“I knew your sister…in the biblical sense.”

A sudden piercing image of Julia and Lawrence together made Sara’s stomach heave. “I…don’t understand why you’re telling me this. You know she’s dead, right?”

He nodded. “I just learned of her accident. I’ve been looking for her for about two years.” At her questioning glance, he added, “I’m thinking of running for public office and I didn’t want any surprises. You know…blackmail.”

“That’s crazy. Julia would never do anything like that.”

“I didn’t know. We only spent one night together and…we didn’t talk much.”

“So why are you telling me this now? Why do I need to know that Julia had an affair? She wasn’t perfect but she was my sister, and I loved her.” Tears began to gather in her eyes. “She’s dead. Isn’t that punishment enough for her sins?”

He started to put out his hand to touch her, but let it drop to the bench.

“There’s a chance I might be Brady’s father,” he said softly.

Dear Reader,

People often ask me where I get my ideas for stories. I wish I knew for sure. This particular story has been in my head for years, but it never felt right to me until last summer when my son, Jon Paul, asked me what my next book was going to be about. We were strolling down a quiet street in La Grande, Oregon, and I started rattling off my idea about a judge, his private investigator buddy and a baby. The more I talked, the more real the characters became. When I asked Jon Paul what he thought of the premise, he told me, “Write it, Mom.” So I did.

As my heroine, Sara, came into focus, I realized she shared some of my daughter Kelly’s positive attributes. Both have a ready smile and nonjudgmental attitude that make them easy to love. And both learned at a tender age that the strong go on—chin up. Or, as Sara says, “You just do the best you can.”

The only problem I had in writing this book is that several of its secondary characters have very strong voices and personalities that can’t be overlooked. It became apparent early on that Bo, my hero’s best friend, was a hero in his own right. And to my surprise another character popped out of nowhere with a spunk and energy that seemed the mark of a heroine. You know what that means…a sequel.

I hope you enjoy reading this book and come to care about these characters as much as I do. The ending may surprise you—I know it did me.

Happy reading,

Debra

His Daddy’s Eyes

Debra Salonen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Kelly and Jon Paul, with a mother’s love

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

SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE Lawrence Bishop III slammed his gavel. The three staccato repetitions dropped a curtain of silence over the proceedings. The opposing lawyers, who up to that moment had seemed poised for fisticuffs, turned to him with a combination of supplication and censure in their eyes.

As the third Bishop male to wear the black robes of a judge, Lawrence, who was “Ren” to everyone except his mother, had grown up hearing stories of courtroom theatrics. But in the two years since his father’s death and Ren’s subsequent appointment to the bench, he’d become weary of prima-donna headline hounds, such as defense attorney Steve Hamlin.

Hamlin, an up-and-coming name in Sacramento political circles, had a well-practiced smile that garnered female groupies. His defendant, a soon-to-be third-time offender, slumped in his chair like a lump of unformed clay.

Peter Swizenbrach represented the plaintiff—in this case, the State of California. If one believed the evidence—and Ren did—the lump was guilty of serial stupidity, which normally wouldn’t be punishable by life in prison unless it included using a gun, which this did.

“Gentlemen,” Ren said, his voice carrying as he meant it to, “do either of you see a jury in this room?”

The lawyers looked at each other as if suspecting a trick question. Tentatively, each shook his head.

“Then, who the hell are you playing to?” Ren barked, nodding toward the dozen spectators. “The audience?” Three young women—obviously Steve Hamlin groupies—in the front row squirmed as if he’d called on them to speak. “Because if you can’t control yourselves, then I will ask them to leave. I,” he stressed the word regally, for he was king of this particular corner of the world, “am not impressed.”

The two attorneys scurried to their respective tables to regroup.

Ren stifled a sigh. The bench was every lawyer’s dream job—and an important step in Babe Bishop’s not-so-secret political agenda for her son—but some days Ren would have traded it for a window job at the post office.

Before he could muster enough energy to begin round two, his clerk, Rafael Justis, a bright, young Hispanic who took no small amount of razzing about his name, handed Ren a folded piece of paper the size of a postcard.

Ren opened it. The familiar scrawl brought a peculiar quickening of his senses even before he read the cryptic: Gotta talk. Ren swore softly under his breath, then lifted his gavel a second time. “We’ll take a twenty-minute recess.”

REN TOSSED HIS ROBE on the brass-and-mahogany coat rack that had been his father’s, then paced to his office window. The view of downtown Sacramento from the third-story wasn’t impressive—no prestigious law firm’s corner office with a vista of the river. But it was an improvement over his previous digs: a tiny cubicle in the basement of a fifty-year-old federal building, where he’d researched environmental law.

Ren had chosen law school because it was expected of him, but he’d wound up falling in love with the law, not the circumspection of it. Although his favorite professor had urged Ren to take up teaching, Ren couldn’t bring himself to disappoint his parents, so he’d sought a compromise: environmental law. The pay sucked, but it gave him a chance to champion a cause he believed in.

For fifteen years, Ren quixotically tilted at bureaucratic windmills. Then, to his immense surprise, a small court battle over salmon spawning grounds two years ago stirred a media frenzy, and Ren became an overnight celebrity. Pretty heady stuff at age forty, but damn unnerving, too. Looking back now, Ren understood the impetus behind his crazy lapse in judgment, which no doubt was the subject of this upcoming meeting—a meeting Ren hoped would bring resolution to two years of haunting guilt.

A noise outside his chamber door made his stomach clench, and he ran a hand nervously through his hair, causing a wedge of ash-brown hair to fall across his view.

A soft knock preceded the opening of the door. Ren turned, motioning the visitor to a chair. At five foot ten, one hundred eighty pounds, with sandy brown hair and hazel eyes, Bo Lester epitomized the word nondescript, an invaluable trait in his line of work.

“Howyadoin’, Ren?” Bo called amiably before plopping like a sack of potatoes into the leather wingback chair opposite Ren’s desk.

No more grace than when we were students, Ren thought, smiling. He quickly sat down in his high-tech desk chair—a Christmas gift from Eve, his future bride, and leaned over to shake hands. “Long time no see,” Ren said.

“Did I pull you out of court? I told that Mexican kid I could wait. It’s your money, and you know I don’t mind wasting it.”

Ren grinned. Robert Bowen Lester Jr., or “Bo,” as he preferred, liked to come off as a redneck hillbilly. He was, in fact, the only son of one of the country’s top financial gurus, Robert B. Lester Sr. But Bo had broken with his family shortly after college when he’d chosen law enforcement over what he called “legalized money laundering.” Today, Bo was one of the top private investigators in northern California.

“You have some information, don’t you?” Ren asked, feeling as if he were swimming in shark-infested waters.

Bo shifted positions, hunching forward to rest his elbows on his knees so he could face Ren eye-to-eye. Ren found the posture ominous.

“You found Jewel.” Ren’s comment was a statement, not a question.

Bo nodded.

“Where?”

“Here.”

Damn. A worst-case scenario. He and Bo had discussed this possibility from day one. As long as Jewel lived somewhere outside the Sacramento area, Ren wouldn’t feel any need to contact her. He could stay out of her life, as—so far—she’d stayed out of his.

But now that option was gone. This was a town that lived and breathed political scandal. What would happen to Ren’s career if Jewel decided to embarrass—or even blackmail—him? His mother’s hopes and dreams would be destroyed. Babe would kill him if she found out. And Eve…Ren didn’t dare think what his future bride would do to him. But he could be sure that whatever form her retaliation took, it would probably wind up on the six o’clock report. Eve Masterson was the popular anchor of the Channel 8 news team.

Bo rapped his knuckles on Ren’s desk. “Don’t get too far ahead of me on this, old friend. That’s only part of the news.”

Ren sat back and took a deep breath. His friend knew him well. “So tell me.” Ren was pleased his voice didn’t betray the fierce humming in his chest.

“Well, I’ve got bad news, and even worse news. Which do you want first?”

“Cut the crap, Lester, just tell me.”

Bo’s wiry brows waggled, but his smile faded as he took a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his wrinkled cotton shirt. He slowly opened it. “First off, the name she gave you—Jewel—was pretty close. Does the name Julia Noelle Carsten ring a bell?”

Ren’s heart thudded against his ribs. Jewel had a full name. His gorgeous sex goddess, his first-and-only one-night stand, had a name. Julia. Such a pretty, innocent name for someone with a body like hers.

“Julia Carsten,” Ren repeated aloud. He searched his memory, which included a long list of miscreants. “Nope. Never heard of her.”

Bo smoothed the paper across one knee, out of Ren’s line of sight. “Her married name was Hovant,” he added casually.

“Married?” Ren croaked, lurching to his feet. His chair crashed backward into the bookcase behind his desk.

Of course. Why else would she disappear without so much as a word? Ren retrieved his chair and sat down, feeling both relieved—Jewel couldn’t very well resort to blackmail when her own reputation was at risk—and yet, let down.

Ren looked at Bo. The man who’d just simplified Ren’s life and eased his guilty conscience wasn’t looking very pleased about it.

“Oh, God,” Ren groaned. “What else?”

“She’s dead.”

An invisible weight of some extraordinary measure pressed on Ren’s chest making it impossible to draw a breath.

“She can’t be dead. She’s too young.” Even as he said the words, Ren knew they made no sense.

Bo passed him the paper, which Ren saw was a copy of an obituary. Four inches of tiny print. A four-inch lifetime.

“How?” he asked hoarsely, trying to comprehend the unthinkable.

Bo cleared his throat. Ren felt himself tensing.

“The inquest called it—”

“Inquest? Why was there an inquest?” Ren asked sharply.

“Fancy speedboat. Too much power, not enough lake. Rammed an exposed rock and burst into flames—”

Ren shuddered at the graphic image.

“—the inquest ruled it an accident, but the investigating officer told me Dr. Hovant was known for his temper. Some people think he might have let that temper run away with him.”

“Murder-suicide?” Ren asked, almost choking on the words.

“Something like that, but no way to prove it.”

Ren tried to digest the information, but it wouldn’t stay down. “Her husband was a doctor? What kind?” he asked, as if it mattered.

Bo shrugged. “A specialist with a whole bunch of letters after his name. Julia had been a nurse before she became Mrs. Hovant.”

Questions percolated in Ren’s head like toxic runoff, but Bo didn’t give him time to sort through them.

“It happened last July. I asked around the marina. Everybody remembered the crash. One guy said the boat blew up like a grenade.” Bo shook his head. “You could ask your fiancée. They probably have it on tape. The media eats up this kind of thing.”

As usual, Bo didn’t bother hiding his disdain for Eve or her job, but Ren ignored the jibe. “Why do they think it was intentional?”

Bo shrugged. “I guess that’s what happens when you air your dirty laundry in public. According to my source, the Hovants were known to get into shouting matches. Seems their marriage had been rocky for the past few years—which, I guess, might explain why Jewel-slash-Julia did what she did with you.”

“This obituary says she was survived by her son, Brady. Stepson, right?” Ren asked, looking up. “The woman I made love to was nobody’s mother.”

His comment seemed to startle Bo, who frowned and tugged a small wire notebook from his hip pocket. After flipping through half-a-dozen pages, he looked up. “You’re right. She didn’t have the kid when you were together. He was born later.”

Ren froze. “How much later?”

Bo fumbled with the notepad. “October? November?”

Ren and Julia’s tryst had taken place the Friday after Valentine’s Day. February, March, April…he mentally counted. “I repeat—how much later?”

Bo flipped pages. “Bingo! Brady Hovant. No middle name. Born November twelfth. Eight pounds ten ounces. I forgot to mention the aunt. I talked to her, too.”

“What aunt?”

“The kid’s aunt. Julia’s sister. Sara Jayne Carsten, age thirty-one. Runs a bookstore near the K-Street mall. She’s got custody of the kid.”

Ren frowned, trying to wade through a river of swirling emotions.

Bo sat forward. “Hey, man, this doesn’t mean anything. Think about it. Julia obviously slept around. And she was married. There’s no reason to think…I mean, you didn’t…hell, man, this is the age of AIDS—tell me you didn’t have unprotected sex.”

“Of course not.” Ren glared at his friend. “I used a condom.” He frowned, trying to remember. Not that it was hard to recall with photographic—some might say pornographic—clarity the night in question. “All three times.”

“My, my, aren’t you the stud.”

“Shut up. She’s extraordinary.” Was. Jewel is dead.

Ren picked up his phone and pushed a button. “Mr. Justis, court is over for the day. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning.”

Bo looked at him, frowning. “This has rocked you.”

Resting his elbows on the desk, Ren put his head in his hands. “I never met anybody like her, Bo. Cool and direct on the outside, steamy and wild on the inside. Damn. She was incredible.”

“You fell hard, didn’t you?”

Ren looked up. “If you mean, was I in love with her?—no. Not even close. Love and sex are not synonymous, my friend. She was gorgeous, wild and hot, and I can definitely say I’ve never had sex like that before or since.” Bo’s hoot made Ren scowl. “That was not meant to demean my fiancée in any way. You don’t marry a woman like Jewel.”

“Dr. Hovant did,” Bo said, rising. “Fat lot of good it did him. If the rumor mill is right, all they did is fight—right up to the moment he drove his boat into a rock.”

Bo crammed his notebook into the back pocket of his rumpled canvas slacks. “Well, looks like your secret’s safe. Bullet dodged. Case closed.”

Ren picked up a pen and made a series of hatch marks on his blotter. Nine of them. “Are you sure?”

“Why not? If Julia knew who you were she obviously didn’t tell anybody, because we haven’t heard anything in two years. She never even mentioned your name to her sister.”

“How do you know that?”

Bo produced a disreputable-looking cotton baseball cap from his other back pocket. “Because I’m a professional. When I visited Miss Carsten at her place of business last week, she never blinked when your name came up.”

Ren’s blood pressure spiked. “You asked her about me?”

Bo made a face. “I told her my friend collected first editions, which is true. I said he was pretty well known for his collection. True again. I said his name was Lawrence Bishop III, and asked if she’d ever heard of him.” Bo smiled, apparently picturing the encounter. “She laughed and said, ‘If any of my customers have numbers associated with their names, it’s more likely the result of a problem with the law than hereditary honor.’”

Ren knew he should have been relieved, but for some reason felt more peeved than pleased. Bo turned to go. “Wait a minute. You’re not done.”

“Yes, I am. You hired me to find your love goddess. I did. It’s not my fault she’s dead.” Bo wedged the cap on his head.

Ren rose and walked around his desk. “Bo, I need clarity on the matter of this child.”

His friend snorted. “What kind of clarity? You used a condom. You were a good bad little boy. End of story.”

“You don’t find it the least bit unnerving that I spend the night in the arms of a stranger in early February and nine months later said stranger gives birth to a child?”

“But you said—”

“Condoms have been known to fail, Bo. And I was asleep when Jewel left, maybe she took the…evidence of our encounter with her. For what purpose, I don’t know. Maybe hubby was sterile and she needed a sperm donor. I don’t have a clue, but I’m uncomfortable with loose ends and this one seems like a big one.”

“Actually, he’s pretty little,” Bo said, leaning down to demonstrate a height somewhere near his knees. “Cute as a bug. Curly brown hair. Big blue eyes.”

Ren pictured a photograph hanging on his upstairs wall: his father leading a toddler—Ren—with curly brown hair and big blue eyes down a dock to the family boat. “You saw him?” he asked.

“Yeah. At the bookstore,” Bo replied. “The aunt takes him to work with her instead of using a baby-sitter. Go see for yourself.”

The idea made Ren’s knees buckle. He parked his butt on the desk and gripped the edge while he forced his brain to recall the paternity cases he’d tried. “What’s his blood type?”

“I don’t know. A, B or O, I suppose,” Bo said flippantly.

“Could you narrow that down?”

“How? Medical records are confidential.”

“Come on, Bo. You hack the telephone company’s records all the time. All I want is his blood type, although I suppose I’ll probably need a DNA match to go to court. Maybe you could ask the aunt.”

Bo’s mouth dropped open. “Have you lost your frigging mind? There ain’t no way that woman would voluntarily give you a drop of that baby’s blood if it meant you might wind up taking him away from her.”

Lowering his voice, he added, “Listen, Ren, get a grip. Chances are, like, one in six zillion this could be your kid. Maybe Julia and the doc had a spat, and she ran up to Tahoe to get back at him—but odds are the kid’s his. If not, she’d have come looking for you as soon as she found out she was pregnant, right?”

Ren had no way of knowing what Julia would do; he didn’t know Julia—only Jewel—and their relationship hadn’t involved much talking. “I never told her my last name.”

“Big deal. If she didn’t recognize you from the salmon thing, she sure as hell couldn’t have missed your dad’s funeral or when you were appointed to the bench.”

“Maybe…”

“Not to mention the fact I see your ugly puss in the papers every few days thanks to that news bimbo you’re engaged to.”

“Eve is co-anchor of the Channel 8 news, Bo—I hardly think she deserves that kind of disparagement. But you do have a point. We are photographed quite often. If Julia had wanted to reach me, she could have found a way.”

“Exactly,” Bo confirmed. “My old man used to tell me ‘Don’t trouble trouble ’til trouble troubles you.’”

Ren snorted. “Very profound.”

“Hey, people pay big bucks to hear Robert B. Lester Sr. talk. The point is, you’ve got a nice life. Don’t rock the boat.”

A part of him wanted to agree, but the problem with Bo’s nautical metaphor was that Ren’s boat was sinking fast from a broadside hit by an eighteen-month-old iceberg.

“SARA J., I’M NOT GONNA tell your sorry ass again, you can’t be giving stuff to every person that comes asking!” Keneesha said with finality.

Sara ignored her friend and continued putting books into the box she was sending to the homeless shelter. Daniel Paginnini was due to arrive at the bookstore any minute to pick them up, and she wanted to be sure she included as wide a range of titles as possible.

“Leave her be, Keneesha,” Claudie St. James said, rocking back and forth in the bentwood chair. “You know how she gets. Sara’s a woman on a mission. And I don’t mean position.”

Claudie laughed at her own joke. Sara smiled, too. For her age, which Sara guessed to be twenty-five, and profession—prostitute—Claudie could, at times, be downright childlike. Perhaps that was what endeared her most to Sara.

Claudie rocked a little faster, her small feet coming off the colorful braided rug that delineated the story corner where Sara regularly read to her customers’ children and to her 18-month-old nephew. At the moment, Brady was sound asleep in his soft-sided playpen behind her desk.

“Don’t talk dirty in front of the child,” Keneesha said, her tone surprisingly maternal. To Sara’s knowledge, neither woman had children, but ever since Brady had arrived in Sara’s life, the two hookers had become veritable founts of wisdom on how to raise children.

Claudie snorted. “The child’s snoring like an old man, or is your hearing going?”

Keneesha drew herself to her very impressive height of six foot, her voluptuous chest swelling indignantly. “I hear just fine. I was referring to Sara J.”

Both women laughed. Sara looked at them, her best—most unlikely—friends, and stuck out her tongue. The two laughed all the harder.

Sara had known Keneesha, a woman in her mid-forties, for almost ten years, which was how long Sara had been back in Sacramento. They’d struck up a conversation on a bus from Reno. Sara had been on the last leg of her journey, returning home after being summarily ejected from the Air Force. Keneesha, “Kee” to her friends, had been returning home after three days of partying with a group of high-rollers.

Kee had listened sympathetically to Sara’s story of her aborted military career—destroyed by a boyfriend, who’d used Sara as a means to facilitate his drug sales on base. Kee had agreed wholehearted with Sara that the judicial system was deeply biased and routinely hung women out to dry.

Claudie had come along later, showing up one night, fiercely prepared to stake out her turf. Kee, who could act downright maternal on occasion, had taken the younger girl under her wing, and Claudie, too, became attached to Sara. To the casual observer, Keneesha and Claudie had only two things in common: their profession—which Claudie engaged in only to supplement low-paying jobs that never seemed to work out, and which Keneesha did when she pleased, period—and Sara. They adored Sara.

Everyday the two women would make their way from their rooms in the crummy hotel down the street to No Page Unturned, Sara’s bookstore. They’d drink coffee at Sara’s new coffee bar, or, on nice days, they’d sit out front at one of the three tiny tables and poke fun at the general populace.

Sara was content with her life as a single mother and small-time bookstore owner. She’d inherited the store when her long-time employer, Hank Dupertis, a gruff old widower with no children or close relatives, passed away in his sleep. Brady was a gift that accompanied the most grievous loss of Sara’s life—her beloved sister’s death.

The book Sara was holding slipped from her fingers, just as the bell above the door tinkled. When Sara straightened, she saw Daniel stride into the shop.

“Hello, Sara love,” Daniel said, his dark eyes teasing. “Will you marry me today?”

Once—about three lifetimes ago—Daniel had proposed in earnest. Fortunately, Julia had intervened. “You and Danny both need to find out who you are before you jump into a relationship,” Julia had told her. “Get out and live a little, girl.”

For Sara that had meant a stint in the Air Force; Daniel had headed to college, then to a job in Seattle. He’d returned to Sacramento just after Julia’s death, and although he and Sara remained good friends, both knew his proposals were in jest.

“Sara J. don’t need no stinking man in her life,” Keneesha said. “She’s got us.”

Daniel looked from the large black woman to the petite blonde, then back to Sara. “Two hookers and a bookstore—why does that not sound like everybody’s idea of heaven?”

Sara laughed and pushed the now-overflowing box across the display table. “I guess everyone’s idea of heaven is different. Actually, I’ve been very blessed. I have three wonderful friends. And business is good. In fact, Channel Eight News is doing a show called The New Downtown next Friday. They want to interview me about No Page Unturned.”

“Next week?” Claudie squealed. “I thought you said next month. Good Lord, Kee, how are we going to get her done by then?”

Daniel looked confused, so Sara explained. “They think I need a new look to be on TV.” She glanced down at her calf-length cotton dress, a sort of wallpaper print with a pale rose background and tiny yellow flowers. Her white sneakers were gobbling up her anklets, heel first. “Who has time for glamour?” she said, tugging up her stockings.

“You’re beautiful to me just the way you are,” Daniel said. He tenderly reached out and tugged on a lock of Sara’s shoulder-length hair.

Sara hated her hair. Bone straight, baby fine and the color of dishwater, her mother always said. Compared to her sister’s vibrant red locks, Sara’s always looked washed out. The idea of being interviewed by someone as beautiful as Eve Masterson left her more than slightly unnerved, which was why she’d agreed to the makeover.

“Yeah, but you’re a man, so what do you know?” Claudie said spitefully.

Sara sighed. “Stop squabbling, children. I told you you could play with my hair, so be nice.”

“And a new outfit,” Keneesha reminded her. “I am royally sick of those baggy dresses. You need some color, girl.”

Sara looked at Keneesha’s leopard-print tank top plastered over fuchsia pedal pushers, and involuntarily cringed. “Maybe.”

The bookstore bell tinkled, and Sara glanced at the nondescript gentleman in a baseball cap who quickly made his way toward the back of the building. The patron seemed vaguely familiar, but since he didn’t seem to require her assistance, Sara turned to Daniel, who was talking.

“…and you can have first pick.”

“What?” she asked, noticing how Claudie’s gaze stayed on the customer as he meandered into the cookbook section.

“Jenny just cleaned out her closet. She never keeps an outfit longer than a year and she only buys the best. I was taking the bag to the shelter, but you can go through it first.”

Daniel’s sister, a true fashion diva, was Sara’s size and had excellent taste. “That’s fantastic. Thanks!”

“No problem,” he said, giving Sara a hug. “Now, where’s my godson?”

Keneesha scurried around the desk to stand defensively in front of the playpen. For a large woman, she moved with surprising speed. “Back off, light-foot. He’s our godson, not yours.”

“Do you have that in writing?”

“I’ll show you writing, white boy,” Kee said, her bluster taking on volume.

The noise woke Brady.

Sara hurried to the playpen and picked him up. “Hey, baby love,” she said, kissing his soft, plump cheek. His sleepy, baby smell made her heart swell and her eyes mist. “How’s my boy?”

Daniel walked over and planted a kiss on Brady’s cheek. The sleepy child chose that minute to rub his eyes, and his small fist collided with Daniel’s nose.

“See, there,” Keneesha chortled, triumphantly, “he likes us better.”

Sara saw a hurt look cross Daniel’s face and impulsively drew him close with her free arm. “We both love you, Danny boy, you know that,” she said softly.

“I know,” Daniel replied. “I love you, too. I’ll see you Sunday, right?”

Before Brady came into her life, Sara had participated on Sundays in a literacy program at a local shelter. Unfortunately, nowadays her free time was so limited, she seldom had the energy to join the other volunteers at the Open Door family shelter.

“I’ll try, but Brady’s cutting teeth, and my neighbors don’t like the way my eaves look.” She rolled her eyes. “I keep getting nasty letters from the Rancho Carmel Homeowners’ Association.”

Daniel gave Sara a peck on the cheek. “Don’t sweat it. You’ve done your share.” He picked up his box of books. “So? Who’s going to fetch the bag of clothes?”

Claudie grumbled about being the company slave, but she followed him out the door.

Brady squirmed, so Sara knelt to put him down. His bare toes curled against the sturdy nap of the new gray-blue carpet. Until recently, the store’s flooring had consisted of worn tile squares circa 1955—some black, some green, about half of them broken. Hank had refused to waste money on a building he regarded as “a piece of junk waiting for the wrecking ball.” Sara never had the funds to re-decorate, but finally decided to use some of the trust money Julia’s lawyer sent each month to make Brady’s play area safe and comfortable.

“Mine,” Brady said, reaching for the bottom drawer of Sara’s desk. She’d been careful to have all the drawers fitted with locks—except one, which belonged to Brady. She made sure a healthy snack was in the drawer at all times.

She couldn’t help smiling at his triumphant chortle when he pulled a thick hunk of toasted bread from the drawer. His ash-brown curls, as thick and lush as his mother’s had been, bounced as he toddled to his miniature cash register and sat down to play.

Sara glanced around; she’d nearly forgotten the customer now unobtrusively tucked in a corner near the cookbooks. That’s odd, she thought. Her occasional male cook usually carried the tragic look of the recently divorced. This fellow didn’t strike her as needy or interested in cordon bleu cooking. And he definitely seemed vaguely familiar.

She started in his direction, but was deflected by Claudie’s loud “Whoopee!”

“Holy sh—shimany,” Keneesha exclaimed. “Look at this, Sara J. Lord God, what I wouldn’t give to be size eight!”

Sara joined her friends at the counter to examine Jenny’s discarded clothes. It wasn’t until the bell tinkled that she remembered the cookbook man.

BO POCKETED his palm-size camera and exited the bookstore, ducking into the alley. A mural of the store’s name was painted in five-foot-tall lettering along the brick wall. Clever name for a bookstore, he thought. I wonder if Sara made it up?

Thinking of Sara made him scowl. Normally, Bo liked his job, but at this particular moment he felt like a piece of excrement wedged between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Ren Bishop was the brother Bo never had, his one true friend, and Bo owed him more than he could ever repay—but he wasn’t happy about the turn this case had taken.

I should have seen it coming, he silently groused as he opened the door of his car, a twenty-year-old Mazda with peeled paint and two primed dents in the fender. His work car, like Bo himself, knew how to be inconspicuous. “Two years without a goddamn lead,” he muttered. “The only witness finally comes home after trekking through India, and what do I find? A dead Jewel and a kid that’s got Bishop written all over his face!”

Lowering himself to the tattered upholstery, Bo pictured the sideswiped look on his friend’s face when he’d left the courthouse. It reminded him of that night two years ago when Ren had stumbled down the gangplank of Bo’s houseboat, vulnerable, exposed and all too human.

“I screwed up, Bo,” Ren had confessed, pacing from one end of Bo’s tiny living room to the other. “Positively. Beyond all screwups.”

“Did you kill someone?”

“Of course not.”

“Then stop pacing. You’re making me seasick.” Bo had been surprisingly unnerved by his friend’s agitation. In college, Ren had been known as Mr. Unflappable. Bo didn’t like seeing him flapped.

Ren proceeded to spill his guts about the redhead who’d mysteriously disappeared after one night of passion. Bo recalled half hoping that Jewel was a blackmailer so he’d have a chance to meet her. But nothing happened. If that night clerk had stayed in India, Bo never would have had a clue to Jewel’s true identity.

“That’s Mrs. Hovant. Julia,” the twenty-year-old clerk told him, after Bo gave her Ren’s description of the woman. “She and Dr. Hovant used to come up from Sac five or six times a season, depending on the snow. Maybe they still do. I don’t know. I don’t work at the lodge anymore.”

With a little cautious probing, Bo also found out that the day in question stuck in the clerk’s memory because Julia had come to the lodge alone. “I asked her where the doc was, and she said something like ‘Getting his rocks off at a medical convention.’ She didn’t seem too happy,” the clerk told him.

The rest had been child’s play for the PI.

Bo heaved a sigh, stirring the dust on his dashboard. He’d expected Ren to mourn Jewel’s death, but this thing about the kid had caught him off guard. Bo had tried to downplay Ren’s concern, but he had to admit the possible date of conception fell eerily close to the one-night stand.

Still, Bo had balked at pursuing it, partly because of what it might do to Sara, an innocent bystander in this little passion play.

“Even if, for argument’s sake, the kid is yours,” Bo had argued, “there’s nothing you can do at this point. It’s your word against the mother’s, and she’s dead.”

“As the biological father I’d have more rights than an aunt.”

“But it comes down to proof. How can you get the proof without admitting what you did? Which, if I remember correctly, was what you hired me to make sure never happened.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can. But regardless of how it affects my political future, I still have to know.”

Bo sighed and started the car. A couple of discreet photos and the kid’s blood type from his medical records. This Bo could do, but that would be it.

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” he muttered to himself. “Even for a friend.”

CHAPTER TWO

REN YANKED ON THE CORD of the wooden blinds with more force than the old rope could take. The handle came off in his hand and the heavy shades crashed back to the mahogany sill with an ominous thunk. He sighed and tossed the yellowed plastic piece on the sideboard.

I’ve got to call a decorator, Ren thought. Although he seldom used the formal dining room, he knew it would be called into play more often once he and Eve were married. At present, the room reflected Babe’s favorite decorating motif: Ostentatious. The opulent crystal chandelier cast an amber glow across the Regency-style table at its eight saffron brocade chairs. Without benefit of the morning light streaming through its mullioned windows, the room’s musty gloom matched Ren’s mood.

Ren blamed part of his foul mood on his alarm clock. If he’d remembered to set it, he would have made his weekly golf game. Instead, he’d slept in till nine-thirty. Ren pushed on the swinging door and entered his kitchen, a pristine world of black-and-white tile—the first room he’d remodeled after he moved in.

His home had once belonged to his parents, but after his father died, Babe, wanting something smaller and more luxurious, sold the house to Ren. He loved the old beast, just as his father had, but the forty-year-old house needed work.

“Coffee,” he mumbled, moving like a bear just out of hibernation. Ren took a deep breath, hoping to discover his coffeemaker was still warming his morning brew. His nostrils crinkled. No light beckoned from the stainless steel coffeemaker, but the smell of overcooked coffee lingered.

Ren microwaved a mug of the tar-like liquid and carried it to the small bistro table in the glass-enclosed breakfast nook. He sat on one of the waist-high stools covered in black-and-white hound’s-tooth.

The wall phone rang before he could take a sip of his coffee. He stretched to pick it up. “Hello.”

“Hi, handsome, sorry about last night. I’d have called, but you wouldn’t believe how late we got out of the booth.”

Ren had no trouble picturing his fiancée as she rattled off her apology. No doubt she was in her car, zipping through the light, Saturday-morning traffic on Interstate 80, headed back into town from her Roseville condo. Eve was ever a study in motion; she reminded him of a hummingbird with too many feeders to frequent.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her, finally taking a sip of coffee. The brew—a shade off espresso—made him blink. “It’s not like I was dying to go to the fund-raiser.”

Ren heard a horn honk. Probably Eve’s. She drove fast and had little tolerance for those who got in her way. “I know, but your mother won’t be a bit happy. By the way, I went online and had a nice big basket of flowers delivered to her this morning with a note saying you’d be making a substantial donation to her cause—what was it, anyway?”

“League of Women Voters, I believe.”

“Oh, damn. I wish I’d remembered that. Don’t be too generous. They were particularly snotty to the media last fall.”

Ren smiled—his first of the morning. His first since Wednesday afternoon, actually. Although he’d gone through all the motions for the past two days, his mind had been consumed by the thought of Julia. And her child.

He missed what Eve was saying and had to ask her to repeat it.

“Where have you been lately?” she exclaimed. “I’m serious, Ren. You always tell me I have too many irons in the fire, but at least I listen when somebody is talking to me. I asked whether Babe talked to you about setting a date for the wedding. She left a message on my machine, and it made me realize we really do need to sit down and talk about scheduling. You know what my schedule is like.”

Ren knew. Lesson One of celebrity dating: Everybody follows the schedule but the schedule-maker. “You’re right. We do need to talk.” Ren recognized that although his affair with Julia had taken place before he and Eve started dating, she had a right to know what was happening, particularly if it turned out he’d fathered a child.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s see….”

A loud engine noise came over the line, and Ren cringed, picturing her flipping through her thick day-planner while changing lanes. “Why don’t you call me back?” he suggested. “I may go out later, but I’ll take the cell phone.”

There was a pause. “You hate cell phones. Ren, are you okay? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted. A guilty conscience had a way of conjuring up the worst scenarios. For instance, what if the reason Julia’s husband had driven into a rock pile was that he’d found out the child wasn’t his? What if Ren was to blame for his son’s mother’s death? Would the little boy wind up hating him when he was old enough to understand?

“Maybe you need vitamins. Boyd did a piece on male vitality last Wednesday—did you see it?” Eve asked.

“Nope. Missed it.”

“Do you ever watch my show?” she asked, her voice suddenly vulnerable.

“Yours is the only news program I watch, you know that. I just happened to be with Bo that night,” he said in partial honesty. After Bo had brought him the news about Julia and the baby, Ren had driven to the American River and walked along the jogging trail until dark. It was either that, or do something utterly stupid like visit the aunt’s bookstore and check out the kid for himself.

Eve’s dismissive snort brought Ren back to reality. “I wish I knew what you see in that man. He’s such a boor.”

Ren grinned. He’d never figured out why the two people he cared for most couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. “Bo did a little research job for me and brought me the results. He’s the best in the business, you know.”

“So you say, but…” The sound of squealing tires broke her line of thought. “I’d better go, sweets. I’m meeting Marcella this morning. We still have to go over my ’96 and ’97 tapes. You wouldn’t believe what a fanatic this woman is. She makes me look laid-back.”

Her musical laugh brought an odd pang to Ren’s chest. He loved this bright, beautiful woman, but he had a feeling she wasn’t going to be overly thrilled at his news.

“So are we on for tonight?” he asked when he found his voice.

“Maybe. Marcella is only in town for another four days. She flies back to New York on Wednesday. Would you mind if she joins us?” Ren and Eve had a standing reservation at Hooligan’s. Since she worked weeknights, Saturday and Sunday were their only nights to dine together. Usually, they ate out on Saturday, and he cooked on Sunday.

“Naturally I’d prefer to have you all to myself,” he said, hoping his tone was more romantic than peeved. “Let’s leave it open for now. Call me later, and we’ll figure something out. Maybe we could ask Bo to join us so we’d have a foursome.”

Ren grinned, picturing Eve’s face at the idea of introducing her famous New York agent to the Sacramento PI. “You’re right,” she said. “We’d better hang loose until I have a better scope on my time. See you later, sweetheart. I love you.”

She hung up before Ren could tell her the same thing.

“Exactly what kind of foursome did you have in mind?” a voice said from the doorway.

Ren spun around, nearly dropping the phone. “Goddammit, Lester,” he shouted. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

Bo shrugged. His sloppy green-and-gold plaid shirt wasn’t tucked into his pants, making him look as if he’d come straight from the bowling alley. Brown double-knit pants barely cleared a disreputable pair of saddle shoes, which he wore without socks. His flattened-out hat was the kind that snapped to the brim.

“I looked for you on the golf course. Your partner said this was the first time on record that you were a no-show. He even thought about calling the paramedics, but didn’t want to miss his tee time.” Bo’s lips curled wryly. “Notice your real friend dropped everything and rushed right over to check on you.”

Ren hung up the receiver and sat down. “Thank you for your concern, but I overslept.” He took a sip of coffee, then frowned. “Did I give you a key?”

Bo ambled to the coffeepot, took a mug from the white oak cupboard and poured himself a cup. He added two scoops of sugar from the bowl on the counter, then carried it to the microwave. “Nope. I picked the lock. Gotta keep in practice, you know.”

Ren doubted that. More likely he’d forgotten to set the alarm. He’d been doing a lot of irresponsible things lately.

“You got anything to eat?” Bo asked, poking his head into the refrigerator. “Oh, Lordy, Revelda’s apple pie,” he said, referring to Ren’s part-time housekeeper. “I swear I’d marry that woman if she’d have me.”

“She wouldn’t. She’d have a heart attack if she saw that floating hovel you call home.”

“Actually,” Bo said, talking through a mouthful of pie, “I found a lady to come in and clean for me a couple of times a month. Works great now that I’ve moved my computers to the office. Speaking of computers—” He pulled a manila envelope from his waistband and tossed it on the table.

Ren’s gulp of coffee lodged in his throat. He strove for nonchalance as he opened the envelope and withdrew a half-dozen black-and-white photographs and a single sheet of paper.

He picked up the computer printout first, but his gaze was drawn to the photos. “Is this her? This can’t be her.”

Bo’s mouth was full. “Uh-huh,” he grunted.

Ren shook his head, his gaze darting from one photograph to the next. “There’s no way this woman is Jewel’s sister. She’s so…plain.”

Bo’s muffled expletive made Ren drop the printed page and pick up a photo. Leaning forward, he studied it closely. While the image was a trifle blurred, it showed a woman whom, though nice looking, he wouldn’t have looked at twice. How could he reconcile this image with the one he held of her sister, an Aphrodite with flaming red hair, lush curves and flashing green eyes?

Feeling a bit let down, like a child at Christmas who’d expected a bike and got a book instead, he sighed. “Her hair’s straight, her dress looks like a discount store special and her figure…” Ren frowned, squinting. “Well, I can’t tell much because of the dress, but she looks like a librarian.”

Bo made a low, snarling sound and helped himself to a second piece of pie. “Close—she owns a bookstore.”

“Owns it or runs it?”

“I didn’t hack her bank records, but her business card says, Sara Carsten, Owner.”

“She’s pretty young to own a business,” Ren said, mentally adding a point in her favor.

“The guy down the block said she’s worked there since high school. In fact, she’s turned it around from near-bankruptcy. The old man who owned it left it to her. She’s kept up with the times—added a coffee bar and two Internet stations. And she’s got a couple of book clubs that meet there.” Bo made a sardonic sound. “The men’s group is called The Unturned Gentlemen.”

Ren added another point in her favor—literacy was a pet project of his. “Okay, she’s a good person and a decent businesswoman, but I still can’t believe she’s Jewel’s sister.”

Bo scowled. Ren ignored him and rocked back, holding the photo. In the light from the window behind, he could see things he hadn’t noticed before. Her smile, for one. It was a kind, gentle smile that made him inclined to smile back.

Ren focused on her eyes. Jewel’s had been bright green, full of flashing sauciness and humor. If he squinted, Ren thought he could see humor in this woman’s eyes, too. “What color are her eyes?”

“How the hell should I know?”

The downright angry tone could not be overlooked. “What is your problem?”

“You, man. You are my problem,” Bo said, marching to the table. He ripped the photograph out of Ren’s hand. “Here you are, poised to destroy this woman’s life, and you don’t think she’s pretty. Well, f—”

Ren raised his hand in warning. He studied his friend as he might a criminal with a gun. Keeping his tone calm, Ren said, “I was just surprised that I couldn’t see any similarities between the sisters.”

Bo’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “It’s not a very good picture. She was talking to that guy when I took it.” He put the photo on the table and pointed at a good-looking man standing at the edge of the photograph. “She even gave him a hug, and I heard her tell him she loved him.”

A funny, totally unexpected twinge caught Ren in the solar plexus. “Her boyfriend?”

Bo shook his head. “No. I got his plate through the store window. His name is Daniel Paginnini. He works in the Building.” Ren had met enough congressional insiders to know that meant the Capitol. “I’d say he and Sara are old friends. She’s got a lot of friends.”

Ren detected an odd inflection in Bo’s tone, but he let it go, although he was curious why Bo was so defensive of the woman. Ren picked up a shot of her holding the baby. Her back was to the camera, but her upper arms looked firm.

“Does she work out?” he asked. Jewel had been in peak physical condition, he recalled, her long, lean body as finely honed as an athlete’s. When he’d asked about her sleek muscles, she’d said, “My job keeps me in shape.” When he’d inquired about her job, she changed the subject by putting her mouth on a part of his anatomy that drained the blood supply from his brain, waylaying any questions he might have asked.

“Yeah,” Bo said snidely. “She lifts weights. I’d say forty pounds, about a hundred reps a day.”

“What?”

“The kid, man. She’s a single mom.” Bo shoved another photo in Ren’s face. All Ren could see of the child was a mop of curls and a pudgy fist clamped around a soft blanket. He missed the first part of Bo’s heated litany. “…gets up at dawn and works around this ugly house in Rancho Carmel until it’s time to go to the store, then she runs her business and chases the kid all over the place until after the noon rush. Then, she lets one of the hookers take over while she takes the kid to the park…”

The word took a couple of seconds to register. “Did you say ‘one of the hookers’?”

“Yeah.”

“How many are there? And what are they doing in a bookstore?”

“Two. The big one’s black. The little one’s white. And they’re her friends. As far as I can see, they’re there every day.”

Ren sat back, letting out a caustic laugh. “Oh, that’s a wonderful environment for a child.”

Bo leaned forward, his lips curled in a snarl. “I knew you were going to say that. Like you have any business pointing fingers.”

Ren’s mouth dropped open. “Okay. That does it. What the hell’s going on with you?”

Bo pulled out a second stool and hopped up to sit at the table. He dropped his chin into his palm and muttered, “I like her.”

“The aunt? Or the hooker?”

Bo glared. “Sara.”

Perplexed, Ren reached for the photograph again. He’d never seen Bo behave in this manner. When involved in a case, Bo rigorously maintained a hard-nosed impartiality.

“Have you actually talked to her? Since that first time?”

“Yeah, yesterday.”

Ren’s solar plexus took another hit. They’d agreed that Bo’s surveillance would be from a distance. “Was that necessary?”

Bo sunk lower in the chair. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“The hooker’s.”

Ren smiled at the embarrassment he heard in Bo’s tone. Bo was a professional, one of the best. Ren could imagine Bo’s chagrin if someone had blown his cover.

“The big one or the little one?”

Ren almost missed the mumbled answer. “The little one, huh? Hmm. What happened?”

“She remembered me, okay? I can’t tell you the last time that happened. Maybe I need to work on my disguises—they get old, you know.”

Ren nodded, trying to keep from smiling.

“I didn’t think anybody noticed me Wednesday when I went back to take the pictures, but yesterday, right after Sara and Keneesha—the black hooker—returned from the park, I eased in behind a couple of shoppers—and wham. The little one—Claudie—nailed me. I thought she was gonna demand a strip search.”

Ren diplomatically covered his grin with his hand. “There’s an image.”

Bo shuddered as though recalling a harrowing experience. “It was so sudden. One minute I was standing in the Mystery section listening to Sara explain about some drumming group when—boom—Claudie grabs my arm and spins me around, feet apart, back against the wall. My hand was going for my piece—”

“You were carrying? Around m—a baby?” he corrected.

Bo scowled. “No. But old habits are hard to break, and she knew what I was doing. Believe me. I saw it in her eyes. She knows people. And she pegged me.” He sat back, shaking his head.

“What’d she say?” Ren was surprised when a smile crossed Bo’s lips.

“She said, ‘What’s this guy doing back again?’ And then Sara and the other one came up, and Sara told her, ‘We really need to work on your people skills, Claudie. Let the customer go.’”

Bo sat up straight. “You’ll never guess what happened next.”

“What?” Ren croaked.

“Sara invited me to join her gentleman’s reading group. Meets every other Wednesday at the store. So I figure I can keep an eye on things until you decide what you’re going to do about this.” Bo nudged the computer sheet toward Ren. “Have a look.”

Ren’s stomach contracted at the implication he read in Bo’s words and tone. His heart thudded loudly in his ear as he skimmed the page. “O-positive,” he said softly. “Same as mine.”

“Yeah, I know. I hacked your file, too.”

Neither man spoke. Ren stared out the window at a mockingbird strutting in his backyard. A black and white maitre d’ against a flawless green expanse. What does this mean? Another coincidence or am I a father?

Over the pulsing static of questions, strategies, legal precedents, moral obligations, terror and niggling hint of joy in his head, Ren heard Bo mutter something about reading books not being part of his contract.

Suddenly, the incongruous image of Bo in a literary setting struck Ren as hysterical. Laughing, he said, “A reading group. You?” The release loosened the pent-up emotions percolating in his chest, taking him beyond humor. Gasping for breath, he sputtered, “That’ll have Professor Neightman rolling over in his grave.”

Bo jumped off his stool and stalked to the door. “You know what you and Professor Neightman can do, preferably in public with your fiancée watching,” he barked.

Sobering, Ren drew in a shaky breath and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. He regretted his jest. For a man who seemingly cared not a whit what people thought, Bo could be damn touchy about certain things, and his lack of formal education was one of them. Not that he hadn’t had his chance. But Bo hadn’t been in study mode during college; he’d been too busy partying.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry. I appreciate what you’re doing, really. I know you’re not crazy about this, but is there any chance you could get some better photos?”

“Why? You think she’s gonna get sexier?”

Ren flinched. “I’d like a shot of the child. Type O is pretty common. It could be a fluke, but if he—”

Bo shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”

Ren would have pressed the point, but Bo didn’t give him the opportunity. The heavy door swished closed, leaving Ren in silence.

He picked up the photographs and headed for his study, intending to go through his mail and pay bills. But once there, he laid out the photographs on his desk. Maybe his calling Sara plain had come from his need to see something of Jewel in her. According to the background information Bo had faxed him, the two women had different fathers. Julia’s had split shortly after her birth. Her mother had married Lewis Carsten a year later and he’d adopted Julia. He’d died when Sara was a toddler. Their mother—an alcoholic—died when Sara was 17.

Ordering himself to put aside any memory of Jewel, he studied Sara’s image. Her jawline was strong but not harsh, her nose perky and small. He liked the shape of her eyes, her thick lashes a shade darker than her hair. In the black-and-white picture, her heart-shaped lips reminded him of an old-time movie heroine—innocent yet sensual.

He could tell, even in the blurry image, that she wore no makeup—a practice that set her apart from other women of his acquaintance. Perhaps he’d done her an injustice. She was pretty, and if she changed hairstyles—hers was straight and plain—she could probably turn a man’s head. However, that didn’t alter the fact that she projected not one iota of the sexual chemistry her sister had exuded.

A sudden knife-like pain sliced through his gut, making him bend over. Tears rushed to his eyes, and he choked back a cry that had been lurking in his subconscious for days. He lowered his head to his desk and wept—for the loss of someone he barely knew, but who’d touched his life with a kind of unfettered passion he’d never experienced before. He hadn’t loved her, this enigmatic Jewel, but on that one night she’d given him…freedom.

THE RAUCOUS SQUABBLING of two blue jays in her neighbor’s sycamore tree reminded Sara of Claudie and Bo, the most recent recruit to Sara’s gentleman’s reading group. It had taken Sara until this Sunday morning, when the mindlessness of scraping paint freed up her random access memory, to place him—the customer who had asked about first editions for his friend. At the time, she’d brushed him off with a flip answer.

“Sara, is it okay if I give Brady a peanut butter sandwich?” Amy Peters asked. The thirteen-year-old wasn’t a terribly experienced baby-sitter, so Sara only used her when she was home and needed some relatively uninterrupted time.

“Sure. You know where everything is, right?”

“Yeah, but it looks like this will be the last of your bread.”

“Darn. I forgot to buy some last night. Oh, well, Brady and I will walk to the market before his nap.”

Amy dashed back inside. Brady was a pretty good toddler, but he had a mischievous streak in him—he loved to be chased. And just lately he’d discovered he could send Amy over the edge by hiding.

With a sigh, Sara tackled her task. A good mile of gutters encircled Hulger’s house. Unfortunately, the original painter had failed to prime them adequately; the brown paint flaked like dandruff in some spots, yet resisted her most vigorous scraping in others. Another reason she hated her brother-in-law’s house.

After the accident, Sara had given up her apartment, which was within walking distance of the bookstore, and had moved into Julia and Hulger’s twenty-eight hundred square-foot house because she hadn’t wanted to uproot Brady. Although it meant a difficult commute twice a day, she’d welcomed the security the gated community offered. But now she was regretting her decision.

“Hello, Miss Hovant,” a grave voice said.

Only one person called her that—Mary Gaines, her neighbor to the left. “Sara, Mrs. Gaines. Please, call me Sara,” she said, striving for patience. Sara didn’t even bother trying to correct the woman on her last name.

“I see you’re finally getting that gutter painted,” the white-haired woman said. Her emphasis was clear.

“Just scraping. I’m still waiting for a bid on the painting. The painter was supposed to meet me yesterday but didn’t bother showing up.” After the scathing message she left on the painter’s machine, Sara doubted she’d ever hear from him again.

“I can give you the name of a man, but he’s not cheap,” her neighbor said, turning to leave. “I just hope you get something done before the next association meeting.”

Sara waited until the woman was gone, then sighed heavily. The homeowners’ association took its job seriously—too seriously for Sara’s taste. But she didn’t think it was right that she had to pay for Hulger’s mistakes. And in her opinion, the entire house was a mistake.

Hulger had had the house built as a wedding present for Julia. Then he’d devoted the five years before his death to imposing his taste on every decorating detail, inside and out. Sara still could never understand how a woman as strong-willed and self-sufficient as Julia had tolerated such an autocratic husband. Another mystery of life, she figured.

In many ways, Julia was an enigma. Sara blamed their mother for that. When Audra was incapacitated by drink and couldn’t run a can opener let alone a household, Julia had become a surrogate mother to Sara, making sisterly confidences impossible.

Julia’s stormy relationship with her husband had never been open for discussion. Danish-born Hulger once told Sara his role in life was to make money and visit his parents once a year; Julia’s duties, according to Hulger, included looking beautiful for his friends, entertaining in lavish style and accompanying him to Denmark.

Julia had tried to do justice to her role, working out at the gym to stay fit and taking exotic cooking courses, but she’d missed her nursing career. Sara had been privy to enough arguments between the couple to know this was a huge issue in their marriage.

Sara had hoped things would turn around once Julia found out she was pregnant, but Brady’s birth seemed to add a new kind of tension to the marriage.

Sara sighed. She missed her sister every single day. Living in Julia’s house was a mixed blessing—reminders of Julia abounded, but so much of her taste was overwhelmed by Hulger’s bizarre, unwieldy legacy.

An hour or so later, Sara strapped Brady into his stroller and started down the street. Although she’d invited Amy to join them, the teen said she intended to use her baby-sitting money to take her mother to the movie as a Mother’s Day treat. Sara had completely forgotten about the holiday.

“Well, Brady, love, what should we do to celebrate?” she asked, giving the stroller a jiggle. “Shall we buy an ice-cream cone?”

“Iceee,” he cried enthusiastically.

She pushed fast to avoid looking at Hulger’s unfinished landscaping. In her opinion, the empty concrete fishpond resembled a giant diaphragm, which complemented the stunted marble shaft that was supposed to support an ornate fountain. Sara had petitioned the estate lawyer—a close, personal friend of Hulger’s who treated Sara like some greedy interloper—for the funds to complete the work, but he’d spouted something about long-term capital investments overriding short-term needs. Feeling utterly intimidated, she hadn’t even bothered asking for help with the gutters.

Sara pressed down on the handlebar of the stroller, leaning Brady far enough back to look up at her. “Whee,” she said, pushing him over the speed bump. His high-pitched chortle made her heart swell. She loved the sound of his laugh. Her favorite time of the day was his bath. Invariably she’d wind up soaked, but it didn’t matter because they’d laugh from start to finish.

“Fas,” Brady demanded. “Mommygofas.”

She took two quick steps. “This fast?”

He shook his head, his curls dancing. “Mo’fas.”

She sped up. “This fast?”

He leaned forward, pushing his little body back and forth as if his movement could increase the speed. “Mo’fast.”

His reward for saying the word right was an all-out run, which lasted until Sara became winded. Brushing her bangs out of her eyes, she hauled in a deep gulp of air. “No mo’fast. Mommy tired.”

With a slower pace, she walked to the market, singing a silly song for Brady. “When you’re happy and you know it, shake your feet…”

Brady’s fourteen-dollar sneakers bounced just above the pavement. “Another ‘short-term’ need, I suppose,” she muttered under her breath. I wonder whether that lawyer would manage if he had my income instead of his.

BO SQUEEZED OFF THE LAST of his exposures. Even through a telescopic lens, he could tell Sara looked tired, but the shots of her laughing as she pushed the kid in his stroller ought to get Ren’s attention. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like a teenager. Not exactly sex-goddess stuff, but he’d included a few shots of her nicely shaped legs displayed by snug denim shorts, for good measure.

After a stop at the one-hour processing lab, he could wash his hands of this job. It was one thing to tail a stranger, but for some reason he didn’t think of Sara that way. Bo blamed that on her open, friendly manner. He had a feeling Ren would like Sara, too, but Bo doubted the feeling would be mutual once Sara found out about Ren and her sister.

Bo shook his head sadly. He wasn’t the kind of guy who believed in happy endings, but this one looked worse than most.

CHAPTER THREE

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY EVENING, Bo parked the Mazda a block-and-a-half from the bookstore, then hunkered down to wait. The Unturned Gentlemen’s reading group was due to begin in fifteen minutes. His stomach rumbled—a two-front nervous rumble.

First, the more time he spent in Sara Carsten’s company, the more Bo admired her. The duplicity of befriending her while running a background check seemed shoddy, but the longer Bo was around Brady, the more convinced he was that the little boy was part-Bishop.

Granted, Bo knew squat about kids, but Brady had an imperious manner that shouted, “I’m important!” Pure Babe, some Ren.

The second source of anxiety stemmed from the slim paperback resting on the seat beside him. He couldn’t decide if he was more amazed by the fact that he’d actually read the thing or that he’d enjoyed it.

A rap on his passenger window startled Bo, until he saw the smiling face of Sara Carsten, who was bending down to look at him. Busted, he groaned silently. He picked up his volume of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, then opened the door and hauled himself to his feet.

“Hi, Bo. I’m so glad you could make it. Did you like the book?” Sara asked. At her side, a far less cordial Claudie watched him warily.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I liked it. Half the time I couldn’t believe it was true, but no writer would be that cruel to his hero, right?”

Sara sobered. “True. Real life’s often bleaker than fiction.”

Claudie snorted. “The guy was a jerk. He deserved what he got. Why the f—heck would anybody go to Antarctica in the first place?”

“Challenge. Adventure. Accomplishment,” Bo returned.

“Men things,” she muttered. “Only men would be stupid enough to think those things mattered.”

Before Bo could reply, Sara laughed and said, “Now, now, children, if you can’t play nice, you don’t get any cookies.”

“Cookie?” a voice chirped from the navy-blue stroller.

Bo walked around the front of the car and squatted, eye-level with Brady. “Hey, kiddo, out for a ride?”

Brady kicked his feet and twisted to one side, shyly hiding his face in the soft fabric. “We had a picnic supper in Capitol Park. Brady walked all the way there, but petered out on the way home,” Sara said.

“It was them squirrels that wore him out,” Claudie added.

Sara poked at a crumpled bread wrapper stuffed in the top pocket of the stroller and explained, “He likes to chase the squirrels. Brady loves animals—but what little boy doesn’t?”

“I bet he didn’t,” Claudie muttered.

Bo decided it was time to confront her. Rising, he faced her squarely. She barely came to the top of his shoulder, but she lifted her chin defiantly and met him eye-to-eye.

She wouldn’t be bad looking, if she weren’t so damn prickly, he thought, taking in her blousy shirt cinched at her very narrow waist by a black leather belt. Although her purple stretch pants showed every curve of her shapely legs and derriere, her running shoes were more Stairmaster than streetwalker.

“Night off?” he asked, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Her eyes narrowed viciously, and her red lips clamped together as if she’d tasted something bitter. “This ain’t the safest area at night, so Keneesha and I take turns hanging out with Sara on book club nights. You got a problem with that?”

Not at all. In fact, he found it admirable. But he couldn’t tell her that.

Sara relieved him of the problem. “I’m so lucky to have such great friends. Look what Claudie did to my hair. Isn’t it fun?” She fluffed out her shortened locks. The style made her hair seem fuller, and it bounced in a girlish manner near her jawline.

“I like it,” Bo said honestly.

“Who cares?” Claudie rejoined waspishly.

“I do,” Sara said. “I’m vain enough to be pleased when a handsome man tells me I look nice.” A blush brought up the color in her cheeks. “Well, my hair looks nice.”

Handsome? Bo nearly stumbled backward into the gutter, but he managed to get past the odd compliment in time to add, “You definitely look better than nice. I’d go so far as to say beautiful.”

Claudie frowned at him and gave Sara a push. “You better open up. Your gentlemen don’t like to be kept waiting.”

Sara, who was dressed in a simple sleeveless, teal-green sheath that cupped her bosom, then fell straight as a plumb bob to the tops of her canvas deck shoes, looked at the utilitarian watch on her wrist and gave a little yelp. “Good point. Come along, Bo. You don’t want to be late for your first meeting.”

“He’ll be there in a second, Sara J. I gotta discuss something with your new gentleman.”

Sara tossed a concerned glance over her shoulder. “Don’t hurt him, Claudie. He’s a paying customer.”

Bo swallowed. He didn’t like the way Claudie was looking at him. Like he was a wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe. “Okay, say your piece.”

Claudie waited until Sara was inside, then asked, “Are you a cop?”

Bo blinked, astounded by her perceptiveness. “No.”

“You move like a cop. You’re always asking questions like a cop. If you’re not a cop, then what are you?”

A PI looking into ruining your friend’s life. The thought made his stomach heave, nearly recycling his hastily eaten burrito.

He moved past her, noticing for the first time how fragile she seemed. How’d you end up on the streets? he wanted to ask. Instead, he said, “Just a guy killing time ’til I get a job, but jobs ain’t easy to come by when you got a record.” He was good at improvising.

“What kind of record?”

D.U.I. in college. “None of your business,” he said shortly, walking away. She dogged his heels, step for step, but stopped half a block from the bookstore. Reluctantly, Bo slowed, then turned around.

“I don’t know if I believe you, but I don’t really give a flying you-know-what. Keneesha and me look out for our friends, and Sara is off-limits to all losers,” she said, her tone ominous. “She wouldn’t be interested in you anyways.”

Bo had no intention of making a play for Sara—no matter how cute she looked with her new haircut—but he didn’t like being told what to do. He’d had enough of that growing up. “Oh, really? And why is that?”

Claudie waited until the man ahead of them was through the door of the bookstore before she said in a low voice, “Because she’s…gay.”

Bo’s mouth dropped open. “Bullshit,” he sputtered. “I don’t believe you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Well, she is.”

Before he could reply, Sara poked her head out the door and motioned to him. “I need him, Claudie. The group’s starting. Besides, this is your night off.”

Bo’s face heated up, even though he could tell by her tone, Sara was teasing. His only satisfaction came from seeing Claudie’s face flush with color, too.

SARA TUNED OUT the low rumble of masculine voices emanating from the far corner of the bookstore. Years earlier, before Hank had died, she’d hauled in a couple of old couches Julia was throwing out and some funky pole lamps to create a “reading room.” Hank had called it a waste of space, but had let her have her way. Although he never admitted it, sales went up—and the reading room stayed.

Closing her eyes, Sara gently rocked Brady back and forth. If she let herself, she could drift off to sleep, too. She’d been up since five, trying to figure out how to pay for the repairs needed on Julia’s house.

“Can I put him down for you?” a voice asked softly.

Sara opened her own eyes to a pair of remarkable blue ones, as deep a hue as the pair she played peek-a-boo with every morning—only this pair was attached to a stranger. A very handsome stranger, who seemed full of concern for her.

That by itself was odd, but the sudden, shocking quickening of her senses left her speechless. In answer to his question, all she could do was shake her head.

“He looks heavy. Are you sure?” His voice was cultured, rich as honey and faintly melodic. Its basic vibration caught her somewhere between her breast-bone and her belly button and radiated outward in the strangest way.

She rocked forward, intending to rise, but her knees felt insubstantial, as if they might crumple if she put any weight on them. He seemed to sense this, and plucked Brady from her arms as if by magic. He didn’t hesitate for a second but smoothly transferred the sleeping child to the playpen with such fluidity that Brady didn’t even stir.

Sara put her hand to her chest as if to capture Brady’s warmth a second longer. Tears rushed to her eyes for absolutely no reason.

“He’s a handsome boy,” the stranger said.

“Thank you.” Sara looked at him as he stood a few steps back from the crib. Suddenly she felt a deep primal urge to push him away. She rushed to cover Brady with a knitted throw that Keneesha had made for him.

Sara straightened, forcing herself not to be intimidated by the man’s size or beauty. And he was gorgeous. His thick, wavy autumn-brown hair had a carefree quality that made her want to touch it. His skin was a healthy tan, not too dark, not too pale.

“Are you here for the group?” The inanity of her question struck her the second she took in his fine, navy pinstriped trousers, perfectly creased above Italian leather shoes. Even without a tie and unbuttoned at the collar, his smoke-gray shirt made a fashion statement: wealthy.

He shook his head. “No, I’m supposed to meet a friend, but I got here a little early. Do you mind if I look around?”

The bookstore owner in her wanted to offer him free reign, but some other part of her remained uneasy. She tried attributing her qualms to his proximity and his maleness, but somehow that wasn’t enough. She had a store full of males, and none of them made her senses peak like this man.

“Be my guest,” she said, faking a smile.

When he stepped away, she let out a long, silent sigh and turned to her desk. She had a hundred things to keep her occupied while the men talked, but couldn’t for the life of her recall a single one. She was about to sit down, when the stranger called to her, “Have you read this one?”

His soft, husky tone made tingles run up her skin. Rubbing her bare arms—Sara told herself it was rude to ignore him—she walked to the cardboard display case holding the latest release from a popular, prolific writer.

“No, I’m not really a fan of horror genre.”

He seemed surprised by her frankness. A blush warmed her cheeks. Smart move. Knock a potential sale to a potential customer.

“I once heard a fifty-eight-year-old man accused of killing his eighty-year-old parents say the reason he hacked them to death with a butcher knife was that they wanted to move into a rest home and he would have had to get a job.” His serious, contemplative tone took her by surprise.

“Are you a psychologist?” Her first guess would have been politician.

A smile tugged at the corner of his thin, masculine lips, suggesting a dimple in his left cheek. “It sometimes feels that way. I’m a judge.”

Sara reflexively took a step back. A judge. The word conjured up memories of a time she wanted to be excommunicated from her consciousness.

She started to turn away, but his next words stopped her.

“In law school they tried to prepare us for some negativity.” He flashed her a beguiling, boyish grin. “Do you know the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?”

Sara shook her head, intrigued by the humor in his tone and the oh-so-human crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder. The other’s a fish.”

Sara tried not to smile, but did, anyway.

Oddly, his smile faded. “The antipathy changes when you become a judge,” he said. “It doesn’t go away—it just becomes more…judicious.”

The wistfulness of his tone caught Sara off guard. The only judge she’d ever met stood out in her memory as a Wizard of Oz kind of character. A big head and commanding voice, passing judgment on things he didn’t understand.

“I’m sure it’s not an easy job, in fact, I can’t imagine one I’d want less.”

Instead of being put off by her opinion, the man stepped around the display, bringing himself closer to Sara. It made sense since they were speaking in library-level whispers, but crazy alarms went off in her head, obscuring his reply.

“It wasn’t high on my list, either, but when the governor asked me to fill a vacant slot, I felt I had to accept.”

Normally, Sara might have credited his amiability to good manners and responded accordingly, but for some reason her long-simmering resentment over the justice system chose that moment to erupt. “You’re talking politics. I’m talking human lives. What makes you—or anyone for that matter—think you’re capable of deciding someone else’s fate? Doesn’t that constitute supreme ego?”

His brows sank together in a more attractive way than Sara wanted to admit. “No, I don’t think so. Law limits a judge’s powers. Any judgment is based on evidence, and the law as it applies to that individual case.”

“But how can you read a few lines on a sheet of paper or listen to two over-priced lawyers talk for ten minutes, then decide a person’s fate? Not everyone who breaks the law is a bad person,” she added in an even softer voice.

His blue eyes were tempered with compassion, as if he knew she was speaking of herself. “I believe a person who breaks the law and pays his or her debt to society is a better person for it. The ones who break the law—from shoplifters to congressmen—and go unpunished are the losers. They have nothing to build on but guilt. What kind of legacy is that?” he asked.

His words touched her, as did his tone and some elusive nuance in his manner, something that made her think he might actually be capable of knowing her without judging her. How crazy was that?

“Ren?” a voice croaked.

Sara blinked, dissolving the mesmerizing connection between them.

The stranger straightened with such unexpected hauteur that Sara had to work at keeping her mouth from hanging open. He suddenly looked like a judge, not just some handsome man lending a sympathetic and understanding ear to her old grievances. Sara’s heart boomed in her chest—what had come over her?

“Hello, Bo,” he said, turning to face Sara’s newest recruit. Bo hurried forward, displaying considerable shock at seeing his friend.

“What are you doing here?” Bo demanded.

“I had to work late and I remembered you were going to be here. I thought we could grab a drink when it’s over.”

Sounds plausible, Sara thought, but it’s not the truth.

Bo squinted at his friend a moment longer, then looked at Sara. She read something sad in his eyes. Anxious to help, she reached out to pat his hand, which gripped his book like a buoy. “It’s a very informal group, Bo. You can leave anytime. Besides, there’s always next week,” she said. “Did they tell you they’re switching to weekly meetings? What do you think? Do you want me to get you the next book?”

His gaze flickered to his friend, whose grin provoked a snarling “Sure.”

Confused by the antipathy between the two, Sara pulled back her hand. “Well…um, great. Stay put, and I’ll be right back.” She tossed a semi-smile in the judge’s direction, then dashed to her storeroom. She didn’t understand what was going on any more than she could explain what had come over her, but Sara cultivated new readers like flowers in a garden; she wasn’t about to let this one wither on the vine. Not without a fight.

REN EYED THE BOOK in his friend’s hand, damn glad it wasn’t a gun. Prudently, he backed up a step, which also afforded a better view of Sara as she hurried toward a doorway marked Employees Only. His gaze followed the lithe form in the pale green dress. She moved quickly but with grace, back straight. Bo’s last photos showed her to possess a very shapely body with sleek calves and a trim derriere, but her business dress was of Shaker simplicity.

“What the hell is this about?” Bo growled, taking a step closer.

Ren raised his hand defensively—not that it would have done any good if Bo Lester took it in his head to beat him senseless. Ren had seen him in action more than once during Bo’s drinking years. “Pure impulse. I can’t explain it. I guess I needed to get it over with.”

“You could have warned me.”

Ren shook his head. “I didn’t know myself. I was supposed to meet Eve for dinner—she took the day off to drive her agent to the San Francisco airport, but she called from her car. Some big toxic spill up near Lake Shasta. I started home, then changed my mind.”

Ren had only intended to peek inside the store, but something had come over him the instant he saw Sara Carsten—eyes closed, lips whispering a lullaby, rocking the sleeping child. The image was so ecumenical, so Madonna-like, that he felt drawn inside as if propelled by a force outside his body.

And then Ren took the biggest leap of faith in his life. He’d picked up the baby. A child that could be his own flesh and blood. It was an idea so staggering and life-altering that he should have run in the other direction, but holding that compact little body seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“Let’s get one thing straight. You hurt her and you’ll regret it.” The threat was so serious, so unexpected, all Ren could do was nod, as Sara hurried to join them, a cardboard box in her arms.

“Sorry ’bout the wait. I’ve been hoarding these so long I couldn’t remember where I put them.” As she neared, she faltered a step as if sensing the primitive, masculine energy between them.

She set the carton on a display table and picked up one small paperback. “The title is A.P.B. It’s a little police procedural—the first in a series. The rest of the group voted for something light this time.”

Bo put out his hand. “I like crime novels. The good guys always win. The bad guys either end up dead or in jail. Right?” He shot a pointed look at Ren.

She glanced from Bo to Ren. “Umm…yes.”

Ren regretted causing her added disquiet. “My friend’s not a big reader,” he said, picking up a book. “I can’t tell you how great it is that you’ve been such a positive influence on him.”

One slender brow lifted. “Bo may not read a lot, but he must like books. He’s been here pretty often.”

“Oh?” Ren asked.

She nodded. “In fact, the first time he came in was to ask about a rare book for a friend.” She clapped her hand over her lips, a blush claiming her cheeks. “This is your friend, isn’t it. The rare book collector. I’ve ruined the surprise, haven’t I?”

Bo seemed momentarily taken aback, but he recovered. “Actually, this is that friend, but since I’m not sure he deserves a Christmas gift this year, don’t lose any sleep over it, okay?”

She was obviously puzzled by Bo’s response, but chose not to question him. Instead, she smiled. “My sister used to tell me I was notorious for speaking before my brain could catch up with my mouth.”

The word sister caught Ren by surprise, and he almost missed a step as he followed her to the counter. Now would be the perfect time to segue into that subject, but he found himself mute. So, apparently, was his private investigator.

While Bo paid for his new book, Ren studied the child sleeping so peacefully in the playpen behind Sara’s desk. The little boy had turned slightly, curled protectively around a stuffed elephant he’d somehow found in his sleep. This image, as much as the one of Sara rocking the baby, wrapped itself around Ren’s heart and squeezed.

“What’s the baby’s name?” he asked, not having known he was going to.

“Brady,” Sara answered guilelessly.

She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Ren, who was studying her face, saw something that had been missing from her photographs, even the ones from Sunday afternoon. A luminous quality that enhanced Sara Carsten’s quiet beauty.

“Brady,” he repeated. “That’s…different.”

She flashed him a grin that made him blink. “You’re very diplomatic. Of course, that probably comes with the job. My sister, Brady’s mother, had the name picked out even before she knew she was having a boy, but she could never decide on a middle name.”

The duplicity of his inquiry made his throat dry and his jaw ache. “You’re his aunt,” he said, as if not framing it as a question could absolve the guilt he was going to feel if he took this inquiry forward. Since Armory, his lawyer, wasn’t due back from Hawaii until tomorrow night, Ren had put off formulating a legal strategy.

Her lovely face changed. In sorrow it became vulnerable. “My sister died,” Sara said simply. “She was killed in an accident, but she left me Brady.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. Hazel, not temptress-green, but beautiful nonetheless. And I thought she was plain.

When she looked down to count Bo’s change, Bo shot Ren a dark look. It hadn’t been easy convincing Bo to stay on the job, but Ren’s promise to approach the matter slowly had helped. His impulsive decision tonight might have jeopardized things.

“Well, there you go,” she said, tucking the book in a sack. “Thanks, Bo. I’m glad you came. And it was…um, interesting talking with you…”

“Ren Bishop,” he added. “It’s Lawrence, actually, but only my mother calls me that.”

He held out his hand, and she took it, just a trifle reluctantly. Her hand was small, her grip slightly reserved. “Sara Carsten,” she said, dropping his hand to reach for a card from a plastic basket beside the cash register. Her blush told him she’d used that as an excuse not to touch him any longer.

Ren took the card she offered. “I don’t carry first editions,” she said. “But I might be able to help if you tell me what you’re looking for.”

Ren was within a heartbeat of telling her the whole sordid story when the sound of men’s voices indicated the readers’ group was over. “We gotta go,” Bo said, starting away.

As Ren followed his friend out of the store, he glanced back once and was surprised to find Sara’s gaze still on him. She had a puzzled expression on her face. He lifted his hand to wave goodbye, but Bo grabbed his arm in one plate-sized fist and dragged him bodily out the door.

“You bastard,” Bo muttered, stalking off down the sidewalk. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this.”

Downtown’s daytime hustle and bustle had given way to an empty-theater kind of quiet. Miniature lights peeked through the new-growth foliage of the well-pruned trees. A gold-hued street lamp spotlighted Ren’s Lexus while ignoring Bo’s Mazda one space ahead of it. The two cars seemed a metaphor for the contrast between their owners.

Ren stopped beside the Mazda. “This wasn’t planned, Bo. It probably wasn’t smart. But I needed to see him.” I held him—the child that might be my child.

Suddenly Ren’s knees felt disconnected from his body. He reached out to steady himself on the blistered hood of the car. “Is there a bar around here? I really could use a drink.”

Ren’s response seemed to take some of the heat out of Bo’s anger. “Around the corner,” he muttered, leading the way.

Bo didn’t speak again until they were seated at a small table. After the waitress delivered a light beer and a cola, Bo said, “Okay, suppose you explain to me what happened tonight. I thought I was the inside guy, and you were going to let the suits make contact when we all decided the time was right.”

Ren took a long draw on his beer. “I was in my office looking at the pictures…the ones you took Sunday.” He paused, knowing there was no way to explain the sense of urgency that had been building in him ever since Bo had delivered the color photos of Sara and the child. Yes, he saw a resemblance in some of the shots, but this need to connect went deeper than that.

He shrugged. “It had to happen sometime, right?”

Bo took a sip of cola. “This means you’re going forward with the paternity suit, doesn’t it?”

Ren couldn’t meet Bo’s gaze. He didn’t want his friend to guess the truth: that deep down, Ren wanted the child to be his. He needed the child to be his. As much as he loved Eve, Ren knew her career was her primary focus. It might be years before she was ready to have children, if ever. Ren was ready for fatherhood now.

“Do I have any choice, Bo? Would you walk away? Live the rest of your life wondering?”

Bo looked ready to argue, but in the end shook his head. “I guess not, but what about Sara?”

Ren’s heart lifted, then fell oddly. He hadn’t expected to like her, but he did.

“She’s a good person and a wonderful mother,” Bo said. “She doesn’t deserve what this is going to do to her. It’s bound to get messy. If she’s smart, she’ll scream bloody murder and hire some media shark like Steve Hamlin to make you squirm. Even if you ultimately win, you’ll be scarred for life.”

Ren took another swallow of beer. Bo’s prediction threw him, but he pretended to shrug it off. “I wouldn’t blame her for going on the offensive. She obviously loves the child, and I saw what mentioning her sister did to her.” Ren’s voice faltered; Sara’s unshed tears had touched him deeply. “I don’t want to hurt her, Bo, but I have to know. What if he’s my kid?”

Ren didn’t really expect Bo to understand. Bo’s relationship with his own father was practically nonexistent. Ren doubted they’d exchanged more than a dozen words in the past year.

“Yeah, I get it. My old man may be a well-dressed rat, but I know he’d give his last dime to help me out,” Bo said, surprising Ren with his insight.

Before Ren could respond, a voice said, “Don’t tell me you actually have a friend.”

To Ren’s surprise, a woman in tight purple leggings and a blousy shirt pulled a chair from a neighboring table and straddled it, dropping her chin to the arched metal back. Her unsteady gaze flicked from Ren to Bo.

Bo groaned. “Go away, girl. Didn’t you give me enough trouble earlier?”

“That’s why I came over. To apologize.” Her words were slightly slurred.

“Apologize for breaking my balls for nothing?”

Her eyelashes fluttered coquettishly. “Did I have my hand on your balls? I must have missed that.”

This has to be one of the hookers. Claudie? And she’s been drinking.

She turned her attention to Ren. “Oh, my, aren’t you hunky—”

“You’re off duty tonight, remember?” Bo barked.

“Working girls never pass up an opportunity to…work.”

A sad little smile crossed her lips, and Ren was reminded of Sara’s words. How can you know the person behind the crime? If Claudie were brought before him, what would he see?

“Not tonight, Claudie. Besides, he’s taken,” Bo told her.

“You could still introduce us. I don’t bite. Well, I do, but it costs extra.”

Ren put out his hand. “Ren Bishop.”

“Claudine St. James. My friends call me Claudie,” she said, giving him a suggestive look that came off totally fake. Ren decided he liked her pluckiness.

Bo coughed. “So what’s the apology for, Claudie?”

She drew herself up fairly straight and said solemnly, “I told Keneesha what I told you, and she called me a dumb f—person. She said Sara would never forgive me if she found out, and I’d better tell you myself or she would.”

Ren couldn’t keep from asking. “Told him what?”

She shot him a poisonous look. “This is private. Just between the cookbook man ’n me.”

“It’s okay. Just say what you want to say.” Bo brushed her arm with his fingertips.

Her automatic flinch made Ren’s stomach clench. Men probably weren’t very nice to her. He had heard his fair share of horror stories in the last two years; hers was probably no different.

“I lied,” she said soberly—her intense scowl obviously a ruse to keep tears at bay. “Sara’s not gay. I made that up.”

“Hell, I knew that,” Bo said gruffly. “I never believed you for a minute. You’re a terrible liar.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. And when you’re that bad of a liar, it’s like it never happened, so just forget it.” Bo rose and motioned for Ren to follow.

She stood, catching the edge of the table as if her equilibrium had been shaken. “You know, cookbook man, you’re not that bad, after all.”

“Cookbook man?” Ren asked, as they exited the bar. He inhaled deeply, the brisk delta breeze a welcome change from the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke.

Bo growled. “When I was taking your damn pictures the first time, the best view was from the cookbook aisle.”

Ren studied his friend in the light from the neon Budweiser sign. Bo was a successful investigator who traveled all over the world, but in his private life he was a recluse who favored fishing and satellite TV over dating. Obviously, these women had somehow touched him. Ren didn’t question his friend’s loyalty, but he wondered if his decision to pursue the paternity issue would change their friendship.

They walked in silence. Ren used his remote to unlock his car. The double beep-beep pierced the quiet. “Bo, this isn’t malicious,” he said somberly. “I wish there were some other way, but I sure as hell don’t know what it is.”

Bo looked skyward. “Yeah, I know.”

Ren waited a minute, then asked, “Do you have that background information on Sara yet? I’d like to read it before I see Armory on Friday morning.”

Bo unlocked his car the old-fashioned way. The door gave an unhappy groan when he opened it. “It’s at home. I wasn’t expecting your surprise appearance tonight, remember?”

Before Ren could reply, Bo climbed into his car. Ren watched him start it and pull away. Obviously, Bo didn’t understand the primal urge that had pulled Ren through the bookstore door. Ren wasn’t sure he understood it himself.

He glanced up the street. A yellow glow spilled from the windows of the bookstore. Why is she still there? She should be home, tucking Brady in bed. Ren longed to walk back to the store to make sure she was okay, but the lawyer in him warned against it. You’re poised to change her life forever. And she’s never going to forgive you.

SARA EASED BRADY’S sleeping form to her left shoulder to better manipulate the key. She’d waited as long as she could for Claudie to return, but still had a long drive ahead of her.

“I’ll do that,” someone said behind her.

Sara recognized her friend’s voice and immediately gave a huge sigh of relief. “Thank God, you’re okay! I was worried about you,” she said, giving the younger woman a quick, one-armed squeeze. The smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke made her recoil. “You are okay, aren’t you?”

Claudie kept her head down as she took the key and finished locking up. “Yeah, I’m fine. Had one too many at Jake’s, is all.”

Sara’s brows went up. “How come? You never drink.”

Claudie handed her the keys with a look of profound weariness. “I drink. Just not when you’re around. How else do you think someone like me lives with all this shit?” The last word was part whisper.

Sara put her arm around her friend’s slim shoulders. “I didn’t mean to sound condemning. I was just surprised. I know you’re doing the best you can—so am I. That’s why we’re friends, remember?”

The two walked down the dark alley toward the employee parking lot. “Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” Sara asked.

Claudie held her tongue until Sara had Brady strapped in his car seat in the back seat of her Toyota wagon. When Sara closed the door, Claudie melted to the curb like a marshmallow over an open flame. “I suck, big time,” she wailed.

Sara sat beside her. “You don’t mean that literally, do you?” she said, purposely injecting a spot of humor. Sara knew her friends liked to think of Sara as angelic, so her occasional forays into the ribald always cracked them up. This time the jest went over Claudie’s head.

“I told the cookbook man you were gay,” Claudie cried.

Sara grasped the odd confession immediately, but it took a second or two longer to figure out how she felt about it. Bo, her newest recruit, was a nice guy, but Sara felt no attraction to him. And even though she was attracted to his friend Ren Bishop, she’d never get involved with a judge, so what did it matter?

Sara shrugged. “Did he believe you?”

“No. I don’t think the other guy did, either.”

Sara’s heart took an unwelcome jump. “The other guy? Tall? Wavy hair? Really handsome?”

Claudie looked at her strangely. “You met him?”

“He came into the store while he was waiting for Bo. Where’d you see him?”

“At the bar.” Claudie turned to face Sara. “I ’fessed up like Keneesha told me. And Bo said he never believed me, anyway, because I was a terrible liar so it wasn’t like what I said even counted. But Keneesha said a rumor like that could make trouble for you with Brady. If social services proved you were an unfit mother, they could take him away. They do that, you know.”

Her solemn anguish touched Sara’s heart. Did that happen to you, my friend? Sara wondered. She didn’t ask; Claudine St. James never spoke of her past. Never. “Nobody’s out there trying to take Brady away. Why would you worry about something like that?”

Claudie shook her head. “You know what life’s like, Sara. Every time you get a sweet thing going, somebody comes along to mess it up.”

An odd shiver passed through Sara’s body. She prayed her friend was wrong. Life without Brady was unthinkable.

CHAPTER FOUR

REN SCANNED THE JAM-PACKED reception area located on the second floor of the courthouse. Potential jurors milled about waiting for instructions, praying, no doubt, for a quick release. To pick Bo out of such a crowd was like looking at a Where’s Waldo? puzzle, Ren thought.

“So, what’s the plan, Stan?” a voice asked beside him.

Ren glanced to his right. Typical Bo. Baggy, tan canvas pants. Navy T-shirt with some engineering firm’s logo on the breast pocket. Scruffy running shoes.

“Lunch,” Ren said shortly. “Let’s beat the mass exodus.”

They took the stairs, hurrying past the uniformed guards at the entrance. Neither spoke until they reached the plaza.

“Where do you want to eat?” Ren asked, jogging down the concrete steps to the street.

Bo shrugged. “The noodle shop?”

The thought of food made Ren queasy, but the instant the white hand appeared on the stoplight, he took off—a sprinter in street shoes. Dodging slow-moving pedestrians, he hurried toward the J-street locale, not paying attention to Bo until his friend grabbed his arm and hauled him to a stop in the shadow of the Union Bank building.

“Slow down. Sara doesn’t get back for another hour, and we need to give her time to get Brady down for his nap. Tell me what Mason said.”

“I gotta give him credit,” Ren answered. “He didn’t even blink when I told him about Julia.”

Armory Mason, Ren’s lawyer, had been his father’s closest friend. Telling Armory of his affair was almost as bad as confessing to his dad.

He’d called Bo right after the meeting with Armory. They’d discussed the timing of this upcoming confrontation, and he’d asked Bo to accompany him to smooth the way with Sara.

“I’m a little nervous,” Ren admitted.

“Well, duh. Who wouldn’t be? But you gotta eat.” Bo grinned. “Actually, I gotta eat. I don’t care about you. You want moral support—it’s gonna cost you lunch.”

He started off at a more sedate pace which Ren matched. The four blocks to the café brought them closer to Sara’s bookstore, as well. Sara. He’d thought about her almost nonstop since Wednesday night. Sara…and Brady.

Earlier, Armory had confirmed what Ren had deduced on his own. Before there could be a custody suit, they had to determine paternity. In other words, he needed a DNA test.

“I suggest you talk to the aunt first,” Armory had told Ren. “You say Bo’s obtained the child’s medical records so you know the little boy’s blood type is O, which is the same as yours. But that’s a very common type. In fact, I’m type O, and we both know I’m not your father.”

Ren smiled politely at Armory’s attempt at levity.

“Perhaps if you explain the situation, she’ll be agreeable. If she’s unreasonable, I’m sure we can get a court order, but that will take time.”

Unreasonable, Ren thought. What constituted “reasonable” when a child was involved?

Armory looked thoughtful. “You said she’s a single mother. Do you know what her financial needs are? Maybe she’d be receptive to an offer of some sort of monetary incentive.”

Ren knew his lawyer was only doing his job. But Armory didn’t know Sara Carsten. Of course, Ren didn’t know her, either, but he didn’t think she’d take a penny from him. The only way she might consider his request was if she believed it was in Brady’s best interest.

At the small restaurant, both men ordered teriyaki noodle bowls—Bo’s with chicken, Ren’s with broccoli. A smiling Asian woman took Ren’s money, then told them “Number twenty-two.” After filling their drinks, they sat down at a small table. Ren chose a chair facing the large, plate-glass window. Foot traffic surged and ebbed on the sidewalk. People carried take-out meals to the park across the street.

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