The Billionaire Next Door
Jessica Bird

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my family, with 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 Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

“No, really, I heard he was coming tonight.”

The young investment banker looked at his buddy, Freddie Wilcox. “O’Banyon? Are you crazy? He’s in the middle of the Condi-Foods merger.”

“I asked his assistant.” Freddie tweaked his Hermès tie. “It’s on his calendar.”

“He must never sleep.”

“Gods don’t have to, Andrew.”

“Well, then, where is he?”

From their vantage point in a corner of the Waldorf-Astoria’s ballroom, they sifted through the crowd of Manhattan highfliers, looking for the man they called The Idol.

Sean O’Banyon was their boss’s boss and, at thirty-six, one of Wall Street’s big dogs. He ran the mergers-and-acquisitions arm of Sterling Rochester, and was capable of leveraging billions of dollars at the drop of a hat or killing a mega deal because he didn’t like the numbers. Since arriving on the Street, he’d engineered one perfectly executed corporate acquisition after another. No one had his track record or his instincts.

Or his reputation for eating hard-core financiers for lunch.

Man, folks would have called him SOB even if those hadn’t been his initials.

He was indeed a god, but he was also a thorn in the side of the I-banking world’s old-school types. O’Banyon was from South Boston, not Greenwich. Drove a Maserati not a Mercedes. Didn’ care about people’s Mayflower roots or European pedigrees. With no family money to speak of, he’d gone to Harvard undergrad on scholarship, got his start at JP Morgan then put himself through Harvard Business School while doing deals as a consultant.

Word had it that when he lost his temper, his Southie accent came back.

So, yes, the white-shoe, country-club set couldn’t stand him…at least not until they needed him to find financing for their corporations’ expansion plans or share buy-backs. O’Banyon was the master at drumming up money. In addition to all the bank funds at his disposal, he had ins with some serious private sources like the great Nick Farrell or the now-governor of Massachusetts, Jack Walker.

O’Banyon was who everyone wanted to be. A rebel with immense power. An iconoclast with guts and glory. The Idol.

“Oh…my God, it’s him.”

Andrew whipped his head around.

Sean O’Banyon walked into the ballroom as if he owned the place. And not just the Waldorf, all of New York City. Dressed in a spectacular pin-striped black suit and wearing a screaming red tie, he was sporting a cynical half grin. As per usual.

“He’s wearing all Gucci. Must have cost him five grand before tailoring.”

“Couch change. I heard he spent a quarter million dollars on a watch last year.”

“It was a half million. I checked at Tourneau.”

O’Banyon’s hair was as dark as his suit and his face was nothing but hard-ass angles and arched eyebrows. And his build matched his attitude. He topped out at six-four and it wasn’t padding that filled out his shoulders. Rumor had it he did triathlons for kicks and giggles.

As the crowd caught sight of him, a swarm condensed and closed in, people pumping his hand, clapping him on the shoulder, smiling. He kept walking, the powerbrokers and A-listers forming his wake.

“He’s coming over here,” Andrew hissed.

“Oh God, is my tie okay?”

“Yeah. Is mine—”

“Fine.”

“I think I’m going to crap in my pants.”

Lizzie Bond stared at the stripped hospital bed and thought of the man who’d lain in it these last six days. The heart monitor he’d been on and the IV that he’d needed and the oxygen feed were all gone. So too the cardiac crash cart that had failed to revive him forty-two minutes ago.

Eddie O’Banyon was dead at the age of sixty-four. And he had died alone.

She shifted her eyes to a window that overlooked Boston’s Charles River.

As a nurse, she was accustomed to being in patient rooms, used to the tangy smell of disinfectant and the bland walls and the air of quiet desperation. But she had come to this room as a friend, not as a health-care professional, so she was seeing things through different eyes.

Like how empty and quiet it was.

She glanced back to the bed. She hated that Mr. O’Banyon had died alone.

She’d wanted to be at his side, had promised him she would be, but when the final myocardial infarction had occurred, she’d been working at the health clinic in Roxbury all the way across town. So she had missed saying goodbye. And he had dealt with whatever pain that had come to claim him by himself.

When the call that he had passed came through to her, she’d left her day job immediately and screamed through traffic to get here. Even though the dead had no schedules to keep and he would never know if she’d hadn’t rushed, it had seemed right to hurry.

“Lizzie?”

Lizzie turned around. The nurse standing in the doorway was someone she knew and liked. “Hi, Teresa.”

“I have his things from when he came in. They were still in the ED.”

“Thanks for bringing them up.”

Lizzie accepted her friend’s personal effects with a sad smile. The plastic bag was transparent, so she could see the well-worn robe and the plaid pajamas Mr. O’Banyon had had on when he’d been admitted around 1:00 a.m. last Sunday.

What a horrible night that had been, the beginning of the end. He’d called her around twelve with chest pains and she’d run up the duplex’s stairs to his apartment. Though he’d been her landlord for two years, he was also a friend and she’d had to call on all her professional training to keep sharp and make the right decision about what to do for him. In the end, she’d called 911 over his objections and not let herself be swayed. The paramedics had come quickly and she’d insisted on riding in the ambulance with Mr. O’Banyon even though he’d tried to tell her he didn’t need the help.

Which had been so like him. Always irascible, always a loner. But he had needed her. His eyes had watered from fear the whole trip from South Boston to Mass General in Beacon Hill and he’d held on to her hand until her fingers had gone numb. It was as if he’d known he wouldn’t be going back out into the world again.

“I know you were the emergency contact,” Teresa said, “but does he have any next of kin?”

“A son. He wouldn’t let me call him though. Said only if something happened.” And something certainly had.

“You’ll get in touch with the son, then? Because unless you’re going to claim the body…”

“I’ll make the call.”

Teresa came over and squeezed Lizzie’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I should have been here.”

“You were. In spirit.” When she started to shake her head, Teresa cut in, “There was no way you could have known.”

“I just…He was alone. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“Lizzie, you always take such good care of everybody. Remember in nursing school when I fell apart three weeks before graduation? I never would have made it without you.”

Lizzie smiled a little. “You would have been fine.”

“Don’t underestimate how much you helped me.” Teresa went back to the door. “Listen, let me or one of the other girls know if you or that son of his need anything, okay?”

“Will do. Thanks, Teresa.”

After the other nurse left, Lizzie put the plastic bag on the bare mattress and rifled around until she found a battered wallet. As she opened the leather billfold, she told herself that she wasn’t invading Mr. O’Banyon’s privacy. But it still didn’t feel right.

The piece of paper she eventually took out was folded four times and as flat as a pressed leaf, as if it had been in there for quite a while. There was one name on it and a number with a 212 area code.

Guess his son lived in Manhattan.

Lizzie sat down on the bed and took her cell phone out of her purse.

Except she couldn’t call just yet. She had to stitch herself back together a little. At the moment, she felt like a stuffed animal whose side had been torn open and whose padding was leaking.

She glanced back at the bag and was overcome with grief.

Over the past two years, Mr. O’Banyon had become a kind of surrogate father to her. Gruff, prickly and standoffish in the beginning, he’d stayed that way…but only on the surface. As time had passed and his health had declined, he’d gotten as attached to her as she was to him, always asking her when she was coming back to see him, always worried about her driving after dark, always keeping up with how her day went or what she was thinking about. As his heart had grown weaker and weaker, their ties had grown stronger and stronger. Gradually, she’d done more things for him, buying groceries, doing errands, cleaning up, helping him keep all his doctor’s appointments straight.

She’d liked being responsible for him. With no husband or children of her own, and a mother who was too fey to really connect with, Lizzie’s caretaking nature had needed an outlet beyond her job. Mr. O’Banyon had been it.

Clear as day, she pictured him sitting in his Barcalounger in front of his TV, a crossword puzzle balanced on the arm of the chair, his reading glasses down on his nose. He had been so sad and lonely, not that he’d ever shown that outright. It was just…well, Lizzie was a little sad and lonely, too, so she’d recognized the shadows in his eyes as exactly what she saw in her own mirror.

And now he was gone.

She stared down at her cell phone and the piece of paper she’d taken out of his wallet. His son’s name was Sean, evidently.

She started to dial, but then stopped, picked up the bag of Mr. O’Banyon’s things and headed out.

When she talked to the man’s son, she was going to need some fresh air.

Standing in the Waldorf’s ballroom, Sean O’Banyon smiled at Marshall Williamson III and thought about how the guy had tried to blackball him at the Congress Club. Hadn’t worked, but good old Williamson had given it his best shot.

“You’re the pinnacle,” Williamson was saying. “Without peer. You are the man I want on this merger.”

Sean smiled and figured that given the amount of groveling that was going on, Williamson was remembering the blackball thing, too.

“Thanks, Marshall. You call my assistant. She’ll get you in to see me.”

“Thank you, Sean. After all you did for Trolly Construction, I know you—”

“Call my assistant.” Sean clapped Marshall on the shoulder to cut him off because getting stroked was boring. Especially when the sucking up was insincere and business motivated. “I’m going to get a drink. I’ll see you sometime next week.”

As he turned away, he was still smiling. Watching men who’d cut him down eat their pride made up for the social slights he had to deal with. Thing was, there was one and only one golden rule on Wall Street: He who had the gold, or could get it, made the rules. And in spite of his nothing-doing background, Sean was a mine for that shiny yellow stuff.

While he headed for the bar, he looked around the ballroom and saw the crowd for exactly what they were. He was under no illusions that any of these people were his friends. They were his allies or his enemies and sometimes both at the same time. Or they were acquaintances who wanted to have their pictures taken with him. Or they were women who’d been his lovers.

But there was no one here he was particularly close to. And he liked it that way.

“Hello, Sean.”

He glanced to his left and thought, ah, yes, a bridal barracuda. “Hello, Candace.”

The blonde sidled up to him, all pouty lips and big, insincere eyes. She was dressed in a black gown that was so low cut you could almost see her belly button, and her surgically enhanced assets were displayed as if they were up for sale. Which he supposed they were. For the right engagement ring and a generous prenup, Candace would walk down the aisle with a bridge troll.

Her voice was slightly breathless as she spoke. Possibly because of all the silicone on top of her lungs. “I heard you were out in the Hamptons last weekend. You didn’t call.”

“Busy. Sorry.”

She pressed herself against him. “You need to call me when you’re there. Actually, you just need to call me.”

He disengaged himself as if he were peeling free of a coat. “Like I told you a while ago, I’m not your type.”

“I disagree.”

“Haven’t you heard about me?”

“Of course. I read about you in the Wall Street Journal all the time.”

“Ah, that’s business, though. Let me enlighten you about the personal side of things.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I never buy jewelry for women. Or cars or plane tickets or clothes or houses or hotel rooms. And I believe in splitting the check over dinner. Right down to the tip.”

She hauled back as if he’d blasphemed.

He smiled. “I see you get my point. Trust me, you’ll be much happier with someone else.”

As he turned away from her and walked over to the bar, he had to laugh. The thing was, he hadn’t said those things just to get rid of her. They were the God’s honest truth: For him, Dutch was the rule with women.

The minute he’d made his first big chunk of cash, he’d become a target for that kind of predatory female and he’d gotten burned. Back over a decade ago, after having lived for years as the poor relation to his roommates and friends at Harvard, he’d finally put together a deal with a percentage point or two in it for him.

The cash had been an avalanche. More than he could ever have imagined filling his account. And within a week of him throwing some of it around, a very sophisticated blonde, not unlike Candace, had shown up on his doorstep. She’d been everything he’d ever wanted, proof positive that he’d arrived. Elegant, cultured, an antiques dealer with style, he’d felt invincible with her on his arm.

He’d done his best to buy her anything she wanted and she’d been more than happy to trade her presence for the things he got her. At least until she’d found someone who could write even bigger checks. On her way out the door, she’d told him, in her Upper East Side, long-voweled way, that even though he was just a roughneck from South Boston, she could tell he was going places…so he should never hesitate to call her if he was ever in the market for oil paintings.

Lesson learned.

Now, it was easy to pick out women like that, although not because he was a genius at reading minds. Pretty much anyone he met in a dress was after money.

Just like anyone in a suit, too, come to think of it.

After he ordered a Tanqueray and tonic from the bartender, he noticed two young guys edging their way over to him. They were dressed well, real spit and polish, Ivy League shiny, and their faces were composed as if they were prepared to play it cool.

Except both of them were rubbing their right palms on their hips as if they were worried they’d offer him a wet handshake.

“’Evening, Mr. O’Banyon,” the taller one said.

Sean got his T& T and pointed to the guy. “Fred Wilcox. And…Andrew Frick, right?”

The two nodded their heads, clearly astounded he knew their names. But you had to keep up with the FNUGs. Some percentage of them were going to make it and thus become useful, and besides, he liked the look of this pair. Smart eyes, but none of that showboat crap some of the other young hardies tried to pull. Plus, if he remembered correctly, they were both HBS like him.

“How you boys doing tonight?” he said.

They stammered over some social nonsense then fell completely silent as a cloud of perfume wafted in. Sean glanced behind his shoulder and then smiled honestly for the first time since walking into the gala.

“My lovely, Elena,” he murmured, leaning down and kissing the smooth cheek of a stunning brunette. As she greeted him in Italian and he replied, he could positively feel the hero worship coming at him from the young guys. He glanced at them. “Will you excuse us?”

“Of course, Mr. O’Banyon.”

“Absolutely, Mr. O’Banyon.”

“Wait up,” he said on impulse as they turned away. “You two want in on some fun?”

Frick blinked. “Ah, yes, sir.”

“Call my assistant tomorrow morning. She’ll put you in touch with the Condi-Food analysts and they’ll find you a little slice of the deal to work on. Don’t worry about your boss. I’ll call Harry and tell him you’re going to come play with me for a while.”

As their eyes bugged as if they’d been goosed by a pair of pliers, Sean smiled. Man, he remembered what that felt like. To be young and green and desperate to be given a shot at the big time…and have a door opened.

The thank-yous from them started to roll fast as marbles on a bare floor. “No problem,” Sean said, then narrowed his eyes. “Just stay tight and use your brains and everything will be fine.”

He turned his attention to Elena. She looked very beautiful tonight, dressed in a red sheath with her hair up high on her head. Rubies glowed from her neck and her earlobes.

“Sean,” she said with her lovely accent, “I have a favor to ask you.”

“What, baby?” As she smiled, he had to imagine that no one ever called her baby. She was a descendent of the Medicis and as rich as her ancestors had been back in the Middle Ages. The thing was, though, in spite of her bloodline and her money, she was a very nice person. They’d met years ago and had shared an immediate, mutual respect.

“Excuse me,” one of the photographers cut in. “May I take a picture?”

Sean flipped into social mode, gathering Elena against him and staring into the lens. There was a flash, a thank-you from the guy, and then he and Elena went back to their conversation.

“What kind of favor do you need?” Sean asked.

“An escort to the Hall Foundation Gala.”

Oh, okay, he knew what this was all about. Her recent marital separation had been messy and public and had involved infidelity on her husband’s side. To top it off, the guy was trying to suck tens of millions of dollars out of her in the divorce…despite the fact that he was still with the masseuse he’d gotten pregnant.

The details of the split had been written up in Vanity Fair and New York Magazine, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Everyone on the A-list circuit was talking about what had happened and not with kindness. They were whispering that Elena had gone out and bought herself a younger man then hadn’t been able to keep him. And that he’d wandered because she couldn’t have children. And that Elena was a cold fish.

Sean didn’t know about the kids part, but he was certain that she’d been passionately in love with her husband when they’d gotten married. Too bad everyone else seemed to have forgotten that.

God, Manhattan could be a very cold place even if you lived in a penthouse on Park Avenue with perfectly good heating and ventilation. All it took was for your private life to become the scandal du jour and you became fodder, not friend. And gossip was like chum to the social sharks, sure to attract a frenzy.

If Elena didn’t show up at the Hall Foundation Gala? She’d look as if she were weak and that would only incite the harping more. But if she arrived at the event with him, she’d appear strong and desirable.

He reached out and took her hand. “I’m there for you. One hundred percent.”

She positively sagged with relief. “Thank you. This has been a very difficult time.”

He pulled her forward and tucked her into his body as a friend or a brother would, for comfort. “You don’t worry about a thing.”

When his phone started to ring in his breast pocket, he took it out. The 617 area code made him frown because he didn’t recognize the rest of the caller’s number.

“I’ll let you take that,” Elena said, kissing him on the cheek. “And seriously, Sean…thank you.”

“Don’t go, baby. This’ll just take a sec.” He accepted the call. “Yeah?”

The pause that followed was broken by the wail of an ambulance siren. Then a female voice said, “Sean O’Banyon?”

“Who is this and how did you get this number?”

“My name is Elizabeth Bond. I got it from your voice mail. I’m…I’m so very sorry to tell you this…but your father has passed.”

All at once, the sounds of the party drained away. The patter of talk, the winding chords of the chamber orchestra, the trilling laughter of a woman nearby—all of it disappeared as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over everything. And then the sight of the 150 people before him fogged out until he was alone in the vast room.

In fact, the very fabric of reality disintegrated until it seemed as if the world had become an intangible dreamscape and him a formless vapor: he couldn’t feel the floor under his feet or the phone in his palm or the weight of his body. Nor could he remember what he was doing in this room full of crystal chandeliers and too much perfume.

“When?” The heavy word came out of his mouth without benefit of conscious thought.

“Less than an hour ago. He suffered a second heart attack.”

“When was the first?”

“Six days ago.”

“Six days ago?” he asked in an utterly level tone.

There was a hesitation, as if the woman on the other end was unsure what his mental state was. Funny, that made two of them.

She cleared her throat. “Immediately following his first, he was taken by ambulance here to Mass General, and though he was revived, the damage to his heart muscle was extensive. Following an angiogram, it was revealed that he had multiple blockages, but he was not stable enough for surgery.”

Dimly, Sean heard the sound of ice tinkling in a glass and he looked down. His hand was shaking so badly his Tanqueray and tonic might as well have been in a blender. He leaned to the side and put the drink down on a table.

“What happens to him now?” he asked, shoving his hand in his pocket.

“He will be held here at Mass General until the family makes arrangements.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Mr. O’Banyon? Will you be making arrangements? Um…hello?”

“Yes, I will. I’ll fly up tonight. What do I need to do once I’m at the hospital?” As she proceeded to tell him who to call and where to go at MGH, he wasn’t tracking. The only thing that stuck was that he could phone the general information number if he needed help or had further questions.

“I’m very sorry,” the woman said and she obviously meant it. There was true sorrow in her voice. “I—”

“Are you a nurse?”

“Yes, I am. But your father wasn’t a patient of mine. He was—”

“Thank you for calling me. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls. Goodbye.”

He hung up and stared at his phone. Obviously his father had listed him as next of kin, which explained how the woman had gotten the number.

“Sean? Is everything all right?”

He glanced at Elena. It took a moment or two for him to recognize her, but eventually her worried mahogany eyes got through to him. “My father is dead.”

As she gasped and put her hand on his arm, a booming voice barreled through the crowd at them. “Sean O’Banyon, as I live and breathe!”

Sean turned to see the owner of a shipping conglomerate lumbering over like a bear through the woods. The man was as ungainly as the mega-ton freight haulers he put out on the oceans and he had the mouth of a longshoreman. In typical Manhattan fashion, he was welcome here tonight only because he’d given five million dollars to the cause.

“I’ll handle him,” Elena whispered. “You, go now.”

Sean nodded and took off, heading for the back exit while trying to dodge all the people who wanted things from him. As he fought through the crowd, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe and a curious panic set in.

When he finally burst outside through a fire door, he had to lean down and put his hands on his knees. Drawing the sultry summer air down his throat and into his lungs only made the suffocation worse and he wrenched at his tie.

Dead. His father was dead.

He and his brothers were finally free.

Sean forced himself to stand up like a man and pushed a hand through his hair to try and clear his brain. Yeah…freedom had come with that phone call.

Hadn’t it?

Tilting his head back, he measured the lack of stars in the sky and thought about the inflection in the nurse’s words, the sadness and the regret.

How appropriate that the person mourning his father was a stranger.

God knew, his sons would never be able to.

Chapter Two

Lizzie hung up her cell phone and stared at the thing. Through the din of what sounded like a party, Mr. O’Banyon’s son had been totally detached, his voice giving away no emotion at all. Then again, she was a stranger and the news had not been good or expected. He was no doubt in shock.

She’d wanted to find out when and where the funeral would be held, but that hadn’t seemed like an appropriate thing to bring up. Worst came to worst she could always call him later.

An ambulance went by her, its lights flashing red and white, its siren letting out a single squawk as it left the Mass General complex and headed out onto Cambridge Avenue. The sight of it got her moving and she started for the parking garage. Part of her wanted to stay here and wait for the son to arrive, but it would take him hours to get into town. Plus it appeared that he was the type who’d rather deal with things on his own.

Besides, it was time to go to her second job.

Lizzie jogged across the road and took two flights of concrete stairs up to the second story of the garage. When she found her old Toyota Camry in the lines of cars, she unlocked it with a key as the remote no longer worked, and put Mr. O’Banyon’s things on the backseat. Getting behind the wheel, she figured she’d leave the bag by the upstairs apartment’s door for the son along with a note that if there was anything she could do to help she was always available.

The drive from Beacon Hill to Chinatown took her on a straight shot up Charles Street, then a jog around the Commons, followed by a scoot past Emerson College. Down farther, opposite one of the Big Dig’s gaping mouths, was Boston Medical Center. Affiliated with Boston University, BMC was a busy urban hospital and its emergency department saw a lot of action. Particularly, and tragically, of the gunshot and stabbing variety.

She’d been moonlighting in the ED three nights a week for the past year because, though she worked days at the health clinic in Roxbury, she needed the extra income. Her mother lived in an artist’s world of color and texture and not much reality, so Lizzie helped her out a lot, covering her expenses, paying bills, making sure she had enough money. To Alma Bond, the world was a place of beauty and magic; practical matters rarely permeated her fog of inspiration.

The extra income was also for Lizzie, however. Earlier in the year, she’d applied and been accepted into a master’s program for public health. Though she couldn’t afford to start this fall, her plan was to save up over the next few months and matriculate in the winter session.

Except now she wondered whether she needed to find a new place to live. Would Mr. O’Banyon’s son hold on to the duplex? If he sold it, would her new landlord ask for more in rent? How would she find something equally inexpensive?

After driving through BMC’s parking garage, Lizzie squeezed the Toyota in between two mountain-size SUVs and took a last look at Mr. O’Banyon’s things. Then she got out, locked the car and strode toward the bank of elevators.

As she waited for the metal doors to slide open, Sean O’Banyon’s hard tone and emotionless words came back to her.

Maybe that hadn’t been shock. Maybe that had been genuine disregard.

God, what could cause a father and son to lose touch to such a degree?

It was 3:16 in the morning when Sean stopped his rental car in front of the Southie row house where he and his brothers had grown up.

The duplex looked exactly the same: two stories of nothing special sided in an ugly pale blue. Front porch was a shallow lip of a thing, more a landing than a place to sit outside. Upstairs was all dark. Downstairs had what looked like a single lamp on in the living room.

He wondered who was staying in the bottom unit now. They’d always rented it out and clearly that was still the practice.

With a twist of his wrist, Sean turned the engine off, took the key out of the ignition then eased back in the seat.

On the flight from Teterboro to Logan, he’d made two phone calls, both of which had dumped into voice mail. The first had been to his younger brother, Billy, who was traveling around to preseason games with the rest of the New England Patriots football team. The second was to an international exchange that was the only way he had to get in touch with Mac. The oldest O’Banyon boy was a special forces soldier in the U.S. Army so God only knew where he was at any given time.

Sean had told them both to call him back as soon as they got the message.

He looked up to the second story of the house and felt his skin tighten around his bones and muscles. Man, Pavlov had been right about trained responses to stimuli. Even though Sean was a grown man, as he stared at the windows of his childhood apartment, he felt his ten-year-old self’s terror.

Dropping his head, he rubbed his eyes. The damn things felt as if they had sawdust in them and his temples were pounding.

But then stress’ll do that to you.

He so didn’t want to go into that house. Probably should have stayed at the Four Seasons, which was what he usually did when he was in town. Except on some molecular level, he needed to see the old place even though he hated it. Needed to go inside.

It was like peeling back a Band-Aid and checking out a cut.

With a curse, he grabbed his leather duffel as well as the two bags of groceries he’d bought at a twenty-four-hour Star Market, then opened the car door and stood up.

Boston smelled different than New York. Always had. Tonight, the brine of the ocean was especially heavy in the air, buffered by the sweet sweat of summer’s humidity. As his nose ate up the scent, his brain registered it as home.

He followed the short concrete walkway up to the house then long-legged the five steps to the shallow front porch. He didn’t have a key, but as always, there was one tucked behind the flimsy metal mailbox that was tacked onto the aluminum siding.

The door opened with the exact same squeak he remembered, and, hearing the hinge complain, his blood turned into icy slush.

That squeak had always been the warning, the call to listen hard for what came next. If it was a door closing underneath them, he and his brothers would take a deep breath because it was just the tenants coming home. But if it was footsteps on the stairs? That meant pure panic and running for cover.

As he stepped inside the foyer, Sean’s heart started to jackrabbit in his chest and sweat broke out on his forehead.

Except, damn it, he was thirty-six years old and the man was dead. Nothing could hurt him here anymore. Nothing.

Uh-huh, right. Too bad his body didn’t know this. As he went up the staircase, his knees were weak and his gut was a lead balloon. And God, the sound of the wood creaking under his soles was awful in his ears. The dirge of his approach was the same as when his father had come home, and hearing his own footsteps now, he remembered the fear he had felt as a boy as the thundering noise grew louder and louder.

At the top of the landing he put his hand on the doorknob and the key in the lock. Before he went in, he told himself this was only a door and he wasn’t stepping back into his past. The space-time continuum just didn’t work that way. Thank God.

But he was still in a cold sweat as he opened up and walked in.

When he turned on the lights, he was amazed. Everything was exactly the same: the tattered Barcalounger with the TV tray right next to it; the rumpled couch with its faded flower print; the 1970s lamps that were as big as oil drums and just as ugly; the crucifix on the wall, the yellowed, exhausted lace drapery.

The air was stuffy in spite of the air conditioner that was humming, so he cracked open a window. The place smelled of cigarette smoke, but it was the kind of thing left over after a four-pack-a-day addict stops. The stench lingered, embedded in the room’s paint and flooring and fabrics, but wasn’t in the air itself.

As the breeze came in, he walked over to the TV tray and picked up the Boston Globe crossword puzzle that was mostly done. The date in the upper right-hand corner was from the previous Sunday, the last time his father had sat in the chair with a pencil in hand filling in little boxes with wobbly, capitalized letters.

Going by the script, it seemed as if his father had had hand tremors. Odd, to picture him as anything other than brutally strong.

Sean put the paper down and forced himself to walk through every room. It was about halfway through the tour when he realized something was different.

Everything was clean.

The cramped kitchen was tidy, no dirty dishes in the sink, no trash collecting in the Rubbermaid bin in the corner, no food left out on the counters. The room he’d shared with Billy had both beds made and a vacuumed rug. Mac’s bedroom was just as neat. Their father’s private space was likewise in wilted but tidy condition.

Back when Sean had lived here, there had been cobwebs in the corners of the rooms and dirt tracked in the front door and beds with rumpled sheets and dust everywhere. There had also been a lot of empty bottles.

With a compulsion he couldn’t fight, Sean went through all the closets and cupboards and dressers in the apartment. He looked under each bed and the couch. Checked behind the TV and then went into the kitchen and moved the refrigerator out from the wall.

Not one single booze bottle. Not one beer can.

No alcohol in the place.

As he threw his shoulder into the fridge and forced the thing back into place, he was flat-out amazed. He’d never have thought their father could kick the sauce. The drinking had been as much a part of him as his dark hair and the hard tone of his voice.

Sean stalled out, but then went into the living room and figured it was time to score some shut-eye. First thing tomorrow, he was going to make arrangements with Finnegan’s Funeral Home for the cremation and the interment. After that, he’d have to pack up the apartment. No question they would sell the duplex. There was no reason to come back here ever again.

He glanced around. God, how long had it been since he’d stood in this room?

As he went through the years, he was surprised to realize it had been all the way back when he’d gone away to Harvard as a freshman. Made sense though. College had been his ticket out, and once he didn’t have to sleep under this roof, he’d made damn sure he never showed up again. It had been the same for Billy when he’d gotten a football scholarship to Holy Cross. And for Mac, who’d joined the army the very month Billy went off to college. They’d all left and never returned.

Go figure.

Sean went over to his duffel, stripped down to his boxers and grabbed his toothbrush. After he hit the bathroom in the hall, he picked a pillow off his old bed and headed for the couch.

No way in hell he was sleeping in his room.

Lying flat on his back in the dark, he thought of the penthouse he lived in down in Manhattan. Park Avenue in the seventies, a perfect address. And everything in that showstopper of a place was sleek and expensive, from the furniture to the drapes to the kitchen appliances to that million-dollar view of Central Park.

It was about as far away from where he was now as was humanly possible.

Sean screwed his lids down, crossed his arms over his chest and concentrated on going to sleep.

Yeah, right.

He lasted not even ten minutes before he was on his bare feet and pacing up and down over the knobby area rug.

Lizzie parked the Toyota in front of the row house and got out with the bag of Mr. O’Banyon’s things. Her feet were killing her and she had a headache from having had too many coffees, but at least she didn’t have to be at the clinic until noon today because she was working the later shift.

As she stepped onto the duplex’s concrete walkway, she stopped and looked up. No lights were on upstairs, but that wasn’t because someone was sleeping. It was because no one lived there anymore.

Tears stung her eyes. It was hard to imagine her cranky old friend gone. Hard to internalize the fact that there would be no more blue glow from his TV at night, no more sound of him shuffling about, no more trips to buy him the chocolate ice cream he liked.

No more talking to him the way a daughter talked to a gruff father.

She tightened her grip on the bag’s handles and hoped he hadn’t struggled at the end, hadn’t felt horrible pain and fear. She wished for him a peaceful slide as he passed, not a bumpy, frightening fall.

As she went up to the house, she felt as if there was a draft licking around her body, as if the night had turned frigid though it was in fact balmy.

It was just so hard to come home this morning. To her, there was only empty space above her now. The man whose life had animated the furniture and the objects in the other apartment was gone and the silence overhead was only going to remind her of what had been lost.

After Lizzie let herself into her place, she put her keys in a dish on her little painted table and shut the door. She was setting down the plastic bag when she froze.

Someone was walking around upstairs.

Her first thought was totally illogical: for a split second, she was sure that someone had made a mistake with Mr. O’Banyon and he’d been discharged because he was perfectly healthy.

Her second thought was that a burglar had broken in.

Except then she realized whoever it was was pacing. Back. Forth. Back. Forth.

The son had come into town.

She started for the door, but then stopped because going up to see him was ridiculous. Though she’d been close to the guy’s father, she didn’t know the son at all and it was just before dawn, for heaven’s sake. Hardly the time for a sympathy call.

After she took a shower, she sat in her living room with a bowl of corn flakes in her lap. Instead of eating the cereal, she played with it until it turned to mush, and listened to the man above her wear out the floorboards.

Twenty minutes later, she put on a pair of jeans and went up the stairwell.

The moment she knocked, the pacing stopped. Just in case he thought she was a burglar, she said, “Hello? Mr.—ah, Sean O’Banyon?”

Nothing could have prepared her for who opened that door.

The man on the other side of the jamb stood about six inches taller than her and wore nothing but a pair of boxers and a whole lot of muscle. With a gold cross hanging from his neck, an old tattoo on his left pec and a scar on one of his shoulders, he looked a little dangerous…especially in the face. His hazel eyes were sharp as razors, his jaw set as if he was used to being in charge, his lips nothing but a tight, hard line.

She could totally imagine the cold tone she’d heard over her phone coming out of that mouth.

“Yeah?” His voice was very deep.

“I’m Lizzie—Elizabeth Bond. I talked to you today—yesterday. I live downstairs.”

All at once his face eased up. “Ah, hell. I’m making too much noise, aren’t I? Worse, I’ve been at it for a while.” His South Boston accent flattened out his vowels and sharpened his consonants. Funny, she hadn’t noticed the intonation over the phone, but it was clear as day now. And she’d seen him somewhere. Then again, it was probably because he looked like his father.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m sorry and I’ll cut it out.”

“Oh, that wasn’t why I came up. And I just got home from my shift so I missed most of the pacing.” She took a deep breath and smelled…whoa, a very nice cologne. “I’m truly sorry about your loss and I—”

“Hey, you want some breakfast?”

“Excuse me?”

“Breakfast.” As he pushed a hand through his thick dark hair, his bicep flexed up and the gleaming cross shifted between his pecs. “I’m not going to sleep anytime soon and I’m hungry.”

“Oh…well…that’s not necessary.”

“Of course it isn’t. But you just got home from work, didn’t you?”

“Ah, yes.”

“So you’re probably hungry, too, right?”

Come to think of it she was.

“And I’ll even put my pants on for you, Elizabeth.”

Absurdly, a rush went through her. And she had the illicit, inappropriate thought that while he was making love to a woman, his voice would sound fantastic in the ear.

God, how could she even think like that?

“Lizzie,” she said, walking in. “I go by Lizzie.”

Sean tracked the woman as she went by him, very aware of her smooth, gliding stride. Tall and lean, she was wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a four-sizes-too-big Red Sox T-shirt he was willing to bet she’d be sleeping in later. Her shoulder-length blond hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense way and the ends were damp as if she’d just showered. She smelled of Ivory soap.

Which he liked.

“Lizzie it is, then,” he said as he closed the door. “And you can call me Sean, of course.”

As he spoke, he realized his Southie accent had resurfaced and it was strange to hear the speech pattern of his childhood back in his words again. During his years at Harvard, he’d assiduously tamed the telltale rs and learned a different, less regional way of talking.

Less regional. Ha. Try more upper-class.

Lizzie stopped in the middle of the room, her pale green stare going over everything as if she were inspecting the place. She had smart eyes, he thought.

“So you’re a nurse?” he said.

“I am, but I wasn’t treating your father. I was a friend of his.”

Had he heard that right? “A friend.”

“Yes. I’ve lived downstairs for the past two years so we got to know each other. He was lonely.”

“Was he.”

“Very.” As she nodded, she ran her hand over the back of the Barcalounger. “We had dinner together a lot.”

For some reason, the sight of her touching his father’s chair creeped him out.

“Well, then, I guess you know the way to the kitchen.” Sean reached into his duffel for some jeans. “You mind if I don’t put on a shirt? Damn hot up here.”

He was surprised when she blushed. “Oh…no. I mean, yes, that’s fine.”

As she headed out of the room, he pulled on his pants and thought of his father.

Lonely. Yeah, right. Not with this tenant around. Eddie O’Banyon had been a loner by nature, but it was funny how a pretty young woman could get a man to feeling sociable.

And she’d obviously spent a lot of time up here. Not only did she know where the kitchen was, but along the way, she shifted the edge of a cheap picture that had tilted off center and straightened a pile of mail. He had the feeling she was the reason the place was so clean.

While Sean worked his way up his button fly, he was willing to bet she was also the reason his father had gotten off the booze, too. Nothing like love or some serious attraction to the opposite sex to turn a guy around. At least temporarily.

Except what had she seen in him?

Sean cursed under his breath. Like he had to even ask that? On impulse, he removed his gold watch and tucked it into his duffel. If she’d been attracted to what little cash his father had had, there was no reason for her to know he was swimming in the stuff.

As he went into the kitchen, he wondered if she knew who he was. He figured chances were fifty/fifty. His face had been in the newspapers often enough, but it was the kind of thing that, unless you were into the world of high finance, you’d probably overlook. Although maybe his father had mentioned something.

Not that Eddie had known much.

“So cop a seat and I’ll cook for you,” Sean said, nodding to the table in the center of the room. “All I got are eggs and bacon, but the good thing is that’s hard to screw up.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He went to where the frying pan had always been kept and what do you know, the thing was still there. “Scrambled okay?”

“Fine.”

As he got the bacon going and grabbed the eggs out of the fridge, he kept his tone casual. “So you knew my old man well, huh?”

“He was very kind to me.”

I’ll bet. “You lived here two years, you said?”

“Since I got out of nursing school. I wasn’t around much as I work at a clinic in Roxbury and I moonlight at BMC a lot, but we spent some time together.” A sad smile lifted her mouth. “Your father always said I worked too hard.”

Did he? What a prince. “And you took care of this place, too, didn’t you? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. He never was into housekeeping when I knew him.”

“Well, at first he wouldn’t let me. But after a while, he needed help.” She cleared her throat. “When was the last time you saw him? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“A while. He told you not to call me until it was over, right?”

As she stayed quiet, he cracked eggs into a bowl and started to beat them with a fork. The choppy, liquid sound cut through her silence.

He looked over his shoulder. “Didn’t he?”

“Yes. It felt wrong not to, but I respected his wishes.”

When her green eyes lifted to his, he stopped dead.

Check out that stare, he thought. So compassionate. So…kind.

As he looked at her face, something popped in his chest, like a lid being released. And what came out of his inner soda can was a yearning that unsettled him. He literally wanted to dive right into those warm eyes of hers.

“I think the bacon is burning,” she said.

He cursed and got back with the program. As he transferred the strips onto a paper towel–covered plate, he asked, “So where are you from?”

“The north shore. Essex. My mother is still up there.” Lizzie laughed a little. “I was hoping to introduce your father to her. Maybe they could have been friends. But your father liked to keep to himself.”

Or maybe keep Lizzie to himself? “You got a husband or a boyfriend there, Lizzie?”

As she blushed again, he became absorbed in the pink tint on her face. To the point that when she dipped her head, he found himself leaning to the side so he could keep measuring her cheeks.

Man, the women he knew in Manhattan did not blush and he realized he liked it. Or hell, maybe he just liked this particular woman turning red.

“Lizzie? Was my question too personal?”

“Not at all. I don’t have a husband. Or boyfriend. Too busy.”

Good, he thought. Then frowned.

Wait a minute. Not good. Doesn’t matter. None of his business.

Besides, maybe she’d been saving herself for his father. God, what a cringer that was.

“What about you?” she asked. “Are you married?”

“Nope. Not my thing.”

“Why not?”

Well, there were a whole bunch of why nots. The first of which was prenups could be broken and he had no intention of someone in stilettos walking off with his hard-earned cash. More than that, though, you had to trust your wife wouldn’t play you. And he’d long ago lost the illusion that faith in lovers or business associates could be justified.

Hell, maybe he’d never had it. His two brothers were really the only people on the planet he believed in.

“No particular reason,” he said, dumping the eggs into the pan. As a hiss rose up from the hot iron, he tacked on, “Other than I’m a loner.”

She smiled. “Like your father.”

He whipped his head around. “I am nothing like my father.”

As she recoiled, he didn’t apologize. Some things needed to be stated clearly and he was not like that abusive, drunken bastard on any level.

“You like a lot of pepper in your eggs?” he said to fill up the silence.

Chapter Three

Sean O’Banyon might be a little touchy about his father, but he made a very good breakfast, Lizzie thought, as she put her fork on her clean plate and eased back in the chair.

Wiping her mouth on a paper towel, she glanced across the table. Sean was still eating, but then again he had twice the food she’d taken to get through. And he was slow and meticulous with his meal, which surprised her. He seemed like the kind of tough guy who wouldn’t bother with good table manners. But his were beautiful.

And…boy, yeah, the way he ate wasn’t the only beautiful thing about him. That chest of his was sinfully good to look at. So were his thick eyelashes. And his mouth—

Lizzie cursed in her head. What was her problem? The man asks her in for breakfast right after his father dies and she’s checking him out as if he were an eHarmony candidate?

Then again, it was probably biology talking. After all, when had she last been alone with a man? As she counted up the months, then hit the one-year, then two-year mark, she winced.

Two and a half years ago? How had that happened?

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked, obviously catching her expression.

Yeah, like she was going to parade her Death Valley dating life in front of him? “Oh, nothing.”

“So what was I about to ask you? Oh…your mother. You said she’s still up in Essex?”

“Ah, yes, she is. She’s an artist and she loves living by the sea. She keeps busy painting and sketching and trying out just about every kind of creative endeavor you can think of.”

To keep her eyes off him, Lizzie folded her paper napkin into a precise square—and thought about her mother’s origami period. That year, the Christmas tree had been covered with pointy-headed swans and razor-edged stars. Most of them had been off-kilter, mere approximations of what they were supposed to be, but her mother had adored them, and because of that, Lizzie had loved them, as well.

For no particular reason, she said, “My mother is what they used to call fey. Lovely and…”

“All in her head?”

“Precisely.”

“So you take care of her, huh? She relies on you for the practical stuff.”

As Lizzie flushed, she murmured, “Either you’re very perceptive, or I’m quite transparent.”

“Little bit of both, I think.”

As he smiled, her heart tripped and fell into her gut. Oh…God, he was handsome.

“How long are you in town?” she blurted. And then couldn’t believe she’d asked. It wasn’t that the question was forward on the surface, but more because she was angling to see him again in a situation just like this. The two of them alone.

Can you say desperate, she thought.

“I’m going back to the city tomorrow—well, that’s today, isn’t it?” He wiped his mouth and took a drink from his glass of orange juice. “But I’ll be back. I’ve got to clean out this place.”

“Are you going to sell?”

“No reason to keep it. But I’ll make sure you’re in the loop.”

“Thank you. I really liked living here.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to leave. I can’t believe anyone would want to turn this into a one-family.”

“I think I’m going to want to move, though.”

“Why?”

She looked around. “It won’t be the same without him.”

Sean frowned and fell silent so she got up and took both their plates to the sink. As she washed them with a sponge she’d bought a week and a half ago, she tried not to think that Mr. O’Banyon had still been alive back then.

“So you and my father were real tight, huh?”

She held a plate under the rushing water. “We used to watch TV together. And we always ate dinner up here on Sundays. We also looked out for each other. It was nice to think someone wondered whether or not I made it back from my night shifts. Made me feel safer.”

And cared for.

With her mother, Lizzie had always been the watcher, the worrier, the keeper…even when she’d been young. For the time she had known Mr. O’Banyon, it had been really nice to be something other than a ghost on the periphery of someone’s artistic inspiration.

Feeling awkward, she asked, “So do you live right in Manhattan?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there,” she murmured as she put the plate in the drying rack. “It seems so exciting and glamorous.”

“City’s not far from here. Just drive down some time.”

She shook her head, thinking of the time she would have to take off from work. “I couldn’t really afford to. With two jobs, my hours are long and my mother needs the money more than I need a vacation. Besides, who am I kidding? I’m a homebody at heart.”

“And you were happy being a homebody here. With my father.”

She picked up a towel and began to dry what she’d washed. “Yes, I was.”

“Were you lovers?”

“What?” She nearly dropped the skillet. “Why would you think that?”

His eyes were cold and cynical as he said, “Not unheard-of.”

“Maybe to you. We were friends. Good Lord…”

She quickly put away the dishes, hung up the towel and headed for the exit. “Thank you for breakfast.”

He rose from the table. “Elizabeth—”

“Lizzie.” She stepped around him pointedly. “Just Lizzie.”

He took her arm in a firm grip. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

She leveled her stare on his hard face. His apology seemed sincere enough; though his eyes remained remote, they didn’t waver from hers and his tone was serious.

She reminded herself that he was under a lot of stress and it was four—well, almost five in the morning. She cleared her throat. “It’s all right. This is a hard time for you right now.”

“Hard time for you, too, right?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “Very. I’m going to miss him.”

Sean reached out and touched her cheek, surprising her. “You know something?”

“What?”

“A woman like you should have someone waiting up for her, Lizzie.”

In a flash, she became totally aware of him down to the details of his beard’s dark shadow and the hazel of his eyes and…

And the fact that he was looking at her mouth.

From out of nowhere, an arc of heat supercharged the air between their bodies and Lizzie had to part her lips to breathe.

Except just as she did, his face masked over and he dropped her arm. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

He turned away as if nothing had happened.

Okay…so had she just imagined all that?

Apparently.

Lizzie forced herself to walk out of the kitchen and found him standing next to the apartment’s open door. As if she’d overstayed her welcome.

As Sean waited for Lizzie to come from the kitchen, he figured he either needed to put his long-tailed button-down shirt on or get her out of here. Because his body was stating its opinion of her loud and clear, and he didn’t want to embarrass the poor woman.

He was totally, visibly aroused. And the quick rearrange he’d done as he’d walked through the living room had only helped so much.

Then things got worse. As she came over, he started to wonder exactly what was under that baggy shirt of hers—and his “problem” got harder.

“Are you going to have a funeral for him?” she asked.

Well, at least that question slapped him back to reality.

“No. He’ll be cremated and interred next to my mother. Told me ten years ago he didn’t want any kind of memorial service.” Man, that had been an ugly phone call. His father had been drunk at the time, naturally, and had maintained he didn’t want his three sons dancing on his coffin.

Sean had hung up at that point.

“That’s a shame.” Lizzie tucked a piece of blond hair behind her ear. “For both of you. People should be remembered. Fathers should be remembered.”

As those green eyes met his, they were like looking into a still pond, gentle, calming, warm. Teamed with the heat that had sprung up in his blood, the impact of her compassionate stare was like getting sucker punched: a surprise that numbed him out.

Unease snaked through him. Stripped of defenses and vaguely needy was not what he wanted to be, not around anyone.

His voice grew harsh. “Oh, I’ll remember him, all right. Good night, Lizzie.”

She quickly looked away and scooted past him. As she hit the stairs at a fast clip, she spoke over her shoulder. “Goodbye, Sean.”

Sean shut the door, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. As he thought about his arousal, he reminded himself that there was nothing mystical or unusual at work here. Lizzie was attractive. He was half-naked. They were alone. Do the math.

Except there was something else, wasn’t there?

He thought back to the past. Though his memories of his mother were indistinct, he recalled her as warm and kind, the quintessential maternal anchor. From what he’d learned about her, she’d come from a very good family who’d disowned her when she’d married a blue-collar Irish Catholic. Her parents had even refused to come to her memorial service.

Back when she’d still been around, their father had been relatively stable, but that had changed after she’d died when Sean was five. After they’d buried her, all hell had broken loose and hard drinking had moved into the apartment like a mean houseguest. Turned out Anne had been the glue that had held Eddie together. Without her, he’d spiraled fast, hit bottom hard and never resurfaced.

Sean stared at the Barcalounger.

Dimly, he heard the water come on downstairs and he imagined Lizzie brushing her teeth over a sink. When the whining rush was cut off, he saw her stripping off those jeans and sliding between clean white sheets.

She looked like the kind of woman who had sensible sheets.

She hadn’t been his father’s lover, he thought. The outrage on her face had been too spontaneous, the offense too quick. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been stringing Eddie along for money.

God, one look into those green eyes and even Sean had been hypnotized.

Picturing her face, he was surprised that he wanted to believe she was a well of compassion and goodness. But the Mother Teresa routine was tough to buy. That talk about wanting to go to Manhattan, but needing to hold down two jobs to help out her fey, artistic mother? It was almost Dickensian.

He went back over to the couch and lay down. As he put his arm under his head, a small voice he didn’t trust told him he was reading her wrong. He ignored the whisper, chalking it up to the fact that he was off-kilter because he was back in his father’s place.

When his cell phone went off at 6:00 a.m., he was still awake, having watched the sun rise behind the veil of the old lace drapes.

Sitting up, he grabbed his BlackBerry and checked the number. “Billy.”

His brother’s low voice came through loud and clear. “I was crashed when you called and just woke up for practice. Are you okay—”

“He’s dead, Billy.” He didn’t need to use any better word than he. There was only one him among the three O’Banyon brothers.

As a long, slow exhale came over the phone, Sean wished he’d told Billy in person.

“When?” Billy asked.

“Last night. Heart attack.”

“You call Mac?”

“Yeah. But God knows when he’ll get the message.”

“Where are you?”

“Home frickin’ sweet home.”

There was a sharp inhale. “You shouldn’t be there. That’s not a good place.”

Sean looked around and couldn’t agree more. “Trust me, I’m leaving as soon as I can.”

“Is there anything I—”

“Nah. There’s not much to do. Finnegan’s will handle the cremation and he’ll be interred next to Mom. I’ll go back and forth until I’ve packed everything up here and put the house on the market. I mean, I don’t want to keep this place.”

“Neither do I. Mac’ll agree.”

In the long silence that followed, Sean knew he and his brother were remembering exactly the same kinds of things.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Billy finally said.

“Me, too.”

After they hung up, Sean felt exhaustion settle on him like a suit of chain mail. Stretching out on the sofa, he closed his lids and gave up fighting the past, letting the memories fill the space behind his eyes. Though he was six foot four and worth about a billion dollars, in the dimness, on this couch, in the apartment that had been a hell for him and his brothers, he was as small as a child and just as powerless.

So he was not at all surprised when two hours later he woke up screaming and covered in sweat. The nightmare, the one he’d had for years, had come for another visit.

Jacking upright, he gasped and rubbed his face. The summer morning was bright and cheerful, the light barging into the living room through the windows like a four-year-old wanting to play.

Amid the lovely sunshine, he felt positively elderly.

In a desperate, misplaced bid to cleanse his mind, he took a shower. Didn’t help. No matter how hard he worked his body with soap, he couldn’t lose the head spins about the past. It felt as if he were trapped in a car on a closed track, going around and around without getting anywhere.

As he stepped out of the water and toweled off, he knew his best hope was that his mind would run out of gas. Soon.

Man, he couldn’t wait to get back to Manhattan tonight.

Chapter Four

Two days later, Lizzie lost her job at the Roxbury Community Heath Initiative.

It was the end of a long Friday and she was in the medical-records room when her boss came to find her. “Lizzie? You have a minute?”

She glanced up from the patient charts she was pulling. Dr. Denisha Roberts, the clinic’s director, was in the doorway looking exhausted. Which made sense. It was almost five in the afternoon and it had been a week full of challenges. As usual, finances were very tight and their waiting room busier than ever.

Lizzie frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you come down to my office?”

Lizzie hugged the chart in her hands against her chest and followed Denisha to the back of the clinic. After they’d gone into the office and Lizzie was in a chair, the director took a deep breath, then shut the door.

“I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to come right out with it.” Denisha sat on the edge of her desk, her dark eyes somber. “I’ve been informed that our funding from the state is going to be cut substantially for the upcoming year.”

“Oh, no…don’t tell me we’re closing. The community needs us.”

“We’ll have enough to stay open and I’m going to put some grant applications out there, which hopefully will generate some funds. But…I need to make some staffing changes.”

Lizzie closed her eyes. “Let me guess, first in, first out.”

“I’m so sorry, Lizzie. You make a tremendous contribution here, you really do, and I’m going to give you my highest recommendation. It’s just that with everyone else doing such a good job, seniority is the only thing I can base the choice on. And I have to make the cut now, before the funding shrinks, because we need that new X-ray machine.”

Lizzie smoothed her hand over the patient file in her arms. She knew exactly the person it detailed. Sixty-eight-year-old Adella Thomas, a grandmother of nine, who had bad asthma and a gospel voice that could charm the birds to the trees. Whenever one of Adella’s granddaughters brought her in for her checkups, she always sang for the staff as well as the patients in the waiting room.

“When’s my last day?” Lizzie asked.

“The end of this month. Labor Day weekend. And we’ll give you a month’s severance.” There was a hesitation. “We’re in real trouble, Lizzie. Please understand…this is killing me.”

She thought for a moment. “You know…I can line up moonlighting work easily enough. Why don’t we say a week from today so you can get me off the books? I’ll still have a month after that to find a day job.”

“That would be…the best thing you could do for us.” Denisha looked down at her hands then twisted her wedding band around and around. “I hate doing this. You can’t know how much we’ll miss you.”

“Maybe I can still volunteer.”

Denisha nodded her head sadly. “We’d love to have you. Any way we can.”

When Lizzie left the office a little later, she thought she was likely losing the best boss she’d ever have. Dr. Roberts had that rare combination of compassion and practicality that worked so well in medicine. She was also an inspiration, giving so much back to the community she’d grown up in. The joke around the center was that she should run for governor someday.

Except the staff really meant it.

Lizzie walked down to the medical-records room and finished pulling charts so that the Saturday-morning staff would be ready for their first five patients of the day. Then she grabbed her lunch tote from the kitchen, waved goodbye to the other nurses and headed out into the oven that was your typical early August evening in Boston.

On her way home, she called Boston Medical Center and asked her supervisor to put her on the sub list so she could hopefully log more hours in the ED. She would need a financial cushion if she couldn’t find another day job right away and she might as well prepare for the worst.

When she pulled up to the duplex, she told herself it was going to be fine. She had an excellent job history, and with the number of hospitals in and around Boston, she would secure another position in a week or two.

But God…wherever she ended up it wasn’t going to be as special as the clinic. There was just something about that place, probably because it was run more like an old-fashioned doctor’s office than a modern-day, insurance-driven, patient-churning business.

Lizzie’s mood lifted long enough for her to get through her front door, but the revival didn’t last as she hit the message button on her answering machine. Her mother’s voice, that singsong, perpetually cheerful, girlie rush, was like the chatter of a goldfinch.

Funny how draining such a pretty sound could be.

“Hi-ho, Lizzie-fish, I just had to call you because I’ve been looking at kilns today for my pottery, which is critical for my new direction in my work, which as you know has recently been drifting away from painting and into things of a more three-dimensional nature, which is really significant for my growth as an artist, which is…”

Lizzie’s mom used the word which as most people did a period.

As the message went on and on, Lizzie put her purse and her keys down and leafed through the mail. Bill. Bill. Flyer. Bill.

“Anyway, Lizzie-fish, I bought one this morning and it’s being delivered tomorrow. The credit card was broken so I wrote the check for two thousand dollars and I had to pay more for Saturday delivery….”

Lizzie froze. Then whipped her head around to stare at the machine. Two thousand dollars? Two thousand dollars? There wasn’t that kind of cash in their joint account. And it was after five so Lizzie couldn’t call the local bank to stop payment.

Her mother had just bounced that check good and hard.

Lizzie cut off the message and deleted it, then sat down in the quilt-covered armchair by the front bay windows.

The credit card was not “broken.” Lizzie had put a five-hundred-dollar limit on the thing precisely so her mother couldn’t charge things like kilns, for God’s sake.

At least this situation was repairable, though. First thing tomorrow morning, she’d call the bank and cancel that check, then she’d get in touch with the one art-supply store in Essex and tell them the purchase was off. Hopefully, she’d catch them in time.

A thump drifting down from above jerked Lizzie to attention. She looked at the ceiling then out the window. Another rental car was parked at the curb, this time a silver one, but she’d been too caught up in the drama over her job to notice when she’d arrived.

Sean O’Banyon was back.

Sean stood in his old bedroom and wondered how many boxes he’d need to clean out the space. On his way into Southie from the airport, he’d hit U-Haul and bought two dozen of their cardboard specials, but he was probably going to need more.

He went over and opened up the closet door then tugged on a white string that had a little metal crown at the end. The light clicked on and the dusty remnants of his and Billy’s high-school wardrobe were revealed. The two of them had shared clothes for years because Billy had always been so big for his age, and when Sean had left for college, they’d divvied up the best of the stuff. All that was left now was a wilted chamois shirt with a hole under one pit and a pair of khakis they’d both hated.

His cell phone rang and he answered it offhandedly, distracted by thoughts of his brother. It was the team of analysts from his office about the Condi-Foods merger, and he started to pace around as he answered their questions.

When he got off the phone with them, he looked back across the room at the closet and frowned. There was something shoved in the far corner of the upper shelf, something he’d missed on the booze hunt that first night he’d been here.

A backpack. His backpack.

He went over, stretched up and grabbed on to a pair of nylon straps. Whatever was in the damn thing weighed a ton, and as it swung loose from the shelf, he let it fall to the floor. As it landed, a little cloud of dust wafted up and dispersed.

Crouching down, he unzipped the top and his breath caught. Books…His books. The ones from his senior year in high school.

He took out his old physics tome, first smoothing his palm over the cover then fingering the gouge he’d made on the spine. Cracking the thing open, he put his nose into the crease and breathed in deep, smelling the sweet scent of ink on bound pages. After tracing over notes he’d made in the margins, he put it aside.

Good Lord, his calculus book. His AP chemistry. His AP history.

As he spread them out flat on the floor and arranged them so the tops of their multicolored covers were aligned, he had a familiar feeling, one he used to get in school. Looking at them he felt rich. Positively rich. In a childhood full of hand-me-downs and birthdays with no parties and Christmases with no presents, learning had been his luxury. His happiness. His wealth.

After countless petty thefts as a juvenile delinquent, these textbooks had been the last things he’d stolen. When the end of his senior school year had come, he just hadn’t been able to give them back and he hadn’t had the money to pay for them. So he’d marked each one of the spines and turned them in as you were supposed to. Then he’d broken into the school and the gouges he’d made had been how he’d found the ones that were his. He’d gathered them from the various stacks, put them in this backpack and raced away into the night.

Of course he’d felt guilty as hell. Strange that palming booze from convenience stores had never bothered his conscience, but he’d felt that the taking of the books had been wrong. So as soon as he’d earned enough from his campus job at Harvard, he’d sent the high school three hundred seventy-five dollars in cash with an anonymous note explaining what it was for.

But he’d needed to have the books. He’d needed to know they were still with him as he went off to Harvard. On some irrational level, he’d feared if he didn’t keep them, everything he’d learned from them would disappear, and he’d been terrified about going to Crimson and looking stupid.

Yeah, terrified was the right word. He could clearly recall the day he’d left to go to college…could remember every detail about getting on the T that late August afternoon and heading over the Charles River to Harvard. Unlike a lot of the other guys in his class, who’d come with trunks of clothes and fancy stereos and TVs and refrigerators—and BMWs for God’s sake—he’d had nothing but a beat-up suitcase and a duffel bag with a broken strap.

He’d gone alone because he hadn’t wanted his father to take him, not that Eddie had offered. And as he’d been forced to go on foot, he’d had to leave his books behind. There had been no question that he was coming back for them, though. He’d returned home that weekend to get the backpack…except his father had said he’d thrown it out.

That had been the last time Sean had been home. Until three nights ago.

A knock brought his head up. Getting to his feet, he walked down the hall to the living room, opened the door and—oh, man—looked into the very pair of green eyes that had been in the back of his mind over the past few days.

Lizzie Bond was dressed in a little white T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. Her hair was down on her shoulders, all naturally streaked with blond and brown, and there wasn’t a lick of makeup on her pretty face.

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