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Her Secret, His Child
Tara Taylor Quinn


A LITTLE SECRETMother and DaughterJamie Archer loves her four-year-old daughter, Ashley, more than anything in this world. But Jamie has a past she's ashamed of, a past she needs to keep hidden. So she's created an entirely new life for herself and Ashley–a life that's threatened when Kyle Radcliff reappears.Father and ChildKyle doesn't immediately realize who she is, but Jamie recognizes him right away. He's Ashley's father. Even though he doesn't know it….A Family Now?For Ashley's sake, for all their sakes, Jamie has to tell him the truth–something that seems to become harder every day. Because she's falling in love with him. For the second time….







“Where you going, Mommy?” (#ue2cd85ee-be90-51f0-9409-27528f8f7f27)Letter to Reader (#u242dc5fc-def3-52c8-803c-ddf5d2b51bb4)Title Page (#u04c4007e-3046-57b5-a954-929cda7e1ebd)Dedication (#ud5d6b943-19be-5880-9e1e-aaf27c808c67)CHAPTER ONE (#ue4fa9427-c31a-57dd-b604-1da0a7b382d9)CHAPTER TWO (#u3e503acd-c6c8-5e63-8495-3c104314f953)CHAPTER THREE (#u46b380ad-46b2-584a-8469-a41220697670)CHAPTER FOUR (#u088ce391-7c37-5f23-8dd2-6eef04a1cbd8)CHAPTER FIVE (#ud49ddf25-8011-569a-90b3-31b334f7275d)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


“Where you going, Mommy?”

Ashley was staring at her mother, big gray eyes wide open. Always observing. Always aware.

“Just to make a phone call,” Jamie told herself as well as the child. It was only a phone call. She’d talk to him, find out what he wanted. How had Kyle Radcliff tracked her down...and why? He didn’t know—couldn’t possibly know—about Ashley.

“Don’t you want to see the movie?” Ashley’s sweet voice was filled with concern. Her thumb stole to her mouth.

“Of course I do, baby!” Jamie said. She rounded the table and knelt down by her daughter’s chair. “I’ll hurry.”

“Okay, Mommy”

Smiling, choking back tears, Jamie leaned forward and kissed Ashley’s cheek.

“Love you, Mommy,” Ashley said without relinquishing her thumb.

“Love you, too, baby”

Jamie fled.


Dear Reader,

Almost everyone is biologically equipped to reproduce. But as miraculous as birth is, the true miracle comes not in the giving of life but in the nurturing of it. No job or other endeavor will ever be more important than the raising up of innocent lives. To have a child completely dependent on you for food and clothing, for safety, for emotional health, for guidance, is an immense responsibility I’ve often thought you can judge people not by how they look or dress, the position they might hold in society, not by education, financial status or geographical location, but by how effective they are as parents.

Unfortunately, good people are sometimes driven by life, by circumstances, by tragedy, to make bad decisions. Yet it seems to me that a bad decision doesn’t necessarily make a bad person. Sometimes, though, a person can be imprisoned by such a decision because our society tends to look only at the surface...tends not to look beyond mistakes and their consequences.

Certainly, accountability is crucial, cost is just, but one of the great beauties of life is the opportunity for second chances. I cling to that promise.

Her Secret, His Child was with me long before I wrote my first book I’m glad to finally have the opportunity to bring you this novel and hope you will join me in celebrating the incredible strength of the human spirit as you share Jamie’s story.

Tara Taylor Quinn

P.S. I’m always delighted to hear from my readers. You can reach me at P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, Arizona 85267-5065 or on-line at http://www.iuficad.com/~ttquinn.




Her Secret, His Child

Tara Taylor Quinn







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Rachel. Having you made my life matter.

And for Jane Robson, whose belief in me taught me to

believe in myself.


CHAPTER ONE

“OKAY, BOYS AND GIRLS, we had Christmas in December and New Year’s last week, and we said Valentine’s Day comes in February, St. Patrick’s Day in March and Easter will be in April. Can anyone remember what we celebrate in May?”

Four-year-old Ashley Archer put her hand up as high as possible; she couldn’t wait to answer. The words almost came out of her mouth before Miss Peters called her name, even though that was against the rules. She squirmed in her seat, rising to her knees so Miss Peters would see her.

“Nathan?”

Darn it. Dumb old Nathan didn’t deserve to answer this one.

“Memory Day.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Ashley threw her hand up again. I know. I know.

“Memorial Day!” Miss Peters sounded like she just got a Christmas present. “Right!”

Right? That wasn’t it.

The teacher smiled at them. Ashley settled back in her seat, although she kept her arm in the air. She liked it when Miss Peters smiled.

“Memorial Day is when we remember our soldiers who died fighting for our country.”

Hmm. Ashley frowned. Maybe that was where her daddy had gone—maybe he was died from fighting for our country. Maybe that was why Memory Day was special, too.

“There’s another special day,” Miss Peters said. “Does anyone know what it is?”

Please ask me. Ashley waved her hand, just in case Miss Peters couldn’t see it up there.

“Ashley?”

“Mommy’s Day.” Whoosh. There. She’d got it out.

“Right!” Miss Peters smiled again. “Mother’s Day.”

Ashley bobbed in her seat. She’d done it. And she couldn’t wait to tell Mommy. After all, Mommy’s Day was the most special day in the whole wide world. �Cause it was all about God giving Ashley to Mommy.

God was really smart, even if He was old. �Cause He gave Ashley the best, prettiest mommy in the whole wide world. Miss Peters baby-talked some more and Ashley sank down in her seat, looking at all the other kids to make sure no one saw what she was thinking. She didn’t want them to know that God gave her the best mommy, ’cause that meant theirs weren’t as good and that would be a not-nice thing for them to know.

She also didn’t want to have bad thoughts, in case God might change His mind and give her some other mommy, instead. Like Nathan’s. Yuck.

Staring at one of the bright-red flowers on Miss Peters’s dress, she tried really hard to pay attention.

JUST AFTER TWELVE. Jamie Archer hummed to herself as she pulled into the drive at Ashley’s preschool. This was her favorite time. Her work for the day was done; she’d finished the Worth’s Flower Shop books early and was ready to start on her tax clients the next morning. The rest of the afternoon and evening belonged to Ashley.

Snuggled in her black wool jacket, she faced January’s brisk cold as she raced for the door, eager to collect the girls. Karen Smith, Jamie’s next-door neighbor and closest friend, had chili and crackers waiting at home for them. Karen’s daughter, Kayla, was Ashley’s best friend, car-pool buddy and preschool classmate. The two girls had been inseparable since the day Jamie and Ashley had moved to Larkspur Grove, Colorado, a little town outside Denver, two years before.

Jamie hated to think what would happen if the girls were put in separate classes when they started kindergarten in the fall.

“Mommy!”

Jamie’s heart skipped a happy beat as it always did when she heard her daughter’s voice.

She bent down just in time to catch the little whirlwind who hurled herself into Jamie’s arms. Anyone might think they’d been apart for days rather than the two and a half hours it had actually been. But sometimes these preschool mornings, away from Ashley, felt so much longer to Jamie.

“Hi, punkin, how was school?” she asked.

“Good. I got to answer Mommy’s Day!”

“Good girl!” Jamie gave Ashley one more hug before releasing the child. Even after four years, it was sometimes difficult to believe that this little girl was actually hers.

“Where’s Kayla?” She looked around the huge room filled with miniature furniture and a confusing array of mothers collecting children.

“She had to go potty,” Ashley said, trotting off to get her coat.

“Miss Jamie!”

Jamie turned as she recognized the other little voice in her life, and grabbed Kayla up for a hug. “Did you remember to wipe?” she asked. Kayla was often in too much of a hurry to finish what she started—much to Karen’s chagrin.

“Uh-huh.” Kayla nodded, her blue eyes wide. “Ashley knew Mommy’s Day,” she informed her importantly.

“I heard!” Jamie set the little girl down and helped them both zip up their parkas.

And as she escorted the two young children out into the parking lot, one tiny hand each in each of hers, she listened eagerly to their continuous chatter. There was no job more important, nothing on earth she’d rather be doing.

For the first time since she was Ashley’s age, Jamie had everything she could possibly want.

KAREN RAN our of crackers. A near catastrophe, seeing that Ashley just couldn’t eat chili without crackers. And besides, Kayla had already had five crackers and Ashley had had only three. Not bothering with her coat, Jamie hurried across the yard separating their homes, sure she had a box of saltines in the cupboard.

And saw the light blinking on her answering machine as she ran in the door. Hoping the light meant another client—an answer to the plea she’d sent out via Dr. Patterson, dean of Gunnison University—Jamie pushed the play-back button.

Ashley wanted to take dance lessons. Jamie needed to come up with the extra money to pay for them.

“Hi, Jamie. Kyle Radcliff calling. As of today, I’m the new English professor at Gunnison University. Could you give me a call, please?”

With a shaking hand, Jamie wrote down the number he rattled off. But as she dropped the pencil, the marks she was staring at through glazed eyes were barely legible.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Limbs suddenly weak, she clung to the counter, trying to keep down the portion of lunch she’d managed to eat.

Just like that.

He wanted her to call him.

Just like that. Her life was over.

She’d been found.

DRAWING ON the strength that came with motherhood, Jamie stood upright, forcing herself to breathe deeply, struggling to hold herself together. Ashley needed crackers. Was waiting for her mother to bring them. Jamie reached into the cupboard.

Yes. Just as she’d thought. There was an unopened box. Enough to keep both girls happy for the rest of the meal. Crackers were good. She was glad she had them.

Hugging the box, Jamie walked slowly back across the yard. The icy air didn’t penetrate. She didn’t notice the blue sky or the blinding glare reflecting off snow-covered yards. Ashley was waiting for crackers. Jamie had crackers. That was good.

“Mommy got crackers! Hooray!”

Jamie smiled automatically, holding up the box of crackers for the prize it was, as her daughter’s greeting met her at Karen’s kitchen door.

“Thank goodness.” Karen rolled her eyes dramatically, grinning. She took the box even before Jamie slid into her chair.

“Thank Mommy,” Ashley insisted, her brows creased with the seriousness of her correction.

Jamie’s heart started to shatter.

Divvying up the goods, Karen reminded the girls that as soon as they finished their chili, they could watch The Little Mermaid again. Jamie heard her. Heard the girls’ chorus of hoorays. She looked at her half-eaten bowl of chili. The spoon she knew she should be picking up.

“Something wrong?” Karen’s voice was soft, barely audible beneath the girls’ animated conversation.

“No!” Jamie glanced across at her friend. The only true friend she’d ever had. The woman who didn’t really know her at all. “Why?”

“You don’t look so good.”

“I, uh, just remembered I didn’t return a phone call this morning and I can’t afford to lose any clients.”

“Then go do it. I’ll watch the girls.”

“You sure?”

“Of course! They’ll be wrapped up in Ariel for the next hour anyway. Get out of here!”

She had to go. But she couldn’t leave Ashley. Could barely wait for Ashley to finish eating so she could lift her out of her booster seat and hold the little girl’s chili-smeared face against her. She’d be all right just as soon as she felt Ashley’s arms around her neck.

“Okay, I’ll hurry,” Jamie heard herself say. And stared again into her bowl of chili. It had been good chili.

She was going to have to leave Ashley with Karen. She absolutely could not allow whatever was to come to touch Ashley’s life. Couldn’t bear for Ashley to know...

“Take your time,” Karen said, clearing their bowls from the table.

Jamie stood.

“Where you going, Mommy?”

Ashley was staring at her mother, big gray eyes wide-open. Always observing. Always aware.

“Just to make a phone call,” Jamie told herself as well as the child. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t you want to see Ariel?” Ashley’s sweet voice was filled with concern. Her thumb stole to her mouth.

“Of course I do, baby!” Jamie said. She rounded the table and knelt beside her daughter. “I’ll hurry.”

“Okay, Mommy.” Ashley’s feet swung back and forth, her heels kicking the front of her booster chair.

Smiling, choking back tears, Jamie leaned forward and kissed Ashley’s cheek.

“Love you, Mommy,” Ashley said, pushing her cheek into the kiss without relinquishing her thumb.

“Love you, too, baby.”

Jamie fled.

LEAVING ASHLEY BEHIND in Karen’s kitchen was hard. But not as hard as growing up with a man who’d given her nothing—except bruises. Not as hard as being homeless at seventeen. She could do this.

She was only going next door. Yet as she walked into her house, as she picked up the piece of paper she’d left lying on her counter, the distance that separated her from her innocent little girl seemed suddenly insurmountable.

What did he want?

What could he possibly want?

He was new in town. Lonely. And somehow he knew that Jamie lived in Larkspur Grove.

He could go to hell.

She was already there.

By the time she got to the tiny bedroom she used as an office, Jamie was almost completely transformed. Encased in a hard shell of numbness her daughter wouldn’t recognize, she wondered how far the word had spread. How many more of them knew where she lived?

The phone seemed to jump out at her, threatening to pull her away, back to the life she’d left behind five years ago.

Even now, even here, Ashley was all that mattered. Her daughter was everything Jamie was not. Sweet. Unsoiled. Innocent. She was the part of Jamie that had never been given a chance to live. Not since the devil himself had moved in with Jamie and her mother, just after Jamie’s fourth birthday.

Jamie would do what she had to do, anything she had to do, to protect Ashley’s right to a childhood. Her right to grow up decently.

And if that meant facing down the demons from her past—one or all of them—she’d do it. There was simply no alternative.

PHONE IN HAND, she punched in the number. His number. Only the shaking of her finger testified to the trauma playing itself out inside her. At seventeen, she’d survived her stepfather’s debilitating advances. She’d survive this, too.

She pushed the last button. Lifted the mobile phone to her ear. Heard it ring...

The phone dropped to the floor, the ringing muffled by the plush gray carpet as Jamie flew to the bathroom and vomited. She hung over the toilet for another few minutes, just in case.

She could do this. She could do this.

It was just going to take a minute.

Wringing a washcloth under cold water from the basin faucet, Jamie fought the monsters she’d been fighting for as long as she could remember. Why had she ever thought she could outrun her past? She should have realized it would eventually catch up with her—destroy the present she’d so painstakingly created.

She buried her face in the cloth, welcoming its coolness against her hot skin. How had she ever been stupid enough to believe she could get away with these deceptions? That they wouldn’t always be part of her?

And then she met her eyes in the mirror. Big gray eyes, just like Ashley’s. Except that Jamie’s had seen too much. Way too much. More than any woman ever should. The eyes that stared back at her weren’t innocent like her daughter’s. They were knowing. They knew just the right look to promise a man anything.

They made her sick. So did the woman they belonged to. She’d made her choices. And had to be accountable for them.

Turning away from the mirror before she threw up again, Jamie wadded the cloth in her fist. The thought of Ashley being tarnished by her sins was killing her as surely as her stepfather would have done if he’d managed to catch up with her all those years ago.

He was dead now. But the effects of his having lived would never die.

The anniversary clock in the living room chimed the hour. She’d been gone from Karen’s for more than twenty minutes. Ashley was going to start wondering where she was.

Concentrating on the child, Jamie found the strength to enter her office a second time. To pick up the phone. To dial again. She’d been facing her problems head-on her entire life, even when it meant putting her own body between her stepfather’s fist and her mother’s weaker frame. Her strength was the only reason she’d survived this far.

She had one focus, one goal: doing what was best for Ashley. Life on the run, hiding, wasn’t it. Reaching for a recent photo of her daughter laughing at her from Santa’s lap, Jamie kept her eyes glued to the image as Kyle Radcliff answered his phone.

“Yes, Ms. Archer, thanks for getting back to me so promptly....”

His voice was just as she remembered it. When she remembered it. It was so warm, almost as if he were in the room with her. She could see him sitting there on the end of the hotel bed, hunched over, his head in his hands as he told her about his mother’s death. “...so I’d like to hire your services.”

He wanted to hire her services. She hadn’t gotten to that part of the memory yet. The part where he’d turned out to be just like all the rest. Her voice stuck in her throat.

He wanted to hire her services.

She wanted to die. Right then. Right there. What was the point of fighting anymore? She was who she was. Who she’d always been. Who she’d always be. The floor started to spin and she almost gave in, almost let that feeling of vertigo swallow her up. Almost.

And then her vision cleared again. And she could see the image she held of her laughing little girl. The trusting eyes. She couldn’t let Ashley be a part of this. Panicking, she tried to think of something to say. Did he know she’d had a child?

She concentrated on the red velvet dress she and Ashley had picked out together for the muchanticipated visit with Santa.

“Ms. Archer? Are you there?” He’d called her “Jamie” before.

“Yes. I’m here.” She didn’t know what else to say. How to keep him away from Ashley. How to keep the woman she’d been away from her child.

“So do you think you’ll be able to squeeze me in?,

Would he go away if she did?

“What exactly did you have in mind?” She hated the words, hated herself for saying them. But she was afraid that if she turned him down, he’d figure she was playing with him, would take it as a challenge, a come-on. That he wouldn’t go away. After all, men like him weren’t used to hearing “no” from women like her. Probably because women like her never said that particular word to men like him.

“You’re the professional, you tell me.” His voice was pleasant, calm, detached.

“You’re the one paying the bill.” The words practically choked her. But she had to gain some time, figure out what to do, how to get rid of him without making him suspicious—or even curious. Her daughter’s entire future depended on making this man nonexistent immediately. Forever.

She not only didn’t want him to call her again, she didn’t want him to think of her again.

“But I’ve never hired an accountant before—”

What?

“An accountant?”

“I’m sorry, I assumed you were an accountant,” he said.

His voice carried a hint of the self-deprecatory humor that had ensnared her almost five years before. That long-ago night, his humility had caused her to let down her guard, to do one of the stupidest things she’d ever done.

“Dean Patterson gave me your name,” he continued. “Said you do taxes. I just assumed you were an accountant.”

“I am.”

“Oh. Good. So, do you have time to take on one more client? Like I said, my records are in fairly good shape, but with the move from Las Vegas to Colorado and selling my house, I’ll need all the help I can get.”

Records? She’d clearly missed something.

“Dr. Patterson gave you my number?” The room had begun to spin again. Relief was making her light-headed.

“I’m sorry to impose like this on a total stranger, but the dean said you were the best.”

A total stranger. “No!” Jamie’s mind raced. “No, it’s no imposition.” The dean and his wife were good to her. They sent her seventy-five percent of her business. They had no idea who she’d been before she moved to Larkspur Grove, pregnant, single and two semesters short of her degree. She’d met them at a student-welcoming session, and for some reason Jamie had never understood, they’d shown an interest in her right from that first introduction, befriended her, helped her get established. They’d guessed, based on her silences, that she was a widow. She’d never corrected the assumption.

“You’ll take me on?”

Kyle Radcliff sounded hopeful, but she heard nothing more personal than that in his voice.

She was trapped. There was no way she could decline without arousing suspicion, maybe not his but certainly the dean’s. She’d just told Dr. Patterson about Ashley’s request for dance lessons, the tuition, recital fees, the costumes involved. Just thanked him profusely for saying he’d send another client or two her way.

Jamie took a deep breath. “It might be a couple of weeks before I can get to you.”

She’d met him once. It had been dark. She looked completely different now. She’d run into one of her college professors from the University of Nevada a couple of years ago and even he hadn’t recognized her. Surely someone who’d seen her only once, at night, wouldn’t know who she was.

“No problem. This all happened so fast I need a little time to unpack and find things, anyway. I just registered with the Las Vegas Educational Job Service in December and didn’t expect a permanent position to come through until the fall.”

The Las Vegas Educational Job Service. Which consisted of one very energetic woman, the service’s owner, Wanda Kendall. Wanda had an office at the university in Las Vegas and was the person who’d helped Jamie find Larkspur Grove, the one who’d arranged for her work-study position so she could finish her degree at Gunnison. The woman who’d introduced her to Dean Patterson.

“Were you teaching in Las Vegas?” At the university? When she’d been a student?

“Yeah,” he said easily. “I was head of the English department at a private college just outside the city.”

A private college. With no connection to Jamie at all.

Okay. So maybe here was her chance to prove there was no part of that other woman, the woman he’d known and forgotten, still left inside her. Here was her chance to put the past behind her, once and for all. To prove to herself that she could. And maybe, finally, to forgive herself....

“Mr. Radcliff, you’ve just hired an accountant.”


CHAPTER TWO

THE HOUSE WAS QUIET. Ashley slept soundly, tucked beneath her Little Mermaid comforter, as Ariel and Flounder smiled down at her from the walls above. Jamie had no idea how long she stood in her daughter’s doorway, absorbing the comfort of her presence. Yet no matter how long she stood there, it wasn’t long enough.

She’d made it through the day. Managed to convince herself that she was fine. That the phone call changed nothing. That it wasn’t any big deal.

Until darkness fell. And the woman Jamie had been, the woman who’d worked nights, returned to haunt her. Nighttime was often bad for Jamie; she was used to coping. But that night, none of her coping techniques were working.

She couldn’t find peace. Couldn’t shut the doors in her mind. Memories flooded her relentlessly until she was drowning, suffocating beneath their weight....

Jamie had only been four, Ashley’s age, when her widowed mother married John Archer. Though she’d loved her mother, Jamie had known, even then, that Sadie Archer wasn’t a strong person. It was why Jamie had wanted a daddy so desperately. She’d hoped and prayed for someone big and strong to take care of them, to keep them safe. She hadn’t known, then, to be careful what she wished for.

John was big and strong, all right, but the day he’d moved into her life was the last day Jamie ever felt safe. He’d been a hard man to please, an unforgiving man. And no matter how hard she tried, Jamie never could please him. She spilled her milk; she made too much noise; she left water on the floor in the bathroom.

At first, her mother had taken the beatings for all the things Jamie had done. But it wasn’t long, a few months maybe, before Jamie started getting them herself. By her fifth birthday, lying was a way of life. Stories came as automatically as the bruises she had to explain.

And several years after that, when it had become obvious that Jamie’s young body was stronger than that of her frail mother, she began to take the hits for both of them. She’d been twelve the first time she stepped in front of a fist aimed at her mother’s chest.

And seventeen the last time she’d felt his hands on her body...

COVERING HER MOUTH to stifle the sobs, Jamie backed away from Ashley’s door. The memories weren’t letting up. And Jamie couldn’t bear to live through them in her daughter’s presence.

She stumbled into the kitchen, as far from Ashley’s room as she could get, and slid down to the hard cold tile, leaning against a cupboard. All her possessions were new since she’d moved to Larkspur Grove—even her underwear. Especially her underwear. She’d brought nothing with her. Not so much as a photograph. But that didn’t obliterate the past’s existence. It lived and breathed inside her. In her heart, in her mind...

The cemetery in Trona, California, was lush, green, full of flowers. And crowded. Jamie had had no idea so many people had cared about her mother. But it made no difference. Surrounded by all these people, she still felt completely alone. Apart. Frozen. It had all been for nothing.

All the struggles. The prayers. The hopes for a better day. The promises of freedom from hell. They’d all been for nothing. Her mother had lived a life of torment. And then died. She’d never escaped. The future had ended before she’d ever reached it.

“�Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid...’” The minister’s words faded beneath the screaming in her mind. Peace! Not where she stood. And fear? What else was there?

“You okay, baby?” John’s arm stole around her shoulders. She would have lost her lunch if she’d had any. All afternoon he’d played the role of loving stepfather. Just as he always did when anyone was around to see him. Anyone who mattered.

Jamie and her mother had never mattered.

Though she couldn’t make herself respond to him, she held herself steady by sheer force of will, bearing the weight of his arm about her. She hadn’t missed the tightening of his fingers on her upper arm. He’d issued his warning—she wasn’t to make a scene. The warning would be a bruise by nightfall.

And no one would ever believe that John had given it to her. Everyone loved John. He was a charming, personable man with a reputation for generosity. Jamie cringed every time she heard him described as a �wonderful family man.” But she knew better than to try telling anyone what had really been happening at home all these years. She knew John would deny everything in that charming salesman’s voice of his. He’d talk about how difficult she was, what a burden she’d been to him, what a liar she’d become. They’d believe him. They always did.

They’d believed him that time she’d told her kindergarten teacher he’d beaten her so badly she ached all over; he’d claimed merely to have spanked her once for lying to him. He’d actually had tears in his eyes when he’d related how hard it had been to raise a hand to her, saying he’d tried everything else to stop her compulsive lying.

It also hadn’t hurt that he’d been valedictorian of his class, in the same school district. Or that his parents—now dead but long revered—had both put in many years on the board of education.

And, of course, the die had been cast from then on. Jamie’s word was no longer valid. She was labeled. A compulsive liar.

Her stomach cramped with fear, she hoped the bruise on her arm was the only one she’d be sporting that night. John had been the perfect stepfather since her mother’s death three days before. But there had been people around. Her mother’s elderly sister, who’d flown in from Florida. Neighbors. Members of the church they attended.

They’d all be gone by evening.

“�In my father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you...that where I am, there ye may be also...’”

Recognizing the familiar Bible verse, Jamie felt the first prick of tears that day. If only it were so. If only she could be sure her mother finally had her mansion.

Her expression stoic, Jamie refused to allow the tears to fall.

And as her mother’s casket was lowered into the ground, she looked not at her mother’s grave, but at the people around her. Their tears flowed freely. They mourned a wonderful, giving, fragile woman.

And not one of them knew.

“Let’s go,” John said, hugging her close.

Longing to flee, to throw his arm away from her, to spit in his face, Jamie walked slowly beside him. There’d been times during the last thirteen years when John’s softer mood would linger for a week, even a month or two. Dared she hope this was one of those times? That the mood might remain? With head bowed, she stared at the ground every time someone stopped them to offer condolences, nodding when the pressure of John’s fingers forced her to acknowledge a comment here and there.

Sure they were all sorry. Sorry her mother had died. But what about being sorry she’d lived? Was Jamie the only one who felt that? She’d rather her mother had been spared the whole sorry business.

“At least you have each other. You’ll need that now.” Pastor Hammond was talking to them outside the limousine provided by the funeral home.

Jamie studied the way her black dress shoes matched the darker patches in the pavement. Pastor Hammond didn’t have a clue. He was supposedly a man of God. A man with divine knowledge. And he didn’t have a clue. Not that she could tell him. If, by some miracle, Pastor Hammond did believe her, which she doubted, John would kill her. She could take that for granted. There was no law powerful enough to keep John from killing her.

The reception at the church passed in a total blur. Some of Jamie’s friends from high school were there. She knew she spoke with them, though she had no idea what their conversation was about. Jamie was used to putting on a facade. Hell, she’d taken gym class with broken ribs the year before. No one had guessed there was anything wrong.

“I can’t believe we’re finally seniors,” Loretta gushed, her hungry eyes checking out all the men in the room.

Following her gaze, Jamie wondered how many of those men had another, uglier, side. One the world never saw. Their superior physical strength gave them all an edge that women couldn’t possibly fight.

“Yeah.” Jamie finally answered Pastor Hammond’s daughter. “Just eight more months.” Loretta’s enthusiasm to leave high school was one of the few things Jamie had in common with the other girl.

A high-school diploma meant freedom to Jamie. Without her mother there, needing her protection, she couldn’t get away from John fast enough. And once she was eighteen, graduated from high school, he wouldn’t be able to make her stay.

Somehow the rest of the afternoon passed, night fell, and Jamie was at home with John. Alone. Her aunt had left for the airport a few minutes before, and Jamie, having changed from her black dress to a pair of jeans, sweatshirt and tennis shoes, was hiding out in her room. Hoping she wouldn’t be noticed by the man she heard slamming things downstairs. Was it possible he actually felt some compassion for her? That he’d realize how much she was hurting and leave her be?

Studying her second-story window, she thought about climbing out. The bushes below were full enough to break her fall. She had nowhere to go, but that wasn’t what stopped her. It was knowing how bad things would be when John eventually got her back. He’d broken her arm the last time she’d used that window.

And then refused to allow her to see a doctor to have the arm set. It had healed eventually. But it still ached whenever she used it too much.

She’d rather just take her chances on being slapped around until John had finished venting his rage. Bruises didn’t hurt much after a day or so. And they didn’t last.

“Jamie!”

Her heart skidded to a stop. The bellow was ugly. Oh, God, here it comes.

“Yes?” She ran quickly to the top of the stairs, eager to appease his anger, not intensify it.

He was such a bastard for doing this to her.

“Get down here now!”

Fear was a familiar companion, yet it still grabbed her by the throat as she hurried downstairs. Maybe this was one of the times he’d be content just to holler at her for a while.

Her long permed hair, tied back in its familiar ponytail, bounced on her back with the force of her descent. And then she was at the door of his study. God, if you’re around, please go in there with me.

“What?” she asked, forcing herself to sound amenable. She leaned against the door frame.

“Don’t �what’ me.” John’s handsome face was twisted in a sneer. “You know we have some things to discuss.”

Not sure what to say, what to expect, Jamie just stood there. She knew from his tone that she wasn’t in his good graces. She just didn’t know why. Or how bad it would be. She didn’t move, barely breathing, not wanting to do anything that might further raise his ire.

“Your mother being gone changes things.” He sat behind his desk, going through papers. He was still wearing his dark suit from the funeral, but he’d removed the jacket, loosened the tie. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past his forearms.

Trembling, Jamie couldn’t take her eyes off the muscles that flexed in those forearms with each object he moved.

“Now that your mother’s gone, I owe you nothing,” he said. “Not a stitch of clothing, not a meal or a bed.”

Was he going to kick her out? Adrenaline pumped through her as she straightened in the doorway, waiting for him to continue. If he kicked her out, she’d know there was a God after all.

“I’ve been supporting you all these years out of the goodness of my heart, out of love and devotion to your mother.”

If she hadn’t been so excited, suddenly, sensing freedom within her grasp, Jamie would have burned with rage at his lies.

Please let him kick me-out. She was barely aware that he’d stood up, that he’d walked to the front of his massive oak desk and rested his lean body against it.

She could get help if he kicked her out. There were places she could go—as long as she didn’t have to worry about him coming after her. As long as she was free from the lies, the threats. The violence. Loretta had a huge room. Jamie could probably stay there. She could finish school. Get a job. If he’d just let her go...

“But then, I wouldn’t be the man I am if I tossed your little butt out in the gutter where it belongs, would I?” he asked.

Of course not. Jamie’s heart sank. How stupid could she be? He wasn’t ever going to let her go. Because he’d look bad if he did. He could explain away her tripping on the stairs, falling during a family hike or being thrown from a horse. He’d never be able to explain leaving his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter homeless.

His eyes were gleaming as he watched her squirm in the doorway. Why did it always have to come to this? Why did she always end up reacting just the way he wanted her to? Like...like a helpless bug at his mercy?

“So, my dear daughter, you’re going to have to earn your keep.”

So, what else is new? The words almost escaped. She’d been doing the majority of the housework for years.

He came closer, slowly, gaining on her inch by inch, his height throwing a shadow on her in the doorway. Jamie didn’t want to shrink from him. She forbade herself to give him that satisfaction. Not anymore. Her mother had gone to her grave a beaten woman. Jamie wasn’t going to do the same.

“I’m curious.” He stopped, pinning her with his cold stare. “How does it feel knowing all of those people were crying today because of you?”

“What?” She shifted away from the door frame.

“You killed her,” John said.

His expression had softened and he smiled sadly as he gazed at her. Jamie’s heart began to thud so heavily in her chest it constricted her breathing. But she still didn’t shrink from him.

“I didn’t,” she whispered. She wasn’t going to let him convince her of something so horrible. She refused to accept any guilt. She’d risked her life for her mother—many times. Sadie Archer had been the one person in the world who loved her. Jamie would have killed herself before she ever did anything to hurt her mother.

“Of course you did,” John whispered hoarsely. He’d stopped a couple of feet in front of her and stood with his hands in his pockets. “Won’t do you any good to pretend, Jamie. You killed her as surely as if you’d put a gun to her head.”

“No!” Jamie felt the tears start to flow, deep inside, where no one could see them.

“That night you called to ask permission to stay later at the library.”

“You said I could.” Jamie hadn’t wanted to leave her mother alone with John, but he’d been in one of his nicer phases. And she’d needed to get a few more references for an English paper she was writing.

“Yes, well, unbeknownst to me, your mother had already left to get you.”

He was a raving lunatic, his story so obviously unfounded. “She knew where I sat in the library. If she’d come, she would’ve found me.”

“Her car broke down on the way.”

Thinking back to that night a couple of weeks ago, Jamie remembered her mother and John picking her up when the library closed. They’d been in John’s car.

She wasn’t sure where this was leading, but she was suddenly scared. Too scared to run. Too scared to move when John took a step closer.

“It was raining that night,” he said.

His voice was still soft, but Jamie trembled anew when she heard the lilt of victory in his tone. He advanced another step.

She was confused now, doubting herself. And if she’d had anything to do with the illness that had finally taken her mother’s life, she didn’t care if John hit her. She didn’t care if he killed her.

“Your mother was exposed to that rain when she had to walk the half mile to a phone, then wait there for me to come bail her out of her troubles again,” John said. His hands were still in his pockets, but the muscles in his forearms were bunched.

His dark hair left menacing shadows on his forehead.

“The next day, as you know, she came down with a cold that led quickly to the pneumonia that killed her.”

Jamie stared at him. Horror made her sick, weak. Surely she couldn’t be blamed for the rain! Or the run-down state of her mother’s car.

“If you hadn’t been at the library, forcing Sadie out in the first place, she’d never have been exposed to that rain at all.”

“But...”

“Or if you’d found another way home, a friend maybe, like most teenagers do, rather than relying on your mother all the time, she wouldn’t have been out in that rain.”

“But...” Desperate to end this nightmare, to be certain she wasn’t to blame for her beloved mother’s death, Jamie meant to tell John that if he’d only kept her mother’s car in better shape, Sadie wouldn’t have had to worry about the rain. But she never got the chance.

“Or—” he took another step “—if you’d called sooner, before seven, when she left to pick you up, none of this would have happened.”

He was right. Dammit, he was right. She’d been so caught up in her reading that she hadn’t noticed the time. Her mother always got her from the library at 7:30; it was a standing arrangement. Jamie should have called earlier, saved her the trip.

John took another small step, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket.

Jamie shrank back.

SHIVERING, Jamie clutched her stomach with both arms, her gaze darting frantically around her cheery kitchen, trying to connect with the present, to bring herself back. To hold on. But the memories just kept right on coming, right on hurting....

“YOU’RE LUCKY I’m willing to keep you, considering what you’ve done.”

John’s soft voice penetrated Jamie’s numb mind. So filled with guilt was she that for a second or two she almost believed him.

She saw his hand coming toward her, braced herself for a blow to the side of her head.

And felt a gentle caress, instead. His hand stroked from the top of her bent head, moving slowly down to her chin, lifting her face to look at him. And suddenly Jamie knew fear like she’d never known before.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her cheeks when she encountered the hot fire of lust in her stepfather’s eyes.

“You took my companion from me,” John whispered. “A man has needs, natural, powerful needs.”

Unable to make a sound, shaking convulsively, Jamie just stared at him in horror. God. No. Not this. Let him beat me to death. Let him stick a gun to my head. But not this.

“Wouldn’t look right for me to search out another woman to take to my bed, not so soon after your mother.” His caress continued slowly downward, along the length of her neck.

She stood frozen beneath his touch, completely unprepared.

“So you see how lucky it is that I don’t have to search. You took her from me.” His hand reached her collarbone, his fingers sliding inside the neckline of her sweatshirt.

Jamie flinched. And just that quickly, the caress became brutal, a vicelike grip bruising her collarbone as John pulled her closer.

“The very least you can do after depriving me of my wife is to take her place yourself.”

“No!” Her scream tore past the constriction in her throat. She was burning up. Sick. And freezing, too.

“Yes.” John bit the word out through clenched teeth as he planted his other hand firmly on her breast.

A part of Jamie just evaporated as her stepfather’s big hand kneaded her soft flesh roughly, touching her where she’d never been touched before. Where he should never have been touching.

His eyes gleamed, almost glassy with lust. Still holding her in a bruising grip, he moved his hand to her other breast. “Oh, yes, I’m going to like this,” he murmured.

And almost before she knew it was happening, he’d pushed up the hem of her sweatshirt, ripping her bra in his hurry to get to her naked flesh.

“Nooooo!” Jamie screamed. She yanked away from him, not caring if he broke her neck with his violent grip.

“Get back here, you little bitch!” He grabbed her hair, his fingers tangling in the tightly wrapped curls, wrenching her back to him. “You owe me, and I’m going to have you.”

Only if he killed her first.

Filled with a strength she wasn’t aware she possessed, with a purpose that hadn’t been there seconds before, Jamie suddenly knew exactly what to do. John was too busy groping her again, too caught up in his crazed lust, to be wary. With one perfectly aimed swipe she kneed him squarely between his legs.

And ran for her life.


CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING BACK, Jamie wasn’t sure just when she’d made the wrong turn, which decision had been the one that catapulted her from a damaged childhood into a hellish life. Though she desperately didn’t want it to be so, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she’d always been tainted; maybe there’d never been any question as to what course her life would take.

Lord knows, she’d tried to be moral, to do what was right. She’d tried to make the proper decisions, to search out the best choices available to her. There just hadn’t seemed to be much to choose from.

Leaning her head against the kitchen cupboard, she closed her eyes, wishing that sleep would come. The night was already half over. And there she sat, a full nine years after she’d last seen John Archer, still alone, still frightened.

Had it been wrong to run? Slowly shaking her head, Jamie couldn’t believe that running wasn’t her only choice. She’d run to Las Vegas. Because it was close. And because she knew enough about the city to realize that if there was any place in the United States that she had a chance of not being found, it was in the city that never slept. Where “no questions asked” was an accepted standard.

She’d left her purse on the front table when she’d come in from the funeral that day and had grabbed it again on her way out. She had enough money for a couple of nights’ cheap lodging, but other than that, she was broke. She’d tried to get a job immediately. Had spent two days answering every want ad she could find. She was a high-school dropout, though, and the most anyone offered her was a fast-food position that didn’t pay enough to cover rent and expenses—let alone any extra to cover the education she’d need to better herself.

Jamie studied the uneven grain in the cupboard across from her. Maybe she should have known when she’d visited the community college, passed the entrance exams without her diploma and applied for scholarship money that she was reaching too high. The guidance counselor she’d seen had tried to tell her, suggesting Jamie go home to John, apologize, ask him to take her back until she finished high school. She was told to save her money and move out when she’d established herself, became “independent”

Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong, Jamie thought now. She hadn’t listened.

But she couldn’t possibly have returned home as the counselor had encouraged her to. Nor could she have begged her stepfather to take her back. What he’d asked of her had been wrong. Very, very wrong. And illegal.

The possibilities floundered in her weary mind, a cacophony of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. Still, she’d known even then that she couldn’t have gone to the authorities for help. After thirteen years of silence, of John’s generous example to the community, of his breaking down her own credibility, who’d have believed her? And what if they had? Could she really have faced her stepfather across a courtroom? Could she have told a roomful of strangers, of reporters, what he’d done to her?

But more, could she have hidden herself from John? After thirteen years of living with the man, of witnessing his diabolical abilities, she knew that even the witness protection program wouldn’t have been able to keep him from finding her if she’d turned traitor on him. And that was exactly how he’d see it; what was self-protection to her would seem betrayal to him.

So maybe her biggest mistake had been believing in fairy tales. Not running as fast and as far as she could when Prince Charming bowled her over in the lobby of his office building. Prince Charming, alias successful business entrepreneur Tom Webber. She’d been standing there looking at a watercolor she didn’t understand, waiting to be interviewed for a job she knew she’d never get, and he’d knocked her right on her butt as he’d come barreling through the revolving door on his way up to the penthouse office.

He’d not only picked her up but insisted on buying her lunch. A meal she’d have turned down flat if she hadn’t been so hungry. As it was, she’d needed the meal even more when she met him at the restaurant an hour later, as he’d instructed. She’d had her interview—and lost the job—in the interim. And over the first real meal she’d had in days, she’d told him the whole sorry tale. She hadn’t been able to resist. He’d been kind, sympathetic, showing her more compassion during that long lunch than she’d known her entire life.

Maybe she should have said no when he’d offered to help her, no strings attached. But he’d said almost plaintively that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He’d offered to set her up in a small unit in one of his many apartment buildings, support her while she finished high school, send her to college. He’d begged her not to say no—and she hadn’t. Should she have denied him the opportunity to be the Good Samaritan he wanted to be? Denied herself the miraculous help that had finally fallen her way?

After growing up under John’s damaging influence, she’d soaked up Tom’s kindness. And he had been kind, if not as altruistic as he’d seemed. He’d been true to his word, too. For a while. Long enough for her to grow fond of him, feel indebted to him. He’d helped her—no strings attached, just as he’d said—right up until she turned eighteen.

He’d been there at her high-school graduation. And had come immediately the day he’d received the news that John was dead. He’d apparently hired a detective agency to keep track of John and had told her as soon as he’d heard. John Archer had been killed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver.

John was dead. If there was anything in her life, besides Ashley, for which Jamie was thankful, it was the death of her stepfather. Which was probably just another immoral decision she’d made. To be happy that a man had lost his life.

Jamie stood and took her exhausted body to bed, her mind finally quieting with fatigue. She had no more answers now than she’d ever had, and she was beginning to suspect that she’d never have them—that, in fact, her questions were unanswerable. Maybe it didn’t matter how she’d become the woman she used to be, the woman she’d renounced.

Maybe there’d been choices and maybe there hadn’t.

But she’d been wrong to think she could escape that woman.

“ASHLEY ASKED ME yesterday if her daddy died fighting for our country.”

Jamie’s stomach, already queasy, protested as she glanced across at Karen. The two were sharing a cup of coffee during Jamie’s morning break before Karen left to get the girls from school.

She said the first thing that jumped into her mind. “Why didn’t she come to me?”

Karen shrugged, paying unnecessary attention to the sugar she was stirring into her coffee. “I asked her the same thing.”

“And?”

“She said you might get sadder at her.”

“Sadder at her?”

Karen shrugged again. And continued to stir.

“She thinks she makes me sad?”

Karen glanced up, her blue eyes warm with compassion. “Kids are pretty perceptive.”

“But Ashley hasn’t made me sad a single day of her life!”

“Apparently, she doesn’t think so.”

“She hardly even makes me mad.”

“You do have amazing patience with her.”

Jamie pushed her coffee away, sick at the thought that Ashley might be growing up the way she had, shouldering the blame for everything that happened, or might happen, in the lives around her.

“Obviously I need to be more careful, as well.” Jamie flipped the spoon she’d used to stir her abandoned coffee. “She must read my moods like a book.”

“She’s one smart little girl. Imagine, a four-year-old figuring that her father was a war hero.”

And suddenly they were back to where the conversation had begun, Ashley inventing excuses for the absence of her father. And Karen wondering how true they were.

Funny how life had a way of regurgitating on you all at once. First yesterday’s phone call. And now this.

“I thought I’d have a few more years before she started asking questions.”

“Wished was more like it, huh?” Karen asked with understanding, in spite of the fact that Kayla’s father was very much a part of their lives. A software consultant, he traveled frequently, but when he was home, he belonged one-hundred percent to Karen and Kayla.

“Ashley’s father isn’t dead.”

The bald words fell into Karen’s sunny kitchen to lie, completely exposed, on the table between them. Karen had never asked about Jamie’s past. Jamie had never offered a word. This particular silence was an understood part of their friendship. A pact Jamie had needed in order for the friendship to exist-a pact she’d just broken.

And she had no idea why. She couldn’t tell Karen about that time in her life. Not if she wanted to hang on to the life she’d made for herself since.

“He didn’t want her?” Karen stirred furiously, staring at the coffee sloshing over her cup.

“He doesn’t know about her.”

“Oh.”

“We were only...together...once.”

Karen laid her spoon in her saucer and looked up at Jamie, her eyes still glowing with tenderness. Not with the condemnation Jamie knew she deserved.

“The baby that resulted simply wasn’t an issue. Wasn’t part of that night.”

“How can you say that if he didn’t have the opportunity to make her a part of that night?” Karen asked softly.

Jamie remembered, very clearly, the wad of bills on the nightstand.

“Let’s just say it was an unspoken rule. Any consequences were mine alone.”

“The bastard!”

“I went with him willingly.”

“And I know you well enough to be absolutely sure that he’d touched your heart. You cared for him and thought he cared back. You never would’ve done it otherwise.”

Ironically, concerning that one time, Karen was right. But Karen’s loving support was like bitter ashes in Jamie’s mouth. Because there’d been other nights, lots of them, when Karen would have been dead wrong.

PUSHING his wire-rimmed glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Kyle Radcliff took the cement steps two at a time. The Archer woman was meeting him in his office in five minutes. And he wasn’t there yet. The semester was just starting, and already his resolution to stay on top of things had vanished. The one thing he could never seem to get right was time management. He bought planners—every kind known to man—he made schedules, he wrote lists. And he still ended up chasing his tail.

But could he help it that a couple of his students got into a debate about Twain’s obvious disdain for the pseudoaristocratic antebellum South, as demonstrated in the thoroughly adult classic, Huckleberry . Finn? The relationship between biography and literature, between a writer’s life and time and his or her work, had always fascinated him. Kyle could no more have walked out on that discussion than burned his original copy of the novel. Some things just took priority.

But he needed Jamie Archer’s help. With the move to Larkspur and now into his new home, some numbers needed to be crunched. Fast. He certainly didn’t have time for a battle with the IRS any time in the near future.

Practically skidding around the corner on the second floor of the English building, Kyle slowed when he noticed the empty hallway outside his locked office door. He’d beaten her there.

He was whistling as he juggled his leather briefcase, along with the couple of texts that hadn’t fit inside, to unlock his door. If his luck held out, he’d even have time to check over the paperwork he’d thrown in a manila folder before he’d left home that morning. Just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Now, where was the blasted thing?

Five minutes later, Ms. Archer still hadn’t arrived, but neither had Kyle found the folder he was looking for.

“I know it’s here,” he mumbled, tossing aside the class planner he’d forgotten to take with him to his American lit class. Not that it mattered. He could conduct his classes blindfolded and textless if he had to.

Finding a couple more folders beneath his personal daily planner, he glanced through them. Nope. One was filled with maps of literary tourist spots on the East Coast The other was his gas-receipt file. Or what would be his gas-receipt file, if he’d ever get around to putting them all in there. He really needed to stick labels on his folders. That’d save him a lot of time. If he could only find the time to do it.

He’d been through every folder on his desk twice, and none of them contained the tax receipts and W-2 forms he needed to give his new accountant. Looking up at the clock on his office wall, he frowned. They’d said 9:30. It was almost 9:45. He wasn’t going to be able to wait much longer.

“The satchel!” He practically sang the words as he remembered where he’d put the tax folder. He’d shoved it in his satchel on the way out to his garage that morning, then promptly forgotten about it when faced with the more important matter of whether or not he’d heard a forecast of snow. He hadn’t driven his beloved mint-condition 1957 Thunderbird in more than a month. Not that he’d taken out the �64 T-Bird lately, either. No, he’d only risked the new and easily replaceable ’98 Bird with the maniacal winter drivers of Larkspur Grove.

A quick search proved him correct—the tax papers were in his satchel—after which Kyle paced back and forth in front of his desk for another couple of minutes, waiting. Richard P. Adams. He was the critic who’d written so convincingly about Huck’s moral growth. Two minutes later, Kyle was seated at his desk poring over a text, anxious to meet again with his debaters.

As he reached for a pen, Kyle’s gaze fell on the corner of an envelope that had come in yesterday’s mail. Jamie Archer. Tomorrow, 10:00.

He read the note a second time, and, of course, remembered that he’d called her and asked to change their meeting from 9:30 to 10:00 when he’d realized how close he’d be cutting it to get from class back across campus to his office. He just hadn’t remembered to make a note of the time change on any of his calendars.

In an attempt to make being a slave to his planner a habit, Kyle dutifully zipped open the leather book and flipped to the tabbed page marking that week. He was immensely relieved to find that he had changed the time after all. Hey, maybe he was getting the hang of this time-management thing.

He’d covered a full sheet of the yellow legal pad on his lap, when he heard a light knock at his door.

“Come in,” he called, his head bent as he hurriedly finished the note he’d been writing.

In his peripheral vision he saw a slim figure enter the room. Judging by the way she hovered on the threshold of his office, like an intimidated freshman, he quickly determined that Ms. Archer was the shyest accountant he’d ever met.

“Finished!” he said, looking up with a welcoming smile. He tossed the legal pad on his desk.

Half in and half out of his chair, intending to offer his hand in greeting, Kyle froze. And stared.

“I can’t believe it.” He didn’t realize he’d said the words out loud until he heard his voice mirror his thoughts. “It’s you....”

Based on the shock in her lovely gray eyes, she’d been no more prepared than he.

“You’ve changed.” He said the first thing that came to mind. Her face was older, more mature, though beautifully so. She’d filled out a bit, but only in her breasts and hips. Her hair wasn’t permed anymore, either, and it was a little darker, falling in soft curls down her back. She wasn’t wearing near the amount of makeup she used to wear. And her clothes were completely different, merely hinting at the beautiful body beneath rather than broadcasting her assets. But he’d have known her anywhere. Those eyes had been haunting him for years.

Kyle came around the desk quickly, grabbing her arm as she turned to leave.

“You obviously aren’t as pleased to see me as I am to have finally found you again,” he said.

She still hadn’t spoken a single word. Just stared at him like a trapped bird. Her reaction puzzled him—a lot. The last time he’d seen her had been in that Las Vegas hotel. She’d been sleeping in his bed, a half smile on her face.

What on earth had gone wrong?

“Do you have any idea how many Jarnies I’ve chased down trying to find you?” he asked, smiling at her. Putting people at ease was something he did well. One of his few natural talents.

Had he suddenly lost his touch? She was still staring at him like he was a dead man come to life.

“Wouldn’t you know it.” He continued to hold her arm, though not so tightly that she couldn’t get away from him if she wanted to. “The first time I hear the name and I don’t wonder if just maybe... And it’s the one time it turns out to really be you!”

Okay, so maybe he was rambling. But he couldn’t believe he’d finally found her. The woman of his dreams. Literally.

“I—” She broke off, swallowed, tried again. “You looked for me?”

“Of course!” Kyle couldn’t believe she had to ask. They’d shared some pretty emotional moments, not to mention the best sex he’d ever had.

“Why?”

“Why what?” He was still holding her arm, but only because she felt so good. So warm.

“Why did you look for me?”

Kyle grinned at her, cocking his eyebrows a time or two. Trying desperately to find the warm, funny woman he’d spent the best night of his life with. “Need you ask?”

His answer must have disappointed her somehow. She looked away, down at the floor. He could almost feel her gathering her strength. He just had no idea why she felt she needed it.

“I’d never talked to a woman as openly as I talked to you that night,” he said, forgoing light and easy for complete honesty.

That was better. She was looking up at him again, a question hovering over the panic in her gaze.

“I’ve never met anyone since then that I wanted to repeat the experience with.”

“Talking, you mean?”

Well, the sex, too, but... “Yes.”

Feeling the muscles beneath his hand relax, Kyle took his first full breath since he’d glanced up and seen her standing there. Phew. He’d finally said something right.

“I should probably go,” she said, nodding toward the door. But she still didn’t pull out of his light grasp. Kyle found her passivity rather odd.

“We haven’t even discussed my records yet.” He had to keep her there. At least long enough to be sure that he’d see her again. That she wasn’t going to just disappear the way she had the last time he’d been with her.

“Surely you don’t still want me to do your taxes.”

He frowned, truly puzzled. “Why not?” He could understand a certain reluctance to follow him home and climb with him into his unmade bed—though there was nothing he’d like more at that moment. But what was so alarming—or intimate, for that matter—about taxes? IRS agents would be going over them pretty carefully and he’d never even met them. Not even once....

“Well...because...surely you don’t.”

Now probably wasn’t the time to ask her out to dinner. “Of course I do. Dean Patterson says you’re the best.”

She took a full minute to digest that remark. Or at least Kyle figured that was what she was doing while she stood there silently gazing at him. During the brief time he’d known her, she’d been a woman of few words, a woman who kept most of herself locked away. But by the end of that night, he thought he’d been admitted inside—though just inside—the locked corridors of her mind. He’d been looking forward to exploring those corridors much more fully.

And then she’d vanished.

Jamie’s next comment had nothing to do with taxes. “You cut your hair.”

Ridiculously pleased that she’d given him that much notice, Kyle shrugged. “Made me look older.” He’d worn a ponytail the night she’d met him.

“Looking older’s important?”

“Maybe not, but when you’re in the classroom and you want to discourage any interest from nubile college girls, it can’t hurt.”

Obviously uncomfortable with his vaguely sexual reference, Jamie simply looked away.

“It would have to be business only.”

She’d said the words so softly he barely heard them, but his heart jumped with hope just the same. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”

Her gaze met his solidly then, filled with strength, with conviction. “That’s the way it has to be.”

He refused to be disappointed so quickly. “You’re married?”

“No.”

Then he could wait. “If you say it has to be just business, just business it is,” he told her, forcing himself to release her arm as he headed back around his desk. So it was going to take longer than an hour or two to unlock her defenses this time around. He’d waited more than five years. He could be patient.

Holding out his tax file, he said, “It should all be in there. You can reach me here or at home if you have any questions. Both numbers are on the inside jacket.”

Nodding, she took the file and flipped it open.

And for the first time since she’d walked back into his life, he caught a glimmer of a smile.

“What?” He was grinning from ear to ear. She’d almost smiled. He was climbing already.

“You want me to submit a bunch of maps to the IRS?”

He wouldn’t bother telling her what he really wanted. Not yet. At least not until he got as far as a full smile. He handed her the correct folder, instead. And was still grinning as he hurried across campus to his next class. He’d just found the woman he was going to marry.


CHAPTER FOUR

KAREN SMITH LOVED her husband. But she didn’t want to have his baby. Not again. Not alone.

She didn’t think he wanted her to have his baby, either. Which made telling him that she might be pregnant almost impossible.

She paced her living room, where the girls sat watching cartoons, little legs straight out in front. Their closeness comforted her, even if the irritatingly high voices on the cartoons did not. Jamie was due any minute. Her appointment with the new client from the university had been more than an hour ago.

Jamie was so damn lucky. She had it all. A career. A home. And Ashley. Oh, and a planner with appointments and meetings written in for practically every day. Karen didn’t have enough to keep track of to need a planner.

Jamie had a life. And probably because of that, she was the most unflappable, centered person Karen knew.

Karen, on the other hand, got up every morning, sent her baby off to school, cleaned, ironed and cooked, only to start all over again the next day. Cleaning the very same things. Ironing the very same clothes. Cooking the very same meals. No challenging decisions. No real thinking at all.

The fact that she loved doing household work made it even worse. That meant she really might be the boring, frumpy person her husband probably thought she was.

She ran her fingers through her short blond curls, the ones she’d styled so painstakingly that morning-as she did every morning—and her eye fell on the picture of Dennis perched among a collection of family portraits on the side table. God, she loved him. So much. He wanted her to spend more time with him. Maybe even travel with him a bit now that Kayla was getting older.

She’d love that.

Almost as much as she’d love a career. Something that was hers alone. Less because she actually needed to go out and do a job than because she wanted her husband to see her as a person, not just a housewife. She wanted to feel the way she was sure those women who worked with Dennis must feel. The way Jamie must feel. Confident. Intelligent. Important.

Though even the thought of having a career was laughable. What could she do? She’d married Dennis right out of high school. She had no skills, no training.

But she could change diapers. Oh, yeah, now there was something she could do....

The girls giggled and Karen nearly jumped out of her skin. They were so sweet, so innocent and precious, caught up in the ridiculously unbelievable antics of an animated cat and bird on the television screen. Her heart swelled with love as she watched their cheerful faces.

“You guys want some orange juice?” she asked.

“Yeah!” They chorused, never taking their eyes from the screen in front of them.

Glad of something to do, Karen headed for the kitchen to collect the two plastic cups with lids. Purple for Ashley. Yellow for Kayla. She filled them with juice, and while she was at it, she poured a glass of water for herself. Determined to be the type of wife a husband craved coming home to, she’d lost the weight quickly after Kayla’s birth. Especially since coming home was something Dennis did so infrequently.

And now, no matter how much she dieted, she was going to get fat again. Panic returned in force and she carried the drinks back into the living room—to the two little girls who thought she was great just as she was.

“Thank you, Mama,” Kayla said, sliding her chubby fingers into the handle of the cup.

“Thank you, Miss Karen.”

Ashley’s sweet smile almost brought tears to Karen’s eyes. But as she stood she caught a glimpse of her svelte figure in the mirror above the fireplace. How could she hope to keep Dennis interested in her while she was at home swelling up like an elephant and he was out doing business with remarkable, fashionable, intelligent women like Jamie? How was she ever going to compete?

How was she going to make it through another bout of midnight feedings, colicky crying and dirty diapers? Kayla meant the world to her; she’d give her life for her daughter in an instant. But she still felt trapped.

And might very well have another baby on the way. Washing down a sob with a sip of water, Karen turned back to the front window.

She just had to keep it together for a few more minutes. Then, once Jamie got there, maybe she could work up the courage to take the home pregnancy test she’d purchased that afternoon.

JAMIE STAYED UP late again that night. Doing Kyle Radcliff’s taxes. She wanted him gone from her life as soon as possible. She didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to remember the hours they’d spent talking. And more.

And she couldn’t think about Karen’s news, either. Hated the insidious envy that had been eating at her all evening as she pictured, again and again, the color change in that little vial this afternoon. Her friend was going to have another baby. Another legitimate baby. A privilege Jamie could only imagine. An impossible dream.

The Karens of this world had husbands. Their children had fathers. Jamie had men like Kyle Radcliff.

She knew what he’d wanted from their association five years ago. What he eventually got. And paid for. Anything else was irrelevant.

“Mommy?”

Or was it?

“Ash?” Jamie pushed away from her desk as the little girl scurried into the office, rubbing her eyes with a pudgy fist. “What’s wrong, baby?”

The footed bottoms of her pajamas scraping along the carpet, Ashley covered the distance between them and crawled onto her mother’s lap. “I waked up.”

Stifling the grin that rose easily to her lips as she gazed at the earnest face of her young daughter, Jamie gathered the child close and gently rocked her back to sleep. But, holding the tender weight against her heart, she couldn’t help wondering if she was waking up, too. From the wonderful dream world she’d created—back into the nightmare that was her life.

She couldn’t let that happen. Not at any cost.

And certainly not for a man who, with a look, a smile, a couple of eloquent words, could make her forget.

Especially not for him.

“PROFESSOR RADCLIFF? Jamie Archer here.” The heavy beating of her heart was due to the speed with which she’d made it from the garage to her office after dropping the girls off at school. Nothing more. With Karen’s news still fresh in her mind the next morning, Jamie was in a hurry to immerse herself in business. Or so she told herself.

“Jamie!” The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.” He paused. “And what’s this �Professor’ bit? I’m �Kyle,’ remember?”

Yeah. She remembered. “I’m missing some receipts.”

“Okay.”

His voice cooled a bit. And Jamie hated herself for being disappointed.

“I’ll see if I can find them. What do you need?”

Reading from the list she’d prepared before falling into bed early that morning, Jamie told him.

“I don’t know if I even have all this stuff, but I can check this afternoon,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll bring them by this evening.”

“No!” Thinking only of Ashley, Jamie panicked. “I mean, um, I’ll be out this evening.” She paused. Swallowed. “Tomorrow’s soon enough. I’ll come to your office.”

“Since you’re going to be out, why don’t you come here to pick up the receipts tonight?” he asked, sounding more cheerful. “I’ll be home.”

“That won’t be necessary. Tomorrow at your office is fine.”

“It’s just that with some of this stuff, I’m not sure exactly what all you need. It might be better if you look things over yourself. It’ll probably save you another trip.”

Deforming a paper clip, Jamie blurted, “I might be out late.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be up grading essays, anyway.”

It was hard to picture him as an English professor. She would have been much more comfortable if he’d turned out to be an ambulance-chasing lawyer or something.

“What kind of essays?” She didn’t want to know.

“We’re doing an in-depth study of Clemens, his political and religious views.”

“Huckleberry Finn.” She’d loved the American-literature class she’d taken on Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain.

“And �The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.’”

“Tom Sawyer, ” she said, remembering.

“Yeah, what’s with Aunt Polly? You think she’s a woman ahead of her time—or a small-minded old bat?”

“She loved Tom.”

“You go for small-minded, huh?”

Jamie picked up another paper clip. “She did her best. Life hadn’t dealt her an easy hand, raising a hellion like Tom.”

“You think the cards you’re dealt are an excuse to be small-minded?”

“No!” Jamie almost laughed. And then caught herself. What was she doing? “And this has nothing to do with your taxes,” she reminded them both.

“So you’re coming by tonight?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Don’t trust yourself?”

“Of course I trust myself.” Jamie forced every bit of disapproving indignation she could muster into her reply.

“You don’t trust me?”

“Why wouldn’t I trust you?” Why, indeed? But that was something they weren’t going to talk about.

He rattled off the directions to his house. “Come anytime. I’ll be up,” he said. And then rang off before Jamie could tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she would not be stopping by his home that night, taxes or no.

When she rang back, she got his answering machine. Throughout the rest of that day, the man never answered his phone. Jamie didn’t know if it was her imagination that had her thinking he was purposely avoiding her—or if she was just growing unnaturally paranoid. But because she couldn’t get hold of him to make other arrangements and because she needed those receipts if she was going to get his taxes done and out of her life, she asked Karen to keep Ashley that evening.

IT HAD BEEN so LONG since he’d cared enough to impress a woman that Kyle was a little unsure of himself as he unpacked enough stuff to make his house look like home. A home minus most of his furniture, of course. There’d been a little mix-up with that.

Give him a classroom full of know-it-all six-foot punks who hated English, and he was comfortable. But give him an hour to win over a 110-pound woman with a heart of gold, and he was at a complete loss.

In the first place, he didn’t even know why he was having to win her over again. He thought he’d done that—quite thoroughly—five years before. He couldn’t have imagined those phenomenal hours with her. Couldn’t have imagined her response.

And couldn’t understand why she’d disappeared.

But one thing he did know for sure: now that he’d found her, he wasn’t letting her get away again.

“At least not without knowing why,” he muttered. “Now, where are those damn files?”

Spying an unopened box across the kitchen, he grabbed his razor knife and headed over. The box was full of files. Surely the ones he needed were in there. Pulling off his glasses and tossing them on the counter, he crouched down to investigate.

“Oh, good, there you are,” he said a few minutes later as he opened what was probably his twentieth manila folder to reveal the extra set of lesson plans he’d worked up for the semester. He’d had to turn in the set he’d brought with him in his briefcase and had forgotten to make a copy first. At least now he’d be spared the relatively humiliating experience of having to go ask the department secretary for a copy.

The doorbell rang just after eight. He’d finally found the travel receipts Jamie had requested—at the bottom of a box of socks and skivvies. They’d all been in a suitcase together, left over from his visit to New England, where he’d visited the homes and graves of most of his idols—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott.

“This isn’t late,” he said as he opened the door. He had to say something. Drooling over his reluctant accountant probably wasn’t wise.

She shrugged her beautifully slim shoulders. “I finished earlier than I thought.”

And what he thought was that she hadn’t had anything to do that night to begin with. That she’d been making excuses. Which made him all the more curious. And determined.

“Here’s my office, such as it is.” He directed her to the little room off the entryway. His desk was there because he’d purchased a new one. And a sturdy box he was using as a chair. The filing cabinets hadn’t made it yet.

“What on earth is in all those folders?” she asked, staring at the piles surrounding the room.

“Stuff.” Kyle shrugged. He still hadn’t found his folder of photos from Walden Pond. Maybe they were in the sock and skivvies box, too.

“So, you have the receipts?” she asked, standing just inside the door of his office.

Handing her the manila folder he’d unearthed, Kyle said, “You’d better take a glance at those, make sure everything you need is there.”

And while she looked, he looked, too. Dressed in a pair of loose-fitting slacks and an equally loose cotton blouse, she could have been trying to hide her glorious body. But unfortunately Kyle found her modest clothes more of a turn-on than the formfitting skimpy red dress she’d worn the night he met her.

She could wear a tent, and he’d be turned on. He knew what secrets the voluminous clothes hid. Knew them intimately. Every inch. Every taste. Every smell...

“These are all plane tickets and hotel receipts, but what about mileage, parking and meals?” she asked, frowning as she once again thumbed through the slips of paper.

Meal receipts? Who saved meal receipts? And where would he save them? His organizer was already bursting at the seams. “Surely they aren’t going to amount to enough to matter.”

“Of course they will.” She glanced up—and then quickly back down. “They’re one-hundred percent deductible as a business expense.”

“What happens if I don’t have them?”

“We can claim up to a certain amount without them. You lose the rest.”

Her expression was so serious he couldn’t help grinning. “Gosh, and I’m such a big eater, too.”

Jamie’s face was straight as she looked back up at him, taking him in from the glasses across the bridge of his nose to his jeans and bare feet. “I wouldn’t know,” she finally said.

“You would have, though, if you’d hung around long enough to find out,” he said softly. He’d promised himself to move slowly, to stay away from accusation.

But patience wasn’t one of his strong suits.

“Hung around?” Her blue eyes were confused. “Where?”

“In the hotel room.”

Head bowed, she studied the receipts she held. “I did hang around. All the way till morning.”

“Dawn was more like it.”

“It was long enough.” She raised a hand to lift the hair off her shoulders. He thought her fingers were shaking. “When I woke up, you were gone.”

“Only to get breakfast.” Kyle took her hand, held it as he stepped behind her. “I came back with two sacks of goodies and had no one to share them with.”

She was trembling. He could feel it as she turned slowly to face him. “You came back?”

Gazing down into the only pair of eyes that had ever taken his breath away, he nodded. She thought he’d abandoned her? Was that why she’d run away? Was that all the past five years had been about?

“Why’d you come back?” she asked.

“You had me under your spell.”

“The sex was good.”

So she’d felt it, too! Kyle breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d nearly driven himself crazy the past twenty-four hours wondering what he’d done wrong, what he’d done to scare her away.

He moved closer to her, rubbing his thighs against hers. “The sex was great.”

“What about electric and phone bills?”

“What?” His body was on fire, his head filled with visions of...

She pulled away from him, flinging out her arm to encompass the room, her voice cold. “You have a home office. Electricity and phone are deductible for that portion of your home.”

Kyle would have said goodbye and good riddance then and there if he hadn’t noticed the slight trembling at the corners of her lips. She wanted to pretend that what they’d shared wasn’t special. That it meant nothing. But it was; it did. Deny it all she wanted, she still felt the connection.

Somehow, somewhere, he had to come up with the patience to wait for her to be as happy about that fact as he was. But first, he was going to find out why she was so adamantly against taking up where they’d left off. She’d given herself to him that night five years before. Not just her body, but the person she was inside.

Their conversation had been unusually frank. He’d attended Tom Webber’s party at the invitation of an old college buddy, to avoid thinking about the woman he’d buried that day. The mother he’d never loved. More emotionally vulnerable than he’d realized, he’d told Jamie things he’d never told anyone before—or since. Dreams, hopes, emotional stuff a man spent most of his life avoiding. He’d told her how lonely and empty his childhood had been. Without needing any of the details, details he’d been loath to give, she’d known exactly how he felt—because she’d grown up lonely, too. Was still alone, inside, where life really happened. He’d always loved reading, had always escaped into books. So had she. She wanted to be a mother—and have a house with a white picket fence. He hoped to write a classic someday.

But more than the words they’d said were the things they’d understood without words. They’d connected in a way he’d never known was possible, an intimate, intuitive way.

The sex had been an unexpected bonus. She’d given herself to him joyfully. Willingly.

And Kyle didn’t turn his back on what was his.

THE NOTE FROM Ashley’s teacher was a total shock. It came home with Ashley two days later, just after Jamie had hung up the phone from leaving a message for Kyle Radcliff. His taxes were done. All she needed was his signature in the appropriate places and she could mail them—and him—right out of her life.

“Miss Peters wants you to have this,” Ashley said, running into the house. Karen and Kayla were right behind her.

Jamie’s eyes met Karen’s over the girls’ heads. Opening the envelope, she frowned; Karen just shrugged and mouthed the words, “Don’t know.”

Ms. Archer, Jamie’s hand trembled as she tried to read the letter she held.

I’m sorry to have to report that your daughter, Ashley, had some trouble at school today involving one of her classmates. Please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss...

“Ash?”

“Yes, Mommy?” The little girl left the toy she’d been showing Kayla and came over to Jamie’s desk.

“You have some trouble at school today?”

Ashley shook her head, auburn curls bouncing with the force of her denial.

“Miss Peters said you did.”

“Pro’bly means that dumb Nathan,” Kayla muttered, not looking up from the different-sized squares she was fitting one into the other.

Karen’s raised eyebrows and shake of her head were the only help Jamie got from that direction.

“What happened with Nathan?” Jamie asked her daughter, taking Ashley’s hands in her own.

“He says dumb stuff �cause he’s dumb.”

“That’s not a nice word to use, Ash, especially when you’re talking about someone else.”

“But it’s true, Mommy, he is dumb.” Ashley’s pretty gray eyes were somber yet completely sincere.

“And I’ll bet you told him so, didn’t you, Ash?” Karen asked, still standing in the doorway. Her gaze was compassionate.

Ashley nodded and Jamie let the little girl go. Ashley’s thumb promptly found her mouth.

Jamie would have her talk with Miss Peters first, and then, when she had the full story, she’d have a heart-to-heart talk with her daughter. Ashley needed to learn to be a little more accepting of other people’s shortcomings.

“How about some lunch?” she asked.

Karen nodded, but her smile was forced. “I made some chicken salad this morning,” she said. “How’s that sound?”

“Great.” Standing, Jamie ushered the two energetic children next door.

But as she helped Karen make sandwiches and pour juice, Jamie felt increasingly worried about her friend. Karen had been looking a little lost ever since she’d taken the pregnancy test. She wasn’t bubbling with excitement yet. Not the way Jamie would be if she were in her shoes. She decided Karen was probably just anxious for Dennis to come home so she could share her news. He was going to be thrilled.

Of that Jamie was certain.


CHAPTER FIVE

“WE’D LIKE YOU to make things a little easier on him.”

Pulling off his glasses, Kyle peered up at the coach standing in the doorway of his office. For a Monday, the day was going stereotypically true to form.

“You want me to doctor his grade.”

Coach Lippert, the head coach of Gunnison’s football team, slipped his bulky frame into the room and closed the door.

“Brad Miller’s good. Better than good.”

Kyle nodded. He could appreciate that. Talent was a valuable commodity. As was integrity.

“He’s star material. Scouts are already looking at him. Another year at the university and he’s sure to get the offer of a lifetime.” Coach Lippert came closer, leaning his beefy hands on Kyle’s desk.

“I hope he gets it.”

“He’s already on academic probation. If he doesn’t pass your lit class, he’s out.”

“I’ve offered to tutor him.”

“Come on, Professor.” Coach Lippert pushed away from the desk. “The boy shows up for every class. He attempts all the homework. And he’s still failing. You really think a little tutoring’s gonna help?”

Kyle shrugged. “I can only give him the grade he earns.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” The coach paced in front of Kyle’s desk, his shoulders bunched until his neck disappeared beneath a face getting redder by the minute. “Your tests are mostly essay questions, they’re subjective. You control the grades.”

“On the basis of preset criteria.”

“But it’s your opinion as to whether or not he meets those criteria.”

“To date, Brad Miller hasn’t met any of them. If he reads this stuff at all—” Kyle held up a copy of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn “—he doesn’t comprehend a single sentence.”

“It’s a little late in the boy’s life to be diagnosing reading disorders, Professor. All he needs is one more semester. Two at the most, and he’s home free. Without football he doesn’t have a hope in hell of making something of himself.”

“Most of the essay questions are also discussed in class. If he can’t figure out what a novel or a poem’s about, he could learn it in class.”

The coach slammed his palm against Kyle’s desk. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

“I’ll tutor him. Every afternoon if you like.”

“He’s got a workout schedule!”

“I guess he needs to decide what’s most important.”

“To Brad Miller, football is the most important. It’s all he knows. And that’s what bugs you, isn’t it?” There was a sneer on Coach Lippert’s face as he headed for the door. “You’re so caught up in your fairy tales you can’t stand it that someone else doesn’t love your imaginary people as much as you do.”

Steepling his fingers across his chest, Kyle half smiled. “I can’t stand it that a poor boy has an opportunity to get a fully funded college education and is gaining nothing more than what he knew before he came here—football.”

With a few choice words, Coach Lippert wrenched open the door, then slammed it behind him.

Kyle picked up his glasses and carefully positioned them across the bridge of his nose, glad no one could see how his hands were trembling.

NERVOUS, JAMIE knocked on the door of Ashley’s classroom early Monday morning. The kids were all in another room for story time, and Miss Peters had suggested this might be a good moment for her and Jamie to talk.

“Come in, Ms. Archer.” A warm smile on her face, Miss Peters ushered Jamie over to the art center. “Hope you don’t mind sitting on a table,” she said, perching on the corner of one herself. “The chairs are all a bit small in here.”

Attempting a grin, Jamie sat. Even at table level, her knees were hugging her chest.

“Ashley told me about Nathan,” she said in a rush, determined to meet the situation head-on. “And I’m really sorry she’s so rigid in her expectations. But I’ll work with her.”

“So you know she slapped him?” The compassion on Miss Peters’s face was the only thing that kept Jamie from sliding right off her seat.

“Slapped him?” she squeaked out. “You mean as in hitting another little child?”

Jamie’s heart caught in her throat as Miss Peters nodded.

“Is he hurt?”

“Not really,” the preschool teacher said. “She hit him hard enough to leave red fingerprints on his face, but they were gone by lunchtime.”

“I can’t believe it!” Jamie felt light-headed, confused. Scared. “I’ve never hit Ashley in her life.”

“I wasn’t sure...”

Eyes open wide, Jamie stared at the other woman. “Never!” After the way she’d grown up, Jamie could hardly bear to speak harshly to her daughter, let alone spank her. Had never needed to. “Ashley’s been a model child,” she added. “Loving. Almost too good.”

“I must say I was quite surprised.”

“What’d you do to her?”




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