It doesn’t surprise me to hear that Cassidy Maxwell’s landed in London with the job of her dreams, assistant to the U.S. ambassador. Her old friend Eric Barnes would be so proud of her—if only Cassidy hadn’t severed ties with him and with everyone else at Saunders immediately after graduation.

Eric’s been haunted by his memories of Cassidy for years. After all, his childhood friend was set to become so much more until she vanished from his life without a trace. But it might finally be time to discover the secrets of her past and plunge headlong into the promise of the future….

Dear Reader,

Well, we’re getting into the holiday season full tilt, and what better way to begin the celebrations than with some heartwarming reading? Let’s get started with Gina Wilkins’s The Borrowed Ring, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. A woman trying to track down her family’s most mysterious and intriguing foster son finds him and a whole lot more—such as a job posing as his wife! A Montana Homecoming, by popular author Allison Leigh, brings home a woman who’s spent her life running from her own secrets. But they’re about to be revealed, courtesy of her childhood crush, now the local sheriff.

This month, our class reunion series, MOST LIKELY TO…, brings us Jen Safrey’s Secrets of a Good Girl, in which we learn that the girl most likely to…do everything disappeared right after college. Perhaps her secret crush, a former professor, can have some luck tracking her down overseas? We’re delighted to have bestselling Blaze author Kristin Hardy visit Special Edition in the first of her HOLIDAY HEARTS books. Where There’s Smoke introduces us to the first of the devastating Trask brothers. The featured brother this month is a handsome firefighter in Boston. And speaking of delighted—we are absolutely thrilled to welcome RITA® Award nominee and Red Dress Ink and Intimate Moments star Karen Templeton to Special Edition. Although this is her first Special Edition contribution, it feels as if she’s coming home. Especially with Marriage, Interrupted, in which a pregnant widow meets up once again with the man who got away—her first husband—at her second husband’s funeral. We know you’re going to enjoy this amazing story as much as we did. And we are so happy to welcome brand-new Golden Heart winner Gail Barrett to Special Edition. Where He Belongs, the story of the bad boy who’s come back to town to the girl he’s never been able to forget, is Gail’s first published book.

So enjoy—and remember, next month we continue our celebration….

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

Secrets of a Good Girl
Jen Safrey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Crystal Hubbard who, every time I send up a signal,

swoops in with her superpowers to save the day.

Thanks, kid.

JEN SAFREY

grew up in Valley Stream, New York, and graduated from Boston University in 1993. She is a nearly ten-year veteran of the news copy desk at the Boston Herald. Past and present, she has been a champion baton twirler, an accomplished flutist, an equestrienne, a student of yoga and a belly dancer. Jen would love to hear from readers at jen02106@lycos.com.

Dear Eric,

I wish I could find the strength to face you. I know you’d be so disappointed if you ever learned the truth about me, about what I did. I never meant to hurt you—I care about you more than I ever thought possible.

I can’t bring myself to see you. I only wish I had it in me to come clean, to send this letter to you—but it would only make it harder to walk away.

Somehow you must know that you’re the only man I could ever love…perhaps someday I’ll be able to tell you that.

Yours always,

Cassidy

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

New Jersey, July 1982

It was the kind of hot Saturday that forced suburban families to temporarily abandon cookout plans and take refuge in their air-conditioned bedrooms. On many picnic tables on many lawns, packages of paper plates and bottles of mustard sat unopened on tablecloths unruffled by an absent breeze.

On one lawn, in that thick, still air, Cassidy Maxwell turned cartwheels.

Well, she turned semi-cartwheels. She wasn’t very good at them yet.

When Eric Barnes brought a bowl of his mother’s potato salad to Cassidy’s mother in anticipation of the afternoon cookout, Mrs. Maxwell told him Cassidy had been tumbling in the backyard for two hours, showing some signs of improvement, but no signs of quitting.

Eric, standing on the Maxwells’ back porch, relinquished the cold casserole dish and turned to watch Cassidy. Unaware of her audience, she raised her hands up in the air with her fingers spread and palms turned out like an Olympian. She nodded her head once at nobody. Then she threw the weight of her tiny body forward onto her hands. Her waist-length auburn hair swept the ground. She lifted her legs up last, but they were bent strangely and she crumpled at the end of the tumble, collapsing to the ground on her knees. When she jumped up again, Eric could see her knees were two dark grass stains.

Cassidy turned her head, saw her friend Eric and smiled a smile that was always changing as teeth fell out and grew in. She raised her arms again, and now that she had the attention of her favorite person, her fingers and elbows were a little stiffer and her nod was a little prouder. She hurled herself upside-down again, though not as crookedly, and crashed down again, though not as hard.

Eric shook his head, but waited until she wasn’t looking to do it. Girls were into weird things. He didn’t think falling down all afternoon could be any fun, unless you were maybe playing a good game of touch football or something.

“Want some Kool-Aid, Eric?” Cassidy’s mother asked, returning to the screen door. Eric nodded. “What color?”

Eric was grateful for the question. At his house, there was no Kool-Aid because his mother only bought—yuck—real juice. At the Maxwells’, a kid not only got Kool-Aid but got a choice of colors. “Purple,” he requested.

Mrs. Maxwell disappeared and Cassidy did three more shaky cartwheels before her mother came back to Eric with two glasses. “Give one to Cassidy, will you? I keep telling her to get in here and drink something because it’s too hot for that nonsense, but she won’t listen. You’re the only one she listens to.”

Even though it sounded like Mrs. Maxwell was complaining, Eric felt good. “Okay,” he said. He took both glasses.

“Cassidy saw another little girl doing cartwheels at the playground this morning when we were on the way to the supermarket,” Mrs. Maxwell explained. “Now she’s dead set on being able to do them herself, as soon as possible. I don’t know whether that kind of ambition is healthy or what.”

Eric had a feeling Mrs. Maxwell was talking more to herself than him, mostly because he didn’t get what she was talking about, but he kept standing there anyway because it would be rude to leave, and you weren’t rude to anyone’s mother.

She gazed over his head at her daughter. “Seven years old,” she continued, “and already she never does anything halfway. God knows what her father and I are in for when she gets older. Oh, sorry, Eric. I’m just babbling. The heat’s frying my brain. Go on.”

Eric followed a path of slate-blue stones to the yard. Cassidy picked herself up from where she’d just landed and bounded over to him, smiling, smiling. She hugged him around the waist, squeezing.

“Look out,” Eric said, “or I’ll spill. Drink this.”

She took a glass and drained the whole thing in one swallow. When she smiled again, her lips and few front teeth were the color of violets.

“I’ll be back later,” Eric said. “I told Sam and Brian I’d play with them before lunch.”

Cassidy’s face fell.

“I’m coming over for lunch,” Eric reminded her. “Me and my mom and dad.”

Cassidy nodded, but slowly, and her shoulders began to droop. Eric could feel her disappointment. She didn’t need to say it. But then, Cassidy never said much, to him or to anyone. Her mother had said she’d grow out of it. Eric hoped so. He’d rather hear her call him a big poopy-head for going off to play without her than to see her look so sad.

“They’re bigger,” he tried to explain. “I have to play with my other friends sometimes or else when I get to seventh grade next year, I’ll have no one to hang around with. You know what I mean?”

Cassidy just stood there, holding her empty glass.

“You wouldn’t like anything we do anyway. What you’re doing now is more fun. Keep practicing, and show me when I come back.”

Seemingly satisfied, Cassidy placed her glass carefully on the ground, pressing it into the dirt so it wouldn’t knock over. Then she ran and leaped into another cartwheel, her worst one yet. She landed on her butt and laughed. Eric laughed, too.

A short time later Eric learned that a bunch of Sam’s younger cousins were visiting, and when they began to organize a mega-hide-and-seek, Eric came back for Cassidy. Her mother waved as they hurried two houses up the street, hand in hand.

Eric would never admit it to his friends, but being with Cassidy was fun. Neither had brothers or sisters, and the summer before, when the Maxwells moved in, their parents had gotten together and instructed their kids to play. Mrs. Maxwell had seemed surprised at how well Eric coaxed shy, serious Cassidy out from her shell, and Eric was kind of surprised himself. Now, he often pretended Cassidy was his younger sister, and he reveled in the way she worshipfully tailed him everywhere he went. It was disloyal, but sometimes hanging out with his “real” friends was too much work—the way he had to act like them, wear the same kinds of clothes, make the same kinds of jokes and be careful not to say or to do anything uncool. He was usually successful, but popularity was difficult. Playing with easily impressed Cassidy was less work, and more fun.

Though he’d never admit it to anyone but Cassidy herself. If the guys asked, he was babysitting. Under duress.

The hide-and-seek game was fast and frenetic, despite the worsening heat of the afternoon. Rules were disputed, elbows were scraped, feelings were trampled upon. When mothers began to shout their lunchtime calls, the game was enthusiastically abandoned.

As the last few children scrambled their way from Sam’s yard, and Sam’s mother began to set their picnic table, Eric turned in a slow circle, searching for Cassidy.

“She’s still hiding,” he said under his breath. “She’s still hiding,” he said, louder. “Cassidy! Cassidy!”

“She must have already run home,” Sam’s mother said, opening hot dog buns.

“No,” Eric said, shaking his head. The game hadn’t officially ended. Cassidy hadn’t been found by the “It” person. And Eric knew Cassidy. He knew she’d stay right where she was until she was found. She’d stay until it was Christmas and it snowed on her head.

“Cassidy!” he called again. “Come on out! Game’s over! Time for lunch!”

No flash of red-brown hair. No breeze rustling the dandelions in the grass. Nothing.

Big-brother concern filled Eric as he continued the game, alone. He peeked around trees, looked in between the house’s corners. “Cassidy! Olly, olly, oxen free! That means come out!”

“She’s still hiding?” Sam asked around a mouth of potato chips. “What a dummy.”

“Shut up,” Eric said. He wandered into the garage, where a car underneath a huge canvas cover was parked among the clutter. Eric kicked and shoved rakes and tool-boxes. Then he looked at the car. He peeled back a corner of the cover. “Cassidy?” He pulled it all the way back to reveal a red sports car. In the back of his head, he knew it would be cool and grown-up to admire the car, but he was concentrating on the lump in the back seat.

The car windows were open, and she must have clambered in through one. Now she was balled up in the corner with her little hands covering her face. Eric opened the back door and slid in next to her. She dropped her hands and looked at him.

There was only a sliver of light coming into the garage from a narrow window near the ceiling, but it was enough to glimmer off the wetness spilling from her eyes onto her cheeks.

“You thought I forgot about you?” Eric asked.

Cassidy nodded mutely.

“See, I didn’t, did I?”

Cassidy snuffled. She wiped her nose with her bare, dirty forearm.

“If you want to be found, you have to not hide so good. You’re the best hider of everyone. I looked all over.”

Cassidy allowed a crack of a smile.

Eric wondered, What would a big brother do?

He grabbed her and tickled her. Cassidy laughed and kicked. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her from the car. He walked them back to her yard, dangling first her head, then her legs, then her head again. Cassidy squirmed and laughed more.

“There you are,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Cassidy, say hi to Mr. and Mrs. Barnes.”

Cassidy, still upside-down under Eric’s arm, grinned at his parents and they smiled back. “Eric, be careful,” his mother said. “Don’t drop her.”

“Maybe I will,” Eric said, shifting his weight to give Cassidy a dropping feeling. She shrieked with happiness.

“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Maxwell said to his mother. “She’s fallen on her head about fifty-eight times today already.”

Eric set Cassidy down, right side up, on the grass. “From now on,” he said quietly, so only she could hear, “remember that even if it takes a long time, all you have to do is wait. I’ll figure out where you are and I’ll always come to get you.”

Cassidy tugged on his hands until he brought his face near hers. Then she bumped her forehead onto his, once, twice.

Then she leaped away from him, launched herself into the air and turned a perfect cartwheel, her toes pointing straight up to the sky.

Chapter One

October 2005

One of the strangest things about flying, Eric thought as he sipped his complimentary orange juice and stared out the tiny window, was that the sky seemed just as far away as when you were standing on the ground. Clouds were closer, but the blue sky itself still too far away to touch.

Like Cassidy.

He wasn’t used to thinking poetically about anything, really. He’d been like that once. He’d been a young man with his head in the sky, dreaming of his certain romantic future with an auburn-haired woman who’d been destined to be with him as long as he could remember. But when that woman disappeared, that young man then faded away into this older man, an economics expert who thought concretely, who dealt with numbers and facts.

Only a man who’d lost his heart could understand the true concept of risk.

Eric leaned his head back in the uncomfortable coach seat and sighed for the millionth time since takeoff an hour ago. He should have had something stronger than orange juice. Anything to keep him from his own thoughts for the seven hours between Boston and London.

“Are you going to London on business?” he heard a woman ask, and in the split second before he turned his head to the left, he thought, I can’t have a casual chat with someone now. I just can’t. But the person next to him was a snoozing elderly man.

Eric heard a muffled male response and realized the question came from a woman in the seat behind him. “It’s quite a long flight, and I hoped you wouldn’t mind talking awhile,” she said.

The man said yes in a tone that told Eric the woman was attractive and the man was surprised she’d chosen him to converse with. Eric sighed again. The last thing he felt like doing was listening to a cheery get-to-know-you chat.

On the other hand, he’d already seen the in-flight movie a few months ago, and it hadn’t been that great. Maybe eavesdropping would pass the time, help him get away from the musty history museum of his own mind and the full-color portrait of Cassidy Maxwell that was on permanent exhibit there.

“So, are you headed to London on business?” the woman repeated.

Her voice carried over the plane’s engines better than the man’s did, and when Eric didn’t hear his response, he filled in the blank with his own mental answer. Yes, I am, he said silently. I’m going to London on business. Unfinished business.

“A woman, eh?” Eric heard, and gave a start, wondering if she was a mind reader.

“I’m a psychologist,” the woman said to her seat-mate. “I can tell when a man’s crossing an ocean for a woman. Is she your wife or your girlfriend?”

Neither, Eric answered in his head. He sipped his juice.

“Was she your wife or your girlfriend?”

Neither, Eric repeated silently. Cassidy had never been his girlfriend. She was supposed to be, because they’d planned it that way. For years at Saunders University, they’d whispered their plans. Cassidy’s face had shone with anticipation and, every time, he’d felt his own face heating up to match. It was all figured out. Right after her graduation. It was the moment he lived for, drew breath for, waited for…for four long years.

The moment that never came.

“Tell me her name,” the psychologist urged. “Just her first name.”

“Cassidy,” Eric said and, realizing he’d said it out loud, glanced at his neighbor. The man rasped out a snore.

“How long have you known her?”

I met her when she was six and I was eleven.

“And now you’re…?”

Thirty-five. But, he said, and the words were hard to say, even just mentally, I don’t know her anymore.

Cassidy never showed up to her graduation ceremony. Eric never again saw the only girl he’d ever loved. Something had happened. Something to make her run from him and the future they’d planned. Whatever that something was, it was something she never bothered to tell him.

She disappeared ten years ago, he said in his head to the doctor, but I stopped knowing her before that. I just didn’t realize I’d stopped knowing her until she was gone, and then there was nothing I could do.

The doctor nodded in understanding. At least, in Eric’s mind she did. Surprising himself with his candor, he continued his story. She was like my little sister, tagging around after me all the time. When I went off to college in Massachusetts, to Saunders University, I left all my friends in New Jersey. She was just in junior high, just another friend I was leaving behind. She started writing me these letters. The letters were…see, Cassidy never talked much. We hardly ever even talked on the phone the whole time I knew her. She was quiet. Her face did all her talking.

The doctor nodded again, scratching on a pad in Eric’s imagination.

But these letters— Cassidy was smarter than her age, funny, insightful. I read these letters over and over and saw how she was growing up into someone who… I dated plenty of women in college. But what they had to say could never compare to anything Cassidy wrote me.

The plane shuddered, the kind of shake that would rattle a nervous flyer but caused a veteran traveler like Eric to pick up a napkin in case he spilled his drink.

“Did that scare you?” Eric heard the doctor ask.

Sure, it scared me. She was a kid. I was an adult. Finally, I made an effort to distance myself from her. I answered her letters less frequently. I’m sure she noticed, but when I was a senior, she invited me home anyway for her Sweet Sixteen party.

“I see,” the doctor said. She was quite good at her job, Eric thought. She must be expensive. Good thing she wouldn’t be charging him.

I was going to blow off the party, stay at school, but her mother called me and asked me to please come, because it would mean so much to Cassidy. I had a feeling Cassidy had told her mother I was giving her the cold shoulder, and I felt very guilty about it because our parents were close, so I said okay. And I went. And…

“Yes?” the doctor asked behind him. Eric closed his eyes.

Cassidy had opened the door for him that evening. The room behind her was colorful and noisy, filled with friends and fun. She was wearing a tight black shirt and fitted black pants. Eric had glanced over her shoulder, searching for her, before he realized he was looking right at her. Her hair shone around her head and shoulders. He’d never seen her wear black before. He’d never seen her wear makeup before, either, not properly. He’d never seen the delicate skin at her collarbone, sprinkled with freckles, and wondered if the skin below it had the same freckles. She’d stared into his eyes then, and he knew that she knew what she’d become, and what she could do to him.

And later, a few hours later, she’d pulled him into the hall, away from her high school friends, and leaned in, and…

I’m sorry, Doctor, Eric said silently, opening his eyes. There are exactly three moments in my past that I never allow myself to remember. I remember they happened, but I can’t put myself back there again because I can’t live with that intense pain. This is the first of those three moments.

“It’s all right,” the doctor said.

Eric had fled that night, before the party had even ended. Fled straight to the train station, headed back to Saunders, and tried for the rest of that year to forget Cassidy Maxwell.

“Could you?” the doctor asked.

No, I couldn’t.

The next year, Cassidy arrived with her suitcases at Saunders, having just graduated as valedictorian, and signed up as a political science major. Just like Eric. He was now a Saunders grad, but he had an impossible time tearing himself away from the campus now that it had suddenly become more beautiful. He was making political contacts and headway, but found himself visiting Saunders often, dropping in on Professor Gilbert Harrison many times to talk. He didn’t recall what he’d said to tip the professor off, but one day Gilbert tipped him off about an assistant teaching position in the polisci department, and a couple of days later, Eric was standing in front of a lecture hall with Cassidy in the front row.

“That must have been hard,” the doctor said with sympathy.

It was hard, all right. He had been hard, watching Cassidy every day. Cassidy, who’d never verbally strung two sentences together in all the years Eric had known her, would raise her hand and wax brilliantly about any political topic, would debate any controversy with moxie. Young men and women alike were taken with her, and wanted to study with her, have dinner with her, be her friend or more.

But Cassidy’s biggest smiles were reserved for the person she’d been giving them to since she was a child. Eric could read those smiles as well as he always could. She wanted him. She knew he wanted her.

“Then what?” the doctor asked.

Cassidy respected the distance her old friend put between them. Even when that semester ended, he was still a faculty member, and both understood—without speaking to each other about it—that the teacher-student relationship had to be kept that way. But Eric had to be near her, had to be with her. They met off campus many times, and during those times, Cassidy reverted to her wordless ways. They brushed hands in a jazz club. He breathed in the scent of her neck as he pulled out her chair at a coffeehouse. Finally he found himself at four in the morning, sitting with Cassidy under the huge oak on the quad, the entire campus asleep around them.

I’m sorry, Doctor, Eric said in his mind. What I said, what she said, the promise we made—this is the second moment I can’t let myself remember.

“No problem,” the doctor said.

What Cassidy and Eric had vowed to each other kept him wide-eyed awake, excitedly alive, until Cassidy’s last semester as a senior. Then something… A toothache had sent Cassidy into emergency oral surgery, and she was laid up. Eric had tried to help her keep up with her work, but stubborn Cassidy had pushed him away, wanted to do everything herself. He’d seen less and less of her, and when he had seen her, she was pale, thinner, with bags under her eyes as big as coin purses. That last time he’d seen her, two days before her graduation, she’d been in the library, scribbling madly into a notebook. When he’d tapped her on the shoulder, she’d jumped, stared at him with frightening, bloodshot eyes, and bolted from the library, mumbling an apology, or something that sounded like it.

Graduation day dawned. A horde of black-robed seniors hurtled themselves off the main building’s stone stairs, shrieking with joy. Eric waited in the spot they’d chosen. Waited with a locket in his sweating hand, the one he’d wanted to give Cassidy as they began their new future together. The quad emptied around him as he stood alone in that moment…

“I understand,” the doctor said.

Eric was glad. That third moment he couldn’t let himself remember, that one was the hardest. The one he’d had no explanation for—for ten years.

He clutched the empty plastic cup in his hand, crumpling it, and suddenly a smiling flight attendant was there. He dropped it in the trash bag she held out and leaned back again.

He never searched Cassidy out. He’d refused to. His pride wouldn’t let him. But now, Professor Gilbert needed help from his former students to save his job, and everyone knew reliable Cassidy Maxwell would do anything for a friend. One conversation with a fellow Saunders alum and suddenly Eric was over the Atlantic Ocean, traveling to another continent to bring the only woman in his heart back into his life.

The main lights in the cabin blinked out. People around Eric reached for headsets and neck pillows, reclining their seats back.

“I’ll let you get some sleep. Good luck on your trip,” the doctor said.

Eric knew the luck wasn’t for him, but decided to take a little anyway. He was about to need it.

All he’d ever wanted to do was to help people. That’s why he became a professor. He wanted to teach young people, guide them, assist them in any way he could in making decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.

Now, there was one person Gilbert Harrison was powerless to help. Himself.

Gilbert laid his head down on his cluttered desk. His forehead knocked several file folders to the floor and he heard papers scatter, but he didn’t bother to bend down to pick them up. He just closed his eyes and listened to silence. It was nearly midnight, but he couldn’t go home. These days, it was hard to leave his office, because each time he did, he was forced to wonder if it would be the last time.

He’d done so much in this office, for so many students, for so many years.

The Board of Directors’ investigation, led by the vindictive Alex Broadstreet, was a humiliating chapter in Gilbert’s professional life at Saunders University. So far, he’d had his name dragged through the mud and he’d been forced to ask former students to return to campus to appeal to the board on his behalf. It was ironic, considering they didn’t even know the half of what he’d done for each of them, but he had taken a chance that their successes as alumni could sway the board and save his job. The only job he ever wanted to do.

And just as a candle of hope had begun to flicker, it was blown out again when he got Eric Barnes’s phone call today. Eric had called from Logan International Airport, about to board a plane to London to bring Cassidy Maxwell back to Massachusetts.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Gilbert had asked after a stunned pause.

“Ella Gardner and I had lunch last week,” Eric had answered. “She told me about you, and your trouble there at Saunders. Are you all right?”

“I’m hanging in there,” Gilbert had answered honestly.

“Look, you know you’re everyone’s favorite professor. It’s our turn to help you. I’ve thought this over. I know—Cassidy—would want to help you if she could. And I’m going to London to ask her.”

He can barely say her name, Gilbert had thought. Eric was as afraid to face Cassidy Maxwell as Gilbert was, though for entirely different reasons. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gilbert said, measuring his words. “She’s now Ambassador Alan Cole’s chief go-to girl.”

Good for her, he thought silently, in spite of his growing fear. “She has a busy schedule. Don’t bother her with this, with my problems.”

“You know her, Professor. If she finds out about this later, she’ll be angry no one told her.”

“True,” Gilbert had been forced to admit. “Why not just give her a call or e-mail her?”

“I think she’ll be more likely to come back if she’s summoned in person. Besides…” His voice had trailed off and Gilbert had waited a moment before Eric added, “Phone calls and e-mails are too easy to ignore. And she’s done an admirable job of ignoring me for the past ten years. For your sake, I need to talk to her in person.”

“For my sake, huh?”

Gilbert could tell by the silence that perhaps a decade wasn’t long enough to heal a broken heart. “Are you sure you are ready for this?”

“It’s time,” Eric had said shakily, then more forcefully, repeated, “It’s time.”

“What if she doesn’t…”

“I don’t plan on dragging her back by her hair. I’ll tell her what’s going on and leave it up to her.”

Gilbert had sighed then. Eric knew what dire straits his old professor was in. If Gilbert protested any more, Eric would grow suspicious, and he couldn’t afford that. He’d wished his former student luck and hung up.

Then he’d sat here in his office chair, without moving, for hours. His anxiety, already high from his job crisis, had expanded until he felt he’d be eaten from the inside out.

He lifted his head and looked out the tiny window next to his desk, but saw nothing but his own reflection. That was the last thing he wanted to see: Gilbert Harrison staring into himself. He snapped off the small desk lamp and sat in darkness. He could see the outline of leaves against the sky. When a breeze blew through, the leaves fluttered slackly, beginning to lose their hold on the branches. In harsh New England winter afternoons, Gilbert could see the Liberal Arts building across the street. In late spring, the lush greenery again obstructed his view. He had noticed this every year—for thirty years.

In the last few weeks, he’d seen his past come back to him: Saunders sweethearts David and Sandra Westport, crack attorney Nate Williams, the still-beautiful Kathryn Price, sharp-as-a-tack Jane Jackson, a transformed Dr. Jacob Weber. He’d been glad to see each of them. His heart had puffed with pride as he’d examined their older, different faces and heard their stories.

But Cassidy Maxwell might come back, as well.

Her former classmates had gotten wind of her possible return and were excited at the prospect of seeing her again. She had been the good girl on campus, a brilliant scholar, a willing tutor, everyone’s friend. The alumni were convinced she could play a major role in keeping Gilbert on the Saunders faculty.

“Won’t it be great to see her again?” they asked Gilbert, one by one. “It’s been so long! Isn’t it terrific she might come back?”

What no one would have ever guessed was that if Gilbert had his way, he’d keep good-girl Cassidy as far away from Saunders University as possible. The other side of an ocean wasn’t even far enough.

If Cassidy came back, she’d also bring back Gilbert’s deepest, darkest secret. A secret she’d discovered a long time ago, accidentally. A secret no one else knew.

That secret could not only destroy Gilbert’s career, but his entire life as he knew it—his and the lives of others.

Gilbert put his head in his hands again. I’m so sorry, Eric, he thought with shame. I’ve never before wanted one of my students to fail.

But I hope you do.

Chapter Two

“What do you mean, we can’t get the Château Clinet?” Cassidy asked.

She held the phone slightly away from her ear as the wine supplier offered a rambling explanation for not being able to meet Cassidy’s wine order for the ambassador’s reception tonight. Unfortunately, Cassidy didn’t have much time for explanations. She was more a solutions person.

“Right,” Cassidy interrupted. “Well, since it won’t do to be without wine tonight, we need a Plan B. Can you replace the Château Clinet with Château Clos Fourtet? If I can’t get the Pomerol, the Saint-Emilion should be just as good.” The wine supplier put her on hold to check and, lifting her chin to her open office door, Cassidy called, “Sophie?”

The eager junior staffer appeared almost immediately. Cassidy waved her in and handed her a stack of paper samples. “If you’d please call the paper shop, the number’s on top, tell them the stock they recommended for the official stationery is excellent, but the color was a little dark. Tell them the light cream is what we want.”

“Right away.” As Sophie scurried out, the wine supplier came back to the phone to report they could indeed deliver the needed quantity of Château Clos Fourtet to the ambassador’s residence that afternoon. Cassidy was relieved. Ambassador Alan Cole was hosting a Winfield House reception that night for his good friend, the artistic director for a prominent Chicago ballet company, who was in London to collaborate on a project with the Royal Ballet. The ambassador was pleased to have his friend in town, and Cassidy didn’t want any problems, no matter how minor.

Of course, as Ambassador Cole’s office management specialist, Cassidy’s job was to ensure all U.S. Embassy problems were kept to a very bare minimum.

Cassidy thanked the wine supplier and hung up, and the moment she lifted her finger from the End button, her cell phone jingled again. “Maxwell,” she answered. She looked at her index finger, where a permanent dent seemed to have formed. The front desk secretary informed her that the plumber had arrived.

“I’m on my way,” Cassidy said. She breezed through the front office, where many people were typing, faxing, taking calls. Charles, another junior staffer, stood and sprinted over to her. People in the embassy were always running to catch up to Cassidy.

“MP Violet Ashton wants to meet with the ambassador as soon as possible,” he said. Cassidy was appreciative that Charles knew to waste no time on pleasantries. “And Sir Neville Pritchard of the House of Lords wants to see the ambassador, also.”

“Can I assume MP Ashton wants to meet regarding the ambassador’s Northern Ireland peace initiative?”

“Correct.”

“Right, tell her tomorrow is fine. Anytime. I’ll fit the agenda around her. And Sir Pritchard, tell him Wednesday or Thursday of next week, midafternoon is best.”

“All right.”

Cassidy left the large room, rounded several corners, walked down several long hallways. The sharp heels of her black leather ankle boots clicked authoritatively, a sound she secretly liked.

She greeted the plumber at the main entrance and escorted him up three floors. Standing together in the otherwise empty elevator, he gave her a friendly, appraising glance. She winced as the elevator dinged and wordlessly led him to a small room on the left.

Cassidy maneuvered many locks with keys and codes and eventually let them both into a small nondescript room. She perched on a table and waited as the plumber investigated the leak Cassidy had reported last week. She would have to wait until he was done, as only a small handful of people had the top-secret clearance to even enter this room, which was filled with classified files.

She glanced at her watch. She wanted to call the public affairs department before two o’clock, and there was that meeting at three…

Cassidy crossed her legs at the knee and noticed splotchy raindrop marks on her shoes. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped at them. At dawn, she’d been out on a Heathrow Airport tarmac with bodyguards to greet an assistant U.S. secretary of state, and although she’d been standing under an umbrella, London’s legendary dreary rain had soaked her feet and dampened the cuffs of her trousers. She’d had to grin and bear the splooshing between her toes as she’d escorted the official in a limo to his breakfast meeting with the ambassador.

At least the sun was out again, but Cassidy was annoyed to be even thinking about the weather. She was so accustomed to constant motion and decision-making that it was maddening to have more than five minutes of downtime.

Downtime led to quiet contemplation, to thinking. Cassidy had trained herself long ago not to sit and think. Keep moving, she told herself, from the minute she woke up every morning to the last moment before she dropped her head on the pillow. Keep moving.

Don’t stop.

She whipped out a small pad of paper and pen from an inside pocket of her fitted black pin-striped jacket and began to scribble a list of things to do in the next hour. Call Winfield House and ask the head housekeeper to fax her tonight’s menu to make sure nothing was forgotten, update the ambassador’s schedule for tomorrow to fit in the meeting with the MP—Cassidy’s stomach rumbled. Oh, yes, get lunch. If time permits.

After the plumber indicated he was finished but would need to get into a rest room one floor above, Cassidy let them both out, secured the room and called Charles to take the worker to the rest room. Then she returned to the front office and resumed running around for several more hours.

At promptly three, Cassidy escorted five men and one woman to a public meeting room. They were representatives from an American lingerie company called Underneath It All. They wanted to open a London branch, and they were set to make a pitch for support from the ambassador.

But Ambassador Cole had not yet returned from his appointments. Cassidy sighed, and as she chatted informally with the businesspeople, her cell phone rang. “Maxwell.”

“Cassidy, it’s me,” Ambassador Cole said, but his voice sounded very far away, and strained through static.

“I can’t hear you well, Ambassador.”

“Bad connection. Listen, I’m running late. We’re sitting here in traffic the likes of which I’ve never seen.”

“Since yesterday?” Cassidy couldn’t help herself.

“I did say that yesterday, didn’t I?” The ambassador chuckled. “Cassidy, you’ll hold down the fort.” It wasn’t a question. It was a confident statement.

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t be longer than a half hour. Shouldn’t, but who knows for sure. There’s a double-decker bus in front of the car, and we can’t see a bloody thing.”

Cassidy smiled. Like herself, Ambassador Cole hadn’t picked up a British accent, but had managed to adopt several choice phrases. “Don’t worry. We’re good to go here. We’ll get things done.”

“I know you will.”

“I’m fitting MP Ashton in tomorrow.” She decided not to tell him about the averted wine crisis. It would just sound like showing off. “And there are a few documents on your desk that need approval before I send them out.”

“Thank you, Cassidy.”

He clicked off and Cassidy faced the small group. “That was the ambassador. He’s running a bit behind. If you spend more than two days in London, you’ll know that isn’t an unusual scenario.”

The guests chuckled.

“Right,” Cassidy said. “I’ll arrange for tea service, and while we wait for the ambassador, you can ask me anything you like about London. I’ve been working here at the embassy for just about ten years, so I should be able to answer just about any question you might have while we wait.”

One phone call and ten minutes later, Cassidy’s fellow Americans were pouring tea and looking delighted about it. Cassidy remembered when she first arrived in London and how she thought tea was so refined and classy and relaxed. Now she was lucky to gulp down two sips from a takeaway thermos on the way to a meeting.

The businesspeople asked Cassidy many questions about many topics, from London’s shopping areas to the weather to the hot-button political issues. They seemed pleased with Cassidy’s straightforward, knowledgeable answers, and the more information she supplied, the more questions they asked.

Cassidy loved her job, but often felt tired at the end of the day, and not from running around. She often grew weary from all her talking. She’d never talked much, as a child, as a teenager. She’d chosen not to. She supposed she’d always liked to watch life, and listen.

At the embassy, she had to be an effective communicator, and she believed she was, but sometimes she secretly longed for the time when she could say nothing and have her feelings be understood anyway. The person who never failed at that understanding was—

Not in her life now.

Cassidy shook her head with a tiny motion and kept talking so she didn’t have to think about him, about anything. When it came to suppressing unthinkable thoughts, she was a professional with a decade of experience.

“Ms. Maxwell,” said one of the men. She looked at him. He was easily the youngest one in the room, perhaps the most eager to show his bosses that he meant business. He reached into a large portfolio at his feet and pulled out a posterboard featuring a black-and-white photo of a scantily clad couple in a heated embrace. “You’ve been so helpful, that I think we can use your personal opinion. Tell us, how do you think Brits would feel about this poster on a Piccadilly Circus billboard?”

Cassidy looked at the poster, but a flash of movement caught her gaze and coaxed it over the man’s shoulder. She could see through the glass wall of the meeting room, straight to the embassy lobby.

Straight into a pair of eyes.

Cassidy sucked in a breath so hard she almost choked.

Bottomless black eyes.

From here, a stranger might think the distance made those eyes look black. But Cassidy was no stranger, and she knew if she walked out of the meeting room, walked closer and closer until she was an inch away, they would still be an almost-impossible ink-black.

Those eyes—Cassidy remembered how as a smitten child, as a teenager with a crush, as a young woman in love, she would do anything to make those eyes look her way. Then, after her mistakes, she feared she could never look into those eyes again. So she’d run away.

There was nowhere to run now.

Every memory she’d banished to the far corners of her mind now leaped out like monsters in a haunted house. Every single thought she’d outrun now clawed at her back.

The only man she ever loved was standing right in front of her again, and there was no escape.

Eric didn’t smile. He didn’t wave or nod. He just held her gaze, and Cassidy was forced to face the hurt she’d inflicted.

“Ms. Maxwell?” she heard, and snapped her attention back to the poster. “Ms. Maxwell? How do you think people in London will feel about this ad?”

Cassidy parted her lips, intending to give a professional response, but her mind tricked her into honesty. “Stunned,” she mumbled. She looked over the man’s shoulder. Eric hadn’t moved. “Shocked,” she whispered.

The uncomfortable rustling in the room brought her back once again. “Excuse me?” the one woman asked. “I rather thought Europeans were less reserved than Americans.”

“We intended a sexy, suggestive effect, not something offensive,” another man in the business delegation added.

“Oh…” Cassidy said, willing herself to focus on her job. Pretend he’s not there, she told herself. He’s probably not there. You forgot lunch, after all. It’s probably a hallucination brought on by hunger.

“What I meant to, ah, say, was…” Cassidy began.

It’s not him. It can’t be him. It must be someone who looks like him. The world has no shortage of tall, dark and handsome. Just a look-alike, that’s all.

“What I meant to say,” Cassidy repeated firmly, “was that Europeans will be shocked and stunned—that it’s not even more racy.” She pushed out a laugh.

Luckily, the company reps laughed, also, letting Cassidy off the hook.

Off the hook in here, at least, Cassidy thought. But I have to leave this room eventually. And even though she warned herself not to, she peered out the glass one more time.

Eric Barnes still stood, with a patience she knew full well he had.

Cassidy looked away from him again. She would not allow this.

Her cell jingled. “Maxwell,” she answered, willing her voice not to shake. She turned to face the wall behind her.

The voice on the other end sounded very close, because it was—the front desk was only steps from the room. “There’s a man here to see you. Eric Barnes. He says he doesn’t have an appointment but insists he see you. He says he knows you personally. I told him you were very busy, and I’d see what I could do.”

Run, was her first instinct. Run out the back door. Keep running…

Cassidy sighed and rubbed her left temple. She had a roomful of people behind her and one of the most respected politicians in all of Europe counting on her. Running was not an option right now.

“I don’t know when I’ll be finished here,” she said into the phone. “I’m waiting on the ambassador. But tell Mr.—Mr. Barnes that he can wait if he wants.”

She clicked off and suddenly felt like Dead Woman Walking.

She turned to the group and talked some more, laughed a bit, and checked her watch often because every time she did, she forgot. She rolled her chair back a couple of inches, putting a blond man directly between her and her view of the lobby. By the time the ambassador strode in and the group rose in greeting, there were hot, damp patches under her arms and a thin rivulet of perspiration was snaking its way along her hairline.

“I apologize for my delay,” the ambassador said. “But I am sure Cassidy kept you all as busy as she keeps me.”

As the people in the room happily chimed in about Cassidy’s helpfulness, the ambassador smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but felt an ugly grimace distort her cheek muscles instead. Before her boss could catch on, she stepped with great reluctance from the room, took a deep breath and took several heel-clacking strides to the lobby.

Eric had taken a seat, but he glanced up when she walked in and rose to his feet. Cassidy nodded at the reception desk, then walked right up to him and angled her head toward the door. He followed her outside and when she stopped and turned, he was suddenly so close that she had to tilt her head up a few inches to look at him.

A deep crease bisected the space between his thick, dark eyebrows—something that wasn’t there before. His hair was different, and she realized with a start that it was shot through with gray. When had that begun? Gray hair seemed like something reserved for older men, much older men, who’d seen—but then, how could she presume to know what Eric had or hadn’t seen?

He just kept standing there, silent, obligating her to speak first.

Questions began to throb across Cassidy’s mind. Why are you here? Why, after all this time? Why couldn’t you just let go? Why are you making me face you now?

But she finally chose to say only one word, and it came out of her throat in a ragged whisper. “Why?”

Eric recoiled. Not physically, but something in his expression pulled back for a moment. Cassidy was unsettled by it; she’d never surprised him before.

“‘Why?’” he repeated in a voice that was a bit lower, a bit harsher, than she’d ever heard it. “Did you just ask me, ‘Why’? Why in hell are you asking me why? It should be me asking you. Why, Cassidy?”

Hearing her name in his voice again almost made her break down in sobs, but she fought hard against herself.

She wondered if he really thought she would answer him. Didn’t he realize that if she could tell him why, years ago, she wouldn’t have run? Couldn’t he guess the betrayal she was hiding was more than he could bear?

She parted her lips, sticky with the remains of unrefreshed Chanel lipstick.

Maybe she would have said something. Probably not.

But she’d never find out for sure. Because at that moment, Eric reached out one hand, put it on the back of her head, pulled her close and covered her mouth with his.

It was as though he’d been in prison for ten years, for a crime he didn’t realize he’d committed, and was finally tasting the sun again.

Cassidy’s mouth was rigid and her glittering amber eyes were in a wide-open stare. Eric closed his eyes and brought both hands to her face, relaxing the smooth skin beneath his fingers, caressing her small earlobes.

He felt her resolve soften, along with her mouth. He nibbled gently with his teeth, and when her lips opened, he touched just the tip of her tongue with his. Someone made a moaning sound, and he couldn’t tell who.

He leaned her against the wall, pressing his lower body against hers.

Then he felt another pressure. On his shoulders. Two hands. Pushing him roughly away.

He let go of her and stumbled three steps back.

Cassidy’s face blazed as red as the highlights in her long, thick hair. She was breathing hard, her nostrils flaring like a prodded bull.

Another woman would have cried, “What are you doing, kissing me at the main door of the U.S. embassy, for crying out loud! I work here! And who do you think you are, kissing me like that, touching me like that? Get the hell away from me!”

But this was Cassidy, whose wordless emotions were always written all over her face. Eric flinched as if she had actually spoken.

He also flinched from the strength of his memory. Those three memories he never let himself remember?

Well, the first one smashed into him now. Hard.

Cassidy, glowing with new beauty at her Sweet Sixteen party. She coaxed him into the hall, away from her giggly girlfriends and clearly hopeful male friends. “It’s my birthday,” she said. “But I have a present for you. Happy birthday to me.” Then she kissed him. An immature, inexperienced kiss. She looped her arms around his shoulders, touched his neck, and he felt her fingers trembling.

Their first kiss. And their last kiss.

Until now. His mouth still felt hers.

“Cassidy,” Eric said. “I—”

She turned to walk away from him.

“Cassidy, please,” Eric said. “I didn’t come here for that. I didn’t mean for that to happen. It just—I saw you and it just—it did. I’m sorry.”

She looked at her arm where he grasped it. He let go and she looked into his face.

“I didn’t even come here for me,” Eric said.

Cassidy raised one thin, arched brow. He remembered when she learned how to do that in fifth grade. She’d given raised-brow questioning looks to people for three days, thrilled at her new form of expression.

“I came here for Professor Gilbert Harrison.”

Cassidy did look genuinely confused then. She probably hadn’t heard the teacher’s name in ten years, Eric thought. She’d not only left him behind, she’d left everyone.

“I know you’re at work,” Eric said. “And I’m sorry to track you down here. I didn’t know where you live and I needed to find you. Will you talk to me later? There’s things I have to fill you in on.”

Cassidy appeared to really want to shake her head no.

“Please,” Eric said. “I came all this way. Gilbert really needs your help. He called a bunch of your old friends, and they want you to help, too.”

“He didn’t call me.”

“No,” Eric conceded. He had wondered why Gilbert hadn’t called Cassidy, his former work-study student, who’d spent so much time with him and admired him so much. But Gilbert had said on the phone that he didn’t want Cassidy to have to make the long journey back to the United States. On the other hand, a bunch of Saunders grads—particularly Ella Gardner, were positive Cassidy would drop everything and run back. Eric had run into Ella recently in Boston. She was the one who told him about Gilbert’s predicament, and suggested Eric fetch Cassidy. She also asked him about the “crush” she’d suspected he’d had on Cassidy at Saunders. Eric would have laughed at the gross understatement if it hadn’t been his own tragedy.

“No,” Eric repeated. “But your friends insisted you should be found. And I guess I really had to agree.”

Cassidy glanced behind her at the main door, either concerned she should be working—or searching for a place to flee.

“What time do you finish for the day?”

Cassidy glanced behind again.

“What time, Cassidy? I’ll meet you here.”

He wasn’t going to let her leave without responding. She figured that out, because she said, “Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Usually—but tonight, I have—”

“I’ll meet you right here at seven.”

She nodded.

A part of him longed to just stand in awe of her, gaping at the beauty she’d matured into. The girl he’d remembered wasn’t even as beautiful.

But the other part of him, the part that had kept him awake for days and weeks and months on end, that distrustful part of him, made him say, “You won’t be here at seven, will you? You’re going to make me chase you, which is the only thing my pride has managed to stop me from doing.”

Cassidy blinked very slowly, translucent lids covering and uncovering two golden lights.

Then she turned on her heel, yanked on the main door and disappeared into the building.

Eric stared at the spot she’d just vacated. A whiff of unfamiliar perfume lingered in her wake, a scent he’d already begun to miss.

His heart ached with emptiness. “That went well,” he said to the wall.

Chapter Three

“Ambassador?”

Alan Cole looked up from his desk with a pleasant smile, a smile that came easily even though he’d been running around today longer than Cassidy herself had. “Yes?”

Cassidy handed him a few e-mail printouts. “You may want to take a look at these today. I’m leaving now, so…”

The ambassador pulled up the sleeve of his suit jacket, checked his gold watch and frowned. “I’m not sure about this…”

Cassidy hurriedly added, “Unless you need me to stay, of course. It’s not necessary for me to leave now. Never mind, I’ll just be in my office.”

“That’s right. According to my calculations, you’ve only put in a thirteen-hour day.”

The shock of earlier events slowed Cassidy’s ability to recognize the joke. She had turned all the way around to leave before she realized it, and then she turned back to the ambassador, who was fixing her with a shrewd look.

“Actually,” he said, “I very highly recommend you do leave. Your day started before dawn. Anyone else would be long gone.” He smiled again. “Anyone but the determined Ms. Maxwell.”

Cassidy relaxed a bit.

Ambassador Cole was an admirable figure, both politically and as one of London’s most eligible bachelors. His wife had died of breast cancer seven years prior, and Cassidy, who had been a junior staffer then, had sadly watched his heart breaking, along with the rest of the embassy. After that, the ambassador had dedicated his whole waking life to his work, and established himself as an influential voice for the United States in Great Britain. About a year ago, he had become fodder for tabloid speculation after he was seen with a stunning middle-aged blonde at an opera opening. The blonde turned out to be only a cousin, but society reporters persisted in their interest in the attractive politician, making it obvious they felt they’d kept their respectable distance long enough.

Alan Cole had short, graying-brown hair and deep laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. His smile was bright white and frequent. His racquetball habit—or, Cassidy often teased him, his racquetball obsession—kept his physical form trim, and his taste in suits was impeccable, assisted by the best tailors in the city. Despite being in his mid-fifties, he’d unwittingly made BBC News fans out of many young twentysomething women who might have instead been watching “Coupling” or “EastEnders.”

The well-spoken and persuasive ambassador continually made an impression on world leaders and pundits alike, and after marveling at his obvious charisma for years, Cassidy was amazed when he took notice of her abilities and eventually promoted her to the position of his closest assistant. She strongly felt that one of her greatest professional achievements was earning his respect, and one of her most rewarding personal achievements was that he treated her like a member of his family.

Which was why she was one of the very small handful privy to the existence of his new girlfriend, a lovely watercolor artist who lived in Brighton, near the ambassador’s summer cottage.

“And if I’m not mistaken,” the ambassador now added meaningfully, “I often encourage you to leave at a decent hour, but you never do. I’m quite surprised at your sudden reasonable behavior.”

Cassidy wasn’t sure what to say. It had been bad enough that Eric Barnes had showed up after ten years to kiss her at the entrance to the U.S. embassy. She didn’t want to call any more attention to herself. And she knew if she made something up, the man in front of her would not be fooled.

“I hope it’s because you’d like some extra time to get ready for the party tonight,” he said.

Cassidy was relieved at the out he’d accidentally given her. “Actually, yes. I was thinking of getting my hair done.”

“Brilliant. I worry about you sometimes, Cassidy. Don’t get me wrong. You’re one of my best assets here, and I certainly wouldn’t want you not to be, but you’re maybe a bit too much of a—workaholic?”

Cassidy had to laugh. “You’re telling me I’m a workaholic?”

“Okay, okay. I admit that is the pot calling the kettle…et cetera. But once in a while—” he paused to sigh significantly “—I see you flying around here, and I wonder if…you’re trying to prove something. I hope it’s not to me. You know I’m confident in your abilities.”

“I know, Ambassador, and I’m appreciative—”

He cut her off. “Don’t be. You earned it. But—” He paused, watching her for a sign to stop. Cassidy carefully kept her expression neutral, so he went on. “Maybe you’re trying to prove something to yourself.”

Cassidy blinked but didn’t answer.

“I know what it looks like, you know,” the ambassador said. “When Natalie died, I pushed myself and pushed myself, determined to prove to myself that I could go on, that I could handle life. You know what? It turned out I was right. I was capable of handling it, but I really didn’t need to make my own life so frenetic to learn that lesson. It only made things harder.”

Cassidy still didn’t say anything.

“I want you to know that you can talk to me. If you need anything, if you ever need a day or a week off, just say the word. We’d have a tough time without you, but we’d manage for your sake.”

“I don’t understand why this is coming up now,” Cassidy said slowly, realizing that her mind had been screaming the same thing earlier when Eric appeared out of nowhere. Why now? Why now? Can’t you leave me alone…

“Like I said, I have worried about you at times in the past. It’s the expression on your face sometimes, a clenched-jawed, gritty look. I saw it again a little earlier today. I’m glad you’re knocking off early. I want you to have fun.”

Cassidy nodded.

“I mean it. Don’t have little chats with the kitchen staff about the pâté, don’t make sure all the serving trays are full, don’t go into the bathroom to check the toilet paper supply.”

Cassidy raised a brow.

“You didn’t know I’m aware you do that, did you?” The ambassador laughed. “If you don’t have fun tonight, you’re fired. And that’s that.”

Cassidy smiled, the first genuine one she’d squeezed out in the last few hours. She knew Ambassador Cole’s mind was weighed down with very serious things these days, not the least of which was his recent Northern Ireland peace initiative. He had other things to occupy him other than the mental state of his assistant, but here he was, insisting on addressing it.

She wasn’t sure how she would oblige him, however. Considering the day’s events, fun was the last thing she’d be capable of. She felt her smile fade.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and turned to go.

“Cassidy?”

She stopped.

“Are you all right?”

Tears threatened and she tilted her head up to the ceiling to try to make them fall back into the corners of her eyes. “You just asked me that, Ambassador.”

“Not quite. I implied it, but that makes it easy for you to avoid answering, and I’d quite like it if you did.”

Cassidy kept her back to her boss, because she didn’t tell lies often and she was about to tell the biggest one ever. She squared her shoulders and brought her head down again. “I’m the same as yesterday. Just fine.”

He didn’t respond, so she added, with purposeful good cheer, “But I appreciate your concern. I’ll see you this evening.”

“Goodbye, Cassidy.”

His words were simple but Cassidy recognized the tone. It was the pensive, analytical one he used when asked on television about things such as his opinion on America’s foreign policies. He would answer clearly but his tone always implied hours of previous contemplation.

Cassidy left the room before the ambassador could contemplate her and her problems any longer.

Cassidy hoisted her weighty leather briefcase more securely onto her slight shoulder, pushed open the front doors and commenced a brisk pace. If fleeing the embassy at a run wouldn’t have aroused certain suspicion, Cassidy might have done so—just flung her bag and three-inch-heeled boots onto the grass and sprinted off as fast as her black cashmere socks would allow. But she knew that subtle was better. The conversation with the ambassador had slowed her down a little bit as it was. She didn’t want to take the chance of Eric showing up early and seeing her run from him—again.

No, she kept her pace quick but casual, glancing out the corners of her eyes, searching for any motion coming her way. Nothing. She let herself turn her head only once to look back, and Eric was not behind her. Her gaze traveled up the walls of the massive embassy, to where the immense golden eagle perched in a permanent moment of taking flight. Cassidy remembered the first time she had seen the bird, the symbol for the American idea of freedom. Every time since that first day, she’d walked into that building under the eagle’s protective gaze, safe in her own freedom from Saunders, from the worst mistakes she’d ever made. Now, today, with no warning, the eagle, as imposing as it was, had proved itself unable to protect Cassidy from her past.

She should have known. And perhaps, in the back of her mind, she always had. Which was why she’d trained herself to stop thinking, stop dwelling, and just work hard.

It was crumbling now, the fortress she’d constructed around her mind and around the warm core of soft feelings deep inside her chest. She faced front again and shivered under her burgundy trench coat. She looked across expansive Grosvenor Square and caught a glimpse of the statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt before turning and heading up to Oxford Street.

A picture of Eric filled her mind and, for the first time, it was not a picture of Eric as a college graduate, an enthusiastic teaching assistant lecturing to an entire class but sending a secret signal through his hypnotic eyes to Cassidy and Cassidy alone.

It was a picture of the Eric she’d never seen before today, and hadn’t wanted to ever see. Eric the man, the man with gray in his hair, the man experienced at having his heart torn in two by the woman he loved.

No. Cassidy gritted her teeth. Something else, something else. Franklin D. Roosevelt. She tried to fill her head with historical facts to shove out the sad picture. FDR. New Deal. Was that him? The New Deal. The New Deal was… She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t believe that she couldn’t remember. Her memory was not normally a flawed one. He shot bears. Didn’t he? And then—no. Crap. That was Teddy Roosevelt. Because of teddy bear. Right? Right? Was she remembering any of this right?

She turned a left, taking her past the famous Selfridges’ storefront. Oxford Street was the usual tourist zoo and as she weaved in and out between clueless people clutching Underground maps, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. In this rush-hour crowd, no one would ever notice one woman in a dark coat carrying a briefcase. She whipped a wrinkled white diaphanous scarf from one pocket and tied it around her hair, binding up her one distinctive trait the best she could. For the first time ever, she wished it already was the middle of a bitter London winter, so she could conceal herself in a hat and muffler.

Why, Cassidy? Eric’s broken voice bounced off the walls of her skull, reverberating over and over again. Why, Cassidy?

Why, Cassidy, she heard again, and this voice was ugly, sneering, triumphantly lecherous. Randall Greene. I had no idea you would be as good as you looked. Virgins hardly ever are, you know?

Cassidy strangled a sob back down her throat and forced her feet to go faster, slamming her heels so hard into the concrete that her shins ached.

“Go away, Eric,” Cassidy said out loud, not caring if it elicited strange looks from the pedestrians hurrying beside her. The Bond Street Tube station was only one block off. She matched her chant to her steps. “Go away, go away, go away.”

London was her city. She belonged here. Eric would leave. He had to.

Right. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was elected president in the year…

She glanced up at the street sign and froze. Someone slammed into her from behind, then roughly pushed around her, cursing her over his shoulder.

Cassidy stared wide-eyed at the sign. Gilbert Street.

Had she seen this before? Had her mind never made the connection to her old professor and friend?

She clenched her fists inside her pockets, angry at everything, angry at her city for failing to be her safe haven forever.

She knew, she just knew, that her no-thinking method couldn’t save her from herself anymore.

She broke into a run, blindly shoving at down parkas and shopping bags, and slipped underground.

When Cassidy broke into an unexpected sprint, Eric cursed and quickened his pace as fast as he could considering the foot traffic. The line at the Tube ticket window was dozens deep, and Cassidy slipped through the turnstile, likely with some sort of commuter pass. Luckily, Eric had anticipated Cassidy’s bolting from him and buying Tube tokens ahead of time was one of his preparations. The subway was sliding into the station just as Cassidy reached the platform, and with a bit of crowd-maneuvering, Eric managed to position himself behind her in the same car, where she’d have to turn her whole body around to see him. She didn’t, though she definitely appeared to have a case of nerves, judging by her white fingers gripping the metal pole and the way she brushed a stray invisible strand of hair from her eyes over and over.

Good, Eric thought with defiance. Good. He’d suffered grief for such a long time. Inciting an attack of nerves on the woman he’d loved was at least some kind of weak revenge.

He was so busy watching her, and watching the way she glided toward the door three stops later at Holborn, that he almost didn’t follow her. He leaped out at the last minute, just as a loud automated voice warned him and other passengers, “Mind the gap!” He straightened, afraid that his display of stupidity had alerted her to his presence, but she was already off and running.

They emerged, not quite together, into London’s early evening. The streets were quieter in this neighborhood, and Eric had to drop back about a block and a half to continue trailing her. The buildings had brownstone fronts with varying doors—some high-polished blond wood, some functional dark brown, some with chipping paint and tarnished knobs. They reminded Eric of Boston.

Boston. Where he should be right now, working, and not halfway around the world, chasing someone who didn’t want to be caught.

Cassidy abruptly turned and headed up the steps of a corner building. Eric quickly sidestepped into the doorway of a small Italian pastry shop. The scent of cannoli filled his nostrils as he watched her pull a pile of keys from her pocket and peer over her shoulder once before letting herself in.

Eric went into the shop and bought a cappuccino, staring out the large window at the building Cassidy had just entered. He stepped outside with his steaming cup, taking his eyes off the building’s door just every now and then to study the unfolded London street map he’d picked up at the airport. He determined he was in the Bloomsbury section of the city. He mentally drew the route he’d have to take back to his hotel. After about twenty minutes he strolled over to Cassidy’s building, sat on the top step and waited.

He wouldn’t ring for her, because it would be much too easy for Cassidy to refuse to let him in. Better for him to wait. She’d started to say she had something going on tonight. Provided it took her outside her home, he’d just surprise her on her stoop and have his little chat with her then.

She’d made it pretty clear she hadn’t intended to keep their date at seven. And it was pretty obvious that if she’d hung around late, Eric would wait at the embassy as long as necessary. He had to hand it to her. She did make the better call, leaving early. She did her best.

But Eric had been blindsided that day she’d left him forever. Today, he could keep up with her, because he had more of an idea what Cassidy was all about. And that was her misfortune.

Because he was going to talk to her.

And in the hours between when Cassidy had stalked away from him and when he followed her home, he’d tried to decide whether he was going to make her talk to him.

He’d come here for Gilbert.

And he’d come here for himself.

But Gilbert was the one in a dire situation. Eric merely wanted an explanation for a long-ago wrong. Was it right to cross-examine Cassidy about her running away if it resulted in her refusal to come back to help the embattled professor, who really needed her?

Could Eric be so selfish? Gilbert had always been a confidant and mentor, not just to him, but to so many at Saunders.

No. On that stoop, with the cold concrete chilling his butt through his suit pants, Eric made up his mind. He would talk to her about Gilbert, and only Gilbert.

She wouldn’t have to talk back. About anything. She could just pack a suitcase, and he could just escort her over the ocean back to Massachusetts. Then he’d walk away from her and go on with his life.

Yes.

He glanced at the sky and tried to discern whether the darkening was due to nightfall or rain clouds. He hoped it was the former. Europe had greeted him early this morning with a depressing, driving rain. Eric turned his head and his gaze landed on a vertical row of doorbells. He was about to idly check for Cassidy’s name when he snapped his head around to face the street again.

It hadn’t occurred to him at any point—when he’d notified his political contacts he was taking a few days off, while he packed his suitcase, during the long plane journey—that Cassidy might not live alone.

There might be a man in there, who’d been waiting for Cassidy to return home. A man she was cooking dinner with. A man she was telling about her day—leaving out the part about seeing an old not-quite-boyfriend?

Was she kissing this man, so soon after—?

Eric set his jaw. Who cared?

Ah, crap. He leaped to his feet and scanned the doorbells. It was the top one of three: C. Maxwell.

No name crammed in next to hers in the small space.

Of course, it didn’t mean she didn’t have a boyfriend who lived elsewhere. For the time being.

Okay. He sat again and the step was no warmer for his having just left it. He didn’t know about her love life, and he wouldn’t know. She certainly wouldn’t volunteer it, and he wouldn’t ask.

That kiss—why had he kissed her? With his careless spilling of emotion, he’d lost all leverage he’d had to be able to interrogate her, to finally learn the truth.

But that kiss—how could he have not kissed her? He’d tasted a memory of crayons and Play-Doh mixed with the exotic newness of her as an adult who craved a different sort of satisfaction. He couldn’t get her off his skin. Shaking her off had been a challenging, sorrowful, arduous process, and now he was back to square one.

He sat there, at square one, shaking his head, for an hour and a half.

He was still sitting when Cassidy finally emerged. She didn’t see him. She backed out of her front door, fumbling with her keys. A black trench coat was draped over her arm, implying she was in such a rush that it would be thrown on while walking quickly to wherever she was going.

She snapped open a little gold-beaded purse and dropped her keys inside. There couldn’t be room in there for much else. She turned just as Eric got to his feet on the top step. She froze, her expression a blend of nervousness and extreme pissed-off-ness. She put her hand back on the doorknob.

“No, please,” Eric said. “Please, Cassidy. I needed to talk to you. I knew you wouldn’t meet me.”

Cassidy blew out a hard breath, and her eyes narrowed. But Eric’s eyes traveled down from her face, and her warning signs became insignificant. Her body—the body he’d once hugged through a navy Saunders University sweatshirt and denim shorts—was poured into a dress that rendered him speechless. Her freckled shoulders and arms were bare except for two thin straps. Her breasts, only slightly more cream-colored than the satin gown, swelled out from a tight bodice. The dress fell from her waist in gauzy layers, cut on a diagonal so that he had an unobstructed view of one long, toned calf. Bright red toenails peeked out from complicated-looking gold sandals, the kind a Roman goddess might have worn.

He dragged his gaze back to her face, framed with sleek burnished waves. Surprise was all over that flawless face. How could that be? How could she not know that if he’d loved her girlish looks, her womanly beauty could very well strike him dead where he stood?

“Give me a break,” he said, but his words sounded, even to him, more of a desperate plea than a command. He added, “I came all the way here.”

Cassidy spoke. “So I see.”

“I mean, I came all the way to London, not all the way to your apartment. Though I did come here…I’m not stalking you.”

Cassidy hesitated, panic spreading across her features. She shivered and shrugged into her coat. Then she raised her arm and, at a volume Eric had never heard come from her throat, yelled, “Taxi!”

She started down the steps. Eric took light hold of her wrist.

“What are you doing? You can’t spare me a minute of time?”

Cassidy thought it over.

“Yeah, okay. I followed you. But I really have to talk to you and I didn’t know how else to get through to you.”

He squeezed his fingers around her skin a tiny bit, a physical entreaty.

“Hear me out. Just hear me out. You don’t have to—” He cut himself off. She was regarding him warily, but she didn’t yell for a taxi again. He let go of her wrist and dragged his hands through his hair, digging his short nails into his scalp. “You don’t have to say anything. All right? I was wrong. I was wrong to ask you anything about why you—about why you left. I was wrong to kiss you like that. I was wrong to demand anything. It doesn’t matter now. How could it matter now?”

Cassidy didn’t answer, but Eric hadn’t expected her to.

“It doesn’t. That’s not why I’m supposed to be here, it’s not why I’m supposed to talk to you. I’m here for Gilbert Harrison, and Gilbert Harrison only. Can we go somewhere? Twenty minutes, I promise. Then you can go—wherever you’re going. Unless—” shoot “—you have a date picking you up?”

Cassidy shook her head, a tiny motion that made Eric breathe a little bit easier.

“All right, then. Can we go somewhere for a drink, maybe?”

Cassidy pressed her lips together, thinking, then nodded vaguely to the other side of the street.

“After you,” Eric said.

Cassidy nodded like a queen, then took the first step, wobbling the slightest bit on what could have been four-inch heels. Eric took her arm gently, hoping her stubbornness wouldn’t make her shake it off so hard that she went sprawling onto the pavement.

She quietly allowed it.

They walked across the street and down about a half dozen doors to a pub called the Black Horse. He opened the heavy wooden door to a rowdy ruckus of football fans screaming at a TV above the bar. Eric couldn’t tell whether the noise was happiness or disappointment. It occurred to him for the first time that sports fans tended to sound the same no matter who was winning.

When Cassidy, in her open coat, swept through the door that Eric held open, a collective hush fell over the men gathered around the television. The silence was only long enough to be noted, then catcalls and whistles filled the air. Eric tried to glare at each man in turn, but ale and sports had watered down any deference they might have had to a protective escort. Cassidy clicked by them, all but oblivious, leading Eric to a table in the back corner, and as soon as she was out of their eyeballing range, the noise level shot back up.

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