The man standing on her doorstep was a total stranger

One who wasn’t scary, but could be. At a little over six foot, he wasn’t unusually tall, but he was broad. Big shouldered, with strong legs and powerful arms and neck. His face was blunt featured, even crude, but somehow pleasing, the only reason Kathleen didn’t slam the door in a panic.

He was the kind of man she couldn’t picture in a well-cut suit, the antithesis of her handsome, successful ex-husband. This man had to work with his hands.

“May I help you?” she asked finally.

“I’m Logan Carr.” He looked expectant, adding when she didn’t respond, “I’m the cabinetmaker.”

“Oh, no!” She’d made an appointment with him so that he could give her a bid. She, of course, had completely forgotten.

Somehow this was the last straw. One more thing to have gone wrong, one more thing to think about when she couldn’t. Suddenly he was a blur, and she was humiliated to realize she was crying.

He stepped forward, taking advantage of her nerveless hand to come uninvited into her house and to close the door behind him. The next thing she knew, she was engulfed in powerful arms and a flannel shirt, her wet cheek pressed to his chest.

And did she, dignified, gracious but reserved, wrench free and demand he leave?

No. She buried her face in that comforting flannel and let herself sob.

Dear Reader,

Kathleen Monroe is at the heart of this trilogy. After all, she’s the one who bought the old brick house in Seattle where three woman live as they embark on new phases of their lives.

As a writer, I love nothing more than exploring how people react to the greatest stresses I can throw at them. You notice I say “people,” not “characters.” That’s because I do try to create people as real as you and me. Sometimes they’ve done ignoble things but are capable of growth and even sacrifice for their loved ones. I’d like to believe almost everyone can and will do the same.

Which makes me a romantic, I fear! So, sure, I’m writing about an angry teenager who is starving herself to death, a woman described by one of her roommates as a “princess” because she is beautiful, charming and spoiled, and a homely cabinetmaker who knows in his heart he isn’t good enough for the “princess.” Doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven, does it?

But, oh, just wait…. If I do say so myself, Logan Carr is one of my all-time most appealing heroes. Question is, can Kathleen measure up?

Good reading!

Janice Kay Johnson

The Perfect Mum
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Perfect Mum

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

A CHILD SCREAMED, a piercing note of terror that seemed to shiver the window glass.

Kathleen dropped her coffee mug and shot to her feet, tripping over her bathrobe. Even as she raced for the kitchen doorway, heart doing sickening things in her chest, she thought, Was that Emma? Not Ginny, surely. Even her giggles were soft!

The scream became a gurgle, a sobbed, “Auntie Kath! Auntie Kath!” and Kathleen knew. Ginny was terrified because she’d found…

Emma. Something was wrong with Emma.

Hiking her robe above her knees, she leaped up the stairs two at a time. “Ginny! What’s wrong?”

Their cat hurtled down the stairs, ricocheting off Kathleen’s shin before vanishing below. Wild-eyed and wearing nothing but a sacky T-shirt, Jo emerged from her bedroom, the first at the head of the stairs. One of Kathleen’s adult roommates who helped pay the rent, Jo was a graduate student and didn’t have to get up as early as the others this semester.

“What is it?”

Kathleen didn’t answer.

Six-year-old Ginny, the timid mouse in their household, darted from the bathroom. Hiccuping with sobs, she snatched Kathleen’s hand.

“Auntie Kath! It’s Emma!”

A whimper escaped Kathleen’s throat when she reached the bathroom. Her daughter lay unconscious on the floor, blood matting her hair.

“Emma! Oh, God. Emma.” She fell to her knees, barely conscious of Jo and Ginny crowding behind her.

A faint pulse fluttered in Emma’s throat, but her face was waxen and still.

“She’s so cold.” Gripping her daughter’s hand, Kathleen swiveled on her knees. “What happened, Ginny? Did you see?”

Tears running down her face, Ginny nodded. “She…she was looking at…at herself in the mirror.” Another sob shook her small body. “Her eyes rolled back, and she fell over! Auntie Kath! Is she dead?”

Even in her fear, Kathleen spared a moment to shake her head. Ginny had lost her dad to cancer a year ago. Death must often be on her mind.

“No, Ginny. I think Emma fainted. You know she hasn’t been eating enough.” Understatement, she thought grimly. In fact, sixteen-year-old Emma had been anorexic for the past year, and this spring had managed to stay barely above eighty pounds. An ounce below, she’d been warned, and she was going into residential treatment. “She must have hit her head on the tub.”

Jo, bless her, laid her hands on Ginny’s shoulders and gently steered her out of the bathroom. “I’ll call 911,” she said briskly. “Don’t try to move her, Kathleen.”

“I won’t.” Her daughter’s hand was icy in hers. “Hurry, Jo. Oh, God, please hurry.”

The wait seemed forever, although Jo must have been back in no more than a minute or two. She was still pulling a sweatshirt over her head.

“I’ll stay with her. Go get dressed, Kathleen. You’ll want to go to the hospital with her.”

Dazed, Kathleen looked up. “Dressed?”

“Hurry.” Her dark-haired roommate—and sister-in-law to be—crouched beside her. “You’ll be okay, Emma,” she said softly, her hand delicately stroking Emma’s cold cheek.

Yes. She had to get dressed. Kathleen stumbled to her feet and backed out of the bathroom, her gaze fixed on Emma’s white, gaunt face. She did look dead. And why not? She’d been dying for months, killing herself with her refusal to eat.

Kathleen bumped into the wall and turned, blindly heading toward her bedroom. Her fault. This was her fault.

She should have seen it coming, checked Emma into treatment. Her face crumpled. Why hadn’t she? Because she’d sincerely thought Emma was recovering? Or because she didn’t want to believe she couldn’t handle her own child’s problems?

In her bedroom, she grabbed clothes from her dresser and scrambled into them without caring what she put on. Not bothering with socks, she shoved her feet into Swedish clogs, yanked a hairbrush through her hair and ran back to the bathroom.

Jo looked up. “Her lashes just fluttered. I think she may be regaining consciousness. I sent Ginny for an ice pack from the freezer.”

“Where are they?” Kathleen asked desperately, even as she heard a distant wail.

Jo rose. “I’ll let them in.” She gave Kathleen a quick hug. “She’ll be all right, Kathleen. Just hold on.”

The EMTs were actually coming up the stairs when Emma’s eyes opened. She stared blankly up. In a slurred voice, she asked, “What happened?”

“You collapsed. And hit your head.”

Slow and heavy, Emma whispered, “I was…a…little…dizzy.” Her lids sank shut.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kathleen whispered, feeling again how icy her daughter’s hand was. “You’ll be fine.”

For the first time, she knew she was lying.

KATHLEEN PACED THE SMALL waiting room, too scared to sit down or to pretend to read a Good Housekeeping or Sports Illustrated magazine, as a couple of other people were doing. They watched her surreptitiously, and she saw pity along with kindness in their eyes.

Looking as if she’d been running, Jo appeared in the doorway, Ginny clinging to her side. “How is she?”

“I don’t know!” Kathleen wailed. “They’re taking X rays.”

Jo opened her arms and Kathleen fell into them, marveling at how natural it felt even though she’d never been comfortable with casual hugs or physical intimacy. It was a moment before she felt movement down by her thigh and remembered that poor Ginny was here, too.

Face wet, she pulled back and said quietly, “You didn’t put Ginny on the school bus?”

“How could I? She was too upset. Here, Hummingbird.” Jo hoisted the child onto a chair. “Your mom is coming.”

“You called Helen?”

Jo looked at Kathleen as if she were nuts. “Well, of course I did! You don’t think she’d want to know?”

“Well, I suppose…” Kathleen said uncertainly.

This was new to her, having this oddly assorted family. After leaving her husband, she and Emma had lived for a few months in an apartment, before she decided the arrangement wasn’t temporary and they needed a real home. Of course they could have moved in with her father, but she’d been glad to leave her parents’ house in the first place, and wasn’t about to go back at her age. With Seattle real estate prices and her own lack of job skills, she couldn’t afford a mortgage on her own. So she’d advertised for roommates.

She had been amazingly lucky. Kathleen had had her doubts about the wisdom of taking on Helen and small, sad Ginny. Helen was engulfed in grief and Ginny was so withdrawn, Jo admitted to thinking of her as a ghost, drifting insubstantially around the house. The truth was, Kathleen had felt sorry for Helen and offered her a room out of pity, not common sense. Sad though Helen still was, she had become a good friend.

In her late twenties, Jo had seemed like a better choice. Unencumbered with children, she’d gotten tired of being an “acting” librarian and decided to go back to school to get her master’s degree so she could be the real thing. She’d seemed to be pleasant, private and quietly ambitious. Better yet, she had turned out to have some construction skills and had been a big help in remodeling first the upstairs and then the downstairs bathrooms in the old house in the Ravenna district.

She had also become engaged in short order to Kathleen’s brother, Ryan.

Now, clinging to her hand, Kathleen was intensely grateful that they’d decided to put off the wedding until summer to give his kids time to adjust to the idea of having a stepmom. After all, Melissa and Tyler had suffered enough trauma when their mom decided over Christmas vacation that she couldn’t keep them and had sent them to live with Ryan.

Kathleen was dreading having to find a new roommate who would come close to measuring up to Jo.

Especially since the three women and two kids had really come to feel like family in such a short time. They depended on each other. How could they replace one member of their household as if she was…was a washing machine that had quit?

“I left a message for Ryan, too,” Jo told her. “I don’t know when he’ll get it.”

“Something’s wrong,” Kathleen decided. “They’d have come back for me if it wasn’t.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “I should go ask. I’m so scared, Jo.”

“I know.” Her roommate gave her another hug. “But she was already talking to you on the way over, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, but her eyes looked funny. And her voice…” Kathleen had to stop, then try again with quiet desperation. “Her voice was slurred. As if she was drunk.”

“She did hit her head,” Jo reminded her.

“Yes, but…”

“Mrs. Monroe?”

Kathleen whirled.

A dark-haired, plump woman in a white lab coat, stethoscope around her neck, stood in the waiting room doorway.

Kathleen’s heart drummed in her ears. “Yes?”

“I’m Dr. Weaver. Emma wants to see you, but I’d like to speak to you first.”

Kathleen nodded dumbly and followed her, leaving Jo and Ginny in the waiting room.

Dr. Weaver stopped in the wide corridor where they were alone, and said quietly, “Emma tells me she’s been in counseling for her eating disorder.”

“For the past year.” Kathleen told the doctor Emma’s history, the name of her therapist and internist.

“Ah.” Dr. Weaver’s face was compassionate. “Well, I suspect she’s been conning them somehow. She weighs seventy-seven pounds.” The doctor talked about electrolytes, liver and kidney function and the danger of heart damage, concluding, “Emma needs to be in a controlled, residential setting where her food intake is monitored. She should gain as much as ten pounds before she can safely be discharged.”

Kathleen seemed able to do little but nod. The lump in her throat made talking difficult, but she said, “We’ve discussed putting her in a residential program, but she seemed…” She bit her lip, breathed deeply. Don’t cry. A semblance of control regained, she said simply, “I kept telling myself that she was doing better.”

The doctor nodded. “People with eating disorders are some of the best liars and manipulators in the world. They’re a little like drug addicts. They’ll do anything to protect their habits.”

“Has she suffered permanent damage?”

“We’ll need to run further tests to have a better sense of where she is. I think she can recover. Her youth is in her favor. The odds of complete recovery diminish the longer someone with her problem goes without effective treatment. You did the right thing getting her into counseling so soon.”

“For what good it’s done,” Kathleen said bitterly.

The doctor gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Unfortunately, resisting is also part of the process. Teenagers with this problem don’t listen to you or a counselor and say, ‘Oh! I see the light.’ They kick and scream and dig the trenches deeper. That’s what she’s been doing. It doesn’t mean she hasn’t been hearing more than she is willing, yet, to accept.”

Kathleen nodded again, teeth worrying her lower lip. “Does she have a concussion?”

“Certainly a mild one. This may be good for her, Mrs. Monroe. A wake-up call even she can’t ignore.”

Kathleen had to laugh, if without much humor. “Oh, I don’t know. Emma can ignore quite a lot.”

They agreed that Emma should be checked into the hospital for the night, giving Kathleen time to make arrangements for her to enter a treatment program for eating disorders. Fortunately, Emma’s counselor and internist were associated with the program Kathleen had chosen—and hoped never to have to use.

She went out to tell Jo the news and found Helen, her other roommate, there as well. Dressed for work in brown slacks and a cream silk blouse, a rose and brown and rust scarf artfully knotted around her throat, she looked far from the timid and tired woman she had been when she came to look at the house seven months ago.

“Kathleen! Is she all right?”

They all crowded around while Kathleen told them what she’d learned. “I’ll need to make some calls, but first I’m going to see Emma. They won’t let anyone else in,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Ginny slipped behind her mother. Her expression anxious, Helen said, “Oh, dear. Ginny isn’t convinced Emma will be okay.”

“I’ll ask,” Kathleen promised. “Maybe they’d let Ginny pop in just for a minute.”

Emma lay in a curtained cubicle, a couple of blankets covering her up to her chin. For a moment, Kathleen stood unseen, and her heart seemed to stop. Lying like this, laid out on her back, eyes closed, Emma could have been dead. Her face, once piquant and a little chubby, was marble pale and gaunt. Not the slightest healthy color flushed her cheeks. Even her lips were bluish.

How did I not see how near death she was? Kathleen asked herself in silent despair. How could I have kept pretending?

Easily, she knew. Oh, how easily, because the alternative was too difficult, too painful.

The curtains rattled when she stepped forward and Emma’s eyes, huge in her thin face, opened. “Mom,” she croaked.

Kathleen pinned on a smile. “Sweetie, you scared us.”

“I’m sorry. I must have slipped or something. Maybe I spilled some water.”

The floor had been bone-dry when Kathleen sat at her daughter’s side. “Maybe,” she said, smoothing hair from Emma’s forehead. Her hair was brittle and colorless, too, a ghost of its former rich gold threaded with gilt and amber and sunlight.

“Can I go home now?”

Here came the hard part.

Kathleen shook her head. “Dr. Weaver wants to check you into the hospital for the night. You do have a concussion, you know.”

“But I’m fine!” Emma struggled to sit up. “If they’re worried about me passing out or something, you can watch me, can’t you? Or Ginny? She always follows me around anyway.”

“It’s not so bad here.” Kathleen hesitated, but didn’t have a chance to continue.

“Make them take this out!” Emma brandished her hand, in which an IV needle had been stuck and taped down. In agitation, she exclaimed, “There’s sugar or something in that! I’d already had breakfast, and now they’re, like, pumping all these calories into me! I’ll have to diet for weeks to make up for it!”

Diet? The idea would have been laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic and even grotesque. How could she cut any more? She barely ate a few leaves of lettuce, non-fat Jell-O and unsweetened herb tea now.

“Honey…”

“I’ll take it out myself!” Emma began clawing at the tape.

“Stop!” Kathleen grabbed her wrist and wrenched her hand away, surprised at frail Emma’s strength. Holding her arm down, she said, “You collapsed because you’ve starved yourself. You will not take this IV out!”

“That’s not true!” Emma glared at her. “You know I’ve been eating. You see me.”

Near tears, Kathleen shook her head. “No. I don’t. You don’t eat enough to keep a…a mouse alive. You’ve been doing your best to kill yourself, but I won’t let you. You’re not coming home. You’re spending the night in the hospital, and tomorrow you’re going into residential treatment.”

Screaming in rage, Emma tore her hand from Kathleen’s grip. “You promised!” she yelled. “You said if I stayed above eighty pounds, I didn’t have to go! You’re a liar, liar, liar!”

Kathleen drew a shuddering breath in the face of her daughter’s vitriol. “I’m not the liar. Dr. Weaver says you don’t weigh anywhere near eighty pounds. You’ve been tricking us somehow. But you knew the consequences, Emma. You’re not getting better. You’re getting worse.”

“I hate you!”

“I love you,” Kathleen said, eyes burning, and turned to leave.

Emma threw herself onto her side, drew her knees up and began to sob.

Kathleen’s heart shattered into a million pieces. She wanted, as she’d never wanted anything in her life, to say, All right, you can come home, if you promise to eat. She wanted to see incredulity and hope and gratitude light her daughter’s face, as if her mother could still do and be anything and everything to her. Of course she’d promise.

And then she would lie and scheme to keep starving. She would exercise in the middle of the night to burn off calories she’d been forced to swallow, she’d take laxatives, she’d hide food in her cheek and then spit it out.

She would die, if she had her way.

Paralyzed, hurting unbearably, Kathleen didn’t turn around.

This was harder, even, than leaving Ian, harder than facing her own inability to provide a decent livelihood, harder than facing the fact that she, too, was responsible for Emma’s self-hatred. But if she truly loved her daughter, she had to be firm now.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushed aside the curtains and fled.

In the tiny, antiseptic rest room open to family members, Kathleen locked the door, sat on the toilet and cried until her stomach hurt and she’d run out of tears. The sight of her face in the mirror should have stirred horror, but she stared almost indifferently at the puffy-faced woman gazing dully back. She did splash cold water on her face and brush her hair before facing the world again.

At the nurse’s station, she stopped. “I’m Emma Monroe’s mother.”

Quick compassion showed in the other woman’s expression. “Are you all right?”

Kathleen nodded, although they both knew she wasn’t. “I’m sure my daughter will take out the IV, if she hasn’t already. You’d better check it regularly.”

“We will. Thank you.”

Kathleen explained about Ginny, and the nurse came with her to get the child.

Taking Ginny’s hand, she smiled kindly. “Let’s just go back and say hi to Emma. You can’t stay, because she’s getting ready to go upstairs to be checked into the hospital, but I know she’ll be glad to see you.”

“Thank you,” Helen said, watching her daughter be led away. “She’s really scared.”

Kathleen nodded. Her head felt disconnected to her body. Huge, and yet, eerily, weightless, as if it were a hot air balloon and she were the tiny wicker basket, dangling beneath, swaying in space.

Jo’s arm came firmly around her. “You look awful,” she said frankly. “Is Emma mad?”

Kathleen nodded again. Her head kept bobbing, as if it didn’t know how to stop. “I told her.” Her voice sounded far away, too, perhaps because it was being drowned out by the roar of the burners that kept the balloon inflated.

“That she’s going into treatment?”

Kathleen was still nodding. A dull throbbing suggested that a headache was building, a storm threatening her sense of unreality.

Jo turned her so that Kathleen had to meet her eyes. “You’re doing the right thing. You know you are.”

“Do I?”

Once, she had been a confident woman who believed, the vast majority of the time, that she was doing the right thing. She had a perfect life, didn’t she? A handsome husband, a smart daughter, a beautiful home, and she worked hard for several charities, doing her share of good. She had glided serenely through life—the life she had chosen, had craved from the time she was a small child and could see the wretchedness of her parents’ crummy jobs and shabby house.

Now, Kathleen could see how smug she had been. Pride goeth before the fall, she thought bleakly. Perhaps, pride caused the fall. With her nose so high in the air, it was easy to trip over an uneven bit of sidewalk, something that should have been right before her eyes.

“I need to make phone calls.” She looked vaguely around. “I didn’t bring my cell phone.”

“I have mine,” Jo offered.

Returning, Ginny raced to her mother. Voice shrill, she said, “There was blood all over! Emma took out that needle in her hand, but they put it back.” Her fingers gripped her mother’s slacks and she gazed up in appeal. “Why does she have to have it in, Mommy?”

Helen knelt and took her daughter by the shoulder. “You know why, don’t you? Daddy had an IV, too, remember?”

Ginny’s lip trembled and she nodded hard.

“It doesn’t mean Emma is dying like Daddy. All it means is that the doctors want to get medicine or just water into someone’s body. Daddy hurt so much, it was the best way to give him painkillers.” Her voice wobbled only a little. “But Emma isn’t even getting medicine. She’s getting water and maybe some vitamins and sugar, because she doesn’t eat enough. That’s why she’s mad. You know how she gets when someone tries to make her eat.”

The six-year-old nodded, her expression relaxing. “She yells at Auntie Kath.”

“Uh-huh. Well—” Helen glanced up wryly at Kathleen “—this is her way of yelling at the nurses. Right now, she can’t stamp her foot or race to her bedroom and slam the door, can she?”

“No-o.”

“So she took out the needle and said, ‘You can’t make me!’”

Creases formed on Ginny’s high, arching forehead. “Only, they can. Can’t they, Mommy?”

“Yep. They’re going to help her get better by making her eat. This is the first step.”

“Oh,” the child said solemnly.

Helen rose. “Kathleen, why don’t you make your calls from home? You can come back later. Emma will be fine. It might be just as well to give her time to get over her tantrum.”

Yes. Home sounded good.

Kathleen nodded and let her friends lead her to the nurse’s station where she explained, then to the business office where she gave all the information on insurance, and finally to Jo’s car.

“See you at home,” Helen said, and started across the parking lot with her hand on Ginny’s shoulder. Poor Ginny, Kathleen saw, still wore the baggy T-shirt she slept in along with a pair of jeans and sneakers with no socks and the laces dragging. Her unbrushed hair was lank and tangled.

Jo looked better, not because she’d spent more time on grooming, but because her thick, glossy hair seemed destined to fall into place. She wore little makeup at any time, and her sweater and jeans were pretty much what she threw on every day.

Even through her dullness, which she thought must be nature’s form of anesthesia, Kathleen remembered uneasily what she had looked like in the mirror. Yes, going home was a good idea.

As Jo drove out of the parking lot, Kathleen said, “Thank you.”

Jo shot her a startled, even annoyed glance. “You mean, for coming? For Pete’s sake, Kathleen! What did you think we’d all do? Head off to school and work as if nothing had happened?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then let it rest.”

Exhaustion and worry weighing her down, Kathleen gazed unseeing at the passing streets. She wanted to go home and crawl into bed and pretend none of this had happened, that it was Sunday and she could sleep as late as she wanted.

Instead, she should shower and make herself presentable, then start a formidable list of calls. Work, to explain why she wasn’t coming. Someone else would have to cover the front desk at the chiropractor’s office. The insurance company, Emma’s doctor, the therapist, the treatment program…

Her mind skipped. Please, God, let there be room.

Ian. She should at least let him know, although chances were she wouldn’t actually have to talk to him. She’d leave a message on his voice mail or with his secretary. He probably wouldn’t even call back. Never mind phone his daughter and express concern.

After all, Emma could eat if she wanted. She was just being stubborn. Melodramatic. Ridiculous. Taking her to doctors and therapists was playing her game, pampering her.

He could not, would not, admit that his daughter had a real problem and was thus flawed in any way. After all, he’d had the perfect life, the perfect wife, hadn’t he? Kathleen thought bitterly. Why shouldn’t he have the perfect daughter, too?

She’d like to believe it was because he wasn’t perfect. In his rage and intolerance, Ian had made it easy for her to believe he was at fault: his demands, his expectations, his irritation with the tiniest mistake or flaw in appearance or failure in school or on the tennis court or at a dinner party.

What was becoming slowly, painfully apparent was that her expectations, her smugness, had hurt Emma as much if not more. Jo had once tried to convince Kathleen that Emma felt free to lash out at her mother not because she was angrier at her than she was at her father, but because she felt safer with her, knew Kathleen loved her. Kathleen hoped it was true.

But she couldn’t absolve herself. If she were warm, supportive and accepting, why hadn’t Emma been able to shrug off her father’s unreasonable criticism? Why hadn’t she recovered, after Kathleen left Ian and she’d no longer had to face his sharp, impatient assessment daily?

Would she be lying in the hospital, so perilously close to death, if her mother hadn’t failed her, too?

Kathleen didn’t say another word on the short drive home. Jo parked right in the driveway instead of on the street, as she usually did, so Kathleen was able to trudge up the concrete steps, stumble on the tree root that had lifted part of the walkway, and make it onto the front porch before she realized she didn’t have keys and would have to wait for Jo.

Fortunately, her roommate was right behind her to wordlessly unlock and let her in. Once inside, Kathleen glanced at the clock.

“Don’t you have an eleven o’clock class? You could still make it if you hurry.”

Jo shook her head. “No big deal.”

“Go,” Kathleen ordered. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll take a shower, make my calls, and go back to the hospital. Anyway, Helen must be right behind us. She’ll be here any time.”

Jo hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

She bounded upstairs, returning almost immediately with her bright red book bag. “You know my cell phone number. Call if you want me. I’ll leave it on even in class. Promise?”

Kathleen produced a weak smile. “Promise.”

The moment Jo shut the front door behind her, Kathleen sank onto the bottom step. She would shower; she had things to do. In a minute. Maybe in a few minutes. Right now, she needed to sit, be alone and regroup.

Pirate, the seven-month-old kitten they had rescued and adopted the previous fall, poked his fluffy Creamsicle orange-and-white head around the corner from the living room. His right eye, which had been hanging from the socket when Jo and the girls found him, didn’t gaze in quite the same direction as the other eye, so the veterinarian wasn’t certain how much he saw out of it. They didn’t care. The fact that he had two eyes was a victory.

Kathleen discovered suddenly that she didn’t want to be completely alone. A warm, fluffy, purring cat on her lap would make her feel better.

“Kitty, kitty,” she murmured, and patted her thigh.

Pirate took a step toward her.

The doorbell rang. Scared by the morning’s events, the kitten bolted again.

Helen must have forgotten her keys, too, Kathleen thought, heaving herself to her feet. But, wait— She’d come from work. She’d been driving. Walking away in the hospital parking lot, she had had her keys in her hand. Kathleen remembered seeing the silly hot-pink smiley face attached to a key ring that Ginny had given her mother for her birthday dangling between Helen’s fingers.

Mind working sluggishly, Kathleen was already in the act of opening the door before she had reached this point in her recollections, or she probably wouldn’t have answered the doorbell at all. She didn’t want to see anybody, even her brother, Ryan.

But the man standing on her doorstep wasn’t Ryan. In fact, he was a total stranger. One who…wasn’t scary exactly, but could be.

At a little over six feet, he wasn’t unusually tall, but he was broad. Big shouldered, stocky, with strong legs and powerful arms and neck. His hair was dark and shaggy, his eyes some unnameable color but watchful, and his face was blunt-featured, even crude, but somehow pleasing, the only reason Kathleen didn’t slam the door in a panic.

He was the kind of man she couldn’t picture in a well-cut suit, the antithesis of her handsome, successful ex-husband. This man had to work with his hands. Like her brother’s, they were nicked, callused and bandaged, the fingers thick and blunt-tipped. In one hand, he held a gray metal contractor’s clipboard.

He seemed to be waiting patiently while she appraised him from puffy eyes.

“May I help you?” she asked finally, warily, her hand on the door poised to slam it in his face if he lunged for her.

“I’m Logan Carr.”

He said his name as if it should mean something to her. Maybe it did, she thought, frowning. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it niggled.

Buying time, she said, “Um…I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

“We had an appointment.” He looked expectant, adding when she didn’t respond, “I’m the cabinetmaker.”

“Oh, no!” That was it. On Ryan’s recommendation, she’d called Carr Cabinetmaking and arranged to dash home during an early lunch hour so that he could look and measure and give her a bid. She, of course, had completely forgotten.

“Are you all right?” He sounded kind.

Somehow this was the last straw. One more thing to have gone wrong, one more thing to think about when she couldn’t.

“I’m…I’m…” Suddenly he was a blur, and she was humiliated to realize she was crying in front of this stranger. “Fine,” she managed to say.

“No,” he said, stepping forward, taking advantage of her nerveless hand to come uninvited into her house and to close the door behind them. “You aren’t.”

The next thing she knew, she was engulfed in powerful arms and flannel shirt, smelling this stranger’s sweat and deodorant and aftershave, her wet cheek pressed to his chest.

And did she, dignified, gracious but reserved, wrench free and demand he leave?

No. She buried her face in that comforting flannel and let herself sob.

CHAPTER TWO

LOGAN CARR MADE SOOTHING sounds while he held the gorgeous blonde.

What in hell? he thought with wry amusement. His face wasn’t pretty, but didn’t usually inspire women to burst into tears.

When she didn’t quiet down, he became worried. Should he be calling the cops? An ambulance? “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.

She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.

“I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.

Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.

He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.

Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”

“I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”

The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.

“Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.

The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.

“I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.

She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”

“Logan Carr,” he said, extending his hand.

“Helen Schaefer.” She shook his hand. “This is Ginny.”

“Ah.” How did you politely say, And who the hell are you?

“Ginny, did you want to watch television while I show Mr. Carr the kitchen?”

The waif shook her head hard, her big eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

Helen Schaefer didn’t look so hot, either, he noted, which made him wonder anew what had happened to upset both women so much. Her face was too pale under skillfully applied makeup, the shadows beneath her eyes purple. He’d felt the tremor in her hand, saw the gentleness with which she stroked her daughter’s head.

“Lead on,” Logan said, wishing the classy blonde hadn’t skipped. He picked up his clipboard from the step where he’d dropped it earlier.

The kitchen had potential and not much else. The vast floor space was wasted, as was typical for a house of this era. Cabinets had been added in about the 1940s, if he was any judge. Which meant drawers didn’t glide on runners, cabinets were deep spaces where you could lose a kid the size of this Ginny, and they stretched to the ten-foot ceiling, the upper ones useful only for stowing stuff that ten years later you were surprised to discover you still owned.

“We can’t afford to replace those,” the redhead told him. “What we’re thinking is that we can make use of this corner.” She gestured.

One area held a table, set with pretty quilted placemats. The corner she had indicated currently had a cart and oldish microwave, an extra chair and a lot of nothing.

Logan considered. They didn’t want to replace their crappy, inadequate kitchen cupboards. Instead, they had in mind him building something that didn’t match in this corner.

Go figure.

“Make use in what way?” he asked politely.

Apparently reading his mind, she smiled with the first spark of life—and amusement—he’d seen in her.

“Kathleen and I have started a business together. We’ve only made a few sales—this is really at the ground floor—but unfortunately it’s taking over the kitchen, and we all have to live here, too.”

“All?” he asked, hoping he didn’t seem nosy.

“Kathleen owns the house,” she explained, “but Ginny and I live here, too, along with another roommate, Jo, and Kathleen’s daughter Emma.”

The one who hated her, he presumed.

And who was Joe, lucky bastard, living with a couple of beautiful women? Unless they were lesbians and Joe was gay.

Nah. Logan couldn’t imagine the woman who’d tumbled into his arms and felt so natural there as a lesbian. Unless that was why she’d left her husband…

Damn it! he thought in irritation. What difference did it make what lifestyle she’d chosen? He wasn’t courting the woman, for Pete’s sake! He was bidding to build some cabinets for her.

Period.

He cleared his throat. “What kind of business is taking over the kitchen?”

“Kathleen makes soap. I market it.”

“Soap.”

“Yeah. You know.” She gazed expectantly at him. “Bars of it. The good kind. Not the kind you buy at the grocery store.”

Personally, he bought whatever was cheap and not too smelly. Speaking of which… He inhaled experimentally. The kitchen was fragrant. He’d vaguely thought they must have been baking earlier, but the overall impression wasn’t of food, but more…flowery.

“Soap-making,” he repeated, and contemplated the corner. “Tell me what it involves.”

They both turned at the sound of a footstep. Looking like a different woman, Kathleen came into the kitchen.

Her face was expertly made up, her thick golden hair loosely French braided. She wore a long, black, knit skirt that clung to her hips and thighs, and over it a simple T-shirt in a vivid shade of aqua. She looked like a million dollars.

“I’m back,” she said with a warm but somehow practiced smile. “Ready to beg your pardon for forgetting you were coming, and then weeping all over you.”

Her face was maybe still a little puffy, her eyes a little red. Even so, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, from her high graceful forehead to pronounced cheekbones and a full, sensuous mouth. She had the kind of translucent skin, faintly touched with freckles, that gives a woman an ageless quality. He couldn’t tell if she was twenty-five or forty. Either way, her face would have looked fine on the cover of one of those fashion magazines.

“Ms. Schaefer was just telling me about the soap-making,” he said. “I gather you work out of the house.”

“We both have real jobs, too,” Helen Schaefer said almost apologetically, “but we have faith this will take off.”

Kathleen Monroe smelled good, Logan discovered when she stopped beside him. The scent was citrus, a little tart but also delicious. He wanted to bury his face in her hair.

Cabinets, he reminded himself. He was here to make a bid. Not make a move on a woman.

They showed him their supplies and the small pantry, which currently held row upon row of bars of soap, all “curing” according to them. Here was where the smell emanated from. Shelves and the single countertop overflowed, and more circled the floor.

There were long square-edged “loaves” that would be sliced into bars, according to Kathleen. Some of these were clear but vividly colored, sea-green or shocking pink or rainbow streaked. Others were cloudy, dark-flecked and oatmeal colored, another a deep, speckled plum. Some soaps, looking more conventional, had been molded into ovals and rounds, with intricate designs of flowers and leaves pressed into the tops. They were beautiful, he realized, bemused. Not delicate and feminine, but solid and colorful and even sensual. He resisted the urge to touch or bend over to sniff individual bars.

The fragrance swelled in this tiny enclosed area, a symphony where a few notes strummed on a guitar would have been plenty. Cinnamon and flowers and God knew what swirled together to overload his nose.

As he backed out, the two women laughed.

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” Helen asked.

“Ventilation,” Logan said. “You’ll want a fan out here and maybe another one in the pantry.”

“That would be great,” Kathleen agreed. “Sometimes it’s hard to eat, oh, say, Thai food when what you’re smelling are vanilla and cinnamon.”

He took out his clipboard and started to make notes: broad, double sinks, a stove top, storage for the tools of soap making: scales, jugs and huge pots and measuring cups and spoons.

“Oh, and molds,” Kathleen said, her face animated. She opened a kitchen cupboard so he could see the odd conglomeration of containers used to mold soap, some—he guessed—meant for the purpose, others as simple as ice cube trays, muffin tins and boxes. “A cupboard with nooks designed specifically for the molds would be great.”

Her main need, he gathered, was for work and storage space. He took his tape measure from his belt and began making notes while they watched, the kid still clinging to mom and staring as if she thought he was an ax murderer.

“Get my name from Ryan?” he asked casually.

“He says you’re the best,” Kathleen said.

“Oh, is Ryan a friend of yours?” the redhead asked. “He’s marrying Jo.”

Joe? The tape measure strung on the floor, Logan turned to see if they were pulling his leg.

Both laughed. “J-O,” Kathleen told him kindly. “Short for Josephine.”

Ah. Satisfied, he jotted down the measurement.

“So, you didn’t put me on your calendar,” he remarked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flush.

“I did. But the day went hayfire from the get-go.”

The kid decided, at last, to speak. In a loud, clear voice, she said, “I thought Emma was dead. She fell on the floor and there was blood and she didn’t talk to me.”

“Hush,” her mother murmured.

“My daughter fainted and hit her head,” Kathleen said. “We had an ambulance here and everything. I just got back from the hospital. I’m sorry! It was scary, and everything else just left my mind.”

“She okay?”

“Just has a concussion. They’re keeping her overnight.”

Uh-huh. She’d fallen apart because her daughter had bumped her head.

He wasn’t buying.

Writing down another measurement, he asked, “How old is she?”

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

A teenager. Well, that explained the “she hates me” part. It also upped his estimate of her mom’s age. Kathleen Monroe had to be mid-thirties, at least.

Satisfied with his measurements, Logan turned to them. “Let’s talk about wood and styles.”

They sat at the kitchen table. Ginny at last became bored and, after a murmured consultation with her mother, wandered away. A moment later, canned voices came from the living room.

He nodded after her. “How old is she?”

“Ginny just turned six. She’s in first grade.”

He hadn’t been around children enough to judge ages. Opening his clipboard, Logan took out a sheaf of pictures.

They discussed panel doors versus plain, maple versus oak, open shelves versus ones hidden behind cupboard doors.

As expensive as Kathleen Monroe looked, Logan half expected her to choose something fancy: mahogany with gothic panels and glossy finish, maybe.

Instead she went for a simple Shaker style in a warm brown maple. “I want it to suit the era of the house,” she explained. “Later, when—if—I can afford it, we’ll re-do the rest of the kitchen to match.”

He sketched out an L shape of cabinets to fit in the corner, then lightly turned it into a U. “A peninsula there,” he said, pointing, “would visually separate your work area from the dining area. Plus, it would give you more counter space. You could have suspended shelves or cabinets from the ceiling, too.”

“Um…” Kathleen frowned into space. “It sounds wonderful,” she finally decided, “but it may be beyond my means. This may all be beyond my means,” she admitted frankly. “We looked at ready-made cabinets at Home Depot and Lowe’s, but Ryan thought we could do as well going to you, plus you could configure them more specifically for our needs.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, standing. “I’ll have the bid to you in a couple of days.”

The bottom line would be affordable, he already knew, even if he took a dive on the job. He wanted to help these women achieve their dream, he wanted to know why Kathleen Monroe had been sobbing—and he wanted to find out what a woman that classy would feel like in his arms when she wasn’t crying her heart out.

Even if that didn’t have a damn thing to do with building cabinets.

EMMA LAY IN THE DARK, feeling the sugar trickling into her body. It was like…like sipping on soda pop nonstop, all day long, until you ballooned with fat. She could feel it sliding through her veins, cool and sticky. Every time a bag emptied, somebody came and changed it.

She hated the nurses who had put the IV needle back in three times, and even more the ones who had finally tied her hands to the bars of the hospital bed so she couldn’t tear it out again.

But most of all, so much it corroded her belly, she hated her mother for letting them do this. For making them do it. Mom could have said, “I’m taking her home.” She could have told them not to force calories on her.

Instead, she was committing her own daughter to a jail. Just because Emma wouldn’t stuff her face.

She was, like, almost at a perfect weight. She used to think eighty pounds would be good, but she had still been pudgy when she got there. So she made her goal seventy-five. Or less. Less would be good. It would give her some room to go up a pound or two and not freak so much.

She didn’t even know why she was surprised. Mom wanted to control her, and food had become their main battlefield. It was so weird, because Emma knew her mother used to think she was fat. Her eyebrows arching disdainfully, she’d say, “Emma, do you really need a second serving?” Or, “Don’t you think carrots would be better for your figure than potato chips?”

She liked to give these little mother-daughter lectures, too. She’d sit on Emma’s bed and say, in this friendly voice, “I know you’re only twelve—” or thirteen or fourteen, the lecture didn’t change “—but pretty soon you’re going to want boys to notice you. It’s going to really matter to you if you feel plump or don’t like the way you look in cute clothes.”

What she really meant was, You embarrass your father and me. To her friends, she said with a laugh, “Emma still has some baby fat, but she’s stretching into this tall beautiful girl.” Baby fat, of course, would magically melt away. Real fat was just disgusting and stayed.

And Mom and Emma both knew that was the kind Emma had.

Emma had started dieting when she turned fourteen not because she wanted to look good in cute clothes, but to please her mother and father. Mom’s face would glow with delight and pride when Emma said no to seconds and dessert and snacks.

When he saw her picking at a salad for lunch instead of pigging out on macaroni and cheese, Dad would say something like, “Keep on that way and we’ll have two beauties in this house before we know it.” Meaning that Mom already was one, but Emma was plain and fat and he hated it when he entertained and he had to produce his one-and-only child and admit she was his.

For a while, Emma had been filled with hope. Finally, she was doing something right. She was making them proud. She would become beautiful, like her mother. Every morning, she’d look at herself in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, sucking in her cheeks, lifting her hair in different styles, trying to imagine that moment when she would know: I am beautiful. She’d told herself she was the duckling—a plump duckling—becoming a swan.

Only, she stayed a duck. She never saw a beauty in the mirror. And her parents’ pride slowly faded as they started complaining about other things. She slouched. Shouldn’t she start plucking her eyebrows? Her table manners! The way she hung her head when she was introduced to their friends and business acquaintances. Obviously she needed braces. How could she possibly be getting B’s and even a C on her report card, when she was a smart girl?

And she understood at last that she would never be good enough for them. She wouldn’t be pretty enough, smart enough, charming enough to be their daughter.

Hearing the slap slap of approaching footsteps, Emma closed her eyes. The curtain around her bed rattled. A nurse lifted her covers enough to see the needle still stuck in Emma’s hand. A moment later, the footsteps went away and Emma opened her eyes again.

She could see only a band of light coming through the half open door from the hall, diffused by her curtain. She didn’t have a roommate, either because the hospital wasn’t that full or because they thought she was a bad influence or something. She was glad. What if she had some middle-aged woman having her gall bladder out, or an old lady moaning? They might want to talk!

Of course, she wouldn’t be here that long anyway. They were moving her tomorrow. It made her sick, thinking about it. Her therapist, Sharon Russell, used it as a threat: If you don’t eat, we’ll send you there, where they’ll stick tubes down your throat if you won’t eat and not let you alone for a single second in case you try to puke.

They’d watch her pee and everything!

She wondered if, once they untied her tomorrow and left her to get dressed, she’d have a chance to run away. Emma didn’t know where she’d go or what she’d do, but anything had to be better than jail, where some warden stared at you while you sat on the toilet! Energized, she started planning.

She was almost seventeen. She could get a job, maybe, and find a bunch of other kids she could share an apartment with. Or she’d call Uncle Ryan and see if he’d let her come live with him and Melissa and Tyler. They never paid any attention to what she ate. Uncle Ryan wasn’t embarrassed by her. He didn’t want to control her every move.

That was what Emma had finally decided: she couldn’t make her parents happy no matter what she did, so she might as well at least be in charge of her own life. She didn’t want to be fat. It was so like them to want to control what went in her mouth. One minute she was fat and disgusting and she was supposed to nibble on green leaves instead of pizza. The next minute, she was getting too skinny and she should stuff her face. The real issue was, she should do what they told her to do.

Smile. Try to look dignified, if you know how. When you laugh like that people can see your tonsils. You should be on the honor roll. Your idea is silly—write about this topic instead. Eat. Don’t eat. Make conversation. Quit chattering.

Having her decide what she would and would not eat drove them crazy. So crazy, Dad didn’t even want to see her anymore. Which was fine by Emma. She was glad she’d made him mad. When he cracked and started screaming at her, she’d felt good. Powerful.

And having Mom choose her over Dad had made her feel powerful, too. For a while. Until she’d realized that Mom was just as bad as Dad. She was as determined as ever to control Emma. Now that she’d failed, she was resorting to force, just like Dad had tried to do. Only Mom didn’t shove food in her mouth even though she was screaming. No, she made it look like she was doing the “right” thing. Insisting her daughter get “well.” That was her word. Emma wasn’t “well” because she didn’t want to be a porker like the other girls at school who wore their pants really low but had rolls that swelled over the waistbands.

Emma tried wrenching her hands free again, but they’d tied them too tight. She felt as if she was being poisoned. If she were at home and she’d eaten too much, she would make herself exercise until she thought she’d made up for it. Sometimes it took hours.

Maybe she could exercise even if she was tied down. Emma squirmed and kicked until she got the covers off to one side and her legs were free.

Leg lifts. She could do ten on one side, ten on the other, then ten with both legs together. She could do it over and over. Or bicycle. Experimentally, she curled her spine, but had a hard time getting her hips high enough to cycle her feet.

Okay, leg lifts. Keeping her toes pointed, she lifted both legs, slowly separated them, then brought them back together, feeling the strain on her belly and back and butt. Pleased, she did it again. And again.

When her legs began to tremble and sweat popped out on her forehead, she smiled.

They couldn’t keep her from fighting back. From controlling what happened to her. No matter how hard they tried.

KATHLEEN WOKE TO THE sinking knowledge that today would be dismal. For a moment, she lay in bed, her face buried in her pillow, and tried to remember why. It didn’t take long.

Emma. Always Emma.

Kathleen rolled onto her back and noticed dispiritedly that rain was sliding down the window glass and deepening the sky to a dreary gray. Didn’t it figure.

She’d taken today off work so that she could accompany Emma to Bridges, the residential treatment center for patients with eating disorders. Emma was not going to be happy.

Yesterday, when Kathleen had returned to the hospital, the sixteen-year-old had been either sullen or in a rage. Her generally sweet disposition had been submerged by the terrifying fear of gaining weight that ruled—and threatened—her life.

Today was unlikely to bring an improvement.

At least the residential program included certified teachers so that the kids didn’t fall behind in school. Emma’s grades had actually improved this past year and a half, since Kathleen had left Ian, even if she had refused to let go of her obsession with weight. Kathleen didn’t know if Emma was studying more because she didn’t have anything else to do, now that she seemed to have no friends, or whether she hadn’t tried in school just to make her father mad, and now the payoff was missing. Her natural curiosity and intelligence had reemerged, thank goodness, resulting in almost straight A’s last semester. Kathleen hated to see Emma have to struggle to catch up. Her ego was fragile enough already.

With a sigh, Kathleen made herself get up, put on her robe and shuffle downstairs without even a pause to brush her hair. She needed breakfast and a cup of coffee before her shower. The only plus today was that she’d gotten an extra hour of sleep. The house was quiet, Helen gone to work and Ginny to school, she diagnosed. Jo might still be in bed—no, on Thursdays she had a much-hated 8:00 a.m. class.

Even living as close as they did to the University of Washington, Jo had to allow almost an hour to get there and park in the huge lot down by the football stadium, then hike up the stroke-inducing stairs to the campus.

Kathleen would miss her complaints. Jo and Ryan were getting married in July and taking a honeymoon trip to Greece, while his kids visited their mom in Denver. Then Jo would go home with Ryan, not here.

Which meant she’d be family, but in a different way. Kathleen was going to miss more than the grumbles; she’d miss her.

Kathleen and Helen had talked about making a big push to get the soap business earning real money. They were scheduled to have booths at a dozen crafts fairs in the Puget Sound area in late spring and summer, and Helen was spending every spare minute calling on shop owners to try to persuade them to carry Kathleen’s Soaps. If they could make enough, maybe they wouldn’t have to bring in another roommate. Ginny could have her own bedroom, after Jo moved out. That was their dream: just the two mothers and two daughters living in this ramshackle but charming Ravenna district house that Kathleen had once so optimistically believed she could remodel “gradually.”

That was before they’d discovered rotting floor-boards beneath the upstairs toilet, corroded pipes and an inadequate furnace.

She shouldn’t be spending money on cupboards. She should be spending it on a furnace, she worried, as she poured cereal into a bowl.

Thank God that Ian at least carried Emma on his health insurance. For Kathleen, it would have been prohibitive and her plan was less comprehensive anyway.

She sliced a banana onto the cereal and wished she hadn’t thought of Ian. He hadn’t returned her call yesterday, but she couldn’t assume he’d heard the message.

She still wasn’t convinced that it would be good for Emma to have him reappear in her life, but Emma’s therapist had advised her to keep lines of communication open.

“Emma would deny it bitterly, but being rejected by him has further threatened her self-confidence,” Sharon Russell had told Kathleen. “If he can be made to see reason…”

That would be a cold day, Kathleen had thought privately, even as she nodded. Ian Monroe exuded confidence and was completely baffled by Emma’s uncertainties. He refused to consider the possibility that he had played any part in the development of his daughter’s eating disorder. Heck, he refused to believe she was anorexic. Or maybe he just didn’t believe in eating disorders at all. After all, he had no trouble disciplining himself to eat well.

Perhaps, Kathleen thought, she was being just a little unfair. After all, she didn’t overeat or starve herself, either. It was just that she could understand human frailty. Ian couldn’t.

Or didn’t want to, she hadn’t decided which.

After putting her bowl in the sink, she poured her tea and left it to steep while she called Ian again. She didn’t bother trying him at home. He’d have left for the gym for some racquetball hours ago, then been at the office by eight o’clock. He’d curl his lip if he knew at nine o’clock she was still sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe and slippers, her hair tangled.

Discipline.

“Crowe Industries, Mr. Monroe’s office,” the secretary answered.

“Patty, this is Kathleen. Is Ian free?”

That was the fiction that allowed them both to save face: most often, Ian wasn’t “free.” His middle-aged secretary didn’t have to say, I’m sorry, he doesn’t want to speak to you, or lie that he was out.

“Let me check. He mentioned wanting to talk to you.”

Kathleen rolled her eyes. I’ll just bet he does.

But he did come on the phone, an unusual occurrence.

“What’s this about Emma being in the hospital?”

“Why, hello, Ian,” Kathleen said. “How are you?”

“Just a minute.” His voice became muffled as he spoke to someone else, or on a second line. She always had hated talking to him at the office, even when she believed them to be happily married.

He came back on. “Was she in an accident?”

“She has continued to lose weight. Yesterday morning she fainted and hit her head.”

“That’s all?” he said in disbelief. “She bumped her head, and you’re leaving dire messages for me?”

“Which you, of course, panicked about. I noticed you rushed to her side.”

“We both know she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Doesn’t she?” Kathleen said quietly.

He let that pass. “Does she have a concussion?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the major problem. She’s down to seventy-seven pounds.”

Ian swore.

“She’s…” Kathleen had to pause and take a deep breath to make sure her voice didn’t waver. “She’s a walking skeleton.”

His voice hardened. “I thought I was the problem.”

Unseen, Kathleen flinched. “You are her father. You’re not off the hook, just because she didn’t magically recover once she wasn’t under your roof.”

“All those doctors and all that counseling hasn’t done jack crap,” he snapped.

“Anorexia is the toughest eating disorder to overcome. Up to ten percent of anorexics die.”

“They starve themselves to death.” He sounded disbelieving, just as he always had.

“Or they damage their heart or kidneys.”

“She’s not that stupid.”

“Stupid or smart doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Kathleen said, feeling a familiar desperation. How could she make him understand? “Or maybe it does. Smart girls are the likeliest to develop the problem.”

“How could she lose that much weight right under your eye?”

Of course, it had to be her fault. It couldn’t be his.

What tore at her was a new fear that he was right. She was responsible for Emma’s determination to starve.

Nonetheless, she tried to defend herself. “She’s been seeing a doctor, a therapist and a nutritionist. They advised me to avoid nagging about food. We’ve been trying to make it a nonissue between the two of us.”

“And failing, apparently,” he said cruelly.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood. “It would appear so.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

Shaking from fury and hurt that refused to die along with the marriage, she said, “Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought you should know,” and hung up the phone.

Talking to him had had its usual shattering effect. Once again, Kathleen had confirmation that she and Emma were on their own.

Except, thank God, for Jo, Helen, Ginny and Ryan. And Kathleen’s father, of course. Friends and true family.

Dry-eyed but feeling as exhausted as if she had indulged in a bout of tears, Kathleen slowly mounted the stairs. Time for a shower, and the hospital.

CHAPTER THREE

KATHLEEN SAT ON THE LIVING room couch two days later, gazing blankly at the opposite wall. A woman who detested inactivity, she much preferred having a purpose. Tonight she was too tired to even think about Emma, Ian or the myriad of household tasks that needed accomplishing.

Thank heavens for Helen and Jo! Even small Ginny had passed a few minutes ago, gamely carrying a full basket of laundry up from the basement in order to fold it.

Earlier Helen had wanted to discuss business. A shopkeeper had asked for a larger discount. Helen still wasn’t satisfied with the label—maybe they needed stronger colors? She was sensitive enough not to say, You should be making soap, we need a huge inventory for the craft fairs. Kathleen had only shaken her head and said, “I can’t think right now. I’m sorry,” and Helen had backed off.

Kathleen felt useless. Inept. Inadequate. Incompetent. Unlovable. She could think of a million other words, but those pretty much covered the bleak, gray sensation that swamped her.

She, who had never failed at anything she set out to do, had now failed at everything really important: marriage and parenting. She—once a society hostess, gourmet cook and mother to a delightful, bright and cheerful child—was scraping for a living, cooking in a kitchen with a peeling linoleum floor and a chipped, stained sink and banned for a week from visiting her daughter in treatment for a behavioral disorder that was killing her and seemed to be rooted in anger at her parents.

Yup. Right this minute, Kathleen couldn’t think of a single reason to feel positive.

The doorbell rang, and she winced. The cabinetmaker had called earlier to schedule an appointment to present his bid. The timing sucked, if Kathleen could borrow one of Emma’s favorite words.

She sighed and dragged herself to her feet. From upstairs, Jo called, “Do you want me to get that?”

“No, I’m expecting someone,” Kathleen called back.

When she opened the door, she experienced the same odd jolt she had the first time she saw Logan Carr on her doorstep. Frowning slightly, she dismissed her reaction; he just wasn’t the kind of man she usually associated with. He looked so…blue-collar. He undoubtedly went home, opened a beer, belched and spent his evenings watching baseball on the boob tube.

A stereotype even she knew was snobbish. After all, Ryan was a contractor, but was also a well-read man who owned a beautiful, restored home and cleaned up nicely.

“Mr. Carr,” she said, by long practice summoning a smile. “Please come in.”

He nodded and stepped over the threshold, increasing her peculiar feeling of tension. He was too close. She backed a step away, using the excuse of shutting the door behind him. He was so big, even though she was sure he wasn’t any taller than Ian. But Ian was lean and graceful, with long fingers and shoulders just broad enough to make his custom-tailored suits hang beautifully. Ian projected intelligence, impatience, charm, not sweaty masculinity.

“Unfortunately, Helen can’t be here. She was asked to work this evening. Nordstrom is having a sale.”

He blinked at what must have seemed a non sequitur. “She’s a salesclerk?”

“Children’s department.”

“Ah.” He nodded.

“Come on into the kitchen.” She led the way. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks, if it isn’t too much trouble.” He did have a nice voice, low and gruff but somehow…soothing. Like a loofah.

“Jo just brewed some. She’s a fantatic.” Kathleen opened the cupboard and reached for two mugs. “Personally, I’d settle for instant, but she shudders at the very idea.”

As if he cared what kind of coffee she’d choose, Kathleen chided herself. She was babbling, filling the silence, because he made her nervous.

“You’re not crying tonight.”

Mug in hand, she turned to look at him. He wasn’t laughing at her. Rather, his expression was serious, even…concerned.

“No,” she agreed. “I’m not crying.” Just depressed. “I’m awfully sorry to have flung myself at you that way. I must have made your day. Nothing like having your shirt soaked with tears.”

“I invited it,” Logan reminded her. “You looked like you needed a shoulder to cry on.”

She hadn’t known it, but that was exactly what she had needed. Now, she felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. He was a complete stranger, but he had held her and she’d gripped his shirt and laid her head on his chest and sobbed. The memory lay between them, weirdly intimate.

“I guess I did,” she admitted. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Faint amusement showed in his eyes. The next second, Kathleen wasn’t sure, because he continued, “Your daughter, is she all right?”

“Emma’s fine,” Kathleen said brightly, lying through her teeth, as she’d spent the past several years lying. Heaven forbid she admit to anyone else that her daughter hated her so much, she was starving herself to death.

“Is she…” the cabinetmaker said noncommittally.

Had Ryan told him something of Emma’s troubles? Kathleen wondered, her eyes narrowing. She’d kill her brother if he was spouting her personal problems to casual acquaintances.

“She’s, um, not home.” As if he’d asked to meet Emma.

“Teenagers rarely are.”

Darn him. His easygoing, I-understand tone made her want to spill her guts. Maybe even cry again, so he’d pull her into his arms.

Shocked at herself, Kathleen stiffened her spine. What was she thinking? He was absolutely not her type, even assuming she had any interest whatsoever in getting involved with a man right now! Which she didn’t.

Didn’t dare. Emma had reacted with hurt and anger the couple of times Kathleen had dated after the divorce. Right now was definitely not the time to upset the applecart as far as her daughter went.

“Sugar? Creamer?” she asked, in her best hostess voice.

“Black is fine.”

She stirred sugar into her own and then carried both mugs to the table.

He’d set that gray metal clipboard, identical to her brother’s, on the table. Kathleen nodded at it as she sat down. “Okay, I’ve braced myself. How much will this cost?”

Logan Carr reached for the clipboard. “I’ve figured out ways to cut some corners and still give you what you want,” he said mildly. “I hope my figures are in the ballpark.”

The baseball analogy steadied her, reminded her of the beer, the belching and the nonstop din of the television. When he slid a neatly typed sheet of paper across the table, she took it, hardly noticing that their fingers briefly touched.

When she saw the figure at the bottom, however, she gaped. “I was expecting twice that much!”

He smiled at her surprise. “Your brother wasn’t kidding when he said you wouldn’t pay much more for custom. Maybe even less, in this case, because I gave some thought to how I could deliver what you need without adding any unnecessary frills.”

She wondered what kind of frills he was talking about, but in her rush of relief didn’t really care. She could manage this.

“The amount doesn’t include the additional peninsula, does it?” she asked.

“No, I made up a second bid.” He slid that one to her as well. The bottom line was less than a thousand dollars more.

“Show me the details again,” she asked. There had to be a catch. An unacceptable short-cut. An eliminated frill that was really an essential. “You’ll use solid maple, right?”

He patiently got out his notebook and scooted his chair around so that they sat shoulder to shoulder, looking as he flipped pages. He’d drawn a couple of simple sketches of the project, one a crude blueprint, the other three-dimensional, showing slots and cubbies and open shelves.

“The fan will be right above, the switch over here.” He indicated the wall by the pantry door with the tip of his pencil. “I can pick one up if you want, or if you’d prefer you can buy your own.”

She shook her head. “You do it, please.”

Nodding, he made a note. “I’ll leave all of this information so that you can discuss it with Ms. Schaeffer.”

“That isn’t necessary.” Feeling more decisive than she had in a long while, Kathleen said firmly, “You’re hired.”

“Good.” He smiled again, turning a face that was almost homely into one that was likable and sexy.

She found herself smiling back, her heart fluttering. Her internal alarms went off, but she silenced them. So what if she felt…oh, just a little spark of attraction. It didn’t mean anything. He’d never know. Heck, she probably wouldn’t even feel the spark the next time she saw him. It was having cried on him that made her aware of him, she guessed. Knowing what it felt like to have his arms around her. Wasn’t it natural to stretch that into a small crush?

“Do you have a contract for me to sign?” she asked.

He produced that, too, and went over it line by line. Satisfied, Kathleen signed, and hoped Ryan wouldn’t have recommended Logan Carr if he weren’t reliable.

“I can’t start for a week,” he was telling her. “I’m finishing up a project in West Seattle, but I can be on it a week from tomorrow, if that works for you.”

“So soon?” she said in surprise. Wasn’t spring a busy season for construction? Why wasn’t he booked way in advance, if he was so good?

As if reading her mind, he said, “I had a cancellation, and my next job is new construction. They won’t be ready for me for a few weeks. This is good timing for me.”

She flushed, as embarrassed as if she’d spoken her doubts aloud. “Oh. Well.” She forced a smile. “It’s good luck for me, too.”

He nodded absently and sipped his coffee, instead of standing to leave. “Nice house. Lots of potential.”

Her mood lifted. “Do you think so?”

He was looking around, his gaze taking in the original moldings and high ceilings. “Your brother grumbled one time that you’d dropped your money into a sinkhole. I think he’s wrong. This could be a beauty.”

“I think so, too.” She had this vision no one else seemed to share, but she could see on his face that he saw something similar. “We’ve actually remodeled a couple of rooms already.” She tried to sound casual. “Do you want a grand tour before you go?”

He set down the mug. “Love one.”

“You can finish your coffee.”

“It’ll keep me awake anyway.” He gave another of those crooked, devastating smiles. “Lead on.”

Pulse bouncing, Kathleen stood, too. “You’ve seen the pantry.”

“You’re lucky to have one. They’re a smart addition to a kitchen.”

She smiled wryly. “Of course, we’re back to storing baking supplies in cupboards too high to reach without teetering on a chair, thanks to the soap.”

“But what would you do if you didn’t have the pantry?” Logan pointed out.

Kathleen made a face. “How true. I’d probably be stepping over bars of soap to go to bed.”

He laughed, a low, rough sound, as well-worn as the calluses on his hands.

She showed him the living room, and he admired the arched entry and the built-in, leaded glass-fronted bookcases to each side of the brick fireplace.

“You planning to refinish the floor?”

“Ryan is itching to tackle it, but I’ve held him off so far. Where would we live while fumes fill the house?”

“That’s always a problem,” the cabinetmaker conceded. “But without a finish this floor is going to get scratched and stained.”

She sighed. “You sound like my brother.”

“We both value fine woods.”

Ian had valued fine wines, she thought irrelevantly. Their house had been a showplace in Magnolia, but it was no more than an appropriate and deserved backdrop, as far as he was concerned. The house had given her pleasure. These days, she tried not to think about the gleaming inlaid floors, stained-glass sidelights and granite kitchen counters.

If she ever had a beautiful house again, she would have earned it herself, and that had come to mean more than the possessing. In his eagerness to help her, Ryan refused to understand that. She had the odd feeling that Logan would.

She led him to the downstairs bathroom, really more of a powder room in the traditional sense.

He stepped past her and, filling the opening, contemplated the tiny room. “Nice,” he said finally.

Feeling a glow, she said, “Thank you. We did it ourselves.”

He glanced at her, surprise in his raised brows. “We?”

“Jo, Helen and I did the work. Especially Jo,” she admitted. “Except for the plumbing. We called Ryan for that.”

He took another look. “You did a hell of a job.”

They had, if she did say so herself—although she felt a little immodest even thinking as much, given how little she’d contributed compared to Jo. Still…

The floor and walls, up to the wainscoting, were covered with two-inch tiles the color of milky coffee, with darker grout. The sink was a graceful free-standing one, the medicine cabinet an antique Jo had discovered at a garage sale. They’d splurged on a reproduction toilet with an old-fashioned oak tank. A cream, rose and spring-green paisley paper covered the upper walls. Just stepping in here made Kathleen happy. At least they’d accomplished something, even if the floors in the rest of the house were still scuffed, the plaster peeling in the stairwell, the kitchen a 1940s nightmare.

“We’ll skip our home office,” she nodded down the hall. “It’s a disaster. That door leads to the basement, which at the moment is our construction workshop, such as it is, and has the washer and dryer. We’ve all got piles of boxes stored down there, too.”

As she climbed the stairs, Kathleen was very conscious of him behind her. She wondered if he was at all aware of her as a woman. Or—she didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her—was he married? She glanced back and made a point of noticing his left hand—no ring. Which didn’t necessarily mean a thing. Not all men liked wearing a wedding ring. For one who worked with power tools, wearing a ring might be dangerous.

He hadn’t mentioned children of his own, she remembered.

It wouldn’t hurt to make conversation, she decided.

“Do you have kids?” she asked casually, as they reached the hallway above.

“Afraid not.”

Frustrated, she nodded at the first bedroom door, shut. “Jo’s room. Then Helen’s.”

This door stood half open, and without stopping he glanced in at the high-ceilinged room. “No closets?”

“A couple of the bedrooms have them, but small ones. What would be wonderful, down the line, is to eliminate one of the four bedrooms and create big walk-in closets for the other rooms.” She laughed ruefully. “Wa-ay down the line.”

“You have to have a plan,” he said matter-of-factly.

He believed in dreaming. She liked that about him. Maybe he didn’t actually swill beer and belch.

But maybe he had a wife at home, washing up their dinner dishes, wondering why he was taking so long to present a bid for a small job.

She opened the door on the other side of the hall with a flourish. “And the other bathroom.”

Every time she stepped in here now, she had a flash of memory—Emma sprawled, unconscious and bleached-white, on the tiled floor. Death was an all too real possibility for Emma, but that morning, it had hit Kathleen like a punch in the stomach.

Emma is dead. I’ve failed her.

She crossed her arms and squeezed, momentarily chilly. Logan gave her a sharp look but didn’t comment. Instead he examined this larger bathroom and gave another nod of approval.

“I could have done a better job on the cabinets, but it looks great.”

“They’re ready-made,” she admitted.

“I know.” He propped one shoulder on the door-jamb and smiled. “Sorry. I think I just crossed over from confidence to cockiness.”

She found herself smiling back, probably foolishly. “No, no. I’m sure I heard nothing but confidence.”

His eyes seemed to darken, his voice to deepen. “Thank you for that.”

Cheeks warming, she backed away. “Um…my bedroom is the last,” she flapped a hand toward the end of the hall, “but I haven’t done anything except cover the floor with a rug and the peeling wallpaper with pictures.”

He glanced that way thoughtfully, then nodded, accepting her unspoken reluctance to show him her private sanctum. Her bedroom. Ryan was the only man to have stepped foot into it, and that was on moving day when he’d helped carry in the garage sale and thrift store furniture.

She found the idea of this man in her bedroom disturbing. It wasn’t so much the notion of him studying her bed with that contemplative gaze as the fact that he would be out of place. Ridiculously so. She imagined his bedroom as spare, with white walls and beautiful wood pieces and perhaps a simple print hung above the bed. Maybe not even blinds or curtains at the window.

Unless, of course, his wife had decorated their house.

Ian had liked their master bedroom luxurious but modern, the deep plush of the charcoal-gray carpet unadorned, the vast bed the centerpiece of the room, the only other focal point the wall of windows looking out at Puget Sound and passing ferries.

To please herself, and because she couldn’t afford luxurious anyway since she’d refused alimony and a split of the possessions she had realized were really his, Kathleen had indulged in a very feminine bedroom for herself, in this house that was her own. Dried hydrangeas and roses filled cream-colored pitchers and vases. The cherry bed frame needed refinishing, but she never noticed, so heaped was the bed with lacy pillows and quilts and a crocheted spread she’d bought for peanuts at the Salvation Army because it had been stained. Armed with a book on caring for old fabrics, she had resuscitated it as well as the pink and white pinwheel quilt the mover had been using as padding, and the lace that edged several of the pillows. Whenever she saw an unusual old picture frame for a price she could afford, she bought it, and had covered the walls with family photos dating back to the 1840s and ending with a laughing Emma, caught only a few months back in an unwary moment. Kathleen’s dresser top was cluttered with her collection of ceramic and wood boxes. A caned Lincoln rocker that had been handed down in her mother’s family gave her a place to sit and read by the light of a Tiffany-imitation lamp that sat on a carved end table, its battered top hidden beneath a tatted doily.

Emma, of course, sneered at the room. “It’s old stuff. Dad would say it was all junk and throw it away.”

So he would—which was very likely the reason she’d decorated the room the way she had.

Kathleen had managed to keep her voice mild. “Old stuff is all I can afford. You know that.”

Emma, dear Emma, had flared, “And it’s all my fault that we’re poor! Of course! I didn’t ask you to leave Daddy!”

She hadn’t had to ask, not after the horrific scene when Ian had lost his temper, held her down and shoved food into her mouth.

“Look at it this way,” Logan Carr said now. “Not a penny spent on this house is wasted. You’ll get it all back if you re-sell. These old houses can’t do anything but gain value.”

“Even Ryan concedes as much.”

Logan gave her a quizzical glance. “I take it you and your brother aren’t close?”

“Actually, we are.” She smiled at his surprise. “Jo says we squabble like a couple of kids on a family vacation. Insulting, but accurate.”

He laughed again, which pleased her. She liked his laugh.

“Well, I’d best get out of your hair,” he said, pushing away from the door frame. “You must have a million things to do.”

Like climb into bed, pull the covers over her head and pretend all her troubles would go away. Or cry. She hadn’t decided which.

“Well, not a million, I hope,” she said with a practiced chuckle. “You probably have plenty waiting for you at home, too.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. She saw the impulse to say something and the instant when he thought better of it.

“Unfortunately,” he agreed.

She couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been going to say. Nobody and nothing is waiting for me at home? Or, Yeah, the wife insists I fix the leak under the kitchen sink tonight?

She saw him to the door, chattering about nothing in particular, another skill acquired from the years of entertaining Ian’s business associates.

There, she said, “We’ll look forward to seeing you a week from Monday.”

“Actually, you’ll only see me if I need additional measurements. I’ll build the cabinets at home and call you when I’m ready to install them.”

“Oh.” She was embarrassed not to have realized as much, and inexplicably disappointed. “Yes. Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”

With a shrug, he said, “You figured they weren’t ready-made, they got built here. That’s reasonable.” He paused, his gaze intent. “Ms. Monroe…”

“Kathleen. Please.” Her heart seemed to be pounding.

The cabinetmaker nodded. “Kathleen. I don’t suppose…” He stopped, frowned fiercely, and shook his head. “Never mind.”

“What?” She wanted to stomp her foot.

“No.” His expression was stolid again. “It was just a passing thought. Nothing important.” He held out a hand. “I look forward to doing some work for you.”

What could she do but hold out her hand in turn? His was big, warm and rough-textured. It seemed to her that he released her hand reluctantly before nodding one more time and heading down the porch steps.

Tempted to watch him go, Kathleen made herself shut the front door. She was too old for delusions of passion and romance.

EMMA SAT AT THE TABLE in the dining hall and stared at her dinner tray. They could not possibly expect her to eat all that!

She sneaked a glance around and saw that a few of the other women and girls—right now, there wasn’t a single guy here—had matter-of-factly picked up silverware and started to eat. Maybe they had figured out some way to get away from their captors long enough to puke up all this food. Or maybe they had decided eating was the only way out of here. It wasn’t like they couldn’t lose the weight again.

Emma just didn’t want to. Gaining ten or twenty pounds, just so she could go home… She shivered at the thought. She’d be fat!

Reluctantly she picked up her fork and stabbed a few peas. Okay. She guessed she could eat them. They were starchy, but still a vegetable. Then maybe if she stirred some of the other food, made it look like she’d eaten some, they’d let her go.

The peas seemed to stick in her throat. She reached for her milk and gagged when she tasted it.

“It’s whole milk,” the girl beside her said. “Or maybe two percent. I’m not sure.”

“Even my mom buys nonfat!”

“Yeah, but this has more calories.”

Beads of sweat stood out on Emma’s brow. “I can’t eat this.”

“You have to. They make you sit here until you do.”

“All of it?”

“Didn’t they tell you?” The girl was really pretty, with shiny thick black hair, and so slim, lots slimmer than Emma was.

“They said I had to eat what they served, but I didn’t figure they meant, like, every bite.” She stared again in dismay at the pork chop, mashed potatoes and gravy and peas.

“I sat here for four hours my first day. The meat was even grosser when it was cold.”

Emma took a tentative bite of mashed potato. It slipped down easier than the peas had. “What’s your name?”

“Summer Chan. What’s yours?”

“Emma Monroe.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“Seventy-six pounds.” Emma was embarrassed. “I wish I looked like you do.”

“But I’m only five-two.” She took a dainty bite and swallowed. “You look great. I’m the one who’s still fat. No matter what they say.”

Emma didn’t ask what she weighed. She’d end up being totally humiliated.

“Do they ever get so they trust you, and you can go to the bathroom and stuff alone?”

“No.” She took another bite. “I’ve been here before. If you want out, you have to cooperate.”

Emma poked at the pork chop. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“You had to tell them you were when you checked in. Now it’s too late. They’ll think you’re lying.”

Emma hadn’t been a vegetarian until she decided meat had too much fat in it. Now…her stomach quivered at the thought. It was almost like being hungry, but more like she needed to throw up.

Summer took a bite of hers and murmured out of the corner of her mouth, “You’d better look like you’re eating. Here comes Karen.”

Karen was one of the nurses. She was stocky, with chunky arms and shoulders and a thick neck. The idea of ending up looking like her scared Emma.

She paused right behind the girls. “How are you doing, Emma? Doesn’t look like you’ve eaten much yet.”

“I had some peas. And potatoes.”

She laid a hand briefly on Emma’s shoulder. “Remember the rules. You have to eat it all. You can’t get well if you don’t eat.”

When she moved on, Emma muttered, “She means, get fat.”

“Just keep eating,” a woman across the table advised. “It’s easier if you don’t think about it. By the way,” she added, “I’m Regina Hall.”

“Nice to meet you,” Emma said automatically.

Not think about it. Right. How did you do that? She always thought about what she ate! She knew how much fat and calories every bite had, how full it would make her, whether she’d feel like a pig after she was done scarfing it down. To just eat and eat and eat…

“I won’t,” she said, and put down her fork.

“Suit yourself.” Regina, who was maybe in her early twenties, shrugged. “I’d rather watch TV than sit here all night. Even if it is reruns.”

“Everybody watches Friends,” Summer chimed in. “Monica is so-o pretty. Don’t you think?”

“I wish I looked like her,” Emma agreed. “I like to cook the way she does, too.”

Everyone at the table joined in to talk about Friends and whether Phoebe was too fat and how cool it would be to have a job as a chef as long as you didn’t have to sample anything and which was the hottest guy on the show.

Joey, most of them agreed, although Summer didn’t say anything and Emma didn’t think any of them were that hot. They were old, for one thing. Her uncle Ryan was better-looking than any of them. Her friends, back when she had some, always said he was super hot compared to their fathers or uncles or any of the teachers.

Emma guessed her dad was, too, but now when she thought of him all she could remember was his face contorted with rage and the cruelty of his hands and the terror of not being able to breathe when he shoved food into her mouth until it was smeared all over her face.

It was that moment when she knew how much he hated having a daughter who couldn’t do anything right. He’d mostly hidden it until then, but he’d finally cracked. Now she hated him, too, and dreamed about running into him by accident sometime when she was grown-up, and slim, and so beautiful she drove men crazy. And wildly successful, too—maybe a federal judge or mayor of Seattle or a movie star. She’d raise an eyebrow, just so, as if in faint surprise at his temerity in approaching her. Her expression would say, Do I know you? He’d mumble something about how much he admired her, or he’d say, “I tell all my friends you’re my daughter.” Mostly in these daydreams she was gracious, saying, “How nice,” before noticing someone more important she had to speak to. Sometimes, when she was in a bad mood, she’d imagine the scathing look she’d give him. “I have no father,” she would say icily, before moving on as if he was nobody.

Right this minute, she wished she had no mother, either. Because then she’d be living with Uncle Ryan, and he wouldn’t have committed her like a crazy person who needed twenty-four-hour guarding.

Realizing that even Summer was almost done with her dinner, Emma took another bite of mashed potatoes. Her stomach growled, startling her. Two more peas, then a tiny sip of the milk.

“Do you have to drink the milk, too?” she whispered, because Karen was strolling back her way.

Summer stole a glance toward their captor and kept her voice low, too. “Uh-huh.”

I can’t! Emma cried inside.

She hastily took another bite of potatoes.

“Try your meat,” Karen said pleasantly, with another tap on Emma’s shoulder.

Regina stood and lifted her tray to bus it. “It’s hard the first time,” she said quietly, nodded and left.

Summer left a few minutes later, too, and one by one so did just about everyone else. Only one other girl was left at another table, gazing down in dismay at her plate. Emma saw that her glass of milk was still mostly full, too.

Emma started to stand, but Karen materialized instantly.

“I’m sorry, Emma, but you’re not excused until you’ve finished.”

Bubbling with resentment, Emma said, “I was just going to sit with that other girl.”

“Oh, I don’t think either of you need to socialize when your food is getting cold.” Karen smiled, for all the world as if she’d just said something upbeat, like, You’re doing great. “Finish, and you’ll both have a chance to get acquainted.”

Three hours and thirty-four minutes later, tears in her eyes, Emma cut her cold pork chop, put a bite in her mouth and grimly began to chew.

CHAPTER FOUR

LOGAN FELT LIKE A DAMN IDIOT, making excuses so he could have a chance to see a woman. A woman, at that, who was way out of his league. It was like being a tongue-tied teenager again, coming up with elaborate reasons for taking a round-about route so he could pass her house.

Hesitating, then ringing her doorbell, he hunched inside his coat against the spring chill. It would serve him right if she wasn’t even home. Hell, maybe the missing teenage daughter would sulkily show him into the kitchen and sullenly show him out when he was done measuring.

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