Duncan watched as Lauren turned those incredible eyes on him

“So, you’re a pool shark, huh? And you accused me of being one.”

He was glad that he hadn’t been able to sleep tonight, that he’d gone out to get a drink because his room had seemed so vast and empty. He liked being here with her. “I’m not that good. Trust me.”

She smiled at him, a gentle expression, and he wished he could make her smile on command. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

He found himself staring at her lips, and looked away. Needing a distraction—fast—he took his shot. A striped ball fell into the corner pocket, another one dropped into a side pocket.

They continued to play, and he was doing well until he sensed Lauren behind him and missed.

“Too bad,” she murmured as she leaned halfway across the table, lined up her shot, called it and made it. Along with two more. He studied the table, and couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Duncan wanted to get to know her. He wanted to know what made Lauren Carter tick.

And he had some pretty good ideas about how he’d go about finding that out.

Dear Reader,

Discovering Duncan is the first of four books in my RETURN TO SILVER CREEK series.

Lauren Carter goes to Silver Creek, a small skiing town in the high mountain country of Nevada, as a private investigator. She’s trying to track down Duncan Bishop, a man who has all but dropped out of his world. She expects to find a man running away, a man who has turned his back on his wealth and power, but instead she finds a man in search of himself, a man going back to his past to find his future.

Returning to Silver Creek lets four men who are at life-changing moments discover that they can indeed go home again. And that sometimes the answers are where we least expect to find them.

I hope you enjoy Discovering Duncan, and will look for my next book, Judging Joshua, in August 2005.

Discovering Duncan

Mary Anne Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over her long career she’s published more than thirty romances, had her books on bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a Career Achievement Award in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.

Books by Mary Anne Wilson

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

495—HART’S OBSESSION

523—COULD IT BE YOU?

543—HER BODYGUARD

570—THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS

589—HART’S DREAM

609—THE CHRISTMAS HUSBAND

637—NINE MONTHS LATER…

652—MISMATCHED MOMMY?

670—JUST ONE TOUCH

700—MR. WRONG!

714—VALENTINE FOR AN ANGEL

760—RICH, SINGLE & SEXY

778—COWBOY IN A TUX

826—THAT NIGHT WE MADE BABY

891—REGARDING THE TYCOON’S TODDLER…*

895—THE C.E.O. & THE SECRET HEIRESS *

899—MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE *

909—THE MCCALLUM QUINTUPLETS

“And Babies Make Seven”

952—MONTANA MIRACLE

1003—PREDICTING RAIN? *

1005—WINNING SARA’S HEART *

1009—WHEN MEGAN SMILES *

1062—DISCOVERING DUNCAN †

For Taylor Anne Levin.

I love you more than you can say you love me!

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 One

“It’s nothing personal. This is business.”

Duncan Bishop stared down at his father who sat behind the huge wood-and-marble desk in the private office of the CEO of Bishop International. The room was dead silent as the old man’s words faded into nothingness.

Duncan Ross Bishop, or D.R. as he liked to be called, stared right back at his son, a look on his face that Duncan had seen many times in the years he’d been part of the Bishop business dealings. The “I’m doing it my way, so get out of my way” look. Before it had been annoying, maybe even frustrating, but now it was sickening.

“Gary Tellgare is a friend.”

D. R. Bishop, a giant of a man, was as fit and hard physically as he was in the business world. With a full head of snow-white hair, a neatly trimmed beard to match, a deeply tanned complexion and a penchant for dark suits that emphasized his size, he knew how to intimidate. With the wave of a hand, he lopped off heads in business and never flinched.

Now he waved his large hand dismissively at Duncan on the other side of the desk. “Damn it, that doesn’t have any bearing on this. There are no friends in business. We need his routing division, and Tellgare runs a half-baked company that doesn’t need it. So, we get it…any way we can.”

Although Duncan never wore a beard, and his hair was dark brown with gold highlights, he matched his father physically with a solid, six-foot-three-inch frame, tanned skin, dark brown eyes and a penchant for dark, three-piece business suits. But other than DNA, right now they had nothing in common. “You’ve crossed the line if you try to ruin Tellgare.”

D.R. rocked his leather chair back, tented his fingers and studied his son with eyes as dark as night. “Crossed the line?”

Duncan leaned forward, pressing both palms down on the reflective surface of the cold desk. “Damn straight.”

“Oh, come on,” D.R. said with an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t have time for this bleeding-heart garbage. Just get it done.”

Duncan had heard those words before, and he was incredibly tired of them. He felt numb from watching his father destroy anything in his path. “I don’t have time for this, either,” he finally said as he straightened.

“Then get on with it.” D.R. pushed a folder on his desk over to Duncan. “Get to Legal and tell them to change this.”

He ignored the file. “No. If you’re going after Tellgare, count me out.”

The folder sat between them as D.R. drilled Duncan with a ferocious glare. “What?” he demanded.

“Are you going after Tellgare?”

“To use your words, damn straight.” The older man sat back and crossed his arms on his chest. “Damn straight.”

Dark eyes held dark eyes without blinking. For one week, Duncan had known this move was coming. He’d known there was no hope of stopping D.R. this time. “Unless you let me take over now and you step down, I’m out of here.”

D.R. uttered a profanity that rocked the room around them. “Fat chance of me stepping down and handing you all of this.”

“It’s your company and your decision. Live with both of them,” Duncan said. “I’ve had it.”

“You’ve had it?” D.R. stood to his full size. “News flash, Duncan, so have I. I’ve put up with your arguments and your flawed reasoning more than I should have because you’re my son. But no more. It’s my company, and I’ll do things my way. So get over it, and get on with this business with Tellgare.”

Now that he’d made the decision to quit, Duncan was shocked he had no second thoughts. “That’s it?”

D.R. exhaled. “And I quote, ‘Damn straight.’”

Duncan turned for the door, but D.R. wasn’t finished.

“Don’t you walk out on me like this!” the man thundered.

Duncan reached for the brass door handle.

“Don’t you think you’re going to use anything I taught you to go up against this company,” D.R. said, enraged. “If you walk out the door, you’re dead in this town. You’re done.”

Duncan twisted the cold handle.

“What in the hell do you think Adrianna is going to say about this idiocy?” D.R. demanded.

Duncan stopped, but didn’t turn. Adrianna? Tall, blond and no stranger to the business world, Adrianna Barr was the only child of one of the most powerful bankers on the West Coast. They’d dated, had fun, and they understood each other. “She’ll understand.”

D.R.’s boom of laughter filled the office. “God, you’re deluded. She’ll drop you like a bad habit.”

Maybe D.R. was right, and maybe he was wrong. It didn’t matter right then. Maybe it would later, but not then. Duncan was used to being alone. He’d always been alone. “Whatever.” Duncan jerked the door open.

“Where are you going?” his father asked, closer now, almost behind him.

Duncan turned and stood eye to eye, toe to toe with his father. “Anywhere but here.”

D.R. exhaled, raking his fingers through his thick white hair, then waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, just go home, get drunk, get Adrianna and take a break. I can handle things on this end.”

“And Tellgare?” he asked in a low voice.

“Leave it to me. I’ll do it if you don’t have the stomach for it.” There was no backing down when it came to his father. None at all. There never had been. “Branch or Gills can take over for you this time.”

D.R. still didn’t get it. “There won’t be a next time.”

D.R. flushed red and he rocked forward on the balls of his feet, bringing his face inches from his son’s. “Listen to me. You’re a Bishop, born and bred. You are my son, and the only Bishop left once I’m gone. Walking out won’t change that.”

Duncan shook his head. “No, nothing can change that, but I’ll learn to live with it.”

Then he turned and walked away. D.R. yelled from the door of his private office, but not at Duncan. He yelled at his secretary, a middle-aged woman who had been with D.R. for ten years. “Helen, call security. Mr. Bishop is leaving. He’s to take nothing with him, have no access to his office or anything to do with this company.”

Helen chanced a furtive glance at Duncan, and he could see the look of commiseration on her face. She knew what it was like to be browbeaten by the CEO. As he strode out the main office door, the last thing he heard was Helen saying, “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”

Duncan didn’t go anywhere near his office. He went straight down to the parking garage, got in his car and took nothing with him when he went through the security gates for the last time. He didn’t look back as he pulled out onto the congested streets of downtown Los Angeles bathed in the late afternoon sun of a clear May day. He drove to his apartment, packed his bags, told the superintendent he’d be in contact and left.

When he met with Adrianna, he found out the old man had been right about at least one thing. Adrianna wasn’t having any part of his explanations. She didn’t get it, either. Finally, he gave up and left her, too. When he drove away from Los Angeles, he drove away from his old life and everything in it. And he didn’t look back.

Los Angeles,

Six Months Later:

“I’M A MAN OF PATIENCE,” D. R. Bishop said as his secretary left, closing the door securely behind her. “But even I have my limits.”

Lauren Carter never took her eyes off the large man across the impressive wood-and-marble desk. D. R. Bishop was dressed all in black. He was a huge, imposing man, and definitely, despite what he said, a man with little patience. He looked tightly wound and ready to spring.

Lauren sat very still in a terribly uncomfortable chair, her hands in her lap while she let D. R. Bishop do all the talking. She simply nodded from time to time. The longer he talked, she got the impression he was the type who drove his life by the sheer force of his will, the same way he did business.

“My son walked out on everything six months ago,” he said.

She finally spoke. “Why?”

He tented his fingers thoughtfully with his elbows resting on the polished desktop as if he were considering her single-word question. But she knew he was considering just how much to tell her. His eyes were dark as night, a contrast to his snow-white hair and meticulously trimmed beard. “Ah, that’s a good question,” he said, hedging for some reason.

“Mr. Bishop, you’ve dealt with the Sutton Agency enough to know that privacy and discretion are part and parcel of our service. Nothing you tell me will go any further.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders and sank back in his chair. “Of course. I expect no less,” he said.

“Why did your son leave?”

“I thought it was a middle-age crisis of some sort.” He smiled slightly, a strained expression. “Not that thirty-eight is middle aged. Then I thought he might be having a breakdown. Maybe gone over the edge.” The man stood abruptly, rising to his full, imposing height, and she could have sworn she felt the air ripple around her from his movement. “But he’s not crazy, Ms. Carter, he’s just damn stubborn. Too damn stubborn.”

She waited as he walked to the windows behind him and faced the city twenty floors below. When he didn’t speak again, she finally said, “You don’t know why he left?”

The shoulders shrugged again sharply. “A difference of opinion on how to do business. Nothing new for us.” He spoke without turning. “We’ve always clashed, but in the end, we’ve always managed to make our business relationship work.”

The two of them had made Bishop International a force to be reckoned with in the financial world. When he didn’t speak again for several minutes, she knew she wasn’t going to get more on the “whys” of his son leaving. Even though she’d been working as a private investigator for less than a year, Lauren knew when she was hitting a concrete wall, when the client wasn’t about to disclose personal information.

She took a notebook and pen out of her purse and got to the point of the meeting. “What do you want from the Sutton Agency exactly, Mr. Bishop?”

“Find him.”

“That’s it?”

He turned back to her, studying her intently for several moments before he said, “No.”

“Then what else do you want us to do?”

“As an employee of Sutton, I want you to find my son, and I want him to come back here, willingly.”

“Okay,” she said.

He gripped the back of his chair, pressing his long fingers into the plush leather. “I’m going to offer you something that’s just between the two of us, and no one else. Agreed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I can hardly agree to it.”

He let go of the chair and came around to where she was and sat on the edge of his desk. She had no doubt every move he made was well thought out for maximum effect on the person he was facing. She was tall for a woman at five-nine, but still shorter than he was by half a foot, and he outweighed her hundred and twenty-five pounds by a lot. Now he was looking down at her intently, and it was all she could do to stay seated and not stand to minimize his advantage.

“He’s a barracuda.” That’s what Vern Sutton, her boss at the Sutton Agency, had told her when she’d been assigned to this job. “The man is tough as nails and gets what he wants. He doesn’t care how he does it, either.” The agency had done a number of background checks for D. R. Bishop over the years, on employees, business associates and even personal acquaintances. But they had never handled a missing person’s case for them.

D.R. had personally called the agency this time, said he needed to locate a missing person, and he’d asked for her specifically to be on the case. He hadn’t given Vern a reason, and Vern hadn’t asked. He also hadn’t told Vern the missing person was his own son.

“Why don’t you just explain things to me, and then I can make a decision? No matter how this turns out, it will be kept confidential,” she finally said when she couldn’t stand the silence between them any longer. “But I can’t make any decision until I know what’s involved.”

“That sounds doable,” he said. “I want you to find Duncan. See where he’s gone, and what he’s doing. Meet him, interact with him and figure out a way to get him back here of his own accord. Then we’ll have a deal between the two of us, an incentive if you’d like.”

She wasn’t going to play a guessing game with him. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re talking about?”

He nodded faintly as if she’d passed some test. “If you can get my son to come back here willingly, I’ll of course pay the agency’s bill, but I’ll make another payment that will go directly to you. A bonus. From me, to you.”

“Just for getting him back here?”

“Yes, and how you do it is up to you. Just do it.”

“And the payment?” she asked, cutting to the chase.

He named a figure that was not only outrageous, but, incredibly, it was the sum total of the tuition payments she’d need to finish law school, almost to the penny. She simply sat and stared at D. R. Bishop as she realized that he’d obviously had her investigated before he ever approached Vern about her services. He knew what she needed and why she was working at the agency. He’d looked over the operatives and found the most needy one.

“So, could you use the money?” he asked evenly.

She wanted to say, “You know I can,” but settled for, “Of course, who couldn’t?”

“Then it’s yours, if you deliver.”

“Mr. Bishop, what happens if your son won’t come back?”

The older man actually frowned, as though he’d never considered that option. “Then I pay your boss and you get your usual cut. End of deal,” he said abruptly.

God, she hated people like him. People who had to be in control, who had to have power, and people who wielded that power as easily as they breathed. His son was probably the mirror image of the man, brought up in his likeness. Duncan Bishop had probably walked out because they couldn’t agree on how to destroy someone or something. Knife, gun or poison. She just bet the father chose a knife so he could destroy “up close and personal,” while the son wanted the gun to get things over with quickly.

She finally stood to face him. “Just get him to come back to L.A.?”

“He comes back and you can get your law degree.”

He didn’t care that she knew he’d had her investigated. “That’s an interesting offer,” she said.

“If you do this successfully, maybe when you pass the California bar exam, there’ll be a place for you around here.”

She didn’t try to stop the smile that came at his words. He’d obviously just looked into her financial needs and didn’t know what she was going to law school for. “That sounds enticing, sir, and I appreciate the thought, but I’m going to specialize in criminal law.”

The old man burst into a guffaw of laughter. “Damn, maybe we could use you anyway,” he said.

“You never know,” she murmured.

He turned from her to go around and drop back down onto his leather chair. He reached for a box that had been on the desk since she arrived. “Here’s everything you’ll need to know about Duncan. His connections, relationships, interests, his business background, pictures.”

“How about credit cards?”

“Helen made a list for you and it’s in there.”

“Money?”

“I don’t know what he took, but he has access through his accounts. Helen put that information in there, too.”

“Has he made any business connections since he left?”

“No.”

“Where did he live when he was in L.A.?”

“He was in the Edge Water Towers off of Wilshire.”

A moneyed area. “Owned or rented?”

“Owned, but he leased it out when he left for a year.”

“Through whom?”

“The agent who deals with those units.” He gave her the name, and she wrote it down in her notebook.

“Did he live there alone?”

“When he wanted to. But he’s seldom wanted to.” His eyes narrowed. “Ms. Carter, my son likes women. He’s seldom without a woman, and if he is, it’s his choice.” He deliberately let his eyes flicker over her, then back to meet her gaze. “As I said, do anything you need to do to get his attention and get him back here.” He smiled slightly and it had the power to unnerve her. “Do we understand each other?”

She understood and it made her vaguely sick. No wonder he’d asked for a woman. The man thought that seduction was all part of the package. It wasn’t. “Of course,” she said. “I understand. Is he married, divorced, involved?”

“No, no and no. He had a girlfriend, Adrianna Barr, but that’s a thing of the past. She took a walk when he did.”

She’d heard of the woman, a society brat from all that she’d read about her, the daughter of a wealthy banker. She’d even seen pictures of the socialite out and about at society parties. Very blond, very pretty, very pale, very thin and very rich. And he thought she, Lauren, could seduce his son into coming back here? Wrong again.

She wasn’t any Adrianna Barr. If D. R. Bishop had bothered to really look at her, he’d see that even though she was tall enough, she wasn’t pale, she wasn’t skinny and she didn’t have long blond hair. And she sure as heck wasn’t rich.

Lauren was tanned, always was, winter or summer, with a generous amount of freckles. She had curves that refused to give her that popular boyish look in stylish clothes, and her hair was deep auburn, bordering on red, cut short and feathered around her face. On top of that, she had no society connections and her bank balance was laughable.

“Okay,” she murmured, making a show of writing something in her notebook. He wouldn’t know she was writing “Fat chance” in cursive, then underlining it. She closed the book and looked back at the man, barely able to hide her distaste. But she managed to. “Anything else you can think of?”

“No,” D.R. said as he held the box out to her.

She pushed her notebook into her purse, then put the strap over her shoulder and took the box, a bit surprised at how heavy it was. “Is there any family he’d go visit?”

D.R. shook his head. “None. He’s an only child and his mother’s been gone ten years.”

She held the box to her middle. “Any gut feelings about where he’d go, what he’d do?”

He shook his head again. “No.”

“In the entire six months there’s been no contact?”

“Not directly.”

“What does that mean?”

He motioned to the box. “It’s all in there. My people found him in Dallas and he took off.”

“They can’t find him again?”

“They could, but he’d just leave again. That’s why I need you. He won’t know a thing, until you work your magic.” He smiled at her, as if to ingratiate himself with her. “And my instincts tell me you can do it.”

She made herself nod and say, “I’ll do my best,” then ask, “How do you want the updates? Daily, weekly…?”

“Once.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just call me when he’s on his way home.”

“That’s it?”

“Unless you blow it, then file your report, let your boss bill me and that’s that.”

She paused. “Sir, one more thing?”

“Of course.”

“He ran away, like some teenager. I don’t get it.”

“He didn’t. He left. He cut off everything, and he left. He told me he’d never be back, and I won’t accept that. This is where he belongs. He’s my only heir, the person who takes over when I’m gone. I need him back here.”

She had the feeling that his last sentence was his most truthful. He needed his son back with him. Not only for professional reasons but because he missed him. “Okay, Mr. Bishop,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

She carried the box down to the parking garage level and got into her car, an unmemorable blue compact. She put the box on the passenger seat, opened it and reached for the papers on top—newspaper clippings, a copy of a birth certificate, several photos.

Duncan Bishop was the spitting image of his father, only younger. He had the intense dark eyes. Every photo of the man had him looking right into the camera, as if he met the world head on and didn’t flinch. His features weren’t perfect, but the strong jaw and high cheekbones combined to make the man “interesting.” His hair was short enough, styled back from his face, a dark brown shot with gold highlights, and every photo had him in a business suit or tuxedo. In one picture she found the Barr woman with him, his arm around her, the woman smiling at someone nearby, the man looking at the camera, appearing faintly bored.

She sorted through, got to the newspaper clippings and wasn’t surprised to see they were all about the business, all about the father and son making a deadly team. All about the victories of the Bishops. She put them back in the box, then looked at the birth certificate. Duncan Ross Bishop. Son of Ellen Gayle O’Hara and Duncan Ross Bishop. His birthday was a month away, two weeks before Christmas. She glanced at the birthplace. Silver Creek, Nevada. She’d heard of the place, but only because of a posh ski resort located there, a very expensive, very in-demand and very private place. A place a Bishop could afford, and, coincidentally, Duncan Bishop’s home.

A lot of people went home when they “disappeared,” and she wondered if Duncan Bishop was that predictable. Would she find him at the fancy resort there, The Inn at Silver Creek? Maybe he was there partying. Or hiding.

Whatever the case, she’d find him. Her future depended on it.

Chapter Two

Lauren found Duncan Bishop in one week, and if there hadn’t been a weekend plunked down in there, she would have found him faster. She looked for hits on his credit cards, his social security card and bank withdrawals. The hits had been all over the country on a personal credit card that wasn’t associated with the company. She’d followed the pattern, and that pattern had ended up where she’d first thought to look—Silver Creek, Nevada. It had been almost too easy.

One week after she’d met with D. R. Bishop, she was picking up a rental car in Las Vegas, carrying no luggage and with a return flight to Los Angeles that night at ten o’clock. She drove north through the expansive desert, and finally climbed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, heading up into rugged country. The one thing she hadn’t discovered was where in Silver Creek he was. He wasn’t at The Inn at Silver Creek north of the town. He wasn’t holed up in an obscenely expensive grouping of cottages that the rich and sometimes famous rented. He wasn’t sitting around a roaring fire in the evenings sipping cognac and rubbing shoulders with people like him. But he was in Silver Creek.

She’d found one place where the credit charges repeated themselves, a place called Rusty’s Diner. She found out that the diner was in the oldest section of town, the part that had survived from the early days when Silver Creek had been part of the huge silver-mining industry in the area. Rusty’s was owned by Dwayne Altman, sixty-five, with a bank balance that showed the diner did okay, but wasn’t in the same league as the trendy restaurants and cafés in the newer section of town.

She had no idea what Duncan Bishop was doing at Rusty’s, but when she had called the place and asked for him, the woman who answered had said, “He’s not in right now. Want to leave a message?” Lauren had hung up. She hadn’t been able to find anything in the records of the town with Duncan’s name on it, so she had to assume that he was either a customer who came in so regularly that they took calls for him there, or he worked there. Neither made sense to her. So she headed to Silver Creek to find Duncan Bishop, figure out what he was doing there and form a plan of action.

By the middle of the afternoon, she’d made it to Silver Creek, found Rusty’s Diner and was sitting across from it at a coffee shop with benches and tables outside on the wooden walkway that lined both sides of the street. She held an untouched cup of coffee, and waited. The diner across the street was rustic, but not in a fake way. It really was old, the wooden siding on it worn from time and weather, and the sign looked as if it had been there since the silver-mining days.

She glanced around at an area that was typical of any old mining town. It fanned out from the main street, a narrow two-lane thoroughfare, lined by brick and wooden buildings, its growth limited by the soaring mountains on either side of the pass. She could see skiing shops, antique stores, a museum to the north, a few bars, even some houses squeezed in here and there. Rusty’s sat between an art gallery that advertised “Silver Creek Primitive Art,” and a postal shipping center.

She glanced back at the coffee shop where she sat, and saw a brass plaque by the door declaring it had once been “the assay office for this whole territory.” Now it was a place that served “over 100 specialty coffees.” She sipped some of her own coffee, glanced across the street and saw the front door to the diner open. A large man in rough outdoor clothes—from a heavy navy jacket to worn Levi’s, heavy boots and a dark watch cap pulled low—stepped outside.

He was the right size, but she couldn’t get a good look at his face. So she watched him cross the wooden walkway, go to his right, and for a minute she was sure he was heading down the street. If he’d taken off, she would have followed, just in case she’d found Duncan Bishop.

Then luck was with her. He stopped at a large, new SUV, with Nevada dealer plates still on it. As he reached for the handle on the back cargo door, he paused and looked up, almost looking right at her. But his gaze swept past her, down the walkway to her right. He watched as a group of rowdy kids in expensive ski clothes came down the walkway. They stopped at a souvenir shop two doors down from where she sat, then the man went back to opening the door.

She sighed with relief because he hadn’t been looking at her, and because, with one glimpse of his face in the late afternoon sun, she knew she’d found Duncan Bishop. But he wasn’t the Duncan Bishop she’d seen in the pictures and clippings. This man looked like a rugged, blue-collar worker. He moved quickly, took two heavy boxes out of the new SUV, closed the door and headed back to the diner. She stayed where she was, waiting, but Duncan Bishop didn’t come back out.

She sipped a bit more of her now tepid coffee, then stood, tossing the paper coffee cup in a trash can by the table, then pushed her hands in the pockets of her plain navy jacket. Nothing about her stood out, except maybe her hair color and she hadn’t had time to do anything about that. So she opted for a knit ski cap she’d found in a supply store near where she’d parked the rental car. She had tugged it as low as she could to cover as much of her hair as possible.

Lauren hunched her shoulders into the cold, biting wind that seemed to have come from nowhere as she stepped down off the walkway and onto the parking shoulder. She waited for a car to pass, then she hurried across to Rusty’s. She pushed back the entry door and stepped inside. The diner was larger than it looked from the street, and was decorated in wood and stone.

Booths lined the front wall, and tables were covered with red-checkered tablecloths that surrounded a huge stone fireplace framed by more booths along the side wall. A bar was against the back wall, with the kitchen visible through an order window. The air was warm and smelled wonderful from a mixture of coffee and cinnamon. Soft music played in the background, Christmas music that was over a month early. As she stood absorbing the atmosphere, a waitress spotted her.

The thin, blond woman in jeans and a red-checkered shirt strode over to her in the entry and smiled. “Welcome, welcome.” She motioned to the almost empty restaurant. “Take your choice.”

“Thanks,” she said and moved to a booth by the front wall, where she could observe the whole layout without looking obvious.

She sank onto the plastic seat, took the menu the waitress offered and asked for a glass of water. When the waitress left, she picked up the menu, ready to use it as a prop so she could look over its edge. But she’d barely opened it when a man came out of a side hall off the entry. She had a pretty good idea who he was—Dwayne Altman, the owner.

He was the right age, medium height, a bit of a paunch under a gray-flannel shirt he wore with Levi’s, and his hair and full beard were a deep red. He spoke to the waitress and then made his way to the kitchen.

As Lauren watched him through the order window, the waitress returned to her table, and Lauren ordered a grilled-cheese sandwich to go and a cup of tea while she waited. As the woman headed back to put in the order, Lauren sat back in the booth and casually studied the rest of the room. Paneled walls, heavy beams overhead, rustic chandeliers that looked as if they were made of antlers and a huge deer head over the stone fireplace.

She looked away from the trophy and glanced at the entry. A four-shelf unit on the wall by the cash register held an assortment of mugs, all different and all carefully arranged. Above the shelves was a wood carved sign, Home Is Where You Hang Your Mug.

She glanced back at the kitchen, but the only person she could see through the half window was the cook. Not Duncan Bishop. She was beginning to think he’d ducked out another door she hadn’t been able to see from her vantage point. Then she saw him come out of the side hall. He was headed for the kitchen.

His watch cap was off, his jacket undone and he walked quickly, with long strides. He stepped into the kitchen, and as the door swung shut, the waitress appeared with her tea. She took it, but never drank it. She watched as Rusty and Duncan came out of the kitchen and walked toward the front of the diner.

They stopped at the greeting desk, with Rusty’s back to her and Duncan facing the restaurant. He looked up and his gaze met hers for a fraction of a second before turning away and refocusing on Rusty. She quickly looked down into her cup of steaming tea, but listened intently to their conversation.

“Hey, it sounds good to me and I appreciate you doing it,” Rusty was saying. “I wouldn’t know where to start dealing like that.”

“Okay.” Lauren glanced up from her tea at the sound of Duncan Bishop’s voice. It was deep like his father’s, a bit more rough, and carried easily in the almost empty restaurant. He was tugging at the sleeves of his jacket as he talked to the other man. “I’ll be back here no later than five p.m. on Thursday.”

“You watch yourself driving on that highway,” Rusty said. “And watch your back in Vegas.”

“I intend to,” Duncan said as he pulled his watch cap out of his pocket and put it on. Then he left. Through the windows, Lauren saw him stride across to the new SUV he’d gone to earlier.

He was leaving, going to Las Vegas, and she couldn’t follow him. She couldn’t get outside fast enough to get to her car and trail him. And she didn’t think, even if she could, that it would be a good idea. She didn’t know where he was going, but she knew he’d be back here on Thursday by five. Three days, days she could use to figure out how to approach him, how to get close enough to find out more about him and, in the end, get him to go back where he belonged.

She watched him stop just as he was about to go around the front of the SUV, turn and look back up the street. She twisted to see what he was looking at and saw the same kids who had made a commotion earlier. A gang of kids with time on their hands and money enough to get into trouble.

Three of them broke away from the main group of six or seven, and caught up with a girl who was probably in her late teens, very tiny and pretty, in a bright pink skiing outfit. The three were yelling at her, laughing uproariously, catching up quickly. She was obviously trying to ignore them, but she didn’t make it past Rusty’s before they were on her, circling her like a pack of hyenas right near Duncan and the SUV.

One of the guys, wearing loose, hanging pants, ski boots and a bulky down jacket, made a grab for her arm to stop her. He caught her by the sleeve, pulling her back and spinning her around. Even through the glass, Lauren heard her say, “Just let go of me, you creep!”

The other two were laughing, blocking her way if she tried to keep going. Then things changed. The one who had a hold on the girl moved backward, but not of his own volition. Duncan was there with a handful of the guy’s jacket, pulling him away from the girl as if he weighed nothing. The kid turned, his hand balled into a fist, then reconsidered doing something drastic when he found himself facing Duncan, who was a good eight inches taller than him. He twisted, and Duncan let him go, and when one of the other two started to say something, he hushed his friend with a slap on the kid’s upper arm.

Duncan was talking, his voice so low she couldn’t hear it at all, but the boys heard it. Duncan’s expression was unreadable, giving away nothing. Not anger, not disgust, or even aggression, but Lauren waited for something to explode. It never did.

Instead, Duncan was leaning toward the ring leader, using his size the way his father did. He got close, and all three of the hoodlums backed up, shook their heads in unison and, quite remarkably, walked away…quickly, without looking back once. The girl was watching them with wide eyes, then looked up at Duncan, touched his arm. Lauren could see her cheeks were flushed as she spoke to him.

Duncan shook his head as he said something to her, then, with a nod, he went back to his SUV. But he didn’t get in. He went around it and kept walking across the street, to the far side, and disappeared from sight. Dusk was approaching. Old-fashioned lamps lined the street and flashed to life. Twinkling Christmas lights framed display windows and outlined rooflines.

“Here you go,” someone said, and Lauren looked up at the waitress who was putting a take-out container on the table. “Anything else for you tonight?”

“No, no thanks,” she said.

“Thanks for coming in,” the waitress said, laying the bill on top of the take-out carton. Lauren paid and left. Stepping out into the chilly twilight, she hurried down the street to her rental car. Once she got the heat going she sat and ate the sandwich.

Duncan Bishop had walked off without his car. One of the charges on his personal credit card had been for Silver Creek Hotel. She’d looked it up, expecting to find a luxury hotel, but she’d been wrong. It was the original hotel in the town, built back in the 1800s, with only twenty rooms in all, and the charges had been recurring, every two weeks. From the address, she’d mapped it as two blocks north of Rusty’s. If he was on foot, chances were, he’d gone there. She wouldn’t attempt to watch him again. Not tonight.

She looked up the street to the north, where more lights were flashing to life. Ski slopes were defined by climbing brilliance on the west, some close and some a lot farther away. As the heat built to a comfortable level in the car, she mulled over everything she’d seen, heard and found out today. Nibbling on her sandwich, she let the facts settle and she gradually formulated a plan.

She started humming “Jingle Bells” under her breath as she pushed the napkins into the carryout box, then put the car in gear and tipped the vents so the warm air touched her face. She had the ten o’clock return flight, but she wasn’t going to make it. She had to see a few more things, then she could head back to Las Vegas. She got on the cell phone, had enough signal to get her call through and pushed her flight reservation back to midnight. Then she drove away from the curb and headed north.

She spotted the hotel on the left as she drove. It was a three-story brick building, with a steeply pitched roof. Tall, narrow windows lined the walls downstairs, and broader windows overlooked the street from the second floor. There was a parking area to the right, and white twinkling lights framed the entry with its half-wood and half-glass door. A sign was hung above the door: The Silver Creek Hotel, Est. 1858. Another sign in a front window seemed jarringly modern and announced Vacancies.

She kept driving, out of the older part of town, into a newer, more developed area. She passed a cluster of restaurants, then the public ski lifts. There was snow on the slopes, but nowhere else. The talk at the coffee shop had been complaints about no snow, how late the season was and how unsatisfactory it was skiing on machine-made snow. The shops at the foot of the lifts were closed, as well.

She kept driving up the street lined with small cabins and homes, and headed into a more upscale area. Here, the shops were high end, the restaurants fancy, and estates were hidden behind massive security gates and high fences. She could see some homes built up the mountains, their lights cutting through the growing darkness.

She turned to follow a bend in the road and the lights from the ski slopes were glowing into the night sky. She saw what she thought was a street to her left, with soft pillar lights framing it, and a wide, sweeping turnoff. But as she got closer, she could see it was an elaborate security entrance.

The pavement was made of cobbled stones, leading up to a lit gatehouse with a security guard standing by, watching the road. Behind him were six-foot-high carved wooden gates hung on massive stone pillars. Carriage lights lit the way and showed just a portion of the stone wall that ran off to the right and left. A rock arch swept over the top of the gates and, illuminated by hidden lights, brass letters spelled out The Inn at Silver Creek.

The place was completely blocked by gates, fences and the guard who looked in her direction when he heard her car approaching. When he saw she was in a cheap import, he lost interest and went back to looking at a pad of paper he had in his hand. Lauren drove a bit farther, never finding the end of the high stone fence, and never finding any life outside of it, either. She finally turned and retraced her route. When she got to the resort’s entry it was dark, and she watched as a low black sports car cut in front of her to get to the gates.

She slowed, watching the guard walk up to the driver’s window, glance inside, then wave the car through. The gates opened slowly, and for a moment Lauren could see beyond the barriers. She caught a glimpse of a lit road heading into the compound, going toward a series of sprawling buildings. Beyond, ski slopes glowed in the darkness.

She didn’t have any idea why Duncan Bishop was holed up at the Silver Creek Hotel, and not here. But she’d find out. She drove on until she was at the hotel and saw the phone number under the vacancy sign. She memorized it, then pulled into a parking spot a few buildings down and took out her cell phone. It only had one bar of signal, but she punched in the number and the call went through.

A woman answered and Lauren reserved a room for Thursday night, with an open end for departure. The woman asked if she knew there was no snow in Silver Creek, and when she assured her she did, the reservation was made. She put away her phone, then pulled back onto the street.

She went past Rusty’s Diner and the SUV was gone. But that was fine because she’d found a chink in Duncan Bishop’s facade of power and control, a very unexpected chink. It didn’t fit the image in the newspaper clips and stories that she’d read about him. Or from what his father said, or anyone else she’d asked about him. It didn’t fit at all, but she’d seen it with her own eyes.

Duncan Bishop was a rescuer. He’d rescued that girl from the gang of obnoxious punks. He hadn’t hesitated. Maybe he was more a controller than a rescuer, but whatever it was, it could work for her. If he liked being in control and rescuing maidens in distress, she’d be a maiden, she’d be in distress and she’d let him have control.

Thursday:

“SO, YOU WENT TO LAS VEGAS, not to gamble, not to have a good time, but to…”

“Business,” Duncan said to his passenger in the SUV as he drove into the mountains.

“Business,” Annie Logan repeated. “Business?”

Annie owned and ran the Silver Creek Hotel, where he stayed, and he liked her and her husband, Rick. They were nice, uncomplicated people who were generous and kind to a complete stranger. But they never stopped asking questions. That and his overwhelming need for solitude had been why he’d hesitated to let her ride along on his trip to Las Vegas.

But he’d finally agreed to take her so that she could visit with her sister while he took care of business. He hadn’t elaborated on what he was doing there, and wasn’t going to go into what he’d accomplished in Las Vegas. He’d go over that with Rusty when he got back. The meeting with a restaurant supplier he’d known for years, Colin Webb of Webb Food Services, had gone very well.

Colin was one of the few business acquaintances he’d had over the years who neither feared nor kowtowed to D. R. Bishop. That fact alone had earned him Duncan’s respect. On top of that, Colin was a fair man. When Duncan had contacted him last week about helping Rusty get a better deal on his supplies, the only thing Colin had said about him leaving Bishop International was “What took you so long?”

After meeting in Las Vegas to talk, they’d struck a deal for Rusty’s Diner. Colin’s company supplied the inn, and it wouldn’t take much more to make a stop at Rusty’s to take him supplies. The deal was struck, and Duncan was going back to Silver Creek with the good news that deliveries would start the week of Thanksgiving.

“You are not a talker, are you?” Annie asked as she reached for the newspaper on the seat between them.

He shrugged. “It depends.” He glanced at the woman in the next seat. Annie was in her early thirties, with dark hair she wore short and curly, little to no makeup, and a woman who wore sensible clothes and shoes. She had a terrific smile and a natural maternal instinct that, without having children, was directed at the people who stayed at the hotel.

“Well, you’re an enigma,” she said. “I told Rick that there’s more to you than meets the eye.”

“No, there isn’t,” he murmured.

He heard the newspaper Annie brought with her rustle, and she read, “Crisis in the national forests. Seems that people are killing the forests. I can’t imagine what Silver Creek would be without the forest.”

Neither could Duncan. The few days he’d thought he’d spend in Silver Creek had stretched out into three months, and he found he was starting to feel more and more comfortable in the town. He liked the pace, the people, especially the old-timers who were a far cry from the people who had surrounded him in Los Angeles. And he liked the land around him.

He flipped on the headlights of the SUV as he climbed higher into the mountains. It was barely four-thirty, but dusk was lying heavily all around. “Do you think there’s snow coming?” he asked for something to say.

“We always have snow by Thanksgiving,” Annie said. “And the weather report says we might get some activity. I sure hope so.”

He’d guess the temperature outside had dropped ten degrees, but the sky was painfully clear. Annie read more headlines, and he wasn’t particularly paying any attention until she said, “Business seems to be as depressing as the conditions in the forest.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, asking no questions.

But that didn’t stop Annie from reading more, and everything he’d avoided for six months hit him in the face. And it hit hard. “Tellgare files for bankruptcy. Stocks plummet. Rivals move in. Sounds like some sharks circling the dead or dying.”

That was closer than she thought, and he looked over at her as she refolded the paper. Sickness hit him hard. His father had destroyed Tellgare. He turned his attention back to the road and realized that he’d wandered onto the shoulder. The tires beat on gravel, the three-foot-high wooden safety rail was close and was the only thing to stop a fifty-foot plunge into a rough ravine below.

He tried not to overcorrect, but to ease his way back onto the road. But he didn’t have time to do it properly. At the same time as Annie said, “Look out!” he saw a disabled car on the shoulder, right in his path. Its hood was up and its taillights on.

He had no choice but to jerk the wheel to the left, back toward the pavement. He felt his wheels spin, then grind in the gravel, shooting rocks everywhere as he slipped past the parked car, barely missing impact. But his relief was short-lived when he felt the back end of the SUV start to fishtail wildly, pushing him into a spin. He steered into it, the world outside a blur and Annie’s screams ringing in his ears. The SUV rammed the safety rail, then an explosion and the sound of tearing metal, acrid smoke everywhere, and with a shuddering finality, everything stopped.

Chapter Three

Lauren saw the SUV come out of nowhere, headed right for her, then, in a surreal moment, it passed by her. Before she could blink, the SUV started to spin, throwing gravel back at her car. Dust rose and the SUV slammed into the safety rail sideways, skidded along the barrier, then stopped in a cloud of dust. In that moment she realized the black SUV belonged to Duncan Bishop.

She was out of her car in an instant, running toward the SUV, coughing from the dust and the smell of burning rubber. She reached the driver’s side, grabbed the door handle and pulled, but it was locked. She pounded on the window, calling out, “Open it, open it, open it!” The door flew back suddenly, almost hitting her before she could jump out of the way.

Then she saw Duncan Bishop. The air bag had ruptured from the center of the steering wheel and the smell of chemicals all but choked her. She grabbed his jacket sleeve, the idea that she nearly got him killed too unbelievable to absorb. “Oh, my gosh, are you okay?” she said, the words spilling out over each other. She let go of his arm. “My gosh, I thought you were going to go over the edge.”

“Me, too,” he muttered as he twisted toward her to get out of the SUV. His feet hit the ground, and she backed up to give him space. He towered over her.

“You just skidded, I mean, the SUV was going all over and I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” he said, straightening in the cold air. “And it’s my fault.”

“Oh, no, if I hadn’t parked my car there, you never would have—”

“I got distracted,” he said.

“I can’t open the door.” A voice came from the car and the next thing Lauren knew, a woman had slid across the driver’s seat and gotten out.

She was of medium height, slender, almost plain. Certainly not an Adrianna Barr type. The woman pressed a hand to her chest and gasped, “Oh, my goodness, now that was a ride.”

Duncan asked if she was okay then headed to the hood of the SUV. Lauren followed. Together they stared at the damage. The front tire on the passenger side was torn to bits and the rim had dug into the gravel. The SUV was butted up against the guardrail. Deep ruts were embedded in the body thanks to the large metal bolts that held the wooden rails in place.

“Holy cow,” she whispered and Duncan turned, almost hitting her in the chin with his arm. She moved back quickly. This was not how the plan was supposed to go. “You really did wreck your car, didn’t you?”

“That about sums it up,” he said. “That tire’s history and we’re stuck.”

“No, no, we’ll put on your spare, and we’ll be fine.”

“No, the spare’s gone.”

The SUV was so new it didn’t even have its regular plates on yet. Lauren had to crook her neck slightly to look up at him. “You don’t have a spare?”

“I tore up a tire a week ago on a strip of metal in the road, and I haven’t picked up the replacement yet.”

The mystery woman appeared, pressing herself between Duncan and Lauren to take a long look at the damage. Then she drew back and looked up at Duncan. “And you don’t have a spare?”

“Ladies, there is no spare tire,” he said with a touch of exasperation. He glanced back down the road where Lauren had parked. “What’s wrong with your car?”

She stuck with the words she’d rehearsed while she’d been waiting for him to show up, when she’d hoped he’d stop to rescue another damsel in distress. “It stalled and I can’t get it started, and my cell phone has no signal.”

He exhaled, his breath curling into the cold air. “Let’s see if I can’t get your car started.”

But as he made his way toward her vehicle, Lauren followed and blocked his path. “I can’t let you mess with that car. It’s a classic. It’s not just some old car.”

In fact, the car was her brother’s, almost forty years old, completely restored, and recently had a new paint job that Alan called “cherry-apple red.” It had taken real bribery to get him to part with it for a week or so, and let her drive it all the way here. But she knew she’d need a car that wouldn’t be overlooked or forgotten by Duncan. “And it’s really temperamental.” That was true, and it was also true that if he knew anything about old cars, he’d know that the coil wire had been pulled out. “It’s got a mind of its own.”

He almost laughed at her. “It’s a car, lady.”

She stood her ground. “It’s my car,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You said it stopped, and you couldn’t get it going. Why do you think you can fix it now?”

“No, I said it stalled and I parked here,” she said, quickly elaborating to cover her tracks. “I didn’t get to finish and tell you that sometimes, if you let it rest for a bit, it’ll start.”

Damn it, he was going to laugh, really laugh. She could see it in the failing light. “So, it’s pouting, and won’t go until you make nice-nice to it?”

She didn’t smile. “No, it’s got a problem with the electrical wiring, and sometimes it reconnects and restarts.”

“Let her try,” the woman said as she came up behind Duncan and grabbed his arm. “It’s freezing and we have to get back.”

He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and nodded to the car. “Go ahead and talk to it nicely and make it understand that we need to have a ride out of here.”

Lauren didn’t wait to be asked twice. She hurried to the car and made a show of tinkering under the hood before reconnecting the wires. Standing, she turned to look at the other two. “That should do it, if we’re lucky.”

“A lady who can fix her own car,” the woman said approvingly. “I love it.”

Lauren reached up to pull the hood closed, then she went around to get behind the wheel. She waited a moment, then turned the key and the strong engine kicked over immediately. Her brother had completely rebuilt the engine and it worked perfectly. She turned on the headlights, drove slowly forward and came even with Duncan as she rolled down the window. “You two need a ride?”

“You’re terrific,” the woman said.

Duncan said, “Annie, get in, and I’ll get our things from the car.” He headed back to the disabled SUV while the woman, Annie, ran around the front of the car and pulled the passenger door open.

She scrambled into the back seat. “Duncan would never fit back here,” she said as she sank onto the white tuck-and-roll upholstery.

“Sorry it’s so small back there,” Lauren said and saw the emergency flashers of the SUV click on. Duncan got back out, closed up the car, then headed back to them with a small bag in one hand and a large envelope in the other. He went around and climbed in, taking the other bucket seat and quickly closing the door after him. He gave Annie the small bag and kept the envelope. “Got everything?” she asked.

He glanced at her and skimmed off his watch cap. His hair spiked slightly around his face, and she could see the beginnings of a beard at his jawline. A rough version of his father, very rough. “I left the luggage. We can get it later,” he said, then asked, “Is it going to keep running?”

“I hope so.” She eased out onto the highway.

“This is a great car,” Annie said, sitting forward to lean between the bucket seats. “And I’m Annie Logan.”

“I’m Lauren,” she said and waited for Duncan to chime in. He didn’t.

Instead, he asked, “Where were you heading, Lauren?”

She started her cover story. “Up the road a ways.”

“Is that a gypsy thing?” he asked.

“Do I look like a gypsy?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She pushed back the hood of the lime-green jacket she’d chosen to make an impact, then glanced at him. “I’ve got freckles and red hair. Gypsies don’t usually have either trait.”

He was studying her intently. “I guess not,” he murmured.

“Now, where am I taking the two of you?”

“Up the road.”

Annie jumped in. “Don’t pay any attention to him. Getting information out of him is like pulling teeth. We’re going to Silver Creek.”

The fact that Duncan Bishop was with a woman shouldn’t have surprised Lauren, not after what his father had told her and what she knew from the checks she’d done into his romantic history. But the type of woman surprised her. Annie Logan seemed warm and friendly, and unassuming. Lauren doubted anyone would have called Adrianna Barr unassuming. She shot Annie a glance in the rearview mirror and said, “Silver Creek it is.”

“Have you ever been there?” Duncan asked.

“No,” she lied. “Why?”

“I thought you looked familiar, but I guess not.”

She looked familiar? He couldn’t remember her from that flashing moment in the diner. He’d barely looked at her, and she’d done everything to be invisible, down to wearing dark clothes and that stupid knit hat. “I guess I’ve got that kind of face.”

“What kind?”

“The kind where you think you saw me before, but you couldn’t have, because I was never where you thought I was, so you couldn’t have seen me.”

“Whew, I can’t argue with that reasoning,” he said.

The car surged slightly, mostly because her foot jerked on the gas. “Sorry, sometimes it’s a little—”

“I know, temperamental,” Duncan finished for her.

Lauren nibbled on her bottom lip as she drove up the grade. Okay, so instead of him doing the rescuing when her car broke down, she’d been the one to rescue him…sort of. She regretted that his SUV was the worse for wear, but she’d made so certain she’d pulled over in a safe spot. Lots of shoulder area. And he should have seen her in this car with its red paint and the parking lights on.

Even though she didn’t know how he could have almost hit her, she took the blame to get talking again. “I’m sorry I parked where I did and almost got you both killed.”

She felt him shift, and she knew he was looking right at her. “I crashed because I was trying to miss your car, but then again, if the car hadn’t been there, I might have kept going and gone right over the rail. I’d say this is the better scenario.”

She shivered at the thought of that happening, and for a moment she thought of her job, of the consequences that came from every action she took to do things right. Thank goodness the consequences this time were relatively minor. And she was with Duncan Bishop. “Much better.”

“Thank goodness we didn’t go over,” Annie said. “And thank goodness you got your car going.”

“So, how did you get this car going?” Duncan asked.

“There’s a wire that goes to the coil, and it…it can come out pretty easily.” She’d barely had to tug to free it after she’d parked on the shoulder.

“It just slipped out of place?”

“I guess so,” she lied. Being the youngest in a family with three brothers had been rough, but it did have its advantages when it came to disabling a car.

“And this happens a lot?” Annie asked.

“Off and on,” she said, looking ahead intently, and not chancing a look at the man close to her.

“Why haven’t you had it fixed?” Duncan asked—the same thing she would have asked.

She took a breath, taking her boss’s advice and sticking to the truth as much as possible when you weave a backstory on assignment. The theory was, you had less to remember, and less to fabricate. “The car was rewired when the engine was rebuilt, and I guess that the new wires were just that, new. And the car’s old. The match isn’t perfect.” He didn’t comment, so she guessed he bought the explanation. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she tried to reroute the conversation. “You live in Silver Creek?”

“We both do,” Annie said before Duncan could say anything.

Annie was making this difficult, a talker who picked up when Duncan hesitated for any reason. So she tried to work around that by glancing at Duncan and making eye contact so he knew she was talking to him. “You like it?” she asked.

As she looked back at the road, he said, “Sure.”

One-word answers weren’t what she’d hoped for, so she regrouped and said, “You never told me your name.”

“Duncan,” he said, and that was that.

He didn’t say anything else, but Annie did, chattering on about Silver Creek and how she’d lived there all her life. She never said how she knew Duncan, but told her everything else about the town. She would have made a good tour guide, Lauren thought, trying not to be annoyed with the woman. She listened, waiting for Annie to stop. They were less than five miles from the town, and the glow from the ski slopes was starting to show in the night sky. Once they got there, she knew he’d be out of the car and gone before she could say goodbye.

“Duncan,” she said when Annie took a breath, trying to find something to say as she tapped the top of the steering wheel with the tip of her forefinger. Then she heard herself saying something totally ludicrous, but she couldn’t take it back once it was out there. “So, are you a highlander?”

“What?”

She looked at him, making a smile form on her lips. “A Scottish highlander. You’re in the right setting, a wild, cold country. Like the Highlands of Scotland, and your name, Duncan, it fits.”

“Sorry, my mother was Irish, and my father is…” He hesitated, then finally said, “Whatever he wants to be.”

D. R. Bishop would be whatever he wanted to be. That was dead on. “Good or bad?” she asked, hoping to get him to talk a bit about his father, but he gave his usual condensed one- or two-word answer.

“That depends.”

Thankfully, Annie had sat back in her seat, apparently gathering her strength for another bout of conversation. So Lauren kept going, trying to get Duncan to say something she could connect with. “So, are you a ski champion or something?”

“No.”

“I thought with all the snow and cold, that being a skier around here was a no-brainer.”

“There isn’t any snow,” Annie said, active again as she sat forward. “Not a flake. Nothing.”

Lauren glanced at the woman in her rearview mirror, then at Duncan. His eyes were narrowed on her, a look he shared with his father, that way of studying what was in front of him intently, and intensely. “There’s no snow?” she asked, the lament that had been everywhere on her short visit to Silver Creek.

Annie jumped in again, earnestly saying, “It’s the driest season yet, and the slopes are all being filled by machine.” She said that as if it were something horrible. “The skiing’s just awful, and the slopes are all but shut down.”

“What about that fancy resort?”

“They can have snow in July up there,” she said.

“I guess money buys just about anything,” she said, waiting to see how Duncan responded.

He didn’t. Annie did, giving a long tirade about how the resort had tried to eat up the town, and how it drew so many outsiders. But not once had Annie said anything personal to Duncan. There hadn’t been any “connection” between them, no touching, no smiles, nothing intimate at all. And Lauren wondered what they were to each other. Obviously they were close enough to go to Las Vegas together, but there was something missing between them.

“Do you need me to take you someplace to get your car towed?” she asked Duncan.

“Rollie’s Garage on the main street,” he said. “It’s just as you get into the old section of town.”

Lauren was tired of all this dancing around with words and decided time was short, so she went for a direct hit. “So, how long have you been in Silver Creek, Duncan?”

She felt Duncan look back at her, but it was Annie who spoke up once again, answering for him. “He walked in two, maybe three months ago. He came and never left.”

That told her nothing, except that there were three or four months unaccounted for. She stared ahead at the glow from the ski runs that was spreading in the dusky sky. Talking to Duncan with Annie around was next to useless, and she figured she had to take a different tack before the car stopped at Rollie’s Garage.

They were close to town now, going past the first scattering of houses digging into the foothills at the base of the soaring mountains on either side, their lights flashing in the night. Then more buildings, a huge stone structure to the right with a lit sign near the road, Silver Creek Clinic. A few small businesses were closing for the day at the beginning of the main street. The old-fashioned lampposts lined the way, and the Christmas lights twinkled everywhere.

“There’s Rollie’s,” Annie said, motioning just ahead of them to the left.

Lauren saw the sign set between the street and an island of gas pumps. Beyond the pumps was an older building with a false-wood fronted office and to the right, three service bays with their metal doors closed tightly. A neon red Closed sign shone in the window of the office.

“It’s closed,” Lauren said, grateful for the opportunity to buy more time and take Duncan to another garage.

“Just pull in. He’s there,” Duncan said, so she had no choice but to swing off the street and over toward the office.

She had to think fast because otherwise she’d lose even this weak connection. So she kept talking, making every attempt to draw him into a meaningful conversation. “The town is bigger than I thought it would be.”

“It’s huge,” Annie said. “Just huge. When I was growing up, there were only two hundred residents, and now look at it. Although it’s not all residents, not at all. I mean, I told you about the influx of all those people for skiing and the rich ones who go straight through and hide behind the walls at the inn.”

She’d told her that three times, Lauren thought, but who was keeping count? She stopped by the door of the closed offices, let the car idle and spoke off the top of her head to buy time. “I’ll wait for you.”

“You don’t have to,” Duncan said, his hand on the door handle. “We can walk.”

“Oh, no,” she said, glancing at Annie to include her in what she said, hoping she’d help her this time. “I can’t just drop the two of you off here.”

But Annie wasn’t an ally this time. “We’ll be just fine,” Annie said quickly, before Duncan could respond. “We’re just going down the street a bit.”

While Annie spoke, Duncan opened his door to get out, and Lauren did the same thing. She knew Annie was scrambling out of the back, then heard the door close, but she never took her eyes off Duncan who was striding to the offices. She caught up with him as he raised his hand to rap on the glass window.

“You don’t know for sure if anyone’s in there, and I feel responsible. It’s so cold, and—”

He looked down at her, his face shadowed by the lights behind him. “Rollie is here twenty-four seven.”

“But he’s not here. It looks empty,” she said.

“He lives out the back. He’ll be here,” he said and rapped on the window, harder this time.

“You could have whiplash or something.” She spoke quickly, and included Annie in what she was saying. “You could both have whiplash.”

He rotated his head, then shrugged. “Nothing.” And, damn it, Annie chimed in, cheerfully saying, “I’m just fine.”

“Well, the car’s all messed up, and I feel as if I’m responsible for that.”

He narrowed his eyes even more. “You’ve got an overdeveloped guilt complex, don’t you?”

If she did, she wouldn’t be playing this game with him. “I just believe in taking responsibility.”

Annie patted her arm. “Oh, it’s not your responsibility. If anything, I was reading that darn newspaper to him about the national forests being in trouble, then businesses going belly up. I’m the one at fault if you want to lay blame.”

A light inside flashed on without warning and its glow exposed the face of Duncan Bishop. His father’s son. The same look. No neatly trimmed beard or white hair, but the strong features, the dark-as-night eyes and a size that seemed almost overwhelming. He turned to the window, exposing his profile and a peculiar arrogance in the way he held his jaw. Like his father. But the rough clothes weren’t like D.R.’s expensive, tailored suits, and for him to be standing in front of a gas station waiting for help wasn’t like his father at all.

Lauren turned to the light and saw the office was just a small room, cut in two from side to side by a scarred counter, and with walls lined with oils and greases and small car parts. A single figure was coming around the counter, a man of medium height, unremarkable in greasy overalls and with little hair on his head. He squinted at the three of them through the hazy glass, then reached for the door and unlocked it.

“Duncan? What’s going on?” he asked as the barrier swung open.

“I almost went off the road back down the way near Elder’s Curve. It tore up my tire and cut into the side of the car.”

“An accident?” he asked as his gaze flicked from Annie to Lauren, then back to Duncan. “Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine, Rollie,” Annie said for all three of them. “And I’m late.” She looked at Duncan. “I’ll get my bag out of the car and walk on home. Thanks for an interesting trip.”

He nodded. “I’ll be along as soon as I take care of this.”

Annie touched Lauren on the arm. “Nice running into you,” she said, then realized what she’d said and laughed out loud. “Didn’t mean that,” she said. “But it was nice meeting you.”

She went back to the idling car, got her bag out, then with a wave, she took off down the street. “I should have driven her,” Lauren said.

“She’s not going far,” Rollie said. “She’s used to Silver Creek. Been here all her life.” He looked to Lauren again, then past her to her car. “This car was in an accident?”

“No, I swerved to miss hitting it, and went off the road,” Duncan said.

Rollie went toward the car, reached out and touched the fender reverently. Then he grinned back at Duncan. “Well, damn it, man, aren’t we all thankful you didn’t scratch her up? What a beauty,” he said in a low voice, then leaned down as if listening to the engine. “She’s got a V-8, overhead, don’t she?” he asked Lauren as he straightened up.

“Completely rebuilt,” Lauren said.

He stood back. “Not original paint, is it?”

“No, it’s redone.”

He emitted a low whistle as he slowly circled the car. “Great job.” He came back around to where they stood in the cold. “Where’d you get her?” he asked Lauren.

“My uncle bought it new, and my brother restored it a year or so ago.”

“He’s a gifted man,” Rollie said.

“Rollie,” Duncan said, interrupting the man’s rapture over the car. “Do you think you can tear yourself away to get the tire?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rollie said, as if he’d forgotten Duncan existed for a moment. “You coming with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, give me a minute, and I’ll be right out,” Rollie said. But he didn’t go inside right away. Instead, he looked back to Lauren. “You want to sell that baby?”

“No, I sure don’t,” she said.

“Then you take good care of her, hear?” he said, and headed right back inside.

She was thankful Annie had taken off, but now Duncan was about to leave, too, to get his car. She looked at him and was taken aback to find the shadow of a smile playing at the corners of his wide mouth. “I think Rollie’s in love.”

Rollie returned before she could absorb the expression on Duncan’s face. Before she could be sure if she saw a faint dimple to one side of his mouth. Rollie hurried out, closed the door and tugged his heavy coat around him. “Okay, let’s hit the road,” he said to Duncan.

“Okay,” Duncan said, then both men were going past the service bays and rounding the corner. Duncan looked back at Lauren with a wave and called, “Thanks,” then was gone.

She didn’t move. She listened, heard doors open and close, then a big engine roar to life. In a moment a huge pickup truck lumbered into view. She could barely make out the shadows of the two men in the cab, then the truck turned onto the street heading back the way she’d just come.

That was that, at least for now. She hurried to the idling car, drove it back onto the main street and headed north. She went one block, parked and looked at Rusty’s Diner. It was time to formulate a new plan. And there was only one thing she could think of to do now.

Chapter Four

It took Duncan an hour to get the tire changed on the SUV, take off some loose metal and drive it back to town. He passed Rollie in the old pickup, hit his horn to thank him again for his trouble, then continued driving to the hotel. He parked in an open spot in front, ran in to clean up, made sure Annie got back okay and gave her the luggage, then headed out again. He left the car parked where it was and walked south, heading for the diner.

And while he walked, he found himself looking at every passing car, in search of Lauren’s old car. He didn’t see it anywhere, and he wondered if she’d just driven on through and kept going. She didn’t seem as if she could afford to stay at the inn, and she hadn’t said whether she skied, but without any snow, that didn’t matter.

He crossed the street and stepped into the diner, generally noticed it wasn’t very busy before he went down the side hallway to the office. The door was ajar. He went in and found Rusty at the desk going over cash register tapes. The older man looked up, the glasses he had to use for reading perched on the end of his nose. “Well, damn, where’ve you been, boy? You said five and it’s going on seven. You had me worried.”

“Sorry, I had a flat tire, and no spare. Rollie took care of it for me,” he said.

“Another flat?” Rusty asked.

“Yeah, another flat.”

Rusty sat back in the chair in the small, cluttered office. The only window was covered with a red-checked curtain, and filing cabinets crowded most of the wall space. Rusty clasped his hands on his stomach. “Any snow out there?”

He shook his head. “No. What’s the forecast?”

“Possible snow tonight. If not, by tomorrow sometime. Can’t be soon enough for me.”

Duncan handed the envelope out to him. “I saw Webb and he cut us a great deal.” While Rusty opened it and scanned the figures, Duncan said, “That’ll cut twenty-five percent off per quarter.”

“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Rusty said and laid the papers on top of the tapes. “The day you walked in here was my lucky day.”

“For both of us,” he said.

“Thanks.” He exhaled. “I needed good news today.”

“What’s going on?” Duncan asked as he shrugged out of his heavy jacket and hung it on a hook by the door.

“The grill’s acting up again, Shannon, the morning waitress, her kid’s misbehaving, so she’ll be off for at least a week.” He exhaled. “I knew there was a reason I never had any of those little humans.”

Duncan tugged off his watch cap and stuffed it in the pocket of his hanging jacket. “What about Arlene?”

“She can’t pull too many double shifts. Damn, she’s near my age.” He stood. “Don’t you go worrying, though. I had one stroke of good luck today, besides your deal. A girl walked in right off the streets asking for a job.”

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