stomach to go weak. The disappointment she’d deal with later, when she was alone that night.

They stood. Walked to the door. Juliet was very careful not to let any part of her touch any part of him.

He held the door. She walked by, feeling his heat, but absolutely determined not to touch him.

She turned to the left. He stood by the door.

“I’m parked over this way.”

She nodded. “I’m back there.”

“This is it, then.” He didn’t come closer. If he’d come closer, maybe…

“Thanks for dinner. And the drinks.” She walked backward slowly as she talked.

Hands in his pockets, he stood there, watching. “You’re welcome.”

“Be happy.”

“You, too.”

There was nothing more to say.

“If you ever find yourself in need of a good attorney, don’t hesitate to call.”

People on the street were glancing oddly as they passed. A teenage couple stopped to watch.

“And if you ever need a home built…”

“I know where to find you.” She was at the corner. “See ya.”

If he replied she didn’t hear him. As soon as she rounded the corner, Juliet ran.

SHE HADN’T BEEN HOME half an hour when the front door slammed. She waited to hear her daughter’s robust voice but was met with silence.

“Mary Jane?” Pulling over her head a T-shirt that matched the black-and-white drawstring bottoms she’d changed into, Juliet came out of her room.

There was no answer. Other than a cupboard slamming in the kitchen. The sound of a glass on the counter. The refrigerator being swung open hard enough to rattle the bottles stored inside the door.

“What’s up?”

The child, dressed in jeans with a matching jacket over a purple lace shirt, spilled the milk she was pouring. “I quit Brownies.”

“You can’t quit Brownies. Only I can do that. I paid for it.”

“Then I haven’t quit, I’m just not going back.” Leaving a puddle of milk on the counter, Mary Jane brought her glass to the table and sat down, her chin at her chest. Her cheeks were puffed out with indignation, her lower lip protruding as though she was about to cry.

“Can we talk about it first?”

“Yeah,” she said with more challenge than acquiescence in her voice. “But I’m not going back.”

Juliet ignored the milk on the counter. Pulling out the chair closest to Mary Jane’s, she sat. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“It’s not what happened, it’s what’s going to happen.”

She was having trouble following Mary Jane’s line of thought. “What’s that?”

“Mrs. Byron said we have to do a father-daughter banquet.” Mary Jane looked over at her accusingly, as though she’d planned the whole thing. Juliet didn’t even know Mrs. Byron. The woman, whose daughter was brand new to the troop, had just been made activities director. “I don’t have a father. I don’t want a father.” The little girl stood with such force her curls bounced against her cheeks. “And I don’t want to go to Brownies anymore.”

“No one’s going to force you to go to Brownies,” she said to the retreating back.

When it rained, it poured.

LATE AFTERNOON, a full two weeks since he’d seen Juliet McNeil, Blake was in his office looking over a library bid to be submitted to city council the next morning, when his secretary buzzed him.

“Paul Schuster to see you, sir.”

“I thought you’d gone home.”

“Just leaving.”

“Drive carefully and I’ll see you tomorrow,” Blake told Lee Anne Boulder, the mother of three who’d lost her husband in a construction injury two years before. “And please, send Schuster in.”

Slipping his arms back into the navy suit coat he’d dropped on the chair in front of his desk when he’d come in from a lunch with the mayor several hours before, Blake met the attorney at the door. Why hadn’t the other man called to let him know he was coming?

Schuster got right to the point.

“Eaton James was on the stand today.”

“That must’ve been entertaining.” He motioned to a leather couch on the other side of his office. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Thanks, I could use a stiff one.”

“Whiskey?” Blake walked over to the wet bar along the far wall. It was there strictly for business meetings. He’d never once used it alone.

A habit his father had taught him very early in life. A man who drinks alone at work has a problem with drinking.

“Whatever you’ve got.”

Pouring a couple of shots of twelve-year-old scotch, Blake handed one to the older man and took a healthy sip of his own. If Schuster was here to tell him they were going to lose, he was going to need more than one.

“When you were in court, answering Juliet McNeil’s questions, you testified that you were in the Cayman Islands five years ago.”

“I was. On and off. I was working on a project in Honduras and used to fly over for a week every now and then. Why?”

“Did you ever do any business there?”

Something in Schuster’s voice, his low-key demeanor, set Blake on edge. Putting his glass on the coffee table, he took a seat across from the prosecutor.

“Never.” Where the hell was this going?

“What did you do there?”

“Lay on the beach. Kayaked. Snorkeled. Ate. Made love with my wife.”

Schuster’s gaze was guarded as he looked up. “Where did you stay?”

“Various places, hotels, a bed-and-breakfast. Once we even camped on the beach. Why? What does any of this have to do with James’s testimony?”

Was the man trying to claim that Blake had something to do with the Eaton Estates deal, other than checking to see if it was legitimate at the request of his mother?

“James launched a bombshell in the courtroom today. I’d bet my career on the fact that no one was as surprised as his counsel.”

Chills slid through Blake. Ignoring the drink he’d left on the table, he watched as the other man swirled his whiskey. Drained the glass. Set it down.

“He claims there’s a bank account in the Cayman Islands that holds every dime of all monies unaccounted for in his books. Those paid invoices for shipments that never seemed to happen? Well, that money was being squirreled away in some bank in the Cayman Islands.”

“He admitted it,” Blake said, elated and sickened at the same time. “We won.” And then, observing the other man’s bowed head, he added, “You won.”

“Not so fast.” Schuster shook his head, looking old and tired in a jacket wrinkled from hours of sitting in court. The energy that seemed to pulse through him twenty-four hours a day was eerily absent.

“James didn’t admit to anything but being blackmailed.”

Frowning, Blake sat back, a curious numbness spreading through him. “What? By whom?”

“Your father.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SITTING BACK with his arms resting on the sides of his chair, Blake hoped he looked relaxed. He was working hard to maintain the facade.

“My father.” They were the only two words spinning around in his mind. There should be more. Would be more. He knew that. For now, focusing on remaining calm was keeping him detached.

Or a sense of survival was.

Schuster, forearms on his knees as he leaned forward, nodded. His hands were clasped as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“My father had no reason to blackmail Eaton James.”

The man’s pockmarked face thinned as he continued to watch Blake. “Apparently he did.”

No, he didn’t. James was a liar, on trial for fraud. “Why?” If Blake was going to clear his father’s name, he had to have the facts.

“After James claimed that he lost the money your father had invested with him, your father hired a private audit firm to inspect James’s books. His right to do so was in the contract he’d had his lawyers write up at the time of the investment.”

Blake recognized his father’s hand in that. Walter Ramsden had been at times almost maniacal in his need for control.

He’d been equally so in walking the straight and narrow.

“The firm found everything in order, according to the document James received. Your father, allegedly, was not satisfied with the record.”

None of which seemed at all unusual to Blake.

“According to James, your father threatened to call someone he knew at the IRS unless James turned over his records to him, so that he could see for himself what was and wasn’t there, with the understanding that if he found anything that even hinted at tampering, he’d call the IRS anyway.”

With a hand to his chin, Blake nodded. Sitting still was excruciating. Almost as painful as listening to what should be a fantastic story, but was, in fact, quite believable, about his deceased father. He could too easily see Walter Ramsden giving James a fair chance to prove himself before turning him in, and then considering himself judge and jury of that proof. After all, Walter Ramsden firmly believed that he always knew what was best.

The damnable thing was, he pretty much always had.

Except, of course, in his decision to invest with Eaton James.

“Threatening to call the IRS on a firm whose bad investment has just lost you a huge chunk of money is hardly a crime, and nowhere near the vicinity of blackmail.”

Unless someone like Juliet McNeil, who colored the truth to match any decor, was painting the picture?

Running a hand through his graying hair, Schuster picked up his glass. “Mind if I have another?”

“Help yourself.” Blake motioned to the bar. He should get up and do it, and get one for himself, as well. Except that he hadn’t finished the one he had.

The back of the man’s slacks looked as though he’d slept in them more than once. Apparently sometime during the afternoon, the prosecutor—whose attention to his appearance was normally obsessive enough to be noticeable—had lost track of the crease in his pants.

With a glass that was twice as full as the one Blake had poured originally, Schuster took his seat.

“James testified that after your father looked over his books, Walter claimed the legitimate start-up companies under Terracotta’s umbrella were fraudulent. Apparently a couple of the new ventures had well-known San Diego businessmen at the helm as the principal signers. Because the auditors knew the reputations of the businessmen in question, they didn’t audit their books, but rather accepted as fact the invoices and receipts going to and coming from them.”

Just like the well-known national firm that had been in the news at least twice in the past two years. Blake frowned. “My father thought the companies were nonexistent fronts to hide Terracotta Foundation losses or gains.”

“Apparently.”

“And these principal signers, how would James have convinced them to act as principals for businesses that were not legitimate?”

“McNeil asked James that very question,” Schuster said, shaking his head. “I swear, the woman had no idea what her client had up his sleeve, but she sure rolled with the punches.”

Blake couldn’t tell if the older man was repulsed, or reluctantly in awe. He suspected a combination of both.

“And what was James’s reply?”

“That your father was obsessed and, he suspected, not quite as mentally alert as he’d once been…”

Blake burned. His old man had had many faults, but a lack of mental sharpness had not been one of them. That was something his mother absolutely would have told him about.

“He said that your father found the fact that all of the principals held seats on the Semaphor board suspect. He accused James of playing on the trust of his philanthropic associates—”

“Something my father had fallen prey to.”

“Exactly.”

Sitting forward, Blake picked up his glass. Sipped slowly. This wasn’t sounding so bad, after all.

“If my father had been wrong, if the companies weren’t fraudulent, what did James have to be afraid of? I think that the fact that the state found the same evidence is pretty telling, don’t you?”

Schuster swirled the liquid in his glass, took a drink, then frowned at Blake. “Not so fast,” he said, his eyes deadly serious. “In the first place, if your father didn’t have something on James, the blackmail attempt would not have been successful.”

He’d actually forgotten, for a moment, that that was where they were headed. James’s ridiculous attempt to buy his freedom.

“And secondly, your father is the one who turned evidence over to the state.”

Goddammit. He hadn’t been told that.

So Schuster’s entire case was hinging on the validity of his father’s claims?

“Obviously you found ample evidence to corroborate the charges.” The case would never have grown to this magnitude, would never have attracted attorneys like Schuster and Juliet McNeil, if there wasn’t substantial proof.

Schuster sighed, dropped his head. “Much of the paper trail I’ve spent the past five years unwinding was created at the direction of your father. In a private meeting, of which no one knows, he told me where to look. And what I’d find.”

“And he was right.”

“Of course he was right, or we wouldn’t be here,” Schuster said impatiently, looking up. “James maintains that your father planted the evidence.”

Glass in hand, Blake sat back. Hard. The moment had gone from incredible to absurd.

“If my father turned everything over to you, what did he supposedly have to use to blackmail James?”

“I met with your father just days before he died. Twenty-four hours after James had met with him, giving him a particular piece of information that he believed would not only get him out from underneath your father’s control, but would turn the tables on him. He had information with which he could blackmail your father, instead.”

“He admitted to blackmailing my father?”

Schuster shook his head. “No, he claims he only used the information to get your father to leave him alone. He had no intention of doing anything illegal.”

Taking another sip of whiskey, although he knew he needed his mind completely clear, Blake set the glass down.

“But he claims that, until he came up with whatever hold he had on my father, my father used the evidence of fraudulent companies to blackmail him.”

“Yes.”

“So again, I ask, if there was nothing fraudulent in those books, why give in to blackmail?”

Not that he believed, for one second, there’d ever been any blackmail. Blake might have gone three years without speaking with his father, but there were some things he just knew.

“James had made some very stupid mistakes. Namely some bad investments—not unlike the Eaton Estates deal—that, had they become known, would have lost the Terracotta Foundation all of its investors. Think of it, a nonprofit organization losing money instead of gaining it to benefit third world countries. He’d made other investments that were keeping him afloat, but who’s going to give money to a man they can’t trust? He’d have been bankrupt with no possible way of recouping his losses, his reputation ruined.”

“So why didn’t the original audit of Terracotta show those losses?”

“Because James started up a couple of other small companies that he used to hide the losses.”

“The companies my father questioned.”

“Correct.”

“So were they legitimate, or weren’t they?”

Shrugging, Schuster finished off his whiskey. “That’s the six-million-dollar question that only the jury will be able to decide at this point. The companies themselves exist, such as they are. It’s a matter of having a license. It’s all paper. What James is guilty of, which your father discovered, is that he forged the names of the principals for both of the companies in question.”

“Forged the names of men on the Semaphor board?”

Schuster nodded. “Reputable businessmen, both of them. He’d gambled on the fact that, were he to be audited, the firm would take the names at face value and not look at those books. A chance that paid off.” The prosecutor dropped his head a second time.

“Chances are I’m going to lose this one because I went for a charge of fraudulent schemes and the man is guilty of forgery,” he said. “I haven’t done a forgery case since my first year out of law school.”

He might lose a case. But what about justice?

“If this is true—” which Blake was certain it was not “—why wouldn’t James have come clean with his attorney from the beginning?”

“Who knows?” Schuster said, standing to pour himself another drink. Blake was going to have to call the man a cab. “McNeil has one hell of a reputation. Maybe he was hoping she’d get him off altogether. Save his reputation, his business, his lifestyle. And when he got scared, he figured facing the much lesser charge of forgery was better than spending the next fourteen years in jail. Ego and fear. Two of the three things that most often get a man.”

“And the third is?” Blake didn’t give a damn. He was stalling. Avoiding the rest of what Schuster had to tell him.

“Sex,” the man said, his lips pursed with disgust.

“So what motivation did James give for my father blackmailing him? How did he explain the fact that Walter Ramsden, a man everyone in the business community knows to be honest to the point of self-righteousness, didn’t go immediately to the authorities with the things he’d found?”

The prosecutor’s eyes were surprisingly clear as he stared at Blake. “You.”

“What?” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice.

“You hadn’t seen your father in four years, Blake. That’s a long time when a man is in his seventies. Especially a man who is suffering from a bad heart. A lack of physical strength had taken its toll. Apparently Ramsden Enterprises wasn’t doing as well as it once had.”

“Nothing that couldn’t easily be fixed.” Blake tried to keep defensiveness and emotions out of his reply. He couldn’t afford clouded judgment at this moment. “As with any company in today’s market, we needed to diversify. To expand. The day of small family concerns had passed.”

“Expansion takes time. Planning. And more energy than your father had. He needed the money to stay afloat until you came home.”

Standing, Blake grabbed his glass from the table and took it to the small built-in dishwasher at the bar. “Well, there you go then,” he said, his back to Schuster. “That will be easy enough to prove. Just look at our books. I did, thoroughly, when I came home. True to form, my father left not one dime unaccounted for—either incoming or outgoing. There was absolutely no influx of money other than what was invoiced and signed off with double signatures.”

“You actually think your father would have put the money someplace it could be found? Tracked?”

“No.” Blake turned. “I don’t. Because my father would never have taken the money to begin with.”

“According to Eaton James, he put it in an account in the Cayman Islands.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “How convenient. James mentions a place that’s well known in the business world for its ability to hide money as though it didn’t exist. Without the Cayman Islands’ cooperation, he knows there’s no real way to prove his claim one way or the other. And he’d also know that the government is known for its blindness to such matters.”

Schuster’s eyes were narrowed, too, although he remained seated. “He has a bank account number. That was the information he presented to your father just before Walter came to me.”

There was more. Blake felt it coming. With both hands bracing his weight behind him, he leaned back against the counter. “You’re going to tell me the account has my father’s name on it.”

“No.” Schuster surprised him. “According to James, it has yours.”

“’NIGHT, MOM.”

“Good night, imp. Sleep well.” Leaning over, Juliet kissed her daughter’s cheek, pulling the covers up to Mary Jane’s chin. No matter how hot the weather, she wouldn’t sleep without being completely covered, at least by a sheet.

She forced herself to stand in the doorway until the child opened her eyes for one last blown kiss, a ritual they’d started when Mary Jane was a toddler. Never had bedtime taken so long.

More often than not, she let Mary Jane talk her into staying up past her bedtime. Mary Jane didn’t seem to require as much sleep as most children. A characteristic of precocious children, her pediatrician had said when, at two, the little girl had played happily in her crib all through naptime.

She gave her daughter another fifteen minutes to settle into sleep before she could no longer stand the tension and called her twin. From a cell phone, sitting in her bedroom with the door closed, just in case Mary Jane got up.

“He’s a criminal, Marce!” she blurted as soon as her sister picked up.

“Who’s a criminal?”

She could hear voices in the background. The television. Again.

“Blake Ramsden.” The father of her child. “What kind of defense attorney am I that I didn’t even suspect?” The thoughts that had been torturing her all evening came tumbling out in no apparent order. “What kind of mother? I’ve been working on this case for months and not once did I have even an inkling that the road to Eaton’s freedom was paved by Ramsden Enterprises. It’s like I was blinded by a nine-year-old memory that might have cost a man several years of his life.”

“So what bothers you more, Jules?” Marcie’s voice was soft yet tough. “Your ego, because you might not be as infallible on the job as you think? Or your heart, because you might have made a bad choice for the father of your child?”

“I didn’t choose the father of my child. The child chose me.”

“You used the same condom twice!”

“I was drunk!”

Marcie didn’t say another word. It was a silence that drove Juliet insane every single time her sister used it on her.

“Why are you doing this?” Juliet whispered a full thirty seconds later. “You’ve never said anything like this before.”

“It didn’t matter before. He had a life in another world.”

A laugh track exploded in the background.

“You think I got pregnant on purpose?” Because if Marcie thought she’d ever consider something as cold-blooded as that—to go out looking for a man for the express purpose of having his kid—then her sister didn’t know her at all.

“I don’t think you consciously chose the course.” Marcie’s reply came quickly. “But I’ve always suspected that somewhere, in the back of your mind, the thought was there.”

Juliet leaned her head against the wall, legs straight out, and studied the subtle texture of her nylons. She really shouldn’t be sitting on the floor in her suit.

“You need family, Jules,” Marcie said slowly. “We both do. And there was no way you could possibly contemplate marriage—not until you’d proven to yourself that you had a full life on your own.”

“I made it through law school by the time I was twenty-five. I had a life.” The carpet was making her legs itch.

Marcie nodded. “You had the beginning of a life. But not enough of one to take away your fear. I’ve wondered if maybe part of you needed to know that even if you were in Mother’s position—pregnant and alone—you had what it took to make it. You couldn’t live with the fear of thinking you might not be able to handle it,” Marcie was saying. “You were afraid of finding out that if it ever happened to you, you’d do exactly what Mom did.” She was going to hang up now. “I don’t think you got pregnant on purpose, no.” Marcie’s words went a little way toward calming the panic in Juliet’s heart. “But I don’t think it was completely a mistake that you didn’t insist on a new condom the second time around. We make little subconscious choices all the time and then act on them without even knowing that’s what we’re doing.”

It was Juliet’s turn to use the silent treatment. Mostly because she was speechless.

“You know,” Marcie continued, “like when you pull into the parking lot of an ice-cream shop without even realizing that you were hungry for ice cream.”

“I hardly think craving a hot-fudge sundae can be in any way likened to having a baby.” She pulled off her pumps, one by one.

“The brain’s ability to see to the needs of the subconscious can be the same in both cases.”

None of this was making sense. And it wasn’t anything she’d needed, or expected, when she’d dialed her twin’s number. “Is Hank there?”

“No.” Of course not. It was Thursday and Hank worked late at the hardware store on Thursdays doing inventory.

With one hand, and leaning from side to side where she sat, Juliet pulled off her panty hose, wadded them and tossed them in the wire-framed designer laundry basket in a corner of the closet.

“So you’re accusing me of going out that night with some thought in the back of my mind that it was time to get pregnant?”

“No! Of course not, Jules.” Marcie’s voice gentled. “I know you better than that. I’m only saying that when the proper circumstances presented themselves, you acted on them. You were with a man who attracted you. He was intelligent and confident enough to argue with you, he was gorgeous, he was from a stable family well known for honest dealings, and—the crèmede la crème—he was leaving the country for an indefinite period of time! There’d be no one to get in touch with, to answer questions from, to avoid, or to call. No one to turn to in case you got cold feet about going it alone.”

“You actually think I thought all that through?”

“No. But I think the sense of freedom spoke to you.” Juliet’s heart sank when it became obvious that Marcie wasn’t going to budge on this one. Usually when that happened she was at least partially correct.

The laugh track sounded again.

Except for her insistence on staying in Maple Grove.

Juliet started unfastening the buttons on her blouse. “Can I have some time to think about this?”

“In other words, you want me to shut up and never mention it again?”

“Yeah.”

“Only if you promise to…no, forget that. Yeah, I’ll let it go.”

“Only if I promise to what?”

“Nothing.”

“What?” Her blouse hung half-open.

“I was just going to say that I promise to leave this alone if you’d quit worrying about Hank and Maple Grove.”

That wasn’t fair. Marcie’s happiness was at stake. “I—”

“Don’t say it,” Marcie interrupted. “You don’t need to. I know you can’t stop.”

“I just—”

“I know, Jules,” she said, her voice low. “Truth is, I’m not even sure I want you to stop.”

Juliet froze, afraid to hope. “You mean it, Marce? You’re actually thinking about moving here?” Her heart rate sped up as she ran through the possibilities.

“Not really,” Marcie’s reply wasn’t as disappointing as it might have seemed. It wasn’t the adamant no that was all she’d ever issued in the past. “I just don’t want you to quit asking. It’s good to know I have a place to go.”

“Always, sis.”

“Yeah. Still, it’s good to hear, you know?”

Juliet did know. After losing everything they had to go live in squalor in a trailer the size of one of their bedrooms at home, security had gained a pretty high spot on the priority list of both girls. Right beneath the need to provide it for themselves.

In the space of a weekend, she and Marce had gone from living in a San Francisco mansion with every possible luxury and socially prominent parents to a rusty, skinny, two-bedroom trailer in Maple Grove with a broken woman who had no training, no marketable skills and not enough esteem to pull herself up. They’d left behind the man who’d lost his fortune and found himself a rich woman who was happy to keep him in the style to which he’d grown accustomed in exchange for his company. The man who’d come home one Friday afternoon to bid a cold adieu to the wife he’d grown to hate and to the children he’d never wanted and didn’t intend to see again.

Juliet could still remember the moment when, thinking that she could solve everything by wrapping her skinny arms around the man she’d adored and telling him that she’d help him get his money back, her father had shoved her away so hard she’d landed on her butt on the ground.

“You going to tell me what kind of criminal Mary Jane’s father is?” Marcie asked when the line hung silent.

“He’s been harboring illegally gained money in a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

“No way.”

“I know,” Juliet said, shrugging out of her blouse and leaving it on the floor beside her. “I couldn’t believe it, either. I’m still not sure I do, but the evidence is pretty conclusive. Eaton James gave me the account number today just before lunch along with paperwork showing who opened the account. It’s in Blake’s name.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah, and it was opened during a period of time he already admitted to being in the islands.”

“Damn.”

That was exactly what Juliet thought.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“HAVE YOU CALLED HIM?” Marcie’s question started the butterflies fluttering around inside her again. She’d spent the past hour telling her twin about the day’s events, the shocking developments in a trial of which she’d thought herself in complete control.

Juliet lay in her bed, pillows propped up behind her, the comforter pulled to her hips. Darkness, broken by a moonlit glow from the open shutters, gave the room a sleepy feel.

“I have no reason to call him,” she said aloud, something she’d been repeating to herself since Eaton James had delivered his startling testimony that afternoon. “I hardly know the man.”

“You had dinner with him two weeks ago.”

She wished she’d never told her sister that.

“And very clearly said a permanent goodbye,” she muttered.

“But you were there in the courtroom. You heard the whole thing. And, even if you haven’t spent many hours with him, you did fill those hours with some…fairly intimate communication.”

“We had sex.” They’d also had a baby. But since he didn’t know that, it didn’t count. Did it?

“Do you want to call him?”

“Dammit, Marce, can’t you just leave me in blissful self-deception for a while?”

“If that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t have called me.” Her sister said. And then added, “Would you?” with a little less confidence.

“No, I wouldn’t have. I rely on the absolute honesty between us,” she admitted. “I always have.”

“Okay. So…why do you want to call him?”

Juliet sighed, ran a hand through hair that was loose and falling free around her face. “I don’t know. I just feel uneasy, you know? I mean, I’ve been working with Eaton James for months and he never breathed a word about any of this.”

“But I’ll bet you assured him, when he first came to you, that you could get him off, didn’t you?”

“I think I would have.”

“And would you have been able to do that if he’d told you about the forgery?”

The Monet lithograph on her wall was a square shadow with little glowing pinpricks where the light hit bright color. “No.” It could be said that she presented different forms of truth, and left out incriminating evidence when it suited her client’s case to do so, but Juliet McNeil never knowingly lied. “It’s his first offense. I’d have gotten him off with nothing more serious than a light probation term.”

“And a damaged reputation that would’ve been hard to recover, at least professionally. Not many people trust their charitable contributions to a crook.”

James had said something similar when she’d come unglued on him late that afternoon. Just what she wanted, a client who tried to outmaneuver her. When would she ever fully grasp the fact that in her world, it was always each man for himself?

“What happens now?” Marcie asked a couple of minutes later.

“I expect the D.A. to drop the charges. He’ll never get a class-two felony out of this. James’ll be charged with numerous counts of forgery and get his hands slapped.”

“And what about Blake Ramsden?”

Glancing out the window at an ocean she couldn’t see in the dark, Juliet held tight to the phone with a sweat-slick palm. “I suspect he’ll be charged with a class-two felony.”

“You think Schuster will do it?”

“Yeah. That’s one thing you can count on Paul Schuster for—he’ll take up any case he thinks he can win. Even more so because he’s going to be driven to get a win out of all the months he’s spent on this. Hell—” she chuckled without humor “—knowing Schuster, he’ll probably figure out a way to make it look like he knew that Blake was guilty all along.”

“Except for the little matter of having wasted the state’s money to press the charges against Eaton in the first place.”

“Who knows.” Juliet couldn’t remember a time when she’d been so tired. At least not since she’d been eight and a half months pregnant and hauling herself out of bed before dawn to get to work.

“Is he guilty?”

“How do I know?”

“You’re usually pretty tuned in to these things.”

“As I proved with my adept handling of the Eaton James defense,” she mumbled.

“No one’s right all the time.”

She sighed, fiddling with the bottom hem of the almost threadbare T-shirt she was wearing. “I don’t know if he’s guilty or not.” She finally gave in and let herself think about the situation head-on. “My heart tells me he’s not, but logic tells me he probably is.”

“I sure wish I’d met this guy!”

“Why?”

“He’s the only man who’s even got close enough for your heart to hear.”

Juliet took the next three minutes listing several men in her life who’d been closer to her than Mary Jane’s father had ever been.

Marcie mostly let her get away with this small refusal to face the truth as she saw it. Juliet hoped that meant her twin wasn’t really sure about the state of Juliet’s heart. Because she couldn’t afford, in any way, shape or form, to have her sister right on this one.

“Do you think there’s a chance Blake Ramsden will call you?”

Marcie’s question was another one she’d been trying—without success—to avoid. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Do you want him to?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, either.” Part of her did. If he was charged, as she knew he would be, he’d need her—if she could convince Eaton James to sign a waiver allowing her to represent Blake. Not only was she one of the most successful defense attorneys in the state, she had an intimate grasp of the details of this particular case.

And she wanted to be there for him.

He’d given her the most precious gift of her life. Just because he didn’t know that didn’t mean she didn’t owe him something in return.

Maybe even, because of that secret, she owed him.

And another part of her, the frightened, lonely part, wanted him to stay as far away from her and her happy little life as humanly possible.

MARY JANE DIDN’T GET scared that often. Which was why when she did get scared, it really scared her.

Something was up that was worse than anything at school or stupid people who didn’t like her. All weekend her mother had done normal stuff with her. She hadn’t cried, or asked for time alone, or forgotten that she’d promised to take Mary Jane for ice cream after they cleaned the bathrooms this week. She just hadn’t argued. Even when Mary Jane had brought up some of the craziest things she could think of, just to get her mother talking.

What if Mom was sick? The thought made her feel as if she was going to throw up. What would happen to her if something ever happened to Mom? She could go live with Aunt Marcie in Maple Grove, of course, which wouldn’t be all that great, but it wouldn’t be horrible like going to an orphanage. But no one would love her like Mom did. No one.

No one would think she was the most special thing on earth. Or tell her about important things even though she was just a kid. No one else, not even Aunt Marcie, would argue with her about things that had no answers like whether or not a chicken came first or an egg.

They’d all say she was just a kid and wait for her to grow up.

Turning over in her bed, Mary Jane bunched up the pillow and squeezed her eyes shut. Tomorrow was Monday, and school was even worse when she was sleepy.

She was being dumb. Mom wasn’t sick. If she was, she’d tell Mary Jane for sure. Besides, she’d had lots of energy and made Mary Jane clean the bathrooms twice while she scrubbed the kitchen floor, even though they hadn’t spilled anything.

Feeling a little better, Mary Jane was almost asleep when she remembered that still didn’t tell her what was wrong.

It must be really horrible.

It had to be or they would’ve talked about it. The only other time Mom hadn’t talked to her at all was when her grandma had died. Mary Jane had been really little, only about three, but she could still remember. Mostly she remembered that summer when she was going into first grade and had asked her mother what Grandma had died of and her mother had talked a lot but never really told her. Only, Mary Jane hadn’t figured that out until later.

Someday she was going to ask again. Maybe. When she was bigger.

So who died? It couldn’t be Aunt Marcie. They’d just talked to her on the phone that afternoon. And there wasn’t anyone else who mattered that much. Was there?

Her stomach hurt and Mary Jane turned over, but that didn’t help. She thought about the book she’d been reading, about the horse and the race and how Bonnie was going to win the race and get to keep her very own horse. But then she remembered that Bonnie didn’t have a mom and that made her scared all over again.

One time, on a night before the first day of school, Mom had told her to count sheep when she couldn’t sleep. Mary Jane hadn’t wanted to tell her she didn’t see any sheep when she closed her eyes.

Maybe they were having trouble paying their bills and they’d have to leave the cottage on the beach and Mom didn’t want to tell her because she knew how much Mary Jane loved living on the beach. But at school once, when she’d told a couple of the kids where she lived, the one girl, Corinne, who was mostly nice to her, had said that it cost a lot of money to live on the beach.

She wasn’t really worried about staying in this house on the beach. As long as she and Mom were together, she didn’t care if they were like the homeless people she saw on the benches along the road to the airport. But did they let kids live like that? She didn’t think so.

So did that mean if they couldn’t pay their bills someone would say that Mom couldn’t keep her? Surely then Mom would be willing to go back to Maple Grove and stay with Aunt Marcie, even though Mom hated Maple Grove so much.

Her head hurt and Mary Jane rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling though mostly she couldn’t really see it. Just shadows.

She was being dumb again. They had lots of money. Mom was almost famous and got paid a lot for her job. But maybe she was losing a big case and then people wouldn’t come to her anymore.

Mary Jane tried hard to sleep. As hard as she could. But it just didn’t come. The more she couldn’t go to sleep, the more scared she got.

Finally, when she couldn’t stand staying in her room all alone, she climbed out of bed, tiptoed down the hall to Mom’s room, lifted the covers quietly and slid in so gently the mattress hardly moved. She’d just lie there on the side of the bed, without even a pillow, so Mom wouldn’t know she was there.

Even if her neck hurt, she figured this was better than being in her own room. But then Mom’s arm came around her and pulled her close. Mom didn’t say anything. Just kissed her lightly by the eye and went back to sleep.

And finally, snug and warm and right where she wanted to be, so did Mary Jane.

EVERY TIME BLAKE’S PHONE buzzed, he jumped. That wasn’t like him at all. He’d lived through a hurricane and a near bombing, seen poverty worse than anything he could have imagined, slept in places where bugs were more abundant than pillows or sheets, and even been thrown in jail once in a godforsaken place he never had found on a map. And the one thing he’d learned about himself during those years of challenges was that he faced adversity with calm.

He’d just never been on the verge of being charged with a crime he hadn’t committed. He’d thought a hundred times over the weekend about calling Juliet McNeil. Had even gone so far as to spend several hours on the Internet finding out what her legal standing would have to be in case he asked her to represent him, given the fact that she was counsel for another man up for the same charges in the same case.

As far as he could tell, there was no statute that prevented her from doing it, as long as she had a waiver from the previous client.

Blake had no idea what the chances were of Eaton James agreeing to that. But surely, once Schuster dropped the charges—as he’d told Blake he was going to do—James would be feeling charitable.

Charity was, after all, his business.

His intercom buzzed. Blake’s pen went flying. “Yes?” he asked after inhaling deeply in an attempt to control his response.

“I’m going to lunch, sir. Would you like me to bring you back something?”

Thanking Lee Anne for asking, Blake declined. The only thing that sounded good at the moment was a visit to the little bar across the room. He retrieved his pen.

And moved over to stare out the wall of windows down at the bustling city he hadn’t realized he loved—or missed—until he’d come home.

He’d done a bit of research on other legal matters that weekend. Namely, how a person was actually charged for a class-two felony. After finding out that fraud of the type in which he and his father had allegedly engaged was a class-two felony.

There were people he could have called. Ramsden had a team of attorneys. Construction attorneys. But certainly they could recommend a good criminal attorney in the space of seconds. He just hadn’t been able to bring himself to admit to anyone that he was actually facing the possibility of being in so much trouble. He didn’t want to give the idea any validity by discussing it.

Neither could he remain completely ignorant. Ignorance had never been the Ramsden way.

Most of the close friends he’d had before leaving the country, friends from college, had moved on, married, settled into careers all over the country. He’d reacquainted himself with a few of them, but being so wrapped up in expanding Ramsden into commercial construction, he hadn’t developed any relationships close enough to call on in a time like this.

As he understood his situation, Schuster—who would be filing charges on behalf of the state—would have to take along an investigator who’d questioned key witnesses to appear before a grand jury.

Once the investigator corroborated Schuster’s claim about how witnesses would probably respond in court, a charge would be entered and either a warrant issued for his arrest or he’d be subpoenaed to appear in court for arraignment.

The whole process could be done in a day or two, which Schuster had already had. They could be coming for him at any moment.

A noise sounded in the outer office. A door closing? Glancing over his shoulder so quickly he pulled a muscle in his neck, Blake waited. After a couple of minutes had passed with no other activity, he strode over to yank open the door. He’d rather just face what was to come than—

The office was empty. But he could see where a calendar had fallen from its nail on the wall. Lee Anne had taken the calendar down earlier that morning, looking up a proposed completion date and had obviously not put it back securely. Slowly, calmly, he walked over and hung it up.

In his office again, Blake didn’t hesitate. He picked up the phone, dialed the number he’d already memorized, and waited. The chances were pretty slim that a woman as busy as Juliet McNeil would just be sitting at her desk on a Monday. For all he knew, she spent most of her days in court. Certainly she’d have a staff to do most of the investigative and research work she needed.

Her skills were in the courtroom.

“Juliet McNeil…”

Traffic buzzed beneath his window. People who looked more like little bugs than human beings scurried down the sidewalk, collecting at street corners waiting for lights to change. A man stood, leaning against the side of a brick building across the street, smoking a cigarette.

The sky was a perfect cerulean blue. The sun bright.

“Hello?”

“Sorry.” Blake finally decided to speak rather than quietly replace the receiver. “It’s Blake Ramsden.”

“Blake! Oh my God. You’ve heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Oh, then I take it you haven’t seen the noon news?”

He’d been too busy dreading being in the news himself. “No, what’s up?”

“Are you in your office?”

“Yes.”

“I’m actually not far from there,” she said. “Mind if I come by?”

What the hell was going on? “Of course not. I’m on the twelfth floor. What did I miss on the noon news?”

Could they announce to the press that he’d been charged before they told him?

“As convoluted as everything is, I don’t want to have this conversation with you over the phone. Do you mind?”

Yes. He was a little short on patience. “No.”

“I’ll be right there.”

She’d clicked off before he’d pulled the phone away from his ear.

BLAKE WAS WAITING for her at the elevator outside Lee Anne’s office. He’d tried to find some local news on his computer but hadn’t had any luck.

She looked all business in her maroon linen suit and matching pumps. And still, in that first instant her eyes met his, Blake saw something else there. Some kind of knowing that had existed between them from the first moment they’d met—two strangers drowning fears and doubts and worries about their futures in a bar on a California beach.

A couple of his staff architects walked by and nodded, their interest in seeing their boss with a beautiful woman a little too obvious.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, indicating the brass placard that identified his suite of offices.

“President and CEO,” Juliet read aloud. “Impressive.”

“It would be if I hadn’t simply inherited the job.”

She glanced back at him, her forehead creased. “From what I hear, you’ve done miraculous things. In just five short years, you’ve turned this company into the leader in a very competitive industry.”

“You’ve done your homework.” It made him uneasy. She’d come armed.

She nodded. But didn’t explain. Nor did she meet his eyes, focusing instead on his inner sanctum.

“Nice. I like all the windows. The view is magnificent.”

He stood beside her as she stared down at the city. “Nothing quite beats the ocean, in my opinion, but this is nice, too. I just imagine that all those buildings are gone and then there it is.”

What kind of sappy idiot was he turning into? So he might go to jail. He’d handle it just as he’d handled everything else that had come his way.

“What did I miss on the noon news?” It was time to get on with it.

“Oh, Blake…” She turned, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. “Eaton James killed himself this morning.”

“What?” His stomach dropped. Another suicide? The brightness in the room diminished, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. A cloud that was following him, would continue to follow him, for the rest of his life?

He had nothing to do with this one. Nothing.

“What happened?”

“Apparently he said goodbye to his wife and kids as usual when she left to take them to school. This was her morning to volunteer at a food bank. Then he went out to the garage, ran a vacuum cleaner hose from the exhaust to the back window of his antique Model T, turned on the car and climbed inside. When his wife came home a couple of hours later, he was dead, slumped over the steering wheel.”

“God.” What was it with people taking the easy way out and leaving their loved ones behind to deal with the consequences?

Not that he really knew about that. It wasn’t as though his father had killed himself. Or that he himself had still been among Amunet’s loved ones. Still, the sting was so acutely felt, so real. “Did he leave a note?”

Amunet had. And it had only brought about more questions with no answers.

“Just to tell his wife that his life insurance wouldn’t pay her anything because of the circumstances of his death, but that the money in the Cayman Islands would be hers when it was freed up and should be enough to care for her and the kids for the rest of her life.”

Blake’s skin was cold. “That was it?” No I love yous? Nothing to tell her children? His children?

“Except for the name of a man he recommended to handle her financial affairs, saying he was someone she could trust.”

Blake stood there, staring out at a day that looked exactly the same as it had mere moments before. And felt as dark as night.

Two weeks ago, he’d been a busy, if somewhat reclusive, builder with a moderately quiet life. Today, standing in that same office, he was living in a world gone mad.