He looked at her, and she knew. He was going to kiss her.

He tipped her head back with one finger and brought his mouth to hers. The instant their lips touched, the kiss spun into a roller coaster ride of sensation.

She’d expected his kiss to be polished and calculated, a process to get from point A to point C. There was no point A. There was only a mating of lips and air and instinct.

When it was over, she held perfectly still. Her breath seemed to have solidified in her throat. She hadn’t been kissed in a long time. And never quite like this. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“I disagree.”

“I should go home.”

“It’s only five days, Madeline. If you leave, you’ll never know what would have happened during those five days.”

She wondered how it would feel to be so sure of something. She used to be that sure. That felt like another woman’s life.

Dear Reader,

Writing this letter to you started me thinking about letters—letters, not e-mails or text messages. Letters like those our grandmothers wrote to our grandpas, mothers to daughters, and old college roommates to each other. They were lyrical and poignant, awaited, savored and treasured.

They were gifts from one heart to another. My newest book, The Wedding Gift, has something in common with those old-fashioned letters, for this story is a gift from my heart to yours.

I’m so pleased to be writing a wedding story, for our youngest and oldest sons were married recently, nine months apart. All four of our sons are married now, and each wedding is a poignant memory and each daughter-in-law a wonderful addition to our family. The babies are arriving, too—oh my, what blessings they are! I promise I won’t bring out their pictures, but don’t be surprised when babies are featured in my upcoming books.

But first things first: I hope you enjoy, no, I hope you savor The Wedding Gift. May reading it speak to your heart the way writing it spoke to mine.

Until next time and always,

Sandra

About the Author

SANDRA STEFFEN has always been a storyteller. She began nurturing this hidden talent by concocting adventures for her brothers and sisters, even though the boys were more interested in her ability to hit a baseball over the barn—an automatic homerun. She didn’t begin her pursuit of publication until she was a young wife and mother of four sons. Since her thrilling debut as a published author in 1992, more than thirty-five of her novels have graced bookshelves across the country.

This winner of a RITA Award, a Wish Award and a National Readers’ Choice Award enjoys traveling with her husband. Usually their destinations are settings for her upcoming books. They are empty nesters these days. Who knew it could be so much fun? Please visit her at www.sandrasteffen.com.

THE WEDDING GIFT

SANDRA STEFFEN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the newlyweds

Greg and Maggie

and

Mike and Amber

Acknowledgement

A special thanks to Barb DePue for sharing incredibly

detailed information and unforgettable descriptions

of her husband Bruce’s heart transplant. The Internet

is nice but there’s nothing like a long talk with

an old friend.

Chapter One

Madeline Sullivan tiptoed from her attic apartment by the light of the waning moon. She crept down two flights of stairs and across floorboards so old they normally creaked beneath the weight of dust bunnies, yet she didn’t awaken any of the inn’s guests. Her car started on the first try and she didn’t see another pair of headlights until she’d reached the first orchard west of town. From there she drove north to the river, then west and north again all the way to Lake Michigan.

The weather cooperated and the traffic was manageable. Even the faded no-trespassing sign marking the narrow lane she was searching for practically jumped out at her at first glance.

It was almost too easy.

Easy was fine. Easy was wonderful. Really.

She didn’t need the accompaniment of distant thunder or the reassurance of rainbows. What she needed was waiting at the top of a knoll near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

At least she hoped it was.

Her heart did race as she turned onto the lane, but that was just her better judgment rearing its timid little head. Determinedly gripping the steering wheel with both hands, she followed the winding path to the top of the hill overlooking the enormous sand dunes for which the shore had been named. Beyond the dunes the choppy waters of Lake Michigan disappeared into a solid wall of clouds. The sky had been low and gray all week, a welcome sight in the scorching heat of summer, but on this day in early spring, the clouds were an annoying affront to the promise of fair weather.

Madeline wasn’t looking for promises. She was looking for a man named Riley Merrick.

Rolling to a stop where dune grass still brittle from the harsh winter concealed most of her car, she settled back to wait. If her sources were accurate, Merrick was the architect overseeing the construction of an extravagant vacation home a quarter mile away.

There was no sign of him, though. She watched for several minutes before reaching for her cell phone to let her best friend back home know she’d arrived safely.

As usual, Summer Matthews started talking the moment she put her phone to her ear. “Since this isn’t a collect call, I assume you haven’t been arrested for stalking Riley Merrick. Yet.”

“Most people begin conversations with hello, Summer. Besides, I’m not stalking him.”

“I suppose you’re not peering through binoculars right now, either.”

Being careful not to let the binoculars clank against her cell phone, Madeline hummed something noncommittal. She was a terrible liar, but even if she’d been good at it, she wouldn’t have lied to Summer.

“If you’d called five minutes sooner,” Summer said, “your brothers could have participated in the conversation.”

Summer was the owner of the Old Stone Inn in Orchard Hill. Once a stop on a well-traveled stage line, the old building was now a popular bed-and-breakfast inn. It sat on a hill overlooking the small city of Orchard Hill to the east and the river and the surrounding apple orchards to the north and west. The resident innkeeper, Summer was known to everyone back home as the keeper of secrets. She was also the best friend Madeline had ever had.

“The boys came to the inn?” Madeline asked.

“After lunch. All three of them. All at once,” Summer said drolly.

Oh, dear. All three Sullivan men all at once intimidated most people. Madeline’s conscience chafed. She wished she could have done this without sneaking, but if her brothers had known she was planning this today, they would have tried to stop her, or worse, insisted upon coming with her. God love them, but they would smother her if she let them.

“What did you tell them?” she asked.

“First I reminded them that you’re a grown woman. Marsh took it the hardest. You should have seen the look on his face when I broke the news that you’re twenty-five. I informed Reed that seeking proof that Riley Merrick is alive and well isn’t unreasonable and I made Noah promise not to follow you by land, by sky or by sea. I didn’t have the heart to tell any of them I advised you to have your way with the first gorgeous man you laid eyes on.”

It was such ludicrous advice Madeline couldn’t help smiling. “I’m overlooking a construction site, Summer. Think about what you’re suggesting.”

Of everyone Madeline loved, Summer understood her best. She would have gladly helped Madeline find a way to shed her old life, to sprout wings or start over where no one knew her, the way Summer had. But she wasn’t like Summer. Marsh, Reed and Noah had done nothing wrong except love their younger sister, and perhaps try too hard to fill their parents’ shoes after they died when she was twelve.

Madeline knew how worried everyone was about her, but her friends, family and coworkers couldn’t fix what was wrong with her life. The only person who could make things better was Madeline herself.

And maybe Riley Merrick.

“Have you seen him yet?”

Summer’s voice summoned Madeline back to the situation at hand. Studying the view through the field glasses again, she said, “There’ve been a few vehicles in and out of the gate and a small crew is climbing around on some scaffolding right now. I don’t think he’s with them.”

“He’s probably short, fat and bald, you know.”

“He isn’t short, fat or bald,” Madeline said absently as she searched the faces of two new arrivals in the distance.

“How do you know?” Summer asked.

“I Googled him.”

There was a moment of silence before Summer said, “So what does he look like?”

“Early thirties, with dark, unruly hair, deep-set eyes, a stubborn chin and a stance that has attitude written all over it.”

“He sounds dreamy.”

“Don’t start, Summer. I mean it.”

“I’m just having a little fun. It’s been a long time since you’ve had any fun. Maybe it’s been long enough.”

Summer had spoken gently, the way everyone in Madeline’s life did these days, and yet the words found their way into her chest like an echo returning from a distant canyon.

“What will you do after you’ve seen him?” Summer asked. “Will you try to talk to him?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, what would I say? ‘Excuse me. You don’t know me, but I just drove a hundred and eighty miles because I need to believe in the notion that something good can come from even the saddest tragedies. You see, that heart beating in your chest used to be my late fiance’s.’ Can you imagine how it would feel to hear that out of the blue? I didn’t come here to upset him.”

“I know,” Summer said. “It isn’t asking too much though, to know he’s alive and flourishing.”

“Thanks, Summer. You’re the best.”

Madeline stared into the clouds in the distance for a long time after the call ended, her mind blessedly blank. Eventually the low rumble of an approaching car brought her from her trance. After raising the binoculars to her eyes, she saw a silver Porsche pull into the lane leading to the construction site. The driver parked on the crest of the next hill and got out. Wearing a brown bomber jacket and khakis, he turned, giving her a momentary glimpse of dark, unruly hair and deep-set eyes.

Riley Merrick. His name escaped on a whisper and brought with it a hitch in her breathing.

He left his car well away from the bulldozer lumbering back and forth at the foot of the hill, and walked the rest of the way to the site. He moved like a long-distance runner, strong and focused and seemingly oblivious to the cold wind in his face.

With his arrival, the area came alive. Generators were started and men in tool belts climbed up scaffolding and ladders, spreading out at the top like ants at a picnic.

Madeline settled back in her seat and took a deep breath. There. She’d done it. She’d witnessed for herself that Riley was alive, and yes, apparently flourishing. Now she could spend the rest of her vacation anywhere, satisfied in her newfound knowledge.

There was only one tiny little problem with that. She didn’t feel satisfied. She felt—

She jerked her head around and fumbled for the binoculars. Someone was climbing the scaffolding in the distance, someone as lithe and agile as a longdistance runner, someone wearing a brown bomber and khakis.

The field glasses bounced off the passenger seat and thudded to the floor. Seconds later she was starting her car. Tires churning up sand, she raced down the hill, around the bend and through the gates at the construction site. In an instant she was out of the car, running against the wind.

The blueprints in Riley’s hands flapped in the wind as he watched the crane lift a roof truss high over the heads of the crew bracing to secure it into place. This summer house was going to be a beauty. From its conception he’d envisioned a buxom lady, with her turret windows, soaring vaulted ceilings and pitched roof. The clients, an eccentric movie-producing husband-and-wife duo from L.A. wanted a showplace, and Riley was just the architect to ensure they got exactly what they wanted.

The lakeside lady would boast stone quarried in Michigan’s upper peninsula and incredible arched leaded windows that winked in just the right light. Inside, she’d have every decadent luxury—a gourmet kitchen, heated stone and Brazilian cherry floors, steam showers and a spa fit for royalty. She’d be a big-boned gal, six thousand square feet on one floor with another fourteen hundred in the nearby guesthouse. By the average person’s standards, that was a lot of square footage for a vacation home. It seemed the wealthier people were, the more room they needed to get away from each other. Riley grew up in a house twice this size.

From the corner of his eye, he saw his project foreman sauntering toward him. “Phone’s for you,” Kipp Dawson said.

“The clients?” Riley asked. When Kipp shook his head, Riley tensed, for only his mother could elicit a grimace of this magnitude from a man as tough and rangy as Kipp. “Take a message,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Do I look like a secretary to you?” But Kipp punched a button on his phone and said, “He’ll call you later, Chloe,” then promptly broke the connection.

Upon meeting them, people were often surprised by Kipp and Riley’s friendship, for Riley had had a privileged upbringing and Kipp had been left with any relative not quick enough to barricade the door. When Kipp was fourteen his mother had dropped him at the Merrick estate, claiming Riley’s father was Kipp’s old man, too. Since Jay Merrick had been good at two things—making money and siring sons, it was certainly possible. In those days before DNA testing, it had taken private investigators nearly a year to prove it wasn’t true. By then the boys were close and Riley’s mother told Kipp he was welcome to stay. She never let either of them forget her good deed.

Riley knew his mother was worried about him but he didn’t appreciate her meddling. Kipp tolerated it much better. Of course, he had her up on a pedestal, right where she wanted to be. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to her,” he said.

Riley mumbled something that meant the subject was closed, but the truth was, he knew what his mother wanted. He’d been dodging her calls all week.

He and Kipp stood side by side while the crew struggled to heave the next truss into place. At this rate they’d never get them all secured before that storm blew ashore.

“Where is everyone?” Riley asked.

“Billie’s sick, Art’s still out with that bum knee of his and the Trevino brothers didn’t show up again,” Kipp said as he lit a cigarette.

“Feel like making yourself useful?” Riley asked.

Kipp hadn’t leaned on a razor in a while. The whisker stubble didn’t conceal his eagerness as he ground the cigarette into the sand. “Your mother’s gonna have my boys in a sling. I’m right behind you.”

They donned safety vests and climbed up. The moment Riley took his place with the crew, an age-old thrill went through him, the kind of thrill that inspired men to shout from distant mountaintops, to dance around ceremonial campfires and to raise a flag on the moon.

The view was breathtaking in every direction. A car was speeding down one of the narrow lanes wending through the nearby hills. Out on the lake an iron ore tanker plodded due south. A small barge chugged away from it, giving it a wide berth. In the distance the sun turned the clouds into a sieve, sprinkling light like holy water across the surface of Lake Michigan.

Riley had climbed mountains and skied down them, flown airplanes and parachuted out of them. Speed was good. High altitudes were better. It wasn’t that the world made sense off the ground. Off the ground, it didn’t have to make sense. Up here, it didn’t matter that he’d contracted a rare virus that should have killed him and would have if not for modern medicine. Up here he didn’t feel as if he’d been walking in another man’s shoes for the past eighteen months.

Every man in the crew watched the crane lift the next truss into the air. Everyone braced as it was lowered toward them. Every one of them saw it lurch on a sudden gust of wind then slam into Riley’s chest.

Riley felt the impact, heard the rush of air leaving his lungs. He fell twenty feet in an instant and snapped to the end of the cable attached to his safety vest with a force that knocked the remaining wind out of him.

“Pete, Sean!” the foreman yelled. “Get that rafter nailed down. Hold on, boss!”

Cinched tight in his harness twenty feet off the ground, Riley wasn’t going anywhere. He was aware of more discussion overhead, but the next voice he concentrated on came from halfway down the wall.

“Riley. Over here.”

Kipp was perched at the edge of the scaffolding. His left arm was wrapped around a two-by-eight runner as he tossed Riley a rope and drew him to solid footing. Once safely on the scaffolding, Riley unhooked his harness and released it. He had little choice but to withstand the quick once-over Kipp gave him with a gaze that saw everything. The fact that he didn’t shrug it off and go back to work wasn’t lost on anybody, least of all on Riley himself. Shakier than he cared to admit, he carefully climbed the rest of the way to the ground.

And came face-to-face with a woman he didn’t know.

Or was he seeing things? After all, pretty young women didn’t appear out of nowhere at rough-in sites. This one seemed to be floating toward him. Her hair was long and light blond. Her lips were moving but it was difficult to understand what she was saying.

“Are you all right? Are you feeling faint? Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Riley stared dazedly at her. She was of average height and wore a light jacket that was belted at her waist and open at her throat where a silver charm hung from a delicate chain. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes flashed with the same beams of light that surrounded the rest of her.

Beams of light? What the hell was wrong with him?

He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear his vision. Thankfully when he looked again, the strange light was gone. The woman hadn’t disappeared, though.

“You’re sweating,” she said. “You could be going into shock. You should be sitting down. Lying down would be better. How are your ribs? Are they tender? Do you have pain anywhere? There’s no telling what you might have bruised or injured or God forbid, jarred loose.”

She opened an oversized purse and fished around inside. The next thing he knew, she was trying to press the end of a stethoscope to his chest.

He backed out of her reach.

“I’m a nurse,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a thousand times.”

He closed his hand around the end of the stethoscope and held it away from his body. She tried again to push it toward his chest but he held fast. Before either of them was ready to admit they’d reached an impasse, the wind intervened, dragging her hair out of the fastener at her nape, an effective diversion for both of them. Free, the blond tresses whipped and swirled around her head.

She finally released her end of the stethoscope and reached up, winsomely tying her hair into a knot that begged to be undone again. She should have looked as out of place as an orchid in a patch of quack grass, and yet her presence seemed expected, binding somehow.

Awareness surged through him so strongly he was tempted to forget he was standing in the middle of a construction site in plain view of a dozen curious men with a pretty young woman intent upon touching him. He wanted her to touch him almost as much as he wanted to pull her to him and cover her mouth with his.

“I’d feel a lot better if you would sit down,” she said. “Could I at least take your pulse?”

The question finally brought him to his senses. She was a nurse. Here to take his pulse.

The thundering in his ears moved ominously into his voice as he said, “My mother sent you, didn’t she?”

Chapter Two

Riley Merrick was standing three feet away.

Madeline was certain her feet were planted firmly on the ground, and yet she felt as if she were drawing closer to him. Heat emanated from him, making her yearn to burrow into his warmth, her ear pressed to his chest. The rumble of the bulldozer’s engine and the sharp pounding of heavy hammers receded until the only sound she heard was the chiming of something sweet and delicate sprinkling into the empty spaces inside her.

“Well? Did my mother hire you or didn’t she?” She blinked. And sound returned in a raucous, roaring cacophony of pitch and volume. “Your mother?” she finally asked.

He scowled. “Knowing my mother, she probably told you to lie about your association with her.”

“I’m a terrible liar,” she said dazedly.

He finally released the stethoscope. “Keep that away from me. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Madeline Sullivan. As I told you before, I’m a nurse, but—”

“So my mother sent you to play nursemaid. That’s so typical. No doubt she expects you to check my pulse and report back to her.”

Since she still didn’t know what his mother had to do with her, she said, “I think we should keep your mother out of this.”

“At least we agree on one thing.”

“Do we also agree that walking on narrow beams fifty feet off the ground is a risk you have no business taking?” Why was she so breathless?

Angry, he was having trouble breathing, too. His next attempt made his nostrils flare as he said, “I was wearing my safety harness.”

Eyeing the harness dangling from the end of a yellow rope, his hard hat upside down on the plywood floor directly beneath it, she shook her head. He could have broken his neck. He could have died, and it all would have been for nothing.

“It can take a long time for ribs to heal completely after a surgery like yours,” she said gently. “Especially with the medications you’re on. You are taking your medicine, aren’t you?”

His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered as he said, “You’re fired, Madeline.”

Her head jerked up. “You can’t fire me.”

“I just did.”

She had to force her gaping mouth closed. Now that she wasn’t simply absorbing the essence of him, she had the presence of mind to take a good look at the man whose name had crept into her thoughts so often these past eighteen months.

She’d expected his face to be swollen, his jowls sagging, his skin sallow. Instead he was lean and rugged and tan. A muscle moved in his jaw and there was a trace of something not easily identified in his brown eyes. Was it dread? Regret? Or was it a haunting sorrow?

Cursed with a soft spot for anyone suffering or struggling in any way, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”

He drew his arm out of her grasp. “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. You have to leave. This is private property and you’re trespassing. Tell my mother—never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” With that, he walked away.

She watched as he conferred with a burly man who’d just climbed off the earthmover. The other man glanced at her, putting her in mind of a St. Bernard—big, yes, hairy, certainly, loyal, obviously, but not very fierce. Deciding to spare him the discomfort of having to escort her to her car, and spare herself the discomfort, as well, she left of her own accord. She surprised herself when she slammed her foot on the accelerator, but she had to admit the sound of sand spraying behind her spinning tires brought her a certain satisfaction.

No sense letting Riley Merrick have the last word.

“Uh-huh,” she said absently into the phone as she reached ahead to wipe fog off her windshield. The hills on either side of the county road were dotted with cherry trees, the branches flexed in anticipation of that elusive signal from Mother Nature to burst into blossom. Madeline understood their wistful impatience.

“Was Riley anything like you expected?” Summer asked.

Hunkering down in her seat, she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her to ward off the damp chill while she considered the question. There was a rawness about Riley Merrick, a burning sensuality that had caught her completely off guard. Deciding to keep that perception to herself for now, she said, “He’s fit, healthy and stubborn, and he looks like his photo.”

“Are you coming home now?” Summer asked.

Madeline had been sitting along the side of the road for the past forty minutes, thinking about her options. Glancing at the keys dangling uselessly in the ignition, she said, “That would be problematic.”

“Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

“What you don’t know the boys can’t badger out of you.” She jolted when a knock sounded on the window. Clearing a spot on the foggy glass, she saw a woman in coveralls hunkered down, looking in.

“Did you just gasp?” Summer asked.

Madeline rubbed the tender spot on her forehead where she’d smacked it on the window and nodded at the woman who’d startled her. To Summer, she said, “How do you suppose a two-ton tow truck sneaked up on me?”

“You called a tow truck?” Summer asked.

Gesturing to the driver that she’d be with her in a moment, Madeline said, “My car started wheezing as I left the construction site. I managed to coax it a mile before it lunged to the side of the road and surrendered. It’s what I get for having the last word.”

“I’m not even going to try to make sense of that.”

She could picture Summer pacing from the front desk of the inn to the French doors with the view of the back garden, always on the lookout, for what Madeline didn’t like to imagine. “They told me they were sending out someone named Red. I wasn’t expecting a woman. I have to go.”

“You’ll call me if you need me?” Summer asked.

“You know I will.” With that, she dropped her phone into her bag, unlocked her door and got out.

“Are you Madeline Sullivan?” the other woman asked.

Madeline nodded. “You’re Red?”

“It’s Ruby, actually. Red is my dad.” She touched a ringlet that had escaped the confinement of her ball cap. “Runs in the family.”

There was a feeling Madeline had when she was exactly where she was supposed to be at the precise moment she was supposed to be there. Some called it an “ah” moment. She called it knowing. She’d described it once to Summer as a shimmering energy that resembled light and felt like warmth. She’d experienced it the day Summer had driven into Orchard Hill six years ago, the day Aaron Andrews took the vacant desk next to her in the fifth grade, and fleetingly when she’d first encountered Riley Merrick today. It was happening again right now.

“Do I have grease on my face?” Ruby asked.

Madeline chided herself for staring. “Goodness, no. I was just thinking how much your name suits you. You’re gorgeous. How tall are you?”

“Five-eleven.” Ruby opened the door and put the car in Neutral. “And a quarter,” she added quietly.

Ruby may have been shy about her exotic beauty, but Madeline soon discovered she wasn’t shy about anything else. She talked while she hooked the cable to the front axle, while she started the winch and while she pointed them toward town.

Listening, Madeline learned what it had been like growing up in Gale, a small town twenty miles west of Traverse City, and how Ruby had decided early on that the family business wasn’t for her. Ruby had reached the point in her life story where she’d graduated from the University of Chicago when Madeline noticed the silver car in the side mirror.

“I took a job with a prestigious marketing firm in L.A.,” Ruby said. “After spending three years going stark raving mad in a tiny cubicle that for all intents and purposes might as well have been a chicken crate on an egg-laying assembly line, I chucked it all and returned to the roots I’d spurned. You’re sure I don’t have grease on my face?”

This time Madeline smiled. “I’m positive.”

At the city limit sign, Ruby said, “I’ve done all the talking.”

Now the silver car in the mirror was close enough to discern the make and year, close enough to see Riley Merrick behind the wheel.

“I don’t mind,” Madeline said. “Really. My fiancé once told me I have a face everyone talks to.”

She didn’t miss Ruby’s quick glance at her bare ring finger. “Does your fiancé drive a silver Porsche?” “No.”

Now they were both keeping an eye on the car in the mirror.

“But you know somebody who does.” At Madeline’s nod, Ruby added, “A friend then?”

“Not exactly,” Madeline said as the wrecker crawled through a pothole on its way into the garage’s driveway. “He just threw me off some property and accused me of trespassing.”

Along with the gift of gab and legs long enough to give Heidi Klum a run for her money, Ruby O’Toole possessed the rare and uncanny ability to move her eyebrows independently of each other. She demonstrated before saying, “I should have let you do the talking.”

Madeline looked out the side window to see if Riley would follow her into the parking lot. Ruby leaned ahead to peer around her.

Together, they saw him stop at the curb. He lowered his window and stared at Madeline. Yearning swelled inside her, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to tear her gaze away. She wondered how long she would have sat there if he hadn’t broken eye contact. Probably as long as it was going to take the beating rhythm of her heart to return to normal.

“Something tells me you haven’t seen the last of him,” Ruby said quietly after he’d disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.

She was still making up her mind about that.

Madeline left Red’s Garage an hour later with a preliminary quote for the repair of her car, simple walking directions to the Gale Motel six blocks away, and more O’Toole family history—red hair wasn’t the only thing that ran in that family. She set off at a fast clip, her tote over one shoulder, her purse over the other, her wheeled suitcase bumping along behind her.

Red O’Toole had cautioned her to keep an eye on the sky. She was more concerned about the Land Rover that was following her. She stepped up her pace and reached into her purse for her cell phone.

“You don’t need to call 911,” a man with shaggy blond hair said, rather sharply in her opinion, as he pulled up beside her. “Riley sent me.”

She tried to recall where she’d seen him. “Why would he do that?” she asked as she considered flagging down the car approaching from the opposite direction.

“You’ll have to ask him.”

The approaching car passed while she was foolishly still deciding. Great. Now it was just her and this stranger and her cell phone.

The houses in this part of town sat close together. Their graying porches and brown lawns looked forlorn despite the daffodils blooming along their foundations. Not a single curtain moved, which meant there would be no witnesses. She could practically hear their grumbles if her brothers had to drive all the way up here to identify her body. That lovely thought finally brought her to her senses.

Again, the man spoke before she completed the 911 call. “Riley told me your car broke down and that you could use a ride.”

“Like I said,” she repeated, “why would Riley do that?”

“Like I said, you’ll have to ask him.” The guy wasn’t going to win any awards for charm. For some reason that made her feel less threatened.

“My name’s Kipp Dawson. I’m six-one and go a buck seventy soaking wet. See for yourself.” He fumbled through the glove box then held his license toward her. When she failed to move closer, he tossed it to her, wallet and all.

She read his ID while keeping an eye on her surroundings. “What are you doing here, Mr. Dawson?”

“I’m giving you a ride. Unless there’s somebody else who can come and get you.”

“I have three older brothers. Three protective older brothers. Accomplished hunters, all of them.”

“If you were going to call them, you would have by now.”

In other words, she’d wasted her breath on the implied threat.

“Riley has two brothers,” he said as if it had relevance to this conversation. “Half brothers, technically, one older, one younger. Pains in the ass, both of them. They come through for him when it counts, though.”

A fat raindrop landed on her forehead while she was wondering why this stranger was sharing Riley’s personal information with her. Within seconds the sky opened up, just as Red O’Toole had predicted.

Kipp got out of his vehicle and wrestled her suitcase from her. After tossing it into the back of his aging Land Rover, he said, “Riley has friends, too, who have his back. We’re worried about him.”

She stood ten feet away in the pouring rain, uncertain what to do about Kipp Dawson and his offer.

“Riley thinks his mother sent you,” he said, getting soaked, too. “I talked to Chloe a few minutes ago. She didn’t mention you.”

Madeline could have blurted the truth, but if she told anyone the reason she was here, it had to be Riley. And she had no right to tell him unless he asked. What had she gotten herself into?

“Maybe having a nurse around isn’t such a bad idea,” Kipp said.

“Are you saying you think he needs a nurse?” she asked.

“I’m not saying anything. I’m just offering you a ride to the motel because Riley asked me to. Do you want it or don’t you?”

Kipp Dawson looked as rough and unkempt as his dented old Land Rover. He was probably right about weighing one-seventy. Men didn’t often lie about their weight. His hair appeared darker now that it was wet and his whisker stubble was too straggly to be a fashion statement. Beneath his exterior was a vein of something earnest.

That didn’t make him her friend.

She tossed his wallet back to him and continued on her way. Walking faster now that she wasn’t weighted down by her cumbersome suitcase, she heard him swear and close his door. Then he was following her again in his car.

The little motel was exactly where Ruby had said it would be. Kipp parked under the portico beneath a lighted vacancy sign that was missing the C, then hauled her bulky suitcase out of the backseat. After setting it heavily on the pavement next to her, he got back in the driver’s seat without uttering a word.

For some reason she felt compelled to say, “Riley made it clear he doesn’t need a nursemaid, as he put it.”

Kipp lit a cigarette before replying. “Riley doesn’t talk about what he needs. You ask me, a good roll between the sheets with a pretty nurse might be just what the doctor ordered.”

Madeline was left staring at his taillights as he drove away, wondering how many more times she would have to consciously close her gaping mouth today.

Sully’s Pub began its existence as a boarding-house for lumberjacks in the mid-1800s. The ax and saw marks on the rough-hewn beams over the bar were as evident today as they were in the black-and-white photograph that immortalized Ernest Hemingway having a beer here in 1948. The waitress was a brown-eyed young woman named Sissy. She wore her dark hair short and her T-shirt tight, the words Yale is for thinkers—Gale is for drinkers stretched across her chest. According to her, the fine folks of Gale have been hoping to lure someone famous to town ever since. Other celebrities had reportedly purchased property in the area, but if they drank, it wasn’t at Sully’s.

Madeline hadn’t come to Sully’s to meet anybody famous. She came because she was starving and the desk clerk at the motel said it was the only place within walking distance that served food this late during the off-season.

The bar was surprisingly crowded on this Friday evening in April. It had a simple menu, small tables, mismatched chairs, paneled walls and one pool table in the back where Madeline and Ruby were losing to a petite brunette named Amanda and her clean-cut accountant boyfriend, Todd.

“You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?” Ruby sputtered to Amanda after scratching on an easy shot.

Amanda didn’t let the fact that she was nearly a head shorter than Ruby intimidate her. Crossing her arms stubbornly, she said, “You’ve been my best friend my entire life and I’m not attending our ten-year high school reunion without you.”

Without her ball cap to subdue it, Ruby’s wavy red hair fell halfway down her back. Even in flat shoes, her legs looked a mile long. In fact, everything about her was long—her eyelashes, her silences, her sigh before she said, “Pete’s going to be there.” “So?” Amanda asked.

“Pete,” Ruby said with obvious disdain. “You know. Peter. As in Cheater Peter?”

“You guys finished here?” somebody asked.

After relinquishing the pool table to a group celebrating a twenty-first birthday, Todd said, “Just take a date.”

As if it was that easy. “Ugh,” was all Ruby said.

Obviously accustomed to these conversations, Todd excused himself and ambled over to talk to someone on the other side of the room. Now that it was just women, Amanda explained Ruby’s dilemma to Madeline.

“Sure she could ask Jason Horning, but he’s practically eye-level with the girls here.” She gestured in the vicinity of Ruby’s chest. “And Ruby’s always had a thing about short men. I mean, a thing. A few years ago, a man escaped from the Benzie County Jail. Every hardware store within fifty miles sold out of dead bolts and buckshot the first day. And do you know what Little Red Riding Hood here said? ‘I wonder if he’s tall.'”

Even Ruby smiled at the memory, until she said, “Buckshot. Now, there’s an idea.”

Madeline was so intrigued she didn’t notice Sissy’s approach until she’d plunked a beer down next to Madeline’s right hand. “It’s from that sulking Adonis at the bar.”

The celebration at the pool table was getting rowdier and the pub more crowded, and yet Madeline found Riley Merrick as if she had a radar lock on him. He’d exchanged his khakis and brown bomber for jeans and a crisp cotton shirt, and sat on a stool facing the mirror behind the bar, his back to her.

“Mr. Porsche, I presume?” Ruby said.

Sissy practically swooned. “He first came in about a year ago. Every month or so he returns. He orders a beer at the bar, talks to whoever happens to be sitting next to him, then leaves. I’ve seen him propositioned, but I haven’t seen him take a woman up on it. The guy couldn’t be sexier if he tried. I’m telling you, when a man like that buys a girl a drink, he’s either apologizing or interested.”

“Which is he?” Amanda asked, scooting her chair closer.

“Maybe both,” Ruby said. “He accused Madeline of trespassing and practically threw her off some property earlier.”

Ruby, Amanda and Sissy were brimming with curiosity.

“He looks tall,” Amanda said. “If you don’t go talk to him, Ruby here will.”

“Would you stop with the height references already?” Ruby sputtered.

Madeline laughed out loud, and it surprised her. She wanted to grasp these young women’s hands and thank them for failing to soften their voices around her. They didn’t handle her with kid gloves. Of course, they didn’t know her history. That anonymity felt breathtakingly liberating. “Would you excuse me?” she asked, surging to her feet.

She’d changed into boots with heels, snug jeans and a black knit shirt. Several people watched her as she made her way to the bar, but she kept her gaze trained on the man watching in the mirror.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after she’d taken the stool next to Riley.

“I thought it was obvious. I bought you a drink.”

Oddly, that gruff tone was as refreshing as Ruby’s, Amanda’s and Sissy’s curiosity had been. Eyeing the drop of condensation trailing down her bottle, she said, “I don’t drink.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

In the mirror she saw Todd slip his arm around Amanda’s shoulder. It was such a pure and simple gesture of intimacy it sent an ache to her chest. “I just lost a game of eight ball and it wasn’t pretty.”

“Losing never is.”

Riley was a study in contrasts. He was a risk-taker who didn’t like to lose, a wealthy business owner who worked alongside his crew. Practically every guy in the bar had at least a few days’ whisker stubble on his face. Riley was clean shaven. His shirt had a designer logo; the beer bottle held loosely in his right hand didn’t.

“You shouldn’t be drinking,” she said.

“You even sound like my mother. I hope she paid you in advance.”

Riley seemed accustomed to interference from his mother. It might have annoyed him, but Madeline got the distinct impression it didn’t intimidate him. “I told you,” she said. “She didn’t pay me anything. Are you this distrusting of everyone in the medical field?”

She noticed an easing in his expression and a warming in his eyes, and it occurred to her that he was enjoying himself. Some men puffed up their chests or swaggered in order to be noticed. Riley’s self-confidence was more subtle.

Someone jostled her from behind and a loud whooping sounded from the group at the pool table. Three middle-aged men yelled at the ref on a television mounted on the wall, drinks were plunked down, a blender started. Sitting in this bar in this town of strangers, her elbows on the marred countertop, the heel of one boot hooked over the rung of her stool, she felt a weight lifting.

“I met a friend of yours today,” she said. “Kipp Dawson could use some training in social graces.”

“I’ll let you tell him.”

She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he threatened me.”

“Kipp threatens everyone.”

She found herself staring at Riley’s mouth. It was broad, the lower lip just full enough to entice a second look. “He told me he has your back.”

“What else did he say?” he asked.

“I won’t repeat it verbatim, but he was very poetic.”

He leaned closer, as if to tell her a secret. “The only time Kipp waxes poetic is when he’s referring to sex.”

Was he flirting with her? Her heart fluttered wildly at the thought. “Just so there’s no confusion,” she said, her beer a few inches from her mouth. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

“Madeline?”

They were nearly shoulder to shoulder now, their bottles raised, gazes locked. “Yes?”

“I didn’t ask you to.” He took his time taking a long drink, set his beer back on the bar, then added, “But I was thinking about it.”

Her beer remained suspended in midair. Her mind remained blank. With two fingers placed gently beneath her chin, Riley closed her mouth for her.

“Once more,” she whispered, her heart hammering in her chest, her gaze still on his.

“Pardon me?”

“That’s my answer.”

“What was the question?” he asked.

“How many more times will my mouth go slack today?”

He didn’t quite smile, but she thought he wanted to. Feeling a curious swooping pull in the pit of her stomach, she raised her beer to her lips and drank it down.

Chapter Three

Are you okay over there?” Riley asked as he backed out of a parking spot behind Sully’s.

Huddled low in his passenger seat, Madeline forced her eyes open and tried to focus on the lighted dials on the dash. “It must have been that last margarita.”

“More like the last three margaritas,” he said. “You and your friends were the life of the party. The bartender said their karaoke machine hasn’t seen that much action all year.”

She held a hand to her forehead, remembering. Madeline had jumped in to harmonize as Ruby sang the greatest Pat Benatar song of all time, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot.”

And somebody had, a shot of tequila for each of them, that is. Things were a little blurry after that. She couldn’t quite recall how she came to be missing one earring. Was she wearing Riley’s jacket? Where was hers?

Moaning softly, she said, “This is why I don’t drink.”

“I saw how you don’t drink.”

She considered telling him a gentleman wouldn’t have mentioned that, but then he probably would have said a gentleman hadn’t, and she just wasn’t up to that kind of banter. When his tires splashed through a pothole, she placed a hand over her poor stomach.

“Hold on,” he said. “These streets are coming apart. I can turn the radio on if you think it’ll help, but if I go any slower, we’ll be moving backward through time, and I doubt you want to relive the past ten minutes.”

“What I want is someone to start an IV to put me in a medically induced coma.”

“So it’s true.”

“What’s true?” she asked miserably. “Doctors and nurses make terrible patients.” “To tell you the truth, I’ve never been a patient.”

She paused a moment before broaching a very delicate subject. “What kind of patient were you?”

“The impatient kind, to hear my brothers tell it.”

She liked the mellow tone of his voice and the way he didn’t take himself too seriously. She wished he would keep talking. “Kipp said you have two brothers.”

“Kyle and Braden. Between us we had one father and three mothers, all of whom have a wide array of yappy little dogs that are obnoxiously high-strung, and too many grandmothers and aunts to officially count, most of whom are also obnoxiously high-strung. Kyle calls the women in the family The Sources because they leak information when it suits their hidden agendas. I don’t know how much my mother told you about me.”

Obviously he hadn’t called his mother. If he had, he would know she’d had nothing to do with Madeline’s arrival in Gale.

“Riley, she didn’t—”

“Why don’t you tell me what you already know.”

I knew the sound of your heart beating before it was yours, and the way it felt beneath the palm of my

hand.

If only she could say that out loud. But she couldn’t do that without explaining how she’d discovered his identity.

Her memories of that horrible day never recurred in their natural order. Instead they flashed back randomly from out of the blue, blindsiding her every time. There was the E.R. doctor’s grave expression, the screech of a gurney, the specialist they called in to confer. Dread. Her frantic race to reach Aaron in time, the sting of her own tears. Dread. The discordant hiss and rattle of the machines doing what Aaron could no longer do, the results of the tests, the bitter taste of coffee. Dread.

It went on for hours and hours. Gradually the seconds slowed then stopped altogether. It was over. One moment she’d been saying goodbye, and the next she was engulfed in a void so vast it sucked the air from her lungs, the sound from the room, and color from every surface. Summer believed Madeline had been having a panic attack. Madeline only knew that the pressure building in her chest had forced her from Aaron’s bedside and sent her clamoring for the stairs.

Up and around and up and around she’d gone until she’d burst onto the hospital roof where a helicopter was readying for takeoff. She crept close enough to feel the wind from the blades, the whomp, whomp, whomp matching the horrible pressure in her chest. The hospital staff scurrying about paid no attention to her. Since she was wearing scrubs, she probably blended right in. She dazedly stepped aside as two men raced toward the helicopter. One carried a cooler; the other was talking on a cell phone.

“ETA one hour,” he said as he veered around her. “Prep Riley Merrick for surgery. His new heart is on the way.”

The next thing she knew the helicopter was lifting. It hovered overhead, turned then disappeared in the midnight sky. All that remained in the ensuing stillness was the whomp, whomp, whomp of her heart and the whisper of Riley Merrick’s name.

There were strict laws protecting patients’ identity. Even if it was legal, did she have the moral right to tell him about Aaron? Transplant recipients were always given the opportunity to obtain information about their donor. If Riley had wanted to know, he would have gone through the proper channels via his surgeon and the hospital. For whatever reason, he hadn’t. Madeline didn’t see what choice she had but to allow him to continue to assume she was here because of his mother.

“Are you still awake?” Riley asked, bringing her from her reverie. Hearing her sigh, he said, “Why don’t you tell me something about you.”

Seconds passed while she tried to think of something to say, a place to begin. “I’m normally an open book. My fiancé used to say I told everyone I meet my life story.”

“I noticed you aren’t wearing a ring,” he said.

“Who ended it?”

“I guess he did.” “You guess?”

“He died.”

This was when most people voiced one of the stock phrases for which there was no response. I’m so sorry to hear that. He must have been terribly young. Time heals.

But Riley asked, “How long were you engaged?”

Concentrating on the blue dash light and the way it illuminated his hands, she said, “I knew I was going to marry him in the fifth grade.”

“I thought that only happened in third world countries and biblical times.”

In a hundred years Madeline hadn’t planned to laugh. Riley rarely said what she expected. The sensation of being caught unawares was new and mildly exciting and other things she would have been able to identify if she hadn’t taken her little trip to Margarita-Ville tonight.

Riley was smiling, too. When he looked at her, something changed in the very air she breathed. A delicate connection was forming between them. It sent a flutter of nerves to her stomach and the flutter of something else slightly lower.

They rode the remaining three blocks to the Gale Motel in silence. She got out of the car by rote after he parked, rifled through her purse until she found her key card and arrived at her door at the same time he did. Suddenly she froze.

“Something wrong, Madeline?” His voice was a low vibration that drew her gaze. The light over the door cast half his face in shadow. His hair fell across his forehead and his hands rested lightly on his hips as if he was as comfortable here as he was sitting on a bar stool or walking on narrow beams thirty feet off the ground.

He was good at this.

He leaned closer, not close enough to make her think he might kiss her, but close enough for her to smell his air-cooled skin and beer-warmed breath. Beneath those scents was the living breathing smell of risk.

He didn’t touch her—he wasn’t quite a rogue. Instead he stayed within reach should she choose to touch him—he wasn’t quite a saint, either. He was something dangerous in between.

Risk. Danger.

She panicked.

Shoving the key card into the slot, she blurted, “Thanks for the ride. I mean that. Good night, Riley.” A second later the door closed behind her.

It wasn’t long before she heard a car start. She didn’t have to look through the peephole to know he had gone.

Breathing shallowly, she studied her room. Her suitcase was open on the low dresser, her toiletries strewn across the faux marble vanity. She almost didn’t recognize her own reflection in the mirror above it—her hair mussed, her face flushed, her lips parted slightly.

What was happening to her?

This trip was supposed to bring her a sense of peace, of completion, of closure. It felt more like a desperate attempt to make sense of something beyond mere mortals’ comprehension.

If Aaron were here, he would say, “I told you so.”

She missed that about him. She missed everything about him, from the way the sun touched his hair with gold to how his smile lit up his blue eyes. She missed his optimism and the way he always thought the best of everyone. She missed hearing about his students’ escapades. She even missed the way he’d cracked his knuckles in church and dumped sugar straight from the sugar bowl into his coffee.

Moving slowly lest she detonated an explosion in the pit of her stomach, she stepped away from the door. She was turning the dead bolt when she noticed she was still wearing Riley’s jacket. Emotion swelled inside her as she brought the sleeve to her nose. It was unsettling, for the man stepping boldly into her mind wasn’tAaron—this man had dark wavy hair, deep-set eyes and a stance that had attitude written all over it.

The door to Madeline’s room was propped open, a cleaning cart blocking the entrance. Riley stood outside, looking in. The bed was freshly made, ready for the next guest. Madeline was nowhere in sight.

He was too late. She was gone.

Built of cinder block fifty odd years ago, the Gale Motel had a total of eight rooms on one floor. The roof was patched, the windows aluminum factory issue. The place completely lacked architectural appeal. But wild horses couldn’t have kept him away this morning.

“I’m too late,” he said as he untied the dog’s leash from the railing. “The desk clerk said Madeline checked out thirty minutes ago.”

The dog stared up at him as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?”

There wasn’t much Riley could do about it. He didn’t know her phone number, where she lived or where she worked. He supposed he could always ask his mother then dismissed the idea as quickly as it formed. He’d had a few beers with a pretty woman. Hours later he’d had one amazing dream about her.

End of story. Certain aspects of the dream still lingered in his mind and in his bloodstream, making their brief association feel unfinished, but she was gone, and that was that.

He didn’t remember the last time he’d been this preoccupied with a woman he’d just met. She wasn’t even his type. Normally he liked his women chesty; surgically enhanced was fine with him. And they wanted what he wanted. Half the time they were the aggressors. Madeline liked him—a man could always tell—and yet she’d ducked into her room last night without so much as a backward glance.

The dog strained against the leash, dragging Riley from his musings. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s your hurry?” Normally the old stray poked his nose in a hundred different places. Today he wanted to run.

Riley gave him the lead. They hit Elm Street hard, then Third, and finally the last stretch along Shoreline Drive. They were starting up the driveway when Riley caught a glimpse of Madeline’s pale blond hair before she disappeared behind the arborvitae hedge in his backyard.

Well, well, well. She hadn’t left town after all.

The dog gave a short bark then tugged against the leash again. “You want to show off for the lady?”

For a mutt, he had good instincts.

“Just remember,” Riley said as he matched his pace to the dog’s steady run. “I saw her first.”

There was one rainstorm every April that spun the seasonal dial to spring. It lightened the sky, mellowed the breeze, gentled the air and left every living organism quivering with irrepressible enthusiasm.

Yesterday’s downpour hadn’t been that storm.

The pummeling rain had given everything in its path a good cleaning and the temperature was warmer today. Rooftops, streets, sidewalks, even the boardwalk leading to the lakeshore glistened in the morning sun. Under the surface, the earth was restless. Melancholy. Like Madeline.

She’d forgotten to close the blinds in her room last night and had awakened in the sun-drenched bed, shards of sunlight boring holes through her eye sockets. A quick shower and two aspirin had tamed her headache, thank goodness for small favors. She’d wasted no time packing. She’d checked out of her room, picked up her car and said goodbye to Ruby.

It was time to go home.

She’d accomplished what she’d come to Gale to do, and more. Yesterday she’d seen Riley, she’d spoken with him, she’d even spent a little time with him. No matter what he thought his mother thought he needed, he was obviously physically fit, healthy and strong.

She had only one thing left to do.

With the jacket she’d somehow ended up wearing home last night now folded over her left arm, she pressed Riley’s doorbell again.

When she’d picked up her car at Red’s Garage, she’d asked Ruby’s father if he knew where Riley Merrick lived. Five minutes later she’d driven away with his address, driving directions and a description of Riley’s house. Red O’Toole hadn’t been exaggerating. Riley’s house was a sprawling single story that blended into the surrounding hills. It had a low-pitched roof, deep eaves and wide porches. It wasn’t so large that he wouldn’t have had ample time to answer the door by now if he was inside.

What now?

She supposed she could have left his jacket on the railing, but she preferred to return it in person. Wondering if he might be down by the lake, she followed an old flagstone path around the house.

The property was amazing, the lawn a gradual slope that leveled off just before it reached the water. Shading her eyes with one hand, she watched a catamaran drift slowly by, its bright orange sail rippling halfheartedly on the melancholy breeze. Several fishing boats trolled back and forth on the horizon, and sea gulls bickered in the foamy shallows.

Riley wasn’t back here, either.

Disappointed, she turned and slowly retraced her footsteps. She reached the flagstone path only to stop abruptly.

Riley and a large brown dog were running toward her. Wearing a black T-shirt and loose athletic pants, he stopped twenty feet away and unhooked the dog’s leash. While the dog raced to the water’s edge to scatter the squawking seagulls, Riley let his hands settle on his hips in a stance she was coming to recognize.

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