Their family. This house. This life.

Bonnie wanted so badly to want the same things Keith did, the things they’d always wanted together.

Their family. This house. This life.

Tied up in knots, she lay there beside him. Did she tell him she hadn’t stopped their spontaneous lovemaking because she hadn’t had to? That it was a safe time for her? The admission would hurt him, ruin the best evening they’d had in months. And for what?

Keith wanted another baby; she didn’t know whether she did or not. Even though she loved being a mother. And a wife.

She just had to figure out what she needed to do for Bonnie, the woman, before she committed herself any further. Or figure out how to convince that woman to feel completely fulfilled with the life she had.

But how did she tell her husband that? How could she look into those gorgeous eyes and tell this man that the life he loved, the one they’d built together, wasn’t enough for her?

They could lose everything. And for what?

So maybe they wouldn’t use protection the next time they made love. Or the time after that.

She loved him so much.

And couldn’t hurt him anymore.

Dear Reader,

We’re back in Shelter Valley, and I’m awfully glad to be here. To see familiar faces, spend time with trusted friends—to live for just a while in a place where good usually wins out.

This visit hasn’t been easy, though. What happens when two good, loving people change as they grow, wanting to travel different roads than the ones they set out on when they started their journey together? Who’s right? The person who wants to stay on the same road? Or the person who’s looking for something different?

Is the pursuit of personal happiness selfish and wrong? Or is it the biggest right? And what do you do with the love that refuses to die regardless of the unhappiness it brings?

I found Shelter Valley a secure place to explore some of the possibilities. And then I stumbled into a series of alarming mishaps at Bonnie’s day care….

The old cliché, “when it rains, it pours,” might be apropos—except that Shelter Valley is in the desert and doesn’t get much rain!

Anyway, I know I speak for everyone here when I say welcome! We’re glad you’ve joined us….

I love to hear from readers. You can reach me by mail at P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, AZ 86226, or by e-mail at ttquinn@tarataylorquinn.com. And I hope you’ll visit my Web site—www.tarataylorquinn.com.

Tara

Born in the Valley
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Nancy Lynn Miller and Rachel Marie Reames. You jumped in with energy and enthusiasm and made a hard time bearable. I’ll never forget….

THE RESIDENTS OF SHELTER VALLEY

Will Parsons: Dean of Montford University.

Becca Parsons: Wife of Will, active in community.

Bethany Parsons: Daughter of Becca and Will.

Ben Sanders: Former student, father (from previous marriage).

Tory Sanders: Wife of Ben, former abused wife.

Alex Sanders: Daughter of Ben, stepdaughter of Tory.

Phyllis Christine Sanders: Baby daughter of Ben and Tory.

Randi Foster: Sister of Will Parsons, married to Zack Foster. Manages women’s athletic department at Montford.

Zack Foster: Veterinarian. Husband of Randi.

Cassie Montford: Veterinarian. Works with Zack Foster and involved with pet therapy. Married to Sam Montford.

Sam Montford: Descended from the founder of the town. Married to Cassie. Successful comic strip artist.

Mariah Montford: Adopted daughter of Cassie and Sam.

Brian Montford: Son of Cassie and Sam.

Phyllis Sheffield: Psychologist. Prominent in psych department at Montford.

Matt Sheffield: Married to Phyllis. Works in theater at Montford.

Calvin and Clarissa Sheffield: Twin children of Phyllis and Matt.

Beth Richards: Found refuge for herself and her son after escaping abusive ex-husband. Married to Greg Richards.

Greg Richards: Sheriff of Shelter Valley. Married to Beth.

Bonnie Nielson: Sister of Greg Richards, runs Little Spirits Daycare, married to Keith.

Keith Nielson: Husband of Bonnie, works at Montford.

Katie Nielson: Daughter of Bonnie and Keith.

Lonna Nielson: Keith’s grandmother.

Martha Moore: Friend of Becca Parsons, recently divorced.

Brady Culver: Deputy of Greg’s.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE STREETS WERE DARK , but she welcomed the darkness. Welcomed the anonymity that wrapped itself around her, allowing her to run as no one in particular, a generic body passing unidentified through the early March night.

Sweating, heart working overtime, Bonnie Nielson concentrated on her rhythm, picking up speed as she reached her stride.

She knew these roads. Knew which houses gleamed bright and clean beneath a noonday sun, which yards grew beautiful flowers, which were the lucky ones with grass, instead of the more common desert landscaping. She knew every neighborhood, every family. In many cases she even knew the families who’d previously occupied these homes. She knew when the street had been paved. When that light went in. She even remembered when the stop sign was erected at the corner of Sage and Thyme.

She knew that an old man had died in that two-story stucco house she’d just passed. His unmarried son had inherited the place and moved in. She knew that the man living next door was divorced. And the one after that, a widower. Sometime during the past couple of years, she’d started thinking of the strip as bachelors’ row.

And she knew that what was now a big looming shadow was actually an old gray house that bucked the stucco tradition with its aluminum siding.

Growing up in Shelter Valley she’d always known the neighborhoods. Had taken comfort in that knowledge.

It was different now, though. Now the familiarity distressed her, a moment-to-moment reminder of how very small her world was—and always had been. How insignificant a role she played in this tiny, sheltered part of a planet that was drowning in need.

Yet this town also housed what was most important to her. Keith. Katie. Greg and Beth and little Ryan. Her friends. Her home.

So she ran. And when the Bonnie Nielson no one knew was hidden far enough inside her, she jogged toward home.

KEITH NIELSON was used to having the sheriff of Shelter Valley in his family room. Sprawling on Keith’s couch, eating Sunday dinner, baby-sitting three-year-old Katie, Sheriff Greg Richards visited regularly.

But not in uniform.

And never before in an official capacity. There’d been a fire, and Sheriff Greg Richards was there to break the news to his sister.

“She always out this late?” He was standing, hands in his pockets, between the kitchen and the family room—keeping watch on the garage door at one end of the kitchen and the sliding glass door in the family room.

Keith appreciated the look of concern on his brother-in-law’s face. Bonnie and Greg were the only living adult members of the Richards family.

Sitting on the edge of the couch, arms resting on his knees, Keith dropped his head, staring at hands that wouldn’t stay still. Staring at the wedding ring that had been a source of joy to him—until recently.

“Not often,” he said. But the truth was only partially revealed in those words. If he measured the number of times Bonnie had been out late at night during their whole marriage, it wasn’t often. If you measured the number of times she’d been out late since Christmas, it was higher. A lot higher.

Greg leaned back against the wall. “I figured this jogging thing would fade quickly.”

Keith thought about that. “Me, too,” he answered slowly. “Just like the aerobics and weight training did.”

Greg nodded. Glanced toward each door. Keith wished Tuesday was a good TV night. At least then they could pretend to be distracted.

“She’s sure looking great.”

“Yeah.” He’d rather see every one of the twenty pounds Bonnie had lost if he could have back the cheerful woman he’d married almost seven years before.

Keith’s head shot up, eyes trained on the garage door.

He thought he’d heard Bonnie come in. He waited, not looking forward to the moments ahead. Little Spirits Daycare had been Bonnie’s dream since her early teens. How badly was Greg’s news going to affect her? She hadn’t been herself for months as it was.

And how much did Greg know about that? Just because Bonnie hadn’t been open with him didn’t mean she hadn’t gone to her brother.

Or maybe Greg hadn’t noticed anything at all.

Keith listened and waited. For nothing.

“Katie’s sleeping soundly.” Greg hadn’t straightened from the wall.

Keith studied the grain in the hardwood floor. “Bonnie put her down before she went out.”

More silence. More door checking and glancing at watches. She’d been gone twenty minutes longer than her usual hour.

“Ryan’s had two dry nights in a row.”

Keith grinned at his brother-in-law. “That’s great, man!” he said, in a way only two men who were close would do.

Greg nodded, his smile slowly dropping to a frown. “You want to break it to her?” he asked.

“You’re the cop.”

“I figured you’d say that.”

“You’ve known her longer.”

“You’re married to her.”

Slapping a hand against his jean-clad thigh, Keith stood. “Who the hell would’ve done this? I mean, set a fire in a day care.”

“I don’t know, but you can be damn sure I’m going to find out.”

Keith believed him. Against every conceivable probability, Greg had solved a ten-year-old carjacking/murder that past spring. He’d found his father’s murderer.

Keith thought he heard Bonnie in the garage again. Moved into the kitchen. Ran a hand through hair that was straight and blond and a little long.

He peered into the refrigerator. “You want a beer?”

“Yeah.” Greg wandered over to the kitchen sink. “No, not really,” he muttered.

Closing the refrigerator door empty-handed, Keith said, “Me, neither.”

What he wanted was to go to work. Picturing the brand-new bigger studio, his general manager’s office, the monitors and cameras and constant activity, calmed him slightly. At MUTV—the Montford University television station—he was in control.

Or, barring work, he’d like to go to bed with his wife. But only if she’d snuggle her body up to him the way she used to.

He couldn’t just keep standing there, looking at his watch.

When he seriously considered searching the streets for his wife, knowing damn well he’d see her sooner if he just waited for her here, Keith went in to check on his daughter for the third time in an hour. Bonnie didn’t run particular routes. She could be anywhere in town. And unless he got lucky and chose the one street she happened to be on…

Katie was sound asleep, her thumb hanging out of open baby lips, her sweet cheeks plump and red and begging for a kiss. Keith touched the soft curls that were dark like her mother’s but still baby-hair wispy. He pulled pink sheets with little princess crowns up over the three-year-old’s shoulders and quietly left the room. He worried about Katie. Wondered if she was noticing the changes in her mother.

Was anyone else noticing?

Greg certainly hadn’t said anything.

So was it only with Keith that she was different? Was this a marriage thing?

His blood ran cold. God, he hoped it wasn’t. Anything else they could beat. As long as they were fighting it together.

Bonnie, sweaty and breathing heavily, was just coming through the garage door as Keith returned to the kitchen.

“What’s up?” she panted, looking from one man to the other. She frowned. “What’s wrong?” she demanded before either of them had replied to her first question. “It’s not Katie….” She glanced at Keith, who immediately shook his head.

She stared at her brother. “Did something happen to Beth? Or Ryan?”

“No.” Greg shook his head. “They’re fine.”

Keith braced himself as Greg’s hands dropped to Bonnie’s shoulders. “It’s Little Spirits.”

“What about it?”

She looked damned cute standing there in navy sweats with the bottoms hacked off to fit her short legs, and a white T-shirt under the matching hooded navy jacket. Too cute to be the recipient of distressing news.

“There’s been a fire.”

“At the day care?” She was hiding her grief well.

Greg nodded, then looked at Keith as if asking for help. Keith, however, was still waiting for Bonnie’s horrified gasp. “In the back supply closet.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No.”

Bonnie pulled out a chair, sat down, one arm leaning on the table. “Was there much damage?”

After that initial glance, she had yet to look at Keith, to give him a chance to offer his support.

Dropping into the chair across from her, Greg said, “You lost everything in the closet, but the fire was stopped before it spread any farther.”

Because he was feeling superfluous standing on the other side of the room, Keith joined the two at the kitchen table, pulling out the chair next to his wife.

Bonnie was frowning. “I wonder how on earth a fire got started in that closet. There’s not even an electrical outlet in there.”

“Someone set it.” Keith did the dirty work, after all. This was the part they’d known would upset her the most.

“You mean arson?” She peered back and forth between the two men. “Who would do a thing like that?” Then after a long pause, she added, “And why?”

Keith was still waiting for that gasp. For Bonnie’s usual intensity. For some kind of emotional reaction. Anger. Sadness.

Bonnie was perplexed.

And that was all.

“I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on who might’ve done this,” Greg told her, taking a notepad from his pocket.

Bonnie didn’t know.

They talked for half an hour, considering and dismissing one possibility after another. No matter what angle Greg took, Bonnie had nothing for him to go on, no leads to pursue. She gave her attention to the matter, answering every question thoughtfully, but with an almost unnerving calm.

Where in hell was Keith’s emotionally exuberant wife?

Greg finished. Eventually left. And Bonnie went in to shower.

Keith stood at the kitchen window, replaying the past hour in his mind, trying to make sense of a world he no longer recognized.

Bonnie, his protective, mother-hen wife, had just had one of her life’s dreams vandalized and had shown not the least bit of outrage—or hurt.

It was as though she didn’t care at all.

EVERYTHING WAS WET and charred, and there was a choking stench in the air. Bonnie pulled out a mop she’d used the week before to clean up an orange-juice accident in the classroom for the three-year-olds, while Alice, their teacher, had wiped off the children who’d been caught in the fray. The mop was wet again, but no longer white or orange-stained. Its synthetic fibers were more than half gone, the remaining strands dark gray and smeared with soot. One side of the long handle—the side that’d been burned—was splintery and coal-black.

She held it carefully.

“I can help with that.”

Her back to the door, Bonnie turned when she heard the voice of the landscaper and handyman. Shane Bellows was employed by the owner of the building in which she leased space.

“Hi, Shane,” she greeted the man who’d once made her teenaged heart throb—before he’d shattered that heart.

Shane might still look like the high-school quarterback who’d broken up with her their senior year because she was too nurturing and “not enough fun.” But the dark-haired man taking the mop from her wasn’t even a shadow of the boy he’d been.

The skiing accident that had changed Shane’s life forever had left him brain-damaged. His memory was somewhat impaired, and he’d become unable to process more than one thing at a time—which made it difficult for him to make decisions. Or to figure out little everyday details, such as the nuances in people’s words or facial expressions.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here last night to clean up for you.” Her emotions were touched by the little-boy tone of voice. He wanted so badly to please. “I’m sorry it had to stay like this all day.”

She handed him some crusty metal hangers to put in the industrial-size trash can she’d wheeled up to the door of the supply closet. “At least it’s out here, away from the kids’ rooms,” she told him. Her tennis shoes sloshed through puddles on the slippery floor as she stepped forward to clear the bigger pieces of melted plastic that had, the day before, been storage bins, from the now-warped metal shelving unit. “We were able to have school as usual today.”

Shane carefully took the plastic, turning completely, holding it over the container before dropping it in—as though making sure he’d aimed right.

“Besides,” she added, “it’s not your responsibility to clean up my messes.”

“I know.” He nodded, frowning slightly as he surveyed the charred remains and started on a shelf that was too high for her to reach without the discolored and misshapen stepstool next to the shelving unit. “I just want to help.”

“You are helping,” she told him, going to work on a lower shelf. “A lot.” She wasn’t even sure what exactly she was clearing away. There’d been a foot-high metal cabinet with twenty or thirty plastic drawers for screws and picture hangers and other little essentials. The drawers were melted shut. Bonnie tossed the whole thing.

“And, anyway,” she told Shane, “no one was allowed in here until the investigators finished up their work this afternoon.”

“Okay.”

They worked silently until the shelving unit was nearly empty. Having Shane around calmed her. She didn’t have to keep up appearances with him.

And being with her seemed to calm him, too.

“This is going much more quickly than I expected, thanks to you.”

He grunted, looking embarrassed, and then slowly smiled. “I’m glad I can help you.”

Bonnie turned back to the job at hand with a twinge of guilt.

Keith had offered to come and help with clean-up duty after work. Beth had said she’d take Katie home with her and Ryan. Wednesday night was macaroni-and-cheese night, and Katie loved it almost as much as Ryan did. Bonnie had sent Katie home with Keith, instead. The little girl had missed her bath the night before and had had a long day.

And Bonnie had needed a break from them.

She would rather die than have Keith know she was dissatisfied with the life they’d built together—a feeling that had been oddly exacerbated by the events of the past twenty-four hours.

She just needed a little time to get herself back in line.

“Do you know who started the fire?” Shane asked, each word spoken deliberately.

Shaking her head, Bonnie shrugged. “People from the sheriff’s office said somebody threw a book of lit matches in through that vent up there.” She pointed to the outside wall of the closet.

Shane stared blankly toward the ceiling. “How do they know that?”

“Because it landed on the wet mop and didn’t completely burn.”

He took a full minute to process that. Then, “Do they know who did it?”

She felt a surge of pity at the obvious struggle he was having. Conversation was difficult for him.

“No,” she said. “I guess there was too much fire and water damage for fingerprinting. It was probably just kids, playing a prank.”

“Why would someone play a prank on you, Bonnie?”

“After looking at things today, my brother, Greg—who’s the sheriff now—doesn’t think they were going after me. There’s not much chance they knew that the vent led into the Little Spirits supply closet.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, and an even bigger “oh” was the fact that Bonnie had been a tiny bit disappointed that Greg hadn’t seen the fire as a premeditated act aimed at her. She’d almost had an excuse to move on.

Bonnie stopped, shaking, hands on the edge of the garbage can she was peering sightlessly into.

An excuse to move on? Where on earth had that thought come from?

She had nothing to move on to. Nowhere she wanted to go.

She loved her husband to distraction. Would give up her life for her daughter. Little Spirits had been a far greater success than she’d ever dared hope.

And still, she was consumed with a nebulous need for more. It made no sense to her.

How could she suddenly resent the very things she’d spent her life dreaming of, praying for, building?

“Are you okay?” Shane’s words pulled her back.

“No,” she told him, walking back to the closet.

She couldn’t prevaricate with Shane. It would be too cruel to this man who was trying so hard to make sense of an already bewildering world. And she didn’t need to pretend with him. In Shane’s mind, what was, was. He wanted predictability, craved patterns and rules, but there was no analysis of motivation, no judgmental thought, no opinion of what should be. Only an acceptance of the environment around him.

Most importantly, her confusion wouldn’t hurt Shane.

“People were talking to you today like you were sad. I saw them when I was waxing floors.”

“I know they were.” They were standing, one on either side of the mangled shelving unit, tilting it to get it out the closet door. “You may not remember, but Little Spirits is something I’ve talked about my whole life and I’ve worked really hard to make it successful. Most of the people in this town know that. So they think it would be really disturbing for me to have it intentionally vandalized. Or even damaged by accident.”

He stopped, stared at her, his gaze intent. The brown depths of his eyes had always been compelling.

“I remember.”

Bonnie didn’t know how to respond. When Shane had suddenly reappeared in her life a couple of months before—her new handyman, instead of the high-powered financier she’d heard he was in Chicago—she’d immediately accepted the man he’d become. Never probing for traces of the man he’d been.

Beyond acknowledging to her landlord that they knew each other, they’d never once referred to their personal past.

The two of them deposited the ruined unit by the emergency exit door.

“What do you remember?”

“That you always wanted to take care of people.”

Yeah. He was right about that. Was that all he remembered?

“And now you don’t?”

Breaking eye contact, she shrugged, dipped back into the closet to start clearing rubbish from the corner. “Of course I do.”

He was hauling out what was left of the vacuum cleaner Beth and Greg had bought her for Christmas.

Bonnie scratched her cheek, felt the slimy wetness of soot from her fingers and wiped her face with her shoulder. She’d brought sweats and a T-shirt with her to work that morning to wear for closet gutting. She was glad she had. She’d probably be throwing them away when she got home that night, because of their smell alone.

“What’s wrong, Bonnie?”

She piled a few more pieces of unidentifiable trash on her outstretched arm.

“I don’t know,” she said, sighing as she dumped it into the rapidly filling can. “I love this place. It just…doesn’t excite me like it used to. I’m feeling differently about a lot of things lately, and that kind of scares me.”

“Different about what things?”

She dumped and gathered more mostly unrecognizable residue. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the sprinkler system had. “My life, my work, my marriage, Shelter Valley.” She rattled on as she worked. “It used to be that those things filled my every waking thought. They gave me strength and incentive.” Now it almost felt as if they were holding her back.

“I think you wanted to be married and stay in Shelter Valley and take care of people.”

His words were slow, deliberate. His work, focused on one task—cleaning everything out of the closet—with no decisions to be made, was quick and efficient.

“I think I did, too.”

“Do you like being married?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Do you like your husband?” His back was turned as he asked the question.

Staring at those broad shoulders, Bonnie thought of the hundreds of times she’d wanted to tell Shane Bellows what a great man she’d found after he’d left her.

Like the realization of her lifelong dreams, the fulfillment of that wish was hollow.

“I adore him.”

Which was why she was finding all this so hard. How could she possibly need more than Keith and the life they’d built together?

Pulling a rag from his back pocket, Shane wrapped it around the sharp edge of a broken jar of buttons she’d forgotten was in there.

“You love the kids,” he said after disposing of the jar. “I see you laugh with them a lot.”

Those big hands picking up tiny little buttons gave her pause.

“You’re right. I do.”

“Then are you okay now?”

“I think I’m just tired.” Shaking her head, Bonnie tossed some spare floor tile she’d found behind the shelves they’d removed. “I never thought I’d start to resent this place.”

“I never thought I’d be a blue-collar worker.” Shane’s tongue dragged around the last word.

He stopped on one side of the closet, facing her as she stood on the other. The space between them was almost empty, but not quite.

These times, when he seemed as clear-minded as she, disconcerted her. She didn’t know how to respond.

“I used to be powerful,” he told her, his voice sounding at that moment as though he were still the man handling fortunes bigger than Bonnie would ever dream of having.

“I know.”

“I remember it,” he said. “I remember Chicago.”

Her heart ached as she listened to him. She couldn’t imagine the hell his life must be. And felt miniscule and petty as she stood there, discontented with her own.

“What do you remember best?” she asked, hoping the question was okay, that it wouldn’t distress or confuse him.

“All of it.”

A more typical nonanswer. Because he couldn’t sift through the memories and make a decision?

“I remember going to work,” he said, his words slow again. “I remember my office, how I could understand and fix anything that came in. I was really good,” he told her with that strange combination of the intelligent and successful man he used to be and the more childlike creature he’d become.

“I know you were. We used to hear about the great things you were doing.”

“I still look at the stock reports and know what they mean,” he told her. “I even play the market.”

Bonnie frowned. “Is that a good idea, Shane? You don’t want to blow your savings.”

“Now that I can’t earn as much?” he asked. He didn’t sound bitter. Instead, he sounded like a little boy who’d just been told he couldn’t go on the big camp-out. Disappointed. Sad.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Bonnie broke off.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice switching back to that of the man he’d once been. These sudden changes were disturbing, even after months of getting used to them. “I got some insurance money from my accident.” The voice was still deep, but with the tenor of a little boy again. “I just kept some of it for me and most of it my friend in Chicago is handling for me.”

Bonnie hoped to God his friend was honest and taking good care of Shane.

“So how’ve you done with the money you kept yourself?” she asked, smiling at him.

Bonnie’s heart lightened when Shane grinned back. “Good,” he told her. “I’ve tripled it so far.”

“No kidding!” She stepped closer, laying a hand on his forearm. “I’m proud of you.”

“That makes me happy, Bonnie.”

“I’m glad.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “You know I’m here if you need anything, right?”

“Yeah.” Bowing his head, he almost mumbled. “You talk to me, Bonnie. Like I’m a real guy…”

Bonnie replayed their conversation over and over as she drove home more than an hour later. She’d helped Shane, made a difference. And that felt damn good.

CHAPTER TWO

HE’D NEVER WORN pajamas to bed. Just boxers. It was one thing that hadn’t changed.

Keith was hard inside his shorts as he climbed in beside his wife almost a week after the fire. It amazed him, that ready reaction, which happened much more often than he would’ve expected after more than six years of sharing the same bed with Bonnie.

She hadn’t been there long. The sheets were still cool.

“’Night,” she said softly before he’d even settled in.

The next day was Tuesday. Keith had a governing-board breakfast meeting. And Bonnie was always up at the crack of dawn taking care of Katie and getting to work earlier than the rest of the eight-to-five world.

Still…

He opened his mouth to reply in kind, but then didn’t. With every casual good-night, he could feel her slipping farther away.

He lay down. Fought with himself for all of two seconds. Nudged her backside with his hips. The low, welcoming moan that came quietly from deep in her throat righted his world.

“You make me crazy, woman,” he growled against the side of her throat, kissing along her neck and collarbone. His hand slid beneath the short cotton top of her pajamas.

And the pressure of her butt against him increased perceptibly.

“What do you want?” he whispered in her ear, feeling her shiver. “Top or bottom?”

Wrapping her arms around his middle, she pulled him on top of her. A silent reply. There’d been too many of those in these last confusing months.

“I love looking at your eyes in the moonlight,” he told her. He loved how they glistened with the intensity of her passion.

Tonight she closed them.

Moving past the disappointment, he bent to kiss her, long lingering openmouthed kisses they’d perfected over the years.

Her mouth opened. But her tongue didn’t dance.

“Something wrong?” he asked, raising his head only far enough to see her face.

Bonnie lifted her hips against his groin, inviting him. As badly as he needed her, Keith was hesitant.

“Talk to me.” He couldn’t make out her expression. “Please?”

“I…”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, her gaze settling at about his nose. “I’m just tired.”

In almost seven years, tired had never made their lovemaking a silent affair. Not even in those first months after Katie was born and they were both doing double duty with full-time jobs and night feeding. Their conversation during sex was what made sleeping with Bonnie different from the few other women he’d been with.

She pulled him down to her, enticing him with her tongue along the edges of his lips, enticing him with other things.

Keith wasn’t sure he should finish what he’d started.

More and more he’d come up against this strange vacancy in Bonnie. This refusal to tell him what she was thinking. But this was the first time it had translated itself into their sex life.

“Bonnie?”

“Yeah?” Her voice was languorous, as though she was giving herself up to passion, as though she wasn’t even aware of the chasm deepening between them.

He was tempted to give up for tonight, to enjoy whatever communication remained between them.

“Why won’t you talk to me? Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her hands didn’t move from around his neck, her hips still pressing against him. “There’s nothing to tell.”

He wanted to believe that. “You seem kind of…distant.”

“I’m really just tired, babe,” she said, her voice full of the intimate warmth that had made him her slave from the very beginning. “I’ve spent the entire week reassuring parents. They needed to hear for themselves that there really was no danger to their kids, that Greg’s official report said the arson was a random act. And no one was satisfied until they’d heard it directly from me.”

She reached up to kiss him and his body started to respond again.

Keith rose on his elbows.

“So I’ve just imagined the distance growing between us these past couple of months?”

It was a subject he’d broached often.

“I’m right here, Keith. Loving you and Katie every bit as much as I always have.”

Keith stared down at her. That was the kind of frustrating nonresponse he received every time. Instead of giving him a real answer, she countered with something good and affirming.

And he knew from experience that if he pushed, he’d just get more of the same.

“I don’t understand.”

She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead, running her fingers through to the ends, which rested at the bottom of his neck. “Don’t understand what?”

“Why I’m battling this fear that things are slipping away and you don’t even seem to be aware of anything changing.”

Fear wasn’t an emotion he was all that familiar with. Certainly not one he’d ever admitted to before. It was probably only because he was still lying intimately on top of her, her arms around him, that he could own up to it now.

“Keith.” She held his face with her hands. “Things are not slipping away. You have my word on that. I’m right here. I’m going to stay right here. I love you very, very much. I don’t even want to contemplate what life would be like without you. Okay?”

Slowly Keith nodded, all the while feeling a sense of defeat. How in hell did you communicate with someone who refused to acknowledge the problem?

And how could he fix whatever was broken when he couldn’t find out what it was?

Or maybe she couldn’t acknowledge the problem because it was him? And it couldn’t be fixed?

Staring down into green eyes that looked almost black in the darkness, Keith knew he wasn’t going to be able to rest easy that night. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong that you aren’t telling me? You aren’t sick or anything?”

“I’d tell you if I was sick, you know that.”

“And business at the day care is good?”

“Amazingly so, especially considering the fire.”

“What about Katie? Is there something wrong there you aren’t telling me about?”

“Of course not! I tell you everything about Katie.”

About Katie maybe. But then, Katie had always been a source of joy between them. Caressing Bonnie’s cheek softly, he remembered how Bonnie’s pregnancy had brought them so much closer when he’d already thought they were as close as two people could be.

The nights they’d spent creating scenarios of what it would be like to be parents, the doctor’s visits, listening to that heartbeat inside her, the hundreds of names they’d picked out only to discard each one and begin again. The countless times he’d rubbed her growing belly with lotion…

“You don’t regret having her, do you?” he asked as the horrible thought occurred to him right in the middle of his reminiscing. She sure hated those stretch marks now that she’d lost weight.

Bonnie tried to sit up, which only brought her breasts and hips against him. “Of course not,” she said, settling back. Her eyes were huge in the moonlight. “Never! Katie is so special. I’d give up my life for her.”

“I still remember the day we found out you were pregnant.”

It had been a Saturday and they’d gone together to buy the home pregnancy kit. And then she’d made him wait outside their bedroom while she’d done the test. He’d burst in, anyway, when her thrilled scream exploded throughout the house.

“Me, too,” she said, her voice softening. “I was incredibly happy. I didn’t have any idea how great it was going to be once I actually held her.”

They were quiet for a moment, a contented quiet. A together quiet. Like they used to share.

“Remember all the hours it took to find just the right crib?” he asked, enjoying the escape to a happier time. “It had to be antique white with spiral spindles, only three inches maximum between the bars.”

“And the wallpaper.” She grinned. “I can’t believe how many days I spent trying to decide between horses and rainbows.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t have to, or the nursery still wouldn’t be done.” He smiled, recalling how excited she’d been when she’d found a paper that had horses on a carousel with rainbows in the background.

Excited. Happy. His. He’d come in from work that night to be greeted by her exuberant “Guess what?” as she’d launched herself at him, throwing not only her arms around him, but her legs, too, catching him off guard. Luckily the couch had been behind him and they’d fallen onto its cushioned softness. As he remembered, it had been a good half hour before he’d ever found out what she’d been so excited to tell him.

And then, without warning or forethought, as they lay there intimately entwined, the solution to the undefined problem became crystal clear to him.

“Let’s have another baby.”

Hips that had been pressing into his withdrew, not far, but then, the bed wouldn’t allow her to move any great distance.

“Katie’s three,” he reminded her. “Potty-trained. The timing’s good.” He paused, but not long enough for her to reject the idea. “If we wait much longer, there’ll be too many years between the kids for them to have anything in common.”

Her hands had dropped, and she ran her fingers along his arms. “You said you didn’t want a bunch of kids.”

The irony was not lost on him. She’d always wanted a big family. The thought of several kids to provide for, several kids taking his and Bonnie’s time until they had none left for each other, had only made him feel trapped.

“I’m not talking about a bunch of kids,” he told her, allowing the weight of his hips to rest completely on her. “Just one more.”

She didn’t say anything. Her fingers were almost frantic as they drew small circles on his upper arms. Her breathing had quickened.

And she wouldn’t look at him.

“Is that a no?” he asked, bracing himself for her answer.

She shook her head. And relief swept over him.

With a surge of protectiveness—and feeling very much in love—Keith bent to kiss her softly. “Talk to me, honey.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“That you want a baby. That you don’t.” He loved her so much, needed so badly for her to be happy. “Just talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. Let me in.”

“You are in,” she said, stroking his face lightly, her sweet touch making his desire for her immediate again. It astounded him that a gesture as simple as her fingers on his skin could ignite him. “You’re in farther than anyone has ever been.”

It should be enough. Goddammit, it should be enough.

“I’m just tired, Keith. After years of struggle with the business and heartache with my dad and worrying about Greg, I’m finally coming down.”

She kissed him, a full-tongued, wanton kiss that was meant to take him to the place where only the two of them could go together. Sliding his arms beneath her, Keith pulled her closer, kissing her back with every bit of energy he possessed.

She was hungry. Generous. She wanted him.

“I’m still amazed by this,” she said softly. Her eyes were glinting, her lips smiling as she studied him.

She was there. Loving him.

Keith grunted, stripped off her pajamas and explored every inch of her newly thin body.

There was absolutely no doubt that this woman needed him.

Was it possible that the problem was his? Had he somehow imagined the change he was perceiving in her? Was his mind taking him down a dangerous road he didn’t need to travel? Was this remoteness of hers no more than a small case of emotional exhaustion, just as she claimed?

His heart filled with hope, with a resurgence of the peace he’d begun to take for granted over the past few years.

“Now,” she moaned. He drew out the moment, savoring it, her, them.

“Nooowww.” Her groan was louder.

He settled his body in the cradle of her thighs, slid up—

“Wait!”

He froze, confused by the alarm in her voice. “What?” he asked, concerned, afraid something was wrong.

“This.” She’d reached inside the cupboard behind them and pulled out the condom he’d thought they weren’t going to use.

Aroused beyond the ability to analyze anything but his need to have sex, Keith held himself up while she unrolled the condom around him. He plunged inside her before she’d completely finished.

The human body was incomparable. It could accomplish all manner of tasks, from the menial to the perilous; it could also transport, transcend, divert. Keith let Bonnie take him away, his mind wholly on their physical communication.

It was physical. It was exciting. And it was empty.

They weren’t making a baby.

And he had no idea why not.

THE THIRD LETTER from Mike Diamond arrived eight days after the fire. It appeared in a pile of mail that also included the insurance forms she had to fill out.

She waited until everyone was busy feeding lunch to a passel of hungry kids before she tore open the envelope with her landlord’s return address.

Keeping one eye on the space outside her glass-enclosed office—making sure she was alone—she perused the letter quickly.

The tone was more congenial than she’d expected, considering that this was the third letter in almost as many weeks. But the entreaty was just as insistent.

He wanted her to relocate Little Spirits. He had a buyer in Phoenix for the small Shelter Valley strip mall in which the day care was located, and the deal apparently hinged on the early termination of Bonnie’s three-year lease.

According to Mike Diamond, the day-care noise level, as well as the deluge of drop-off and pick-up traffic during rush hour each business day detracted from the strip’s appeal. A couple of weeks before, after receiving Mike’s first letter, Bonnie had placed an anonymous call to the Phoenix-based management company Diamond had named. She’d found that they did indeed have a policy that precluded day cares from renting in any of their strip malls.

A guffaw of laughter sounded just around the corner from Bonnie’s office. She quickly filed Diamond’s letter with the other two in a folder at the back of the file drawer in her desk.

It had taken her more than a year to land the right location for Little Spirits. Shelter Valley was a small town, and there just weren’t many places that had enough space, private kitchen facilities, the right zoning, an outside play area and met all the other specifications. And although she was doing well, she wasn’t making enough to build her own facility.

Which meant that Diamond’s continued and very determined hounding should upset her.

Six months ago, she’d have thrown his letter in the trash—after first expending much frustration in tightly wadding the paper. Today she knew only that she wasn’t moving. Tomorrow? She couldn’t say.

That didn’t mean she hadn’t considered letting Mike Diamond out of the lease.

Leaning back in her chair, eyes closed, Bonnie thought about the fire that could have solved the problem for her the week before. If only the Kachina County volunteer firemen hadn’t been so damn good at what they did—responding so quickly to the call. If there was no building, there’d be no choice to make.

“I saw a letter come in from the Diamond Company. Did they rent that space next door?”

Bonnie jumped as Beth Richards, Greg’s wife, stepped into her office. Beth volunteered at Little Spirits almost every day now that she was a woman free to look at life’s options. She’d sold the cleaning business that had kept her and her son fed while they were hiding out in Shelter Valley the previous fall.

“No,” Bonnie said, looking over the insurance forms she’d just received. She hadn’t told anyone about Diamond’s request yet. She knew that her family and friends would want to help her fight, and she had no idea what she wanted to fight for. Or if she wanted to fight at all.

“Darn.” Beth dropped into the chair across from Bonnie—just as she had all those months ago when she’d shown Bonnie the missing-persons postcard depicting Beth and her toddler son. “It’s been what—three months now? I was really hoping something would go in soon. Preferably a bookstore. I hate having to go all the way to Phoenix to buy Ryan new books.”

Bonnie smiled at the woman who, while casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved sweater, still looked like a fashion model. “You could always open one.”

Beth shook her head. Moving to the edge of her chair, she grinned. “I can’t run a store and the Montford classical music department, too.”

Squealing, Bonnie ran around her desk and hugged Beth. “No kidding? You got the job?”

“Will called this morning.”

The happiness she felt for Beth—and for her brother, whose life was finally falling into place—dispelled some of the confusion weighing her down. Her family was settled, healthy, content.

They talked about the logistics of the job for a couple of minutes. Ryan would be a regular student at Little Spirits, which was something they both agreed would be good for him. And though she’d be giving up her volunteering, Beth would still be able to spend some afternoons with her son.

“You have an odd look on your face,” Beth said as the two women walked through the multipurpose room toward the playground where the kids were loudly engaged in an after-lunch recess.

Bonnie shrugged and shook her head, afraid to speak in case the tears she was fighting won despite her efforts. What was the matter with her? She had it all. Why wasn’t that enough?

Linking her arm with Bonnie’s, Beth pulled her away and out another door. “Let’s walk.”

Which meant talk.

She should argue. She had work to do.

Or did she? The children in her care were all being watched by competent employees. Paperwork, other than the insurance forms, was up-to-date.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Beth released her arm as they circled the day care and strolled out to the desert beyond. “And before you say nothing, let me tell you right now that answer’s already disqualified.”

“I’m just ti—”

“Nope.” Beth shook her head. “Tired isn’t going to cut it, either. You’re the most energetic person I know, Bon, and besides that, I’m not just talking about this week. The guys might not have noticed yet, but you’ve lost your spark.”

“Keith noticed.”

“I don’t think Greg has, but then, he’s not looking. All he knows is that you’re married to the man you love, have the child you’ve always wanted and the career of your dreams.”

“I know.”

On the other side of the desert lot was a quiet residential street. Beth took the sidewalk away from town. And said nothing. Bonnie’s new sister-in-law, who’d quickly become her closest friend, already knew her well.

“There’s really nothing wrong,” Bonnie said slowly, wanting above all to present her case honestly. “As you said, I have everything I’ve ever wanted. And I’m incredibly thankful for that.”

Someone needed to clean the gravel out of the cracks in this sidewalk.

“But?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said, frustration welling up inside her. She glanced at the clear, blue Arizona sky—illuminated by a sun that was already heating this March day to Midwest summer temperatures.

She slid her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “Have you ever had the feeling that the role you’re playing isn’t significant?”

“Of course you’re significant, Bonnie!” Beth said, stopping to stare at her. “My gosh! This entire family revolves around you.”

“Only because I got here first,” she said. “It could just as easily revolve around you.”

“But you—”

“That’s not really what I meant,” Bonnie continued, cutting off Beth’s rebuttal. “And you’re right. I have no business feeling like I do and I’m just going to stop.”

She turned, heading back toward the day care.

“No.” Beth grabbed her arm. “Wait. I’m listening now. Talk to me.”

Feeling ungrateful and selfish, Bonnie tried really hard to convince herself that if she just kept working on it, she could make these feelings go away.

She’d been trying for months.

“I just feel my life is too small, that I’m not doing enough with it.”

Beth started to walk and Bonnie fell into step beside her. “With my education and capabilities, I could be helping the homeless or abused women, making some kind of real difference. Sounds crazy, huh?”

“No. Not at all.”

“The world is filled with people who need my help more than the relatively privileged, well-loved kids who come to my day care.”

“We don’t have a lot of homeless people here,” Beth said softly. “And though I’m sure there are some, there probably aren’t many abused wives, either.”

“That’s part of the problem, I think. Shelter Valley is such a protected—and protective—place that I’m isolated from larger realities.”

“So you want to leave town?”

“No!” Bonnie ran her fingers through her hair, trying to massage the ache from her head. “Of course not. Maybe I just need to feel needed.”

“Which you are, of course, by so many people.”

“Yeah, but not in the way I mean.” She tried to find words to articulate things she wasn’t sure she understood. “Last week, after the fire, Shane Bellows helped me clean up. All I did was talk to him for an hour and yet I left feeling I’d really used my life for a greater good. He was responsive and just so happy to be part of an adult conversation. He needs a friend, Beth, someone who’ll treat him like a grown man with something to contribute, instead of the half person he’s sort of become. It’s that kind of satisfaction I’m missing. I think.”

“Be careful with Shane, Bonnie. You’ve got a history with him that could trip you up.”

“No worry there. He’s not at all the man he once was. That history is dead and gone.”

“From what I understand, even the doctors aren’t completely sure how much Shane’s mind has been altered.”

“He’s completely harmless, Beth, if that’s what you’re getting at. His doctor didn’t think there was any problem with him working around small children, which he certainly would have if Shane posed any kind of threat.”

“Just be careful.”

Beth waved as a car passed. Mr. and Mrs. Mather. They’d been one of her house-cleaning clients, Bonnie remembered.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”

Bonnie wished Beth’s opinion didn’t matter so much.

“No.” As if by previous consensus, they both turned the corner, slowing their pace as they started down another deserted street. “As a matter of fact, I completely understand.” She spoke in a low voice, holding Bonnie’s full attention.

“You know how I spent my youth, Bonnie. Training to be a concert pianist is completely consuming, draining every ounce of energy you have and then demanding more. I gave it everything and somehow managed to get my business degree, as well. And then, after my parents were killed and I was on my own, I suddenly found myself with skills and discipline and drive, and nothing important to contribute. People were dying every day while I played scales.”

“Hardly.” Bonnie still got chills every time Beth sat down at the piano. The woman brought something elemental, spiritual almost, to everything she played.

“It’s how I felt,” Beth insisted. “And that feeling drove me straight into the trap James Silverman and Peter Sterling set.”

It was the first time Bonnie had ever heard her friend mention her ex-husband and his partner. The two men who’d, in the end, contracted a killer to ensure her death.

“I wanted to make a difference, to stand for something, to help save the world in some significant way.”

Taking Beth’s arm, a silent support, Bonnie ached for her friend, ached because of the memories Beth would never completely escape.

“The cult allowed me to believe I was contributing something huge, and that feeling drove me for a long time, Bon. Far longer—and farther—than it should have. It drove me into turning a blind eye to things that were not only immoral but illegal, as well.”

Sterling Silver, the cult run by Beth’s ex-husband and his doctor partner, had been shut down the previous year when Greg had gone searching for the identity of the woman he loved. James Silverman and Peter Sterling were currently serving life sentences in separate Texas prisons.

“So you’re saying I should just ignore this feeling and be thankful for the life I have.”

It was exactly what she’d been telling herself.

“I don’t know,” Beth said, turning with Bonnie as they reached another corner, heading back toward the day care. “I don’t think there are any easy answers.”

Bonnie didn’t think so, either.

“You said Keith noticed something’s wrong. What does he say about all this?”

“Nothing,” Bonnie said, kicking a pebble into the street. “I can’t tell him I need more out of life than he’s giving me, Beth. It would kill him. And it’s not fair to him, either. Because there’s nothing he can do. Besides, I might wake up tomorrow and be perfectly satisfied again.”

“I doubt it.”

“Me, too.”

They walked on, their silence broken only by an occasional passing car. And there weren’t many of those.

“But I still can’t tell him,” Bonnie eventually said. “I can’t hurt him like that.”

“I couldn’t, either.”

“That letter from Diamond today…”

“Yeah?”

“It was the third one of its kind. He’s got a buyer for the property, contingent on me relocating. The developer has a rule against day cares in strip malls.”

“Mike Diamond’s selling?”

“I guess.”

“Wow. That surprises me. I thought he was planning to expand, not get out.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“So what are you going to do?” Beth asked, slowing as the day care came in sight.

“I can’t move without building a place,” Bonnie said. “I’d already exhausted all the other possibilities when Diamond’s place became available.”

“Can you afford to build?”

“Maybe. Probably. If Keith and I take out a loan. But how can I even contemplate putting us deeper in debt when I’m not even sure this is what I want?”

“I’m guessing you haven’t talked to Keith about it.”

They stopped at the corner across the street from Little Spirits. Bonnie looked at her sister-in-law. “How can I—without getting into the whole ‘I’m not satisfied with my life’ thing?”

“So tell Diamond no.”

“I’m planning to.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

They crossed the street, the traffic noises not nearly loud enough to hide what Bonnie hated to admit.

“Because I can’t quite turn my back on the chance to get out of the two years I have left on my lease.”

CHAPTER THREE

THERE WERE SOME THINGS that just shouldn’t change. Stockings was one of them. Lonna Nielson rolled the silky material up her right leg, ignoring the varicose veins she passed along the way, and clipped it into place with two quick pinches of her fingers.

Women had been wearing stockings since before she was born. They hid imperfections. They gave a woman a sense of dress, of polish—a personal finishing that served as an invisible shield between her and anything the day might bring. Those silk stockings told the world that she took pride in herself.

And they had to be real silk stockings, pulled up one at a time and hooked to the garter belt. None of that panty stuff for her. There were certain places a woman just needed to breathe.

Besides, everyone knew that garters were far sexier.

Didn’t make a whit of difference that she was seventy-six years old or that she’d been a widow for more decades than she’d been a wife. Feeling a little bit sexy was important to her.

Taking a deep breath to prepare for the pull in her lower back, she reached down for the second stocking, her mind sliding over the list of things she had to do that Friday morning. First was the Beautification Committee meeting. Not the most important, perhaps, but those idiots wouldn’t get anything right if left to their own devices. She’d been living in this town longer than most anybody else here and knew how to hide her imperfections.

Second stocking in place, Lonna picked up the navy slacks and polka-dot blouse she’d ironed after her five-mile walk and before her granola-and-fruit breakfast that morning. It was almost seven o’clock, and she had to hurry or she wouldn’t have time to get over to Grace’s, fix breakfast and wait for her to finish eating so she could do the dishes before her eight-thirty meeting.

Missing the cat that had been lying on her bed for seventeen years, Lonna worked buttons through holes that had grown curiously tighter and harder to maneuver over the years. Buffy, her snarly calico, had died six months ago, and while Lonna was probably lonelier than she’d admit, she was loath to start all over again.

Besides, kitty litter was damned heavy to haul around.

Purse over her forearm—navy to match her slacks and low-heeled pumps—she was almost out the door before she remembered the list of new books she was recommending to the library board later that morning. It was still on the printer Keith had installed to go with the computer he’d bought her for Christmas. The boy meant well. And he’d been right. The blamed machine made keeping up with her jobs somewhat easier.

But it was a love-hate kind of thing. Refusing to look at the screen that revealed more information than Lonna had ever had or ever would have, she grabbed the sheet she’d printed out before going to bed the night before.

The phone rang.

She was late already, and even if she didn’t get Grace’s dishes done, she couldn’t just make breakfast and leave the woman to eat it alone. Grace looked forward to their morning chats.

And Lonna did, too.

The machine could get the phone. She slid the paper into the leather zip folder Becca Parsons had given her for her last birthday, stiffening as the phone rang again.

Someone needed to talk to her.

And who was Lonna to determine that whatever he or she had to say wasn’t important?

With an exasperated sigh she picked up the phone.

And three hours later, sitting beside Dorothy’s hospital bed, she assured her friend of seventy years that she would not have to go into a Phoenix nursing home. She would not have to leave Shelter Valley or the home she’d lived in all of her adult life. Dorothy’s heart and soul were her essence, and they were still in one-hundred-percent working order.

Lonna would help her while her broken hip healed.

She’d find the time.

And the energy.

She always had.

THE FILM WAS EVOCATIVE. Intense. Full of energy. Keith just wasn’t sure that what it evoked had anything to say to their audience. Or to anyone except maybe the people involved. Or people like them.

Of course he’d been preoccupied with the conversation he’d had with his grandmother earlier that day. He’d been trying to talk her out of a trip to Phoenix by herself. Friday-afternoon traffic was hell. He’d told her Dorothy would be just fine until later that day when he could take Lonna Nielson to the hospital to see her friend.

Had his grandmother listened?

Of course not.

She’d climbed into her Buick and sped to her friend’s side.

This seemed to be a pattern in his life. His word apparently had little value to the women he cared about.

“You don’t like it.”

Keith glanced at his new program director and smiled. Martha Moore, at least, respected his opinion.

“I didn’t say that,” he said, smiling at her before turning his attention to the monitor.

“You don’t have to say it.” Her words were soft as she, too, focused on the film they were previewing. It was a work a student had found and suggested for the following week’s Fine Art feature on MUTV.

The piece was a dance performance. Sort of. It was a depiction of a human condition, one that every human being eventually faced.

An excellent depiction as far as Keith could tell.

He just had no idea why people would choose to watch other people act out the process of dying. It wasn’t something he wanted to put himself through.

But Martha was riveted. Her whole body leaned toward the monitor, almost as though she was going to jump on that stage with those writhing, painfully weak bodies. Eyes drawn to the slim neck exposed by her short black hair, Keith wondered why Martha was still single. Her husband had left more than two years before, and other than a few dates with the architect who’d done some work at Montford, Martha’s love life had been nonexistent.

As far as Keith knew, anyway.

And he couldn’t understand that. Not only was she slim and sexy and down-to-earth, the woman had a way of making a guy feel she honestly enjoyed his company. He wondered if she had anything planned for the weekend ahead; if so, he hoped it would involve something for her and not just for the four kids she was raising alone.

“What?”

She’d caught him staring.

“Nothing.” Jaw set, Keith turned back to the screen.

Keith made it a priority to support student initiatives as often as he could. Part of the MUTV mission was to give the students running the new digital cable station opportunities to recommend and even develop programming. His television motion-picture students had been the driving force behind Keith’s initial idea for the Montford University television station. Unlike many college and university stations, MUTV was not an education-access station.

They were in control of their own programming.

But this particular piece…

Bodies in nude-colored body things, showing the most godawful suffering…

“I think we’re going to have to give this one a miss,” he said.

“No!” Martha’s head spun toward him. “This is what we’re all about, Keith! We have to do it! This is absolutely the best thing we’ve seen in the six months we’ve been here!”

“We’re about positive educational experiences,” he reminded her. “Our programming enriches peoples’ lives in positive ways.”

It didn’t matter if they were showing actual college classes, university sports or a full-length feature film, the goal was the same.

“And it doesn’t get any more uplifting than this,” she insisted. Her brown eyes were turned to the screen again.

Keith stared at her. “It’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen! Those people are dying of AIDS!”

The depictions were real—performed by people suffering from the deadly virus.

“They’re alive, Keith.” Martha’s tone was low, but carried so much conviction Keith had to take another look at the screen.

“Think of the hours of rehearsal they put in here. Listen to the documentary. Hear the laughter. The love these people have grown to share. That’s what living is all about. No matter what,” she continued softly, slowly, “life isn’t over until it’s over.”

Okay. He supposed that was true.

So how come all he’d seen was dying people writhing on the floor?

“You can’t just watch something like this with your analytical mind, Keith. You have to see it, feel it, with your heart.”

A young bald man was making motions, as though he was grooming himself, but kept getting interrupted by an imaginary sore on his hand that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

“It’s horrible,” Keith said, wishing he had the guts to get up and leave.

“Look at the expression on his face.” Martha’s voice was soothing. A balm amidst the tragedy seeming to engulf the small room they used for viewing.

Keith looked.

“He’s alive. That sore or whatever it is isn’t stopping him. He’s still doing what he set out to do. Still accomplishing things.”

“Still living,” Keith said slowly, relaxing slightly as his focus changed, seeing, instead of the tragedy, the determination in the performer’s eyes.

And the deep-seated satisfaction as he completed his task.

“Victory,” Martha said.

Her eyes were filled with tears.

Keith had the most bizarre urge to hug her.

HUGGING HERSELF, Bonnie stared at the water at her feet, remembering Mike Diamond’s letter. Still, the flood seeping into her tennis shoes could easily pass for nothing more than bad luck. Toilets broke. Seals gave way. Curious children conducted flushability experiments with assorted toys and other nonbiodegradable items. The insurance form was already mentally half-written.

“I can help you.” She heard Shane’s thick, deep voice behind her. She hadn’t noticed the slushing of his tennis shoes in the inch-deep water pouring out into the hallway.

He was carrying a mop in one hand, pulling a wringer and bucket with the other.

“The toilet exploded.”

He nodded, started to mop. And then to wring.

Bonnie glanced back at the tile floor in the private teachers’ bathroom. With the wallpaper and area rug, the matching curtains and towels, wastebasket and soap dispenser on the sink, the wood cabinet in which the sink sat—the one she’d saved two months to buy—the place looked like home. Or it had. That cabinet wasn’t going to escape unscathed. She could already see the wood at the bottom starting to warp.

Another insurance form to fill out.

“I turned the water off,” she told Shane. And that was all she’d done. Except feel relieved that her husband had picked up their daughter a couple of hours before. She hadn’t even called Keith yet to tell him about this latest disaster, let alone phoned a plumber. Six o’clock on Friday night wasn’t a good time to get someone in, and it wasn’t as if this was a real emergency.

With one easy flick of the wrist, Shane pulled the lever to bring the rollers down over the mop and release the dirty water into the bucket beneath.

“Can you pick up that rug?” he asked, speaking slowly.

Bonnie hurried to do as he’d asked. The little rug was heavy with water. She dropped it into the sink and then got out of Shane’s way.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, touched that in spite of his limited capabilities, he was such a good friend. “Accidents happen.”

“But you just had a fire.”

“Yeah, maybe someone’s trying to tell me something,” she said wearily, trying to smile.

“Tell you what?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head and moved aside as he worked. “It’s just an expression, but much more of this, and parents are going to wonder if it’s safe to bring their kids here.”

“And your business would be in trouble.”

So why didn’t that thought strike terror in her heart?

He mopped and wrung, bending down to wipe a bit of debris off the baseboard behind the toilet with a paper towel he’d pulled from his back pocket.

“I’m really sorry about this.”

“It’s okay, it’s my job.”

The simple statement brought tears to her eyes.

Bonnie didn’t know what was wrong with her. She didn’t seem upset about what was happening to her day care—her life’s dream. And Shane Bellows’s mopping made her cry.

“I’ll go call a plumber,” she said, and escaped to her office before she could do something else she didn’t understand.

Like ask Shane to have dinner with her so she could figure out a way to help this shell of a man with whom she’d once been so in love.

Or use the flooded bathroom as an excuse to call her husband and tell him she couldn’t come home.

KEITH WAS LYING on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, three-year-old Katie astride his upper back. She was leaning forward with her chin near his ear as her green eyes intently followed along in the big book of children’s stories her father was reading to her.

If one could refer to Keith’s dramatic rendition of each scene as simply reading.

Closing the door from the garage into the kitchen, Bonnie stood and watched the two of them, filled with so much love she ached. Keith’s voice rose and fell, his head turning or nodding, his shoulders rising and falling, with Katie riding right along with him, her body responding to each change of cadence. Her little hands clutched her daddy’s sweater and patted his shoulders in excitement. Her eyes grew large. She laughed. Her dark curls seemed to dance. Then, as the story grew more serious, she listened quietly again.

Keith looked up as he played the part of a frog turned into a prince and caught Bonnie standing there. The grin on his face froze; his voice died. Katie looked up then, too, her wriggling body stilling immediately as she saw her mother. And the questioning look in the little girl’s big green eyes shocked Bonnie. It was as though, like her father, Katie was assessing the situation.

“Hi!” Bonnie dropped her purse and briefcase on the table. “Don’t stop,” she told Keith. “You were just getting to the good part.”

His face softened as she joined them in the family room. “How was your day?”

She thought of the flood. Of Shane.

“Fine.” She didn’t want to spoil the fun Katie and Keith were having.

Keith watched her for a minute more and then, without letting her see his thoughts, turned back to the book.

The tales continued and eventually, as Bonnie relaxed and laughed along with her daughter when Keith tried to play the wolf huffing and puffing at the straw house, Katie slid down from her father’s back and crawled onto her mother’s lap.

As she hugged her little girl close to her heart, savoring Katie’s warmth, and shifted just enough to let her toes rest against Keith’s thigh, Bonnie swallowed hard.

GRANDMA NIELSON called just as they were finishing the pizza Bonnie had made for dinner. Katie had sauce smeared on her nose, rimming her pert baby mouth, over her chin and on her chest. Bonnie couldn’t see Katie’s booster chair under the table, but there was probably sauce mixed in with a pile of crumbs on her lap, as well.

“She just got back from Phoenix,” Keith said, hanging up the phone.

“At eight o’clock? She drove home in the dark?”

Her husband frowned. And nodded. While he accepted his grandmother’s right to live her life the way she wanted to—encouraged it even—her health and well-being had become a constant worry to him.

“How’s Dorothy?” Bonnie asked, getting a damp cloth to wipe Katie’s cheeks.

“She doesn’t need a hip replacement.” Keith didn’t look too happy.

“That’s good news.”

It was testimony to the changes in their little family when, without a fuss, Katie lifted her face and only blinked when Bonnie wiped her clean.

“She’ll be home next week.”

Bonnie set Katie on the floor before tending to the mess on the booster chair and table. “Wow,” she said to her husband, never missing a beat in their conversation. “That’s a fast recovery, isn’t it? She’ll be able to get around that soon?”

“No.”

Cloth in hand, Bonnie stopped. “No?”

“The doctor suggested long-term care. Grandma’s determined to bring her home.”

“Who’s going to…” Bonnie didn’t need to finish the question. She knew the answer. Lonna Nielson was.

“She says she’s sure she can get people to come in shifts—at least for meals.”

And who would do the rest? Bonnie’s heart lurched when she thought of her adored grandmother-in-law doing any lifting or carrying while her old friend recovered. Hips could take months to heal.

“Is she coming over?” she asked Keith, satisfied that Katie was safely ensconced in front of her favorite animated video before she started the dishes.

Grandma usually joined them for a game of canasta on Friday nights. Maybe she could talk to her.

“She says she has paperwork to do.”

“You going to get her?”

“Of course.”

Bonnie grinned, her troubled heart filled with warmth as she heard her husband’s exasperated tone. It was always the same.

When Keith started college, his parents left Shelter Valley on a church service mission in Cairo. His father was Grandma’s only child. Consumed by their jobs as house parents at an orphanage there, they’d returned to Shelter Valley just once in fifteen years. Their deaths in a bus accident shortly after Katie was born had left Grandma and Keith as the only surviving members of their family. But no matter how lonely Grandma might feel, or how much she might want to be with the kids, she always made excuses. When Bonnie and Keith got married more than six years before, Grandma had determined that she would not interfere with their lives. Which was why her car was never seen in her grandson’s driveway. Whether for Sunday dinner, Friday-night canasta, holidays or anything in between, Keith more often than not had to go and get her or she wouldn’t come.

Wet hands in the sink, Bonnie looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his.

“You’re a good man, Keith Nielson.” The whispered words came from her very depths.

Almost as if they drew him, Keith moved toward her, then bent to press his lips to hers. The wealth of love she’d been feeling since she’d walked in the door that evening just continued, fueling the kiss. God, she loved this man. Wanted him.

There was never any doubt about that.

“Gotta go,” Keith muttered, obviously reluctant.

He kissed her again, raising a longing in Bonnie that could easily have consumed her. A longing for life to be only this. A sure knowledge of what was.

He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching hers.

“I’ll, uh, make brownies for when you get back.” She stumbled over the words.

They were the right ones. Keith’s face softened, the question in his eyes fading as he nodded, grabbed his keys and strode out the door.

Making brownies. Kind of a code.

It had all started that first time she’d made brownies after they were married. They’d been in the kitchen of the little house they’d rented on the back of the Weber property. The Webers were the owners of Shelter Valley’s only department store, and their son, Jim, had graduated from high school a couple of years behind Bonnie.

It hadn’t been after dinner then, but fairly late on a Sunday morning. She and Keith had missed church because they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other long enough to get out of bed. But they couldn’t miss the lunch Grandma had invited them to share with her, and Bonnie had promised to bring brownies.

She’d started the project fully dressed in a completely respectable, unsexy pair of sweats and a T-shirt. She’d even had a bra and panties on underneath.

And then Keith had announced that for every ingredient she added to the brownies, she had to take something off.

She’d been using a mix and had ended up naked when all the ingredients were in the bowl.

The batter had been delicious.

They’d had to stop and buy brownies at the grocery store on their way to Grandma’s.

Pretty much ever since, whenever she made brownies, they also made love.

Bonnie finished the dishes, a smile on her face.

CHAPTER FOUR

GRANDMA DISCARDED the two of diamonds. And she had no meld. When she’d picked up a couple of fours and then discarded a four, Bonnie had wondered—in canasta you could never have too many of whatever you were saving. But to discard a wild card without a meld…

“You want to skip the rest of the game and go straight to the brownies?” Keith asked her.

“I can finish.”

“But do you want to?” Bonnie pushed. Though she’d obviously freshened her makeup, Grandma still looked exhausted. Her slacks and blouse were wrinkled, her shoulders slumped, and her gaze not as open and clear as usual.

“Yes, I want to.” But she obviously didn’t.

Sending her concerned husband a reassuring smile, Bonnie packed up the cards and cut the brownies. Grandma asked about Katie, who’d been going to bed when she’d arrived, asked if Bonnie had seen Becca Parsons that day and if Becca had said anything about a long-range planning committee meeting the next morning. She asked about Keith’s work.

And she avoided Keith’s attempts to tell her to slow down. When they asked about Dorothy, her answers were brief and seemingly carefree.

After two brownies, Grandma was ready to go home.

Keith rose to get his keys.

“Why don’t you stay and finish up in here,” she told her grandson, waving toward the dessert plates and napkins, half-empty milk glasses and score card still on the table. “Bonnie can take me home.”

Exchanging one more silent look with her husband, Bonnie followed the older woman out the garage door to her van.

“YOU’VE GOT TO TELL that grandson of mine to let up on me.”

Bonnie hadn’t even backed out of the garage before Grandma spoke.

Easing the van into the quiet street, she flipped on her headlights and put it in drive. “He just cares about you, Grandma.”

“I know that. I care about him, too. Far more than he’ll probably ever know. Which is why it’s so hard to keep fighting him. I have enough to do without expending energy fighting with him.” Bonnie was amazed at how the older woman could take a much-repeated grumble and speak it with such convincing authority.

“He won’t listen to me on this one.” Bonnie said the same thing she always did.

“I mean it, Bonnie. I need his support right now.”

Turning a corner, Bonnie slowed and glanced at Grandma, a knot in her stomach. “What’s up?” she asked.

“I will not turn my back on my friends.”

“I know that.”

“I’m seventy-six years old, not dead.”

“I know that, too.”

“But do you?” Grandma asked. Bonnie had pulled into Grandma’s drive, but the old woman made no move to get out of the car. She stared at Bonnie through the semidarkness, her eyes faded and watery. “Do you have any idea how it feels to have lived a full, productive life and then to discover that because you’ve had one too many birthdays, everyone suddenly thinks you no longer have anything significant to offer?”

Grandma’s words, though softly spoken, reverberated through the van, knocking the breath out of Bonnie.

“I think I do,” she whispered. She didn’t know which was worse—thinking that you were giving nothing significant, or having others think you were incapable of giving.

She wasn’t sure it even mattered.

“I’ll talk to him.”

She watched Grandma to her door with a new understanding, one that effected a change she wasn’t sure she fully grasped. Grandma wasn’t the only person who got older. There was an entire community of elderly citizens in Shelter Valley.

She wondered how many of them were fighting the same frustrations she’d been fighting these past months. The need to be needed. Or to make a difference in a world that cried out for help.

And wondered if there were answers for any of them.

KEITH WAS WAITING for her when she got home. Only the small light over the kitchen sink was glowing. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” played on the stereo behind her.

Bonnie smiled.

He walked toward her, unbuttoning his shirt. His longish blond hair was mussed.

“Got Grandma home safe and sound?”

She nodded. That short car ride had left her with too much to think about. And no conclusions other than a determination to somehow talk Keith into letting Grandma do what she had to do, even if it killed her.

Later.

Forcing thoughts of the disturbing conversation from her mind, Bonnie focused on the lithe male body slowly approaching.

As always, a rush of delicious anticipation leaped in Bonnie’s abdomen. This man had the power to change her in some elemental way. And if, tonight, there was a bit of desperation in her eagerness for him, it wasn’t something she was going to dwell on.

She unbuttoned her blouse, as well, exposing the teddy she’d slipped on when he’d gone to get Grandma.

“Oh, God, Bon, you’re so beautiful it hurts.”

She ran her fingers up his chest, his throat and into his hair, every nerve in her hands heightened so that she felt each silky strand slide between her knuckles and fall across her skin.

“Kiss me,” she begged, standing on tiptoe to reach for his mouth as she pulled his head down to hers.

He did. Again and again. His hunger was insatiable. His taste excitingly familiar. Hers. Bonnie groaned. There were so many feelings pulsating between them, so much to say.

Love into eternity. Trust and an honest desire—stronger than self—to provide happiness. Forever.

Keith had always aroused her. But tonight, as he loved her urgently, his body was perfect, in tune with every physical sensation she had. And his spirit was there, too, communicating without using the words she was so afraid to speak.

Words were too messy. Left too many things un-said, or said wrong. But this—this all-consuming absorption in each other—was more vital than any conscious thought.

By the third time they made love, they were stretched out on the family-room carpet on a quilt pulled from the back of the couch. Keith had turned on the gas fire and flames danced lazily in the fireplace in front of them. This time their loving was traditional, slow, soothing raw places deep inside Bonnie’s heart.

Bonnie savored the love she knew she was so lucky to have.

“You’ve brought me to my knees, woman,” he grumbled beside her on the carpet. “I love you so damn much.”

“I love you, too.”

He rolled to his side, head propped on one hand.

“Thank you.”

His words startled her. She was the one who should be expressing gratitude.

“For what?”

“Tonight.”

She kissed Keith gently, wishing she wasn’t too exhausted to make love again. She didn’t want this feeling to end.

And knew that it would.

Her stomach tightened. She’d be kidding herself if she thought her dissatisfaction with life would just disappear when she woke up in the morning.

Settling down onto the quilt, she pushed herself up against Keith so that his hips were cradling her bottom, his arms around her.

“You know, that first time in the kitchen tonight, while I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting inside you, it still hit me hard that you didn’t insist on using protection. I had this huge urge to laugh out loud.”

He paused and Bonnie lay frozen, willing him not to think what she knew he was thinking. “Of course, other urges were much stronger than laughter….”

She chuckled with him and felt no laughter at all.

“I know it took a while for us to get pregnant with Katie,” Keith continued, his voice sleepy, content, happier than she’d heard him in far too long. “I’m not expecting anything to come of tonight. I’m just glad we’re getting started.”

Bonnie moved her head. It could have been a nod. Or a protest. She wanted so badly to want what Keith wanted, what they’d always wanted together.

A family. This house. This life.

Tied up in knots, she lay there beside him. Did she tell him she hadn’t stopped an incredibly spontaneous moment because she hadn’t had to? That it was a safe time for her?

The admission would hurt him, ruin the best evening they’d had in months. And for what?

She wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to have another child. And didn’t want him to think she didn’t want one. Because maybe she did. She loved being a mother. And a wife. She just had to figure out what she needed to do for Bonnie, the woman, before she committed herself any further.

Or figure out how to convince that woman to feel completely fulfilled with the life she had.

But how did she tell her husband that? How could she look into those gorgeous blue eyes and tell this man that the life he loved, the one they’d built together, wasn’t enough for her?

They could lose everything. And for what?

So maybe they wouldn’t use protection the next time they made love. Or the time after that.

Rolling over, she studied Keith’s familiar features. Those eyes, half-closed, slumbrous and sexy, the jaw with the familiar dark shadow, a mouth that wasn’t quite grinning but somehow expressing complete satisfaction. She loved him so much.

And couldn’t hurt him anymore.

“I SAW THIS FILM in the studio today.”

Keith and Bonnie were sitting up, wrapped in the quilt. Reflection from the flames swayed across Bonnie’s skin, clothing her in a mysterious beauty. It was after midnight and they both had to work early, but Keith had absolutely no desire to go to bed.

“Previewing?” she asked, glancing sideways at him.

He nodded. It wasn’t often a film stayed with him, coming to mind again and again, as this one had.

Keith wasn’t sure if it was the film itself or Martha’s reaction to it that was nagging at him. While he appreciated what the dancers and the filmmaker were saying, he still didn’t think it fit their programming mission.

“It’s bothering you?” Bonnie asked, understanding, even though he’d said nothing.

He nodded a second time, his gaze moving from her face to the fire.

He told her about the suffering he’d seen. The death and hopelessness that pervaded the film. “It was too much.”

“The movie showed them dying?” Bonnie asked.

“No.” And then, “They were dancing.”

“Dancing.” He could feel her looking at him. “Even at the end? They were dancing?”

“Yeah, but you had to see it, Bon. These guys were like shells of men, their bodies so thin you wondered how they had the strength to move.”

“But obviously they did have the strength, or they wouldn’t have been able to dance.”

She’d know about that, having been a dancer for years before she’d stopped to study early-childhood education.

“Yeah.” Elbows on his knees, Keith stared down a particular feisty flame.

“I think that’s inspiring. Like they weren’t going to quit until it was over.”

“So you think it would be okay to broadcast?”

“Of course!”

Keith turned his head to see Bonnie frowning at him. “Don’t you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” More so now.

“What did Martha have to say about it?”

“Pretty much the same thing you did.”

“I’m not surprised. We think a lot alike.”

Keith nodded.

He’d noticed that, too.

SHANE BELLOWS’S HEART sped up as he walked down the deserted hallway in Little Spirits. A light was still on in the playroom. That meant Bonnie was there.

According to the note he’d left on his mirror last night, she’d mentioned that she planned to move the reading corner to the other side of the room today.

He could help.

He could talk to her.

“Hi,” he said, trying to force his voice to respond to the commands he was giving it—trying to sound the way he had when he’d spoken to her during high school.

She’d wanted him then.

Facing a ceiling-high shelf, her arms full of the books she was pulling down, Bonnie turned to look at him over one shoulder.

“Hi, Shane.” Her easy grin settled so much of the uncertainty that was constantly there inside him.

He wanted to grin back, but was afraid his mouth would get that crooked hitch that came and went for no reason he could figure out. He didn’t want her to see that stupid look. Not ever.

“I can help,” he said, keeping his words to a minimum, as he always did around her. He hated the way his speech slowed and slurred. He’d never get used to that.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “You’ve been working all day.”

“So have you.”

She’d let him stay. She always did. And she always talked to him. Bonnie was the only person in his hometown who still treated him like a man.

She didn’t smother him with the pity that stripped him of what little pride he had left.

He removed some books from the shelves, taking care to keep his movements slow so he could control them. Bumbling around in front of Bonnie was humiliating.

“It’s not quitting time for you yet, is it? You’ve still got your own work to do,” she said, her brows knitting together as she watched him.

“I got it done.” So that he’d have this time with her. He’d come in early, rearranged the order of a couple of jobs to be more efficient. He’d figured that out on his own and was really proud of himself that it had worked.

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