Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Copyright

Lovely though Randi was, the child claimed Travis’s attention

Matt’s small body already held evidence of the long-boned height that was as much a McLean trait as the square jaw and blond curls. His legs pumped furiously as he went after the beach ball

His son. Oh, yeah, most definitely his son. Travis was overcome by an emotion so new he wasn’t sure what it was, except that his heart seemed to somersault. Without thinking, he caught the ball. He found himself looking into a small upturned face.

“Sorry, mister,” said the boy. “My name’s Matt. Wanna play catch with my mom ‘n me?” he asked hopefully.

Travis stared into the eager face of his son, swallowed past the lump in his throat and remembered feeling the way Matt looked right now….

Dad, would you play a game of catch with me?

Sorry, Travis, but I’m late for a meeting at the hospital

“Sure thing, Matt,” he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in New Jersey, author Veronica Sattler has had several career interests, ranging from teaching to selling antiques to her ultimate passion, writing. She was inspired by historical writer Kathleen Woodiwiss, and went on to win several awards in the historical genre. Wild Honey is her second contemporary novel.

Veronica, who also enjoys gourmet cooking and American folk art, currently resides in rural Pennsylvania with her daughter, Alyssa, and an Irish wolfhound named Brendan.

Wild Honey
Veronica Sattler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Peg and Bill Kreitler with love.

CHAPTER ONE

DEAR GOD, it can’t be! Please, oh, please, it can’t be him! Randi Terhune mouthed the silent plea, her bloodless lips moving almost imperceptibly.

She stared at the big handsome man being transferred from a stretcher to an emergency-room gurney. It was him, she realized as she fought to steady her trembling hands. There couldn’t be two such perfect male specimens walking the earth, unless they were twins, and Travis McLean’s information profile had revealed no such thing. Dear Lord, what am I going to do?

Dimly she was aware he was the patient they’d just rerouted from Bethesda Naval Hospital. Brought in by special helicopter, he’d been flown here to Johns Hopkins when fog prevented landing at the original destination.

At the forefront of her mind, however, other things about him loomed much larger. Like the fact that he was the father of her child. A child he knew nothing about. Had never seen.

A child whose mother was still a virgin.

Randi managed to pull herself together enough to issue an order to one of her staff to assist in the admittance procedure. She was buying herself some time, but that was all. As head ER nurse, she’d be the one expected to deal with this VIP patient. The call from Bethesda had been very specific about the man’s importance, although they hadn’t given any details.

Glancing at the memo she pulled from her clipboard, Randi frowned. He’d be a doctor, of course. He’d been a fourth-year medical student back then, so he had to be a full-fledged physician by now. But why would the brass at Bethesda be ordering the red-carpet treatment for a doctor—a doctor with a gunshot wound?

Hope flared as she redirected her gaze to the tall blond man now stretched out on the gurney. Maybe there were two of them! There were such things as doubles, she’d heard. The Germans even had a word for it—Doppelgänger, if she recalled her high-school German correctly.

Carefully, trying to appear casual amid the usual emergency-room chaos, she made her way toward the nurse she’d directed to admit the man on the gurney. She saw John Ames, the second-year resident in surgery on duty tonight, and managed a smile as he approached the gurney from the opposite side.

At least, she hoped what she did passed for a smile. Inwardly she was quaking like a leaf in a storm.

Randi held her breath and prayed as she stole a glance over her assistant’s shoulder. At the form on the clipboard that gave the patient’s full name.

And felt her heart sink as she read, “Travis Paxton McLean.”

“E-excuse me, Pierson,” she stammered when her assistant, a big capable black woman, glanced up at her and then offered her the clipboard. “I…there’s something I forgot to take care of in my office. Continue until I get back, please. I’ll…I’ll only be a minute.”

How she managed to get to her tiny office at the far end of the corridor, Randi never knew. But somehow, agonizing minutes later, she was shutting the door behind her. She leaned back against it in the unlit room, her heart slamming against her ribs.

She hadn’t really expected to learn he was someone else of course. No, reading his name had only compounded the feeling that the floor had just opened under her. The feeling she got when she’d risked a glance at the man’s eyes: the exact same eyes as her son’s.

Images swirled as the past came up to confront her—the tastefully decorated waiting room of the doctor’s office outside Cambridge, the look that might have hinted at embarrassment on the handsome face, the lazy Southern draw! as he asked for an application, and finally the sharp crystalline blue of those eyes.

Matt’s eyes.

Matt. Seizing on the image of her son, Randi fought for control; she sucked in a deep calming breath, then another. Matt, she repeated silently. Matt had been worth it!

Miranda Terhune was thirty-two years old; because of a rapid shift in personnel that had left several unexpected vacancies, and because of her own professional skill and competence, she’d been promoted to her present position at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in a little more than two years.

But it wasn’t the scene of her current job she was remembering now. It was the place where she’d worked five years before. A fertility clinic near Cambridge.

She’d gotten the job because of Connie, her old college roommate. She, Randi, had been working at the time at a hospital in Washington, D.C., and not really enjoying it. But it hadn’t been just the work; she’d felt a vague dissatisfaction, an odd restlessness, though she’d been unable to put her finger on the source of these feelings.

Now, with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, she knew why she’d felt that way. She’d always thrown herself into her work, but as time wore on, it hadn’t been enough. Perhaps earlier than most women who chose career over marriage and family, she’d felt her biological clock ticking. Reminding her that her prime child-bearing years were passing. That one day she could wake up and find it was too late.

Of course, she hadn’t had an inkling she might be yearning for a child when Connie had called, asking if she’d like to fill in for her at the clinic while she was on maternity leave. Yet she might have picked up a clue from something Connie had said.

“Never thought I’d be one to opt for the Pablum and Pampers scene, but you know, Randi, there’s something about being in a place like this day after day, seeing all these women with big bellies—and grins on their faces, instead of the urgent hungry looks they came in with. Maybe it’s catching, y’know?”

Yes, the clue had been there, all right. Because when Connie had said that, Randi had said yes.

But the yearning had been strong and recognizable after only a few months of working in Dr. Philip Burgess’s clinic. Randi wanted a child, hungered for one. The trouble was, she was unmarried and determined to remain so.

Because Randi Terhune was afraid of men.

Leaning against her office door now, she felt herself shudder with the silent admission. It was the first time she’d admitted it, to herself or anyone else. She suspected Jill knew, though. Jill and Dr. Carol Martin.

Fighting a wave of nausea, she tried to block the images, but they came at her with the ruthlessness of longsuppressed demons. Demons straight out of hell.

He was stalking her. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. Or that she was twelve years old. Or that her mother had been dead more than six months now, and all she had left was Jill.

But Jill couldn’t help her, couldn’t protect her. Her sister was only fourteen, and she hadn’t been able to protect herself! He’d come to Jill’s bedroom at night, when he’d thought both girls were asleep. But Randi hadn’t been asleep. She’d gotten up to get a drink of water from the bathroom and glanced into her sister’s room. The door was open and the hall light spilled in. And she’d seen.

Just as she’d seen him stalking Jill for days. Touching her back and shoulders and arms with lingering hands, brushing against her small breasts in passing. Watching her with eyes that burned as they fastened on those breasts, and on Jill’s bottom when she bent over, or her bare legs when she wore shorts.

Soon he’d begun stalking Randi, too. Waiting until he thought the time was right to come into her room and make her whimper, just as Jill had whimpered, to push her down on the bed and—

“Oh, God!”

The sound of her cry startled her in the still, dark room. She became aware that tears were streaming down her face.

Impatiently she swiped at them with her fingers. She’d thought all that was behind her. Jill had put it behind her, hadn’t she? And Randi’d had just as many hours of counseling as her sister. Jill was happily engaged to marry David in the fall, and Dr. Martin was so certain of Jill’s recovery she’d delightedly consented to be a bridesmaid.

But the doctor isn’t so certain of your recovery, is she? an inner voice taunted.

Carol Martin was the psychiatric counselor they’d both seen following their stepfather’s death in a car crash. The car crash that had mercifully ended his months-long sexual abuse of Jill Terhune and prevented him from ever actually laying hands on Randi.

Yet Randi had been the one with the nightmares after they’d gone to live with Aunt Tess. The nightmares that had awakened Jill, if not the kindly old woman who was their dead mother’s maiden aunt. And so Randi had finally been forced to tell Jill that she knew.

The two of them had always been close, but that night, as they’d wept together, an even closer bond had been forged. A bond that gave them the courage to approach the guidance counselor at school. The woman had broken the news to their elderly guardian, and it was then they’d begun the sessions with Carol Martin.

Sessions that had healed the actual victim of the abuse, but not her younger sister? In the silence of the darkened office now, Randi wanted to deny it, but how could she with the man whose sperm she’d stolen lying on a gurney a room away? Stolen, because she’d longed desperately for a child, but was terrified to conceive in the normal way.

Still, old habits die hard, and so Randi did find herself denying it as she switched on the light and reached for a tissue from the box on her desk. Nonsense, she thought as she blotted her face and checked it in the small mirror from her purse. You aren’t afraid of men. You just aren’t one of those women who feels she needs a man to make her life complete.

Feeling more resolute with this assessment, she switched’ off the light and, straightening her shoulders, headed back to the ER. She scrubbed her hands carefully and nodded to her assistant. Martha Pierson was still beside the gurney across the room, and Randi signaled she’d be right there. But as she approached the figure now sitting up on the gurney, her resolution took a nose dive.

Matt will look like that in thirty years, she found herself thinking as she took in Travis McLean’s chiseled features. She’d already noticed several women in the room staring at him with unconcealed admiration, and she didn’t have to guess why. She’d looked at him the same way five years ago; he was too beautiful to believe.

Pierson handed her a tray of sterilized instruments. Randi paused, feeling the inner tension mount as she stole glances at Travis McLean’s profile while Dr. Ames examined his shoulder. So much like Matt…

Her own hair was a fine and silky honey blond. McLean’s was sun-streaked with flaxen. And coarser, thick and springy, with a lot more curl. Like Matt’s. The lean planes beneath the prominent cheekbones weren’t evident in her son’s young face yet, but she suspected they’d appear with time. Just as Matt’s perfect little nose would lengthen, grow into the narrow, straight proportions of his father’s. And Matt already had ample evidence of the square jaw she saw on McLean. She found herself wondering if it denoted the same stubbornness that—Don’t think about it! Don’t think about things you’ll never be able to compare because—

The tray of instruments she was holding crashed to the floor.

“Good grief, Terhune, what’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you this way!” The resident’s uncharacteristic sharpness told her plenty about how distraught she must appear. She’d better get ahold of herself.

“I…I’m sorry, Doctor. Just having a…a bad night, I guess.”

Her face flaming, Randi bent to retrieve the instruments, even though it meant she’d have to scrub again. She needed to get away from those crystalline blue eyes that seemed to look right through her. What if he remembered her? What if…

But, no, he had no way of knowing what she’d done. She’d destroyed all records of his donation after she’d inseminated herself. And she’d told no one but Jill and, reluctantly, Carol Martin. Jill and Carol, both sworn to keep her confidence.

She’d been certain she’d never again lay eyes on the perfect specimen of American manhood she’d selected for his health, intelligence, family background and physical assets to be the father of her child. So certain…

She straightened and handed the tray to an orderly. Taking great pains to avoid the sight of McLean’s tanned and muscled bare chest, she asked Pierson to cover for her again, murmured an excuse to Ames and went to scrub.

Making her way across the busy room, she tried to regain a sense of normalcy by taking in the scene. It was chaotic, but familiar.

On her far right a uniformed police officer waited, no expression on his face, to give her other assistant, Nurse Ryan, details about the young punk he’d just brought in; the teenager was comitose from a suspected drug overdose.

Just to her left, an anxious young couple hovered, the woman clutching the man’s hand as they watched an intern stitch up a nasty cut on their little girl’s leg. The child was trying hard not to cry, but the words, “Mommy…Daddy,” kept erupting through her stilted sobs.

Would she ever be able to watch so bravely if it were Matt lying there on the table? And no husband to share the agony, to support you, as this woman has? her inner voice taunted.

Where on earth had that come from? She’d never questioned her single parenthood before. Besides, she wasn’t alone. She had Jill, didn’t she?

Jill—who was getting married in a few months.

Suddenly Randi began to feel as if she’d never again be certain of anything in her life.

CHAPTER TWO

TRAVIS MCLEAN hated hospitals. Emergency rooms in particular. That he sat in one at the moment was not improving his disposition one iota.

Dammit, he’d told Cord he didn’t need this! A local ambulance, maybe the attentions of some small-town country doctor near the scene, and he’d have been fine. But would that SOB listen? Hell, no!

But then, Jason Cord never listened much to anyone these days. Something was eating at that guy, and Travis suspected if Cord didn’t unload it mighty soon, there’d be hell to pay.

As for Rafe O’Hara, his other so-called buddy of long standing, yeah, okay, maybe O’Hara had owed him one. And he doubted Rafe could have said anything that would have changed Cord’s mind, anyhow.

But, Lord, did he hate hospitals!

Scowling at the tired-looking overworked resident who probed the wound in his shoulder, Travis wanted to bolt and run. The shoulder hurt like a sonofabitch, but physical pain was not the reason. No, nothing that simple. Besides, he was more than acquainted with pain. Hell, any five-year CIA veteran was likely to be, and he’d had a four-year hitch in the navy before that. A hitch that had seen action. He’d been shot during that action, and compared to what he’d endured then, this was nothing. A run-of-the-mill flesh wound. He’d live.

But what wasn’t so simple was another kind of pain the ER, for some reason, brought to mind The pain of remembering. And something that felt suspiciously like guilt….

Travis, I simply do not understand you! The tear-filled voice of his mother floated back to him on the currents of memory, aided perhaps by the shot of Demerol they’d given him. To take a lifetime of plannin’ and just throw it away. It doesn’t make any sense!

But whose plan are we talkin’ about, Mother? His own voice echoed through the corridors of five long years, angry, strident. Y’all were so certain I’d become a doctor—a heart surgeon, to be specific. Just like my father. And my grandfather, of course. But did anyone ever ask me? Did anyone, just once, ask if that was what I wanted?

But four years at Harvard Medical School, Travis! Four years of straight A’s! Why do all that if you didn’t want it? His poor mother, sounding so bewildered, helpless, and so very sad. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He loved her, respected her. But his father, ah, now there—

“Nurse, give me a hand here please.” The voice of the young resident cut across his thoughts. Then a loud crash had Travis glancing at the floor beneath his gurney; a tray of surgical instruments lay scattered there.

“Good grief, Terhune, what’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you this way!” The resident, whose name tag said Dr. Ames, looked more puzzled than angry.

“I…I’m sorry, Doctor. Just having a…a bad night, I guess.”

Travis’s eyes traveled upward from the tray on the floor. When they came to rest on the flushed face of the woman who’d stammered the apology, he sucked in his breath.

“Sorry,” Ames said to him. “I know it’s painful, but I’m suturing now. It shouldn’t take much longer.”

Pain, hell! Pain had nothing to do with it. But Nurse Terhune’s gorgeous self sure did! What a stunner! Honey blond hair, whiskey-colored eyes and a figure that…

Travis cleared his throat and quickly looked away as Nurse Terhune’s shapely bottom presented itself when she bent to retrieve the instruments. He was actually getting aroused! Like some horny adolescent, for Pete’s sake!

He couldn’t resist slanting another glance at the beautiful blonde as she handed the tray to an orderly and asked another nurse to stand in for her while she went to scrub. He took in the long leggy figure striding away from him, and his lips formed a silent whistle.

Ames grinned at him, finally aware of what was going on with his patient. “Some piece, huh?”

“Dynamite.” Travis’s soft drawl was slightly husky, his eyes lazily assessing as they followed the retreating figure.

“Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up, buddy.” Ames gestured in Nurse Terhune’s direction. “That little number comes in at about forty below.”

“You’re kiddin’.”

The resident shrugged. “All I can say is, a lot of us have tried, and no one’s gotten to first base. Of course, our little ice queen may have a ‘significant other’ tucked away somewhere, but nobody’s been able to—Uh-oh…”

Travis winced as Ames returned his attention to the wound a bit too energetically; Nurse Terhune was headed back in their direction.

“Lord, Lord, what a shame,” Travis murmured softly as his eyes approved of what they saw. Dynamite, coming and going.

Ames caught this and barely stifled a grin as he told Nurse Terhune to proceed with dressing the wound.

But Travis frowned. Something had begun to niggle at the back of his mind. Through half-shuttered eyes he traced the features of Nurse Terhune’s heart-shaped face as she bent over his shoulder. There was a hazy momentary image of a similar face, but younger maybe…and then it was gone. Damned Demerol!

“Ouch!” Travis glared at the woman who’d been the object of his most recent—and scandalous—thoughts.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Her embarrassed apology had Travis swallowing the blistering setdown he’d been about to deliver. But she sure had been clumsy in bandaging his shoulder. A glance at her badge had already told him she was the ER’s head nurse. Why, he asked himself, was she acting as nervous as a newly capped rookie? And damned if that wasn’t a blush under that porcelain skin.

A slow, lazy grin stole across his face as he watched her from beneath half-closed lids. She caught his casual scrutiny, and the blush deepened.

Lord, he did love a blusher! You hardly ever saw one these days. Fact was, he couldn’t recall the last time he had. Unless it had been Sarah, and kid sisters didn’t count.

The grin faltered as he recalled how long ago that would have been. He hadn’t seen Sarah in five years, hadn’t seen any of his family. His sister was in her second year of premed at Georgetown now. Hardly a kid anymore.

Maybe he should go there and try to see her. Would she even let him? Would she dare it? Maybe. She’d always been pretty gutsy.

Suddenly the monstrous inadequacy of relying solely on his sources at the Agency to keep informed about his own sister had him wanting to pound something with his fist. His fingers clenched and he ground his teeth.

“If…if the pain’s real bad, I think I could get you something more for it.”

The softly murmured offer of Nurse M. Terhune pulled him back to the moment. She’d stammered a bit; still jittery, then. Yet somehow, maybe because of its softness, he’d found her voice soothing. His grin reemerged.

“What’s the M stand for, Nurse M. Terhune?”

“Hold still, please.” Suddenly all thumbs, Randi tried to sound professional and concentrate on the bandaging.

Travis wasn’t about to let her ignore him. “Melanie, maybe? Margaret? No, scratch that—you don’t look like a Margaret. I’ve got it! How ‘bout Marcie?”

“Mr.—” Randi made a show of glancing at the name on his admittance form “—McLean, I don’t—”

“Travis, honey. Just Travis.”

Randi found herself unwillingly seduced by the liquid softness of his voice. Lord, the man was every bit as compelling as she remembered. Unable to stop herself, she risked a glance at his face.

A mistake. He was observing her with a casual indolence that reminded her of a well-fed lion basking lazily in the sun. The clear blue eyes, heavy-lidded and sensual, roamed her face, coming to rest on her mouth. As they did, his own curved into a slow, easy smile.

“Uh, Travis, the sooner you allow me to finish here—”

“Uh-uh, honey. Not fair. Now that you know my name, I reckon it’s tit for tat for me to know yours.”

The soft Southern accent had a teasing quality, which curled around the edges of her defenses and stole inside. Something began to unravel somewhere deep within, in a place Randi couldn’t name, a place she hadn’t known was there.

She looked quickly away, reaching for a pair of scissors on the tray.

“C’mon now, darlin’,” he cajoled. “Margie? Molly? Hey, how ‘bout Millicent? I know it’s old-fashioned, but I do believe Millicent’s makin’ a comeback.”

He was outrageous. And too persistent by far. Yet Randi felt a tug pulling at the corners of her mouth. She faced him squarely, hands on her hips.

“If I tell you, will you let me finish? We need to get you upstairs.”

“Upstairs? Like hell, lady! I’m walkin’ out of here!”

“In a few days, you mean.”

“In a pig’s eye, I mean!”

Randi remained prudently silent as she reached for her clipboard, eyeing him covertly as she did so. All evidence of the lazy cat was gone. Travis McLean had a no-nonsense look in his eye that said he meant business. She couldn’t imagine anyone daring to cross this man when he looked as he did now.

“Are we having a problem here?” Dr. Ames approached the gurney.

“Damn right there’s a problem! There’s no way in hell I’m stayin’ in this godforsaken place for more than….”

As Travis launched into a recitation of his grievance, Randi headed for the doors where a pair of paramedics were wheeling in the latest emergency. She was only too glad of the opportunity to get away. She caught terms like “scapula” and “clavicle” as McLean marshaled his arguments, and she felt a little sorry for Ames. Members of the medical profession often made the worst patients.

Still, there’d been no mention on the admittance forms of his being a doctor. Randi mused on this as she oversaw the immediate removal of the patient they’d just brought in—a fully dilated woman in premature labor—to the delivery room. There often wasn’t such information of course, not in ER. There frequently wasn’t time to record it.

She wondered if he was a doctor attached to the military in some way. That would account for his original destination tonight. Huh. Just her rotten luck that the fog had enveloped Bethesda, but not Hopkins!

After a brief exchange with the ob-gyn supervisor in the delivery room, Randi hurried back to her own station, wishing she didn’t have to. Not because she was tired from working extra shifts the past two weeks, although she was. Several unexpected absences among her staff, because of an outbreak of summer flu, had left them shorthanded, and she’d filled in. But that was nothing new. They all pitched in at such times; it was part of being professional.

No, Randi knew her reluctance to return had less to do with the ER than who was in the ER—a big blond Virginian with scandalous good looks, as Aunt Tess would have put it. Looks that had been part of Randi’s decision five years before to select him as the biological father of her child.

But only part of her decision, she reminded herself as she headed back the way she’d come. That his family background was solid had been another part. Not that Randi was a social snob, but if you came from a good family, she’d reasoned at the time, you had to come from a good genetic pool. A pool that was more likely to contain solid citizens than ax murderers, right?

And when Travis McLean had listed the occupations of his parents and grandparents on his application form at Dr. Burgess’s clinic, they’d read like a roster of the American Medical Association, for heaven’s sake! No wonder he’d been at Harvard Med.

What’s more, enrollment at such a school meant he had to have the intelligence Randi was looking for, so there was another part. Oh, yes, McLean had fit the bill to a tee.

She paused briefly outside the ER. Not only to drum up courage, but to say a small prayer that he’d already been taken upstairs. It really wasn’t like her at all to cave in this way when something went wrong; that was part of what made her a good ER nurse. But coping with medical emergencies was a far cry from having a hidden part of your past come up and hit you in the face!

Taking a slow deep breath, she again tried to make herself relax by thinking of her son. Adorable, wonderful, bright and loving Matt, who’d come into her life like a shining beacon of pure sunlight four years ago and given it meaning. Purpose. A future where there was safety and hope. And dreams that didn’t turn into nightmare.

Feeling a little like the young mother who’d just gone into the delivery room, Randi took another deep breath. She stepped toward the door just as it swung open in front of her. It was her assistant. Martha Pierson had had years of ER experience and hardly ever looked ruffled, no matter how hectic things got. Right now the look on her face hovered somewhere between exasperation and…amusement?

“Better come quick. That hunk’s refusin’ to cooperate, and the good doctor wants your help. Yours, and nobody else’s,” Pierson emphasized.

Randi didn’t need to ask who the “hunk” was. Yet she did take a second to wonder why Ames would specifically ask for her. More than wonder. Worry, to be exact. Had McLean made the connection she’d been dreading? Was he refusing to cooperate until he got some answers she wasn’t prepared to give? Her knees suddenly felt like jelly.

Pierson had been right about his refusing to cooperate. She could see that much from the single glance she risked as she made her way across the room.

McLean was still sitting up on the gurney. He was wearing an expression that reminded her inexorably of Matt. His pose said he wasn’t budging.

Nearby stood an orderly with a wheelchair. Hospital regulations said wheelchairs must be used to transport even ambulatory patients from one ward to another. Unless they were so incapacitated they had to be taken by gurney.

Travis’s pose said he was taking neither. Well, that was what he thought!

“What’s the problem now, Doctor?” Randi placed her hands on her hips and managed to glare at their patient, figuring the best defense was a good offense. “Don’t tell me this one’s still giving us a hard time.”

Ames’s face bore none of the amusement she’d glimpsed in Pierson’s. The resident looked at Pierson now as she came up behind Randi. “You tell her, Nurse!” And then Ames rushed off toward a stretcher they were just bringing in.

Pierson complied. “Seems Mr. McLean’s not willin’ to cooperate until you give him some information, Nurse Terhune.”

Randi’s apprehension must have shown on her face. McLean unfolded his arms and traded the stubbornly locked jaw for a reassuring smile. “Hey, beautiful, nothin’ to get all hot ‘n’ bothered about.”

He reached out to give her nose a playful flick with his finger. At the unexpected touch, Randi jumped.

“Whoa, now, honey, settle down.” The smile widened, became the lazy grin she remembered all too well. “All I’m askin’, before I agree to let these turkeys trot me off upstairs like a good little patient, is what the M stands for, remember, sugar? Seems these, uh—” he glanced at Pierson “—co-professionals of yours aren’t allowed to tell me. Said you were the only one who could.”

Randi glared at him, more annoyed with the man for the scare he’d given her than his outrageous demand. The scare, which she couldn’t even admit to. Not to mention that unexpected touch. It had sent an unfamiliar current shooting straight to her toes.

“You’re pretty used to getting your way, aren’t you, Mr. McLean?”

The teasing light that entered his eyes had her wishing she could recall her words. “When I go after somethin’ I really want—” his eyes roamed lazily over her face—”yeah, I reckon you could say that.”

Randi drew herself up to make the most of her five feet, seven inches. Despite her height, she knew that if Travis McLean stood up, he’d dwarf her. She fixed him with her most formidable look. Her I’m-the-one-in-charge-here glare. “Mr. Mc—”

“Ah-ah,” he warned, wagging his finger teasingly at her. Behind her, Pierson snorted.

“I beg your pardon?” Randi was doing her best to retain a professional demeanor, but it was getting harder by the minute.

The grin was wider than ever. “It’s Travis, remember?”

He had to know how his grin did devastating things to any woman foolish enough to be in the vicinity.

A muffled sound had her glancing behind her. Martha Pierson was grinning, too. Foolishly, Randi thought. Solid no-monkey-business Pierson, who was happily married with five kids.

Damn the man! The sooner she got out of the ER, the better.

She faced him squarely, gave a curt nod. “Very well, Travis—”

“Hey, Randi!” A small boy with a baseball cap worn backward waved at her from the doorway to the waiting room. The rest of his attire consisted of a pair of cotton pajamas decorated with Berenstain Bears and severely battered high-tops, unlaced and minus socks.

“Robbie Spencer, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Robbie was the son of her next-door neighbor, and Matt’s best friend.

Robbie’s smile split his freckled face. “Mom’s havin’ our new baby, an’ Daddy couldn’t get holda Grandma in a hurry, so I got to come!”

Just then, a slender, pleasant-faced man put a hand on Robbie’s shoulder and bent to whisper something in his ear. Bob Spencer, Robbie’s father. After the brief exchange Bob glanced up. He saw Randi and waved.

Randi gave him a thumbs-up. Then father and son withdrew and the door closed behind them.

“Randi, huh?” Travis McLean’s drawl drew her attention back to him. He eyed her speculatively, but a teasing light still lingered in his eyes.

“Now, I do know Demerol does frightenin’ things to a body’s wits,” he continued, “but I believe I’m still lucid enough to recall that ‘Randi’ begins with an R. ‘Course, the boy could be dealin’ with a minor speech defect, I suppose, meanin’ to say ‘Mandy,’ when he really—”

“It’s Miranda! You lunkhead! Miranda, and Randi for short! Now are you satisfied?”

The blue eyes remained speculative as the grin she was beginning to detest reappeared. “Satisfied? My, my, sugar, you do ask the most interestin’ questions.”

Randi went beet red.

The grin broadened, and she took a step backward as he slid off the gurney and towered over her.

Lord, how tall was he? Six-four? Six-five? Too tall for her own comfort, she decided as he leaned over to whisper in her ear, “the thing is, darlin’, are you ready for the answers?”

Randi felt perspiration dampen her uniform. He was toying with her, she was sure of it. Toying like a cat with a mouse. But why? Had he recognized her, after all? Was he using this ridiculous banter to draw her out in some way?

Steady, she reminded herself as her knees again began to feel as if they wouldn’t support her. He doesn’t know anything, remember? Even if he does recognize you, he can’t suspect a thing beyond that.

She stiffened her spine, pointed authoritatively at the wheelchair waiting beside the patient orderly. “In!” she commanded. “Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Travis gave her a cocky salute and sauntered over to it. A stain of fresh blood had penetrated the gauze of his dressing; it would have to be removed and the sutures checked. Demerol or no, it had to be hurting him a great deal, yet he moved and acted as if he were socializing in somebody’s living room. She’d seen a lot of patients attempt to act unaffected by their pain, to appear brave in the face of it, but this was different. He’d put himself beyond it. Functioned as if it didn’t exist.

What sort of a man was he to be able to ignore pain that way?

The orderly began to wheel him away; when Travis turned and winked at her, Randi decided that maybe she didn’t want to know.

CHAPTER THREE

TRAVIS SAT in his hospital bed, grinding his teeth. He was ready to climb the walls. These jokers were set on keeping him here “at least till the end of the week,” he’d been told this morning. By Dr. Wallace Reston, the physician in charge, when he’d made his Monday-morning rounds.

Reston knew his father. He’d gone to med school with the great Trent McLean and still played golf with him once a month. This had allowed him to invoke a familiarity with Travis he wasn’t entitled to, and ask too damned many personal questions.

Not that Travis had answered them. The people he counted among those entitled to ask those questions, let alone receive answers, could be tallied on the fingers of one hand. The rest could go to hell.

It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to justify his actions to anyone but himself. The chosen few who’d gotten any explanations at all had received them out of love. Not curiosity, not obligation and definitely not the misconstrued familiarity that came of playing golf with his estranged father!

Oh, Reston had been discreetly courteous about it all. Very polite, as a matter of fact. Old school, Southern-style. Probably thought he was being smoothly oblique, too….

“Heard they had to abandon another blast-off at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday,” the elderly doctor had mentioned all too casually. “Makes you wonder how all those scientists and technicians feel when that happens. You know, all that time and energy spent gettin’ ready. And then—nothin’. I wonder if it ever bothers them…” He’d looked pointedly at Travis when he said this. “‘Course, it isn’t as if they won’t have another go at it—not like it would’ve been for me, had I been talked into abandonin’ medicine after years of trainin’. Know what I mean, son?”

Despite the old man’s prying, Travis remained courteous to him. Not that he hadn’t been mighty tempted to tell him he hadn’t the right to call him “son.” That no one had that right anymore. Mighty tempted not to counter with a query of his own: “Is that the lie the old bastard’s put out to all and sundry these days—that I was talked into it?”

But he hadn’t of course. He was old school, too. The proper behavior of a Southern gentleman had been ingrained in him and his brother since the earliest days of their childhood. It was the foremost mark of the Tidewater gentry, their mother had always told them, and a true test of Southern manhood.

And because Judith McLean had a way about her and they loved and respected her, her children had never questioned what she said. Southern gentility might be occasionally threatened and a little ragged around the edges since the Civil War, he and Troy used to joke, but it wasn’t dead yet.

So Travis had smiled and gently changed the subject. Now he sat here, pampered like a pet poodle, because Wally Reston likely thought he was doing his old friend a service by mollycoddling the son Trent himself never spoke to. Never spoke to, never saw, never acknowledged as being alive.

Dead, that was what he was to Trent Cunningham McLean III. Just as he was supposed to be dead to Judith McLean and Troy McLean and Sarah. Dear feisty little Sarah…

Travis shifted restlessly on the bed. The agony of his separation from the sister he’d always been close to wasn’t something he normally allowed to penetrate the wall he’d built around it. Lord, he wanted out of here! He’d even settle for the chance to work off some of the steam that was building inside him like a pressure cooker. What he wouldn’t give for his shorts and running shoes right now!

He eyed the armchair near the window. He could get out of bed and use the chair, of course. But he’d been dumped here, out of state, as an emergency patient—minus toothbrush or robe or anything more than the clothes he came in. Which they’d taken away, the cagey bastards. And he’d be damned if he’d lounge around in a chair wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a bandage!

On the other hand, he could always do it without the gown. That’d get their attention all right. He doubted such a stunt was in him, though. It had been years since he’d even thought of cutting loose….

There’d been the ultraserious business of pulling A’s in prep school and then as an undergraduate in pre-med to assure him entrance into Harvard of course. Because nothing else would do for the son and grandson of two of its most renowned alumni.

And then had come the exhausting discipline of med school itself and—

His mind tripped on the one exception to that tightly reined discipline. The night he’d gone drinking with three classmates who weren’t as disciplined. Who’d convinced him he needed to cut loose a little. The night he’d accepted their dare to go to that clinic and—

Now what had brought that up? He hadn’t thought about that dumb stunt in years. Not since his little four-year excursion in the navy for Uncle Sam. More discipline. And after that, the Agency. The last place he’d have allowed himself to think about something like that. If you weren’t all business in the Agency, you weren’t in the Agency, period.

And now he was thirty-five. A little long in the tooth for the kid stuff, a time to put away childish things…

But the familiar passage from Ecclesiastes was erased when Travis found himself thinking, with a grin, that sitting on the chair in nothing but a bandage might almost be worth it. If it was Miranda Terhune who stumbled across him!

Fat chance, though. He’d seen neither pretty hide nor gorgeous hair of Nurse Randi since the ER. And suspected it was likely to remain so. Not just because the ward he was in wasn’t her beat. He’d begun to see what that young resident had meant when he’d called her an ice queen.

Except…those blushes had told him that somewhere under the ice, a lovely little fire burned. He’d bet on it. It was why he couldn’t resist those teasing probes, gentlemanly or not. That, and because a challenge was a challenge.

Yet his indulgence in that little byplay had likely ensured her giving him a wide berth for the duration of his stay. No, Nurse Randi wanted no part of challenges. She’d keep her distance.

There was something about the woman, though. Something more than her arresting beauty that nagged at him, had his mind returning to her. He wondered if he hadn’t seen her somewhere before. He rarely forgot a face. In his business, his life and the lives of others could depend on such recall. And Randi Terhune’s wasn’t the sort of face he’d be likely to—

The murmur of voices in the corridor intruded, and Travis lost the thought. Visiting hours. Scowling, he picked up the book a candy striper had brought him and found his place. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Fit reading for a hospital room? he mused darkly. Maybe not, but it sure fit his mood.

Settling in with the book, he ignored the muted sounds outside his door. He hadn’t had any visitors yet, and he wasn’t expecting any until tonight. Which was just fine with him.

Jason Cord had said he’d drop by, bring his shaving kit and a few other items Travis had told him where to locate in his apartment. And although Jason could be pretty surly these days, he was never boring, especially talking about the doings at the Agency.

Rafe O’Hara had called, of course, to see how he was, the smug bastard. OI’ Rafe was getting married today, though, so maybe Travis had the last laugh. For he firmly believed in one self-evident truth in this life: romantic love was for poets and fools.

Still, Rafe and Francesca looked so happy together that he’d briefly wondered if there might be an exception….

A low rumble of laughter resounded from the corridor just outside the door, and Travis slapped the book shut. Hell, weren’t hospitals supposed to be quiet?

Realizing how grouchy he’d become, he made a conscious effort to relax. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that a few noises wouldn’t faze him if he had visitors. But he didn’t right now, so visiting hours just increased his frustration. And boredom. Hell and damnation!

Suddenly Travis’s head snapped in the direction of his door as it opened. Then he froze.

The slender, elegantly dressed woman had also stopped moving, except for the clear blue eyes that swept over him, drinking in every detail. Eyes so like his own, although the rest of her patrician face had been passed on only to her younger children, missing Travis entirely.

“Hello, son.” She spoke quietly, in the soft Tidewater accent that would forever stir nostalgic echoes from his youth. “May I…may I come in?”

Travis found himself swallowing, unable to speak. He managed a nod, gestured to a chair near the bed.

He watched her as she found the chair, lowering herself into it with as much grace and poise as ever. Judith Paxton McLean was a year short of sixty, but she’d always looked at least a decade younger than her age. An active life that included daily horseback riding and tennis had preserved the girlish figure in the red Chanel suit; the youthful impression was aided by her expertly applied makeup and the smart beveled cut of her silver hair.

Only when she was seated and he saw her close up could Travis believe she would leave her fifties behind next May. The lines around her eyes, which had seemed faint in the dim light of the doorway, were more sharply etched than he remembered. The frown lines on her brow were new, too.

Well, five years was a long time. Damn the son of a bitch! Damn him to hell and then some!

“I suppose it was Reston who told you I was here?” he asked tightly.

Judith McLean nodded. “He…he said it was a gunshot wound! Oh, Travis, I—”

“It’s nothin’ serious, Mother.” How strange it felt to be addressing her like that. Mother. After all this time, like something alien on his tongue. “Just a simple flesh wound. I’ll be fine.”

She eyed the bandaged shoulder, the sling they’d used to immobilize his arm. “Are you certain? It looks as if it might be…You’re not in pain, Travis?”

“I said it’s not serious. Certainly nothin’ that’d require bravin’ the wrath of your husband by traipsin’ all the way up here to see the black sheep of the family!”

Her face went pale, and Travis felt instant remorse. Lord, he hadn’t meant to snap at her like that. He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just that…”

Travis ran his hand through his hair in frustration, then sighed again. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

Judith looked away and her reply was toneless. “No…no, he doesn’t.”

“So after five years of obeyin’ his dictates, of avoidin’ me, of not takin’ my phone calls or answerin’ my letters—five years, Mother!—a hospitalization has finally given you the courage to come see me. But only on the sly. What would it take, I wonder, to dredge up the courage to see me openly? My funeral?”

He saw her flinch, and remorse nagged at him again, but he shook it off. He was her son damn it! Her firstborn, on whom, along with his brother and sister, she’d lavished all the love and affection of a devoted mother. Yet she’d thrown him away—on the spiteful orders of a man she didn’t even love!

He still remembered the day she’d admitted that to him. The day he’d stumbled on her crying in the stables, where he later learned she often went when she was troubled. Wadded up on the hay-strewn floor was a lace-edged handkerchief. He’d retrieved it and begun to hand to her, thinking it was hers.

But it hadn’t been hers. Before she took it from him, he noticed the unfamiliar initials embroidered on one corner. And although he’d been only thirteen, he’d known. When he asked her, she’d told him that, yes, his father had a mistress.

“What’ll you do, Mother?” he’d asked next.

“Do, darlin’? Why, what can I do?”

“You can leave him! He can’t possibly love you if—”

“Love has nothin’ to do with it, Travis,” she’d interrupted.

“But he’s lied to you!” Travis had been outraged. “Lied to all of us! All those excuses ‘bout how he’s always tied up in surgery or goin’ off to lecture on—”

“Travis McLean, I’ll not have you speak of your father that way! Of course, he hasn’t lied to y’all. Your father does work long hours at the hospital, and his work most certainly takes him out of town to lecture sometimes. Your father is a world-famous heart surgeon!”

And then, with the uncanny perception of the young, he’d said, “That’s why you’re stayin’, isn’t it, Mother? It’s because of who he is, not because you love him. Isn’t that why you said love has nothin’ to do with it?”

Fresh tears welling in her eyes, his mother had nodded, then taken him in her arms. “But I was wrong to say it that way, son,” she’d murmured. “I may not love him, but I’d do anythin’ for you children. Love has everythin’ to do with that!”

Now, as he sat in this bland, sterile room, Travis wondered about that, too. Did she really love her children as she’d professed? Over the years he’d assumed they were the reason she stayed in a loveless marriage. But when the day had come when he’d dared his autocratic father’s wrath by choosing to follow his own path, she’d meekly aligned with her husband against him. Had let him cut Travis out of their lives.

As for their loveless marriage, Travis soon began to suspect it was nothing out of the ordinary. He’d spent a lot of time growing up amidst the privileged children of families where divorce was rampant; his prep school had been full of them. Soon he began to accept the fact that the love he thought was missing in his parents’ marriage simply didn’t exist.

Still, until five years ago, he’d believed in parental love. Now he wasn’t even sure about that.

With an irritated gesture, he steered the conversation to more certain ground. “Tell me about Sarah. Is she well? Happy?”

Obviously relieved by the shift in topic, his mother managed a smile and nodded. “She loves Georgetown. Doin’ splendidly there, too. Of course, we all know she would. Her adviser says she’s taken to pre-med like a duck to water.”

Unlike her long-lost brother. But Travis didn’t voice this. The bitterness was fading now. Maybe he’d exorcised it. “And Troy? He holdin’ up all right?”

His thirty-three-year-old brother had had to struggle for the grades that would get him into a decent med school. Or a career in medicine, period.

Troy had been the athlete in the family. A natural, who could have gone on to qualify for the Olympics in swimming, they’d been told. Or a career in tennis. He’d once beaten Bjorn Borg in a match at their club, and Borg had offered to sponsor him.

But that had been out of the question. In fact, Travis was the only one his brother had even told about it, and Troy’d insisted he keep it secret.

“Good Lord, Troy, why?” Travis had exclaimed. He could still recall his incredulousness at Troy’s request.

The brother he loved hadn’t been able to look him in the eye. “You know why,” he’d mumbled, staring at his Nikes as they sat on a bench in the club’s locker room.

And Travis had. Telling the family, or more specifically, their father, would only result in the same cold dismissal his swimming coach’s suggestion had brought the previous year: “You are a McLean, Troy. With a long and illustrious tradition of medicine to follow. Swimmin’ is a fine pastime, but it can’t be allowed to distract you from your career. From surgery as a profession. You’ll thank the coach and tell him no, of course.”

So Troy had acquiesced without a whimper, submitting to a regimen of tutors and summer schools to help him attain the grades necessary to enter medicine. And managing to graduate from a med school that, while not Harvard, was respectable enough for the father he tried so hard to please.

His mother’s sigh brought Travis back to the present. “Well, your brother does try hard, but sometimes I think he ought to have pursued another specialty. Your aunt Louise did suggest he join her at Stanford and go into research, you’ll recall. But as I told her, your father…”

And so it goes…

“Right.” Travis’s voice was tight with anger. “Nothin’ would do for his sons but to follow in his illustrious footsteps. No matter that the shape of those feet, as they tried to follow—tried so hard, Mother!—was so different. No matter that they longed to take another path.”

“Now, Travis, your father—”

“Is a cold, selfish bastard who never had time for any of us while we were growin’ up! And made it plain only one thing mattered to him—that we live our lives to please him. To be a self-perpetuatin’ testament to the great Dr. Trent McLean, heart surgeon nonpareil!”

“Oh, Travis, I know he’s hurt you, but try to understand. In his own way, your father loves you. I know you find that hard to believe. I didn’t believe it myself at one time. But in the last few years…well, I think he’s mellowed. And perhaps…perhaps even begun to realize what his unbendin’ ways have cost him.”

Travis’s smile was bitter. “Like a son, maybe? Well, that shouldn’t faze him, Mother. He has one to spare.”

“Travis, I don’t s’pose I can blame you for feelin’ bitter, but—”

“What do you want from me, Mother? Why’d you really come here? It wasn’t entirely to see how badly injured I was. Wally Reston could’ve given you all the particulars—and very likely did.”

Travis leaned toward her and didn’t let go of her gaze. “So what is it you really want from me?”

She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “I—I was hopin’ that maybe there was some way to…to put an end to this terrible estrangement. Maybe if you were to go to your father, Travis, and try to—”

“Forget it. He’d never listen, and I…” He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “Well, let’s just say I’m well past tryin’, okay? I have my own life now, and while it’s—”

“But what kind of life, Travis? A life where you’re constantly in danger? Where you’re shot at and could be gunned down at…at any moment? Dear heaven, sometimes I think I’ll go out of my mind, worryin’ ‘bout you! And missin’ you so!”

She’d begun to cry now, and Travis felt like a twenty-four-carat heel. He should’ve withheld his anger, done his best to soothe her.

And so it goes… Not exactly a banner day for Southern manhood, he thought, again echoing the famous phrase from Slaughterhouse Five. Shifting to the side of the bed, Travis put his good arm around his mother’s shoulders.

“Shh, don’t cry. It’s really not as dangerous as all that. A desk job more often than not, honest.”

Judith made an effort to pull herself together. Taking care not to jolt his injured side, she embraced him quickly, then groped for a handkerchief in her purse. She nodded gratefully when he handed her a tissue from the bedside box.

“You won’t even consider…?” she said tentatively after drying her eyes.

“What? Goin’ to see him? D’you recall how many times I tried to—unsuccessfully, I might add—five years ago?” Travis snorted. “I’m not in the habit of knockin’ my head against a stone wall, Mother.”

Judith bowed her head and sighed. “I s’pose that’s what I expected you’d say, but—’ she met his eyes again “—I hope you’ll understand that…that I had to try?”

He nodded grimly.

“And on the outside chance you’ll change your mind, I’ve taken a room at the inn across the street—just for this evenin’, that is. I’ll need to leave by—”

“Save your money, Mother. And your hopes. I won’t be callin’. I can’t.”

She nodded, silently rose from the chair and bent to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be leavin’ now, son. Get yourself well real soon now, hear? And remember, I do love you, no matter what I might’ve foolishly led you to believe these past five years.”

He wanted to ask her about that. About how she could have stayed away all that time, no matter what her husband threatened. But somehow he hadn’t the heart for it. What good would it do? Likely just hurt her more than he’d already managed with his less-than-genteel tongue. And so it goes…

“I love you, too,” he murmured softly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. But as he watched her turn to leave, he saw the tears in her eyes, and the remorse was back.

A FEW MINUTES LATER Travis stood at his third-floor window looking down at the street facing the Johns Hopkins Inn. He’d managed, one-handed, to strip off the hospital gown, wrap a towel around his hips and secure it at the waist—all the nod to modesty he was willing to make at the moment; if any more unannounced visitors dropped by, he was more than ready to tell them to go to hell if they complained.

His mood was sour again, and he didn’t need to wonder why. A sardonic smile twisted his lips. At one time he’d reckoned a visit from his estranged mother would have made his day. He supposed he’d always been given to optimism in his life, and that had applied even to the one corner of it that rankled. But instead of heartening him, seeing her had only served to make him realize how hopeless it all was.

He caught a flash of red below, and he watched his mother walk toward the street. To a stranger she’d appear utterly poised, her head held gracefully erect, her carriage straight. But he could see things a stranger would miss. The suggestion of a defeated cast to her shoulders, a certain hesitance in her step as she approached the curb, the last lingering look she cast in the direction of his window before she entered the inn.

Sighing heavily, he was about to return to the Vonnegut novel when something else caught his eye. A blonde with a knockout figure emerging from the hospital. She headed toward a dark red Saab that had just pulled up out front.

Nurse Randi Terhune.

“Well, well, well.” Travis’s first genuine smile of the day accompanied the softly drawled syllables.

Her legs looked longer than ever in a pants uniform with a tunic top that stopped just where they began. Sunlight glinted off her honey-colored hair. Worn loose now and minus her nurse’s cap, it hung down her back nearly to her waist. Lord, Lord…

He was able to make out the Saab’s driver as she reached across the passenger seat and said something to Terhune. A brunette who bore a strong resemblance to Nurse Randi. He supposed they could be sisters, despite the difference in coloring. Beautiful features like theirs leapt out at you and—“God almighty!”

Travis sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, fixing on the image that filled his mind’s eye. An image from the past. Now he realized why the dumb stunt he’d pulled in Cambridge had been teasing his brain, just as Randi Terhune’s face had been nagging at him. He opened his eyes and gazed into space in stunned awareness. Terhune had been in the clinic that day! She was the nurse who’d admitted him!

His gaze shifted to the scene below. The passenger in the Saab was now opening the door and climbing out.

Travis hadn’t noticed him at first, and no wonder. This little guy stood only about three feet tall, if that. He was all tousled blond hair and energy about to explode as he gave Terhune a whopping big hug.

It became apparent the boy was giving up the navigator’s seat to Terhune, who opened the rear door; there was a car seat in back, and he took a step toward it. Then she said something to him, and he turned toward her, affording Travis his first clear look at the child’s face.

Great God in heaven!

Terhune fastened the boy’s seat belt, shut the rear door and got in up front, closing her own door. The Saab pulled away from the curb.

Travis was left with his jaw hanging open.

The kid in the car was the spitting image of himself when he was four or five years old!

CHAPTER FOUR

TRAVIS WATCHED the Saab drive away feeling as if he’d been poleaxed. It had been like looking at a mirror into the past. Thirty years past. Even if his memory was playing tricks on him, which he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen enough snapshots of himself over the years to know damned well what he looked like as a kid.

Gathering his spinning thoughts, Travis made his way slowly to the bed. He lowered himself to the mattress that barely accommodated his big frame. Tucking his free hand behind his head, he stared pensively at the ceiling.

His thoughts gravitated inexorably to the clinic in Massachusetts. The clinic where he’d first seen Randi Terhune. The fertility clinic where he’d donated his sperm. On a dare. And suddenly he knew: the results of that irresponsible stunt had come home to roost.

“Damn!” The oath exploded in the quiet room as he went over the episode in his mind….

He’d been hitting the books hard, averaging maybe four hours sleep a night. Then exams were over and he’d wanted nothing more than to crash for twenty-four hours. But he hadn’t. Jenkins and Henley waylaid him on his way to his apartment and convinced him they all owed themselves a night on the town to celebrate.

So he’d gone with them from one watering hole to the next. Drinking more than he ever had or likely would again. Taking their dare had been the most singularly immature act of his so-called manhood.

Yet he’d done it. Despite the host of misgivings that plagued him when he realized what he’d committed himself to. From the moment he awoke with a king-size hangover the next morning till the instant, two days later, he walked through the clinic’s doors, he’d regretted that commitment.

His discomfort level had been acute. He’d always loved kids. The mere thought of a child of his walking around somewhere without him left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Ah, hell!” Travis shifted restlessly on the bed, his mind swinging mercilessly back to that time.

All the regret in the world hadn’t swayed him. He’d honored that commitment, no matter how stupid it seemed in the harsh light of day. Because honor was the operative term here. A McLean didn’t welsh on a dare.

Another fact of the immaturity that characterized the whole mess, he told himself grimly. A mature man would have gone to Jenkins and Henley and told them flat out that it was a dumb idea. That it violated an underlying code of ethics he intended to live by, and that was that.

But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d rationalized, telling himself his donation was a selfless act; he hadn’t sold the specimen, after all, as some impecunious med students were rumored to do. What’s more, he’d told himself, he would probably be making some childless couple very happy.

That was what he told himself whenever a twinge of conscience nagged him over the years. And eventually the twinges grew fewer and farther between. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d even thought about it.

But he did remember. He’d thought about it not an hour ago. Very likely spurred by a subliminal recognition of a face he’d seen before, even if it took a while for his conscious mind to make the connection. And now that kid…

Closing his eyes, he pictured the child—all big blue eyes and engaging grin under a cap of unruly blond curls. Curls exactly like his. And he’d hugged Terhune.

Dammit, there was no getting away from facts. In his line of work, lives often depended on the ability to quickly assess the facts at hand, no matter how meager, and draw conclusions from them. And right now, the few facts he had were leading him to one earthshaking conclusion: that kid could very likely be his son!

JILL TERHUNE eyed her sister with concern as she handed Randi a mug of decaf. They were in the kitchen of the house they shared, inherited from the great-aunt who’d raised them after their stepfather’s death. Matt had gone next door to play with Robbie Spencer the minute they got home, so it was just the two of them. Jill could finally pursue what had been on her mind since picking Randi up.

“Wanna tell me about it?” The older sister kept her voice casual, pouring herself a coffee and taking a seat across the table from Randi.

Randi glanced up from her mug with a look of surprise. “Tell you about what?”

“Whatever it is that’s got you so on edge.” Jill smiled to soften her words. “You’ve been strung tighter than a guitar string ever since I picked you up from work.”

Randi grinned sheepishly. “That obvious, huh?”

Jill grinned back. “It’s me, pipsqueak—ol’ eagle eye, Jill the pill, remember?”

Randi laughed, relaxing for the first time since the upsetting encounter in the ER. Jill’s use of their childhood names for each other could do that. It could also evoke a host of memories. Memories that bound them, reminding them of what they were to each other. Of the love between them, shared gladly these four years with the small boy they both adored.

Suddenly Randi frowned. Was her sister the only one who’d noted her unease? Besides half the ER staff? “Jill, do you think Matt noticed…”

Jill laughed and shook her head. “Fortunately he was too wrapped up in the news about the Spencers’ new baby—even if she isn’t the brother Robbie’d been hoping for.”

“True,” Randi said with a chuckle. “Remember when he told us Robbie had put in an order for a boy?”

Jill chuckled, too. “And if it turned out to be a girl, he was going to tell his mother to send her back?”

“Uh-huh. And then he asked if we could…Oh, God!” Randi dropped her face into her hands. Matt had asked if they could order a baby brother for him.

Jill reached across the table and gently touched her sister’s shoulder. “Randi, what is it?”

Randi collected herself, lowering her hands and reaching for her coffee. She took a sip and heaved a sigh. “I’d love to be able to give Matt a baby brother or sister, but…I can’t.”

“Not by going the route you used to conceive Matt, I agree.” Jill knew her conservative sister was troubled by misgivings over the ethics of what she’d done in that clinic, despite her reluctance to voice them. But they were close; she needn’t be a mind reader to tune in to Randi’s feelings.

“But last I heard,” Jill went on, “the more conventional means of having kids hasn’t gone out of style. Randi, you’re only thirty-two. That’s hardly over the hill. I mean, look at me. I’ll be marrying at thirty-four. You could still meet someone special, if only you’d—”

“Jill.” Randi said her name softly, but to Jill it had the impact of a shout The topic was not to be pursued. They’d been over this before, always with the same result: Randi wanted no part of dating. No part of men and marriage. Of sex. Although she’d never put it to Jill in those terms.

The problem was that Jill was certain she knew why but could say nothing to Randi about it. Your sister’s not yet ready to deal with the deepest roots of her emotional distress, Jill. Dr. Carol Martin’s words threaded through her mind as she and Randi quietly sipped their coffees. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing. Her sessions with me—like yours—are entirely confidential….

Jill could still see the counselor’s face on the day she’d told her this. It had been calm, relaxed. But by then Jill and Carol had known each other several years and become friends. So Jill had been able to see that, while her face was professionally neutral, Carol’s eyes were troubled. Because on that day, Randi had elected to end her counseling.

Carol had urged Randi to continue, but to no avail. Basing her decision solely on the fact that Carol had declared her sister healed of the emotional wounds of sexual abuse, Randi had reasoned she must be healed, as well.

If Carol says you’re okay and ready to get on with your life, I should be, too. Now it was Randi’s words that drifted through Jill’s mind, spoken in reply to Jill’s asking her why she wasn’t returning to Martin’s office. After all, Jill, darling, you were the one—I mean, I was only a frightened witness, wasn’t I?

But Jill knew otherwise. She’d seen their stepfather coming out of Randi’s room, too, during that terrible time after their mother died. More than once. He’d been abusing Randi, too.

But Randi apparently had no memory of it. “Blocking” was the psychological term for what she was doing, according to the books Jill had read on the subject. Not that Carol Martin would confirm or deny this to Jill—that professional confidentiality again. But Jill had certainly told Carol what she’d seen, so Carol knew the score. She just couldn’t discuss it with Jill, although she’d warned the older sister not to broach it with Randi on her own.

She’d likely deny it, Jill, the doctor had said. And you might even find it causes an estrangement between you. Worse, hearing you recount what you saw might cause a traumatic reaction in Randi—especially if she’s not emotionally prepared to deal with it. I caution you to leave it alone.

And so Jill had. But on the day Randi decided to leave counseling, she’d been sorely tempted to speak. Only her fear of making matters worse had kept her silent. The best she’d been able to manage had been a faint argument that implied she accepted Randi’s version of what happened…

But being a witness is still traumatic, Randi. Remember? Remember how we both broke down and cried at school? Jill still thanked God they’d somehow found the courage to approach someone with their tale after their stepfather was killed in that car crash. Their guidance counselor had told Aunt Tess and recommended the sessions with Carol Martin. The sessions that had healed Jill, but not her sister.

Jill barely suppressed a sigh. No matter how hard she’d argued, she hadn’t been able to persuade Randi to go back to Martin. It’s time we both put the whole ugly business behind us, Jill, she’d replied, and had never gone to Carol’s office again.

The whole ugly business. Yes, it was ugly, and yes, Jill was able to put it behind her. Carol Martin’s work had gently led her to a point where she could. By focusing on her strength as a survivor and helping her to feel empowered. And accentuating the positive in her experience with men. Especially her healthy relationship with the biological father they’d lost. Carol had been able to help Jill reconstruct the positive self-image that was badly threatened by her stepfather’s abuse. Threatened, but not shattered, thanks largely to Daddy and the caring relationship the girls had had with both their parents while they were alive.

Jill had come out of counseling a whole woman. Her relationship with David was proof of it. David, a decent, stable man she trusted completely—and loved to distraction! She could barely wait for the wedding. Yes, she was ready to get on with her life.

Just as she knew Randi wasn’t. If only she’d go back to see Carol. Something had to give. Her sister was a warm, loving woman. Jill didn’t believe a career, even combined with mothering, would be enough to fulfill Randi’s deepest needs. Not for the long haul. Besides, kids had a way of growing up and—

“So I seem on edge, huh?” Randi’s question pulled her back.

“Oh, I don’t know…” Jill shrugged. “You could, of course, have taken up shredding Kleenex as a hobby, I guess.”

Randi grimaced, recalling the tissues she’d absently torn to shreds in the car. She took a sip of coffee, setting the mug down with a sigh. “Something, uh, unexpected happened in the ER last night—and I don’t mean the emergencies. Except that the man happened to be a patient, that is.”

“The man?”

Randi’s face tightened with strain. “His name is Travis McLean. I know it means nothing to you, Jill, because I never mentioned it to you. But he’s—” she paused for a deep breath “—Matt’s father.”

Jill stopped in the act of raising her mug and stared at her. “Dear Lord!” she murmured at last. “Are you cer—”

“Dead certain.” Randi’s eyes closed, then opened again. “I recognized him, but I also confirmed the name—Travis Paxton McLean. It was on the admittance form.”

Jill nodded slowly, her eyes on Randi’s face. “I can see why that would have been unnerving.” Unnerving, yes, but why did her sister look so haunted? “Did he, uh, recognize you?”

“I don’t think so, but…” Randi hesitated, reluctant to say anything about the guilt the incident had dredged up. Hadn’t she worked all that out years ago? Matt had been worth the unorthodox means she’d used to have him. Dear Lord, if she didn’t have Matt in her life, she’d—

Abruptly she shook her head. “No, as far as I could tell, he didn’t remember me.”

“Well, then—” Jill smiled and patted her hand “—if he didn’t recognize you, there’s nothing to worry about.” She threw her sister a shrewdly assessing glance. “Is there?”

Randi shrugged and took a sip from her mug. “No, I

suppose not, but…” But then, why can’t you stop thinking about the man? Why do you keep seeing his face every time you look at your son? And why do you keep remembering those odd currents that ran right through you when he grinned at you, teased you and bantered with you?

Jill looked at her expectantly, but Randi had no intention of voicing such things. Big sister would only start in again about her needing to date, and there was no way. Especially when the man under discussion was Travis McLean.

“Come on, sis, talk to me,” Jill urged, her voice gentle. “But…?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Randi avoided her sister’s eyes. “I guess I’m just blowing the whole thing out of proportion because I’m tired. I’ve been putting in some long hours at the hospital.”

“True,” Jill said, suspecting there was more to it than that but reluctant to say so. On the other hand, if seeing Matt’s biological father had triggered the old guilt in Randi, this might be the perfect opportunity to suggest she do something about it. Obliquely of course.

“I spoke to Carol Martin on the phone this morning, Randi,” she said casually, eyeing her sister as she reached for the coffeepot and refilled her mug.

“Oh?”

“She’ll be able to be a bridesmaid for sure. Her family reunion’s been postponed till December.”

“Oh, Jill, I’m glad. I know how much you wanted her in the wedding party.”

Jill nodded, sliding a careful glance at her. “She asked about you…how you are.”

“Mmm,” Randi murmured noncommittally. She knew what was coming.

“You know,” Jill said all too cheerfully, “you ought to drop in on her one of these days.”

“Drop in on her…at her office, you mean?”

Jill had the grace to blush, then laughed. “Okay, okay, but it was worth a try.”

Randi laughed, too, then grew serious. “We’ve been over this ground before, Jill, and, no, I don’t feel I need to see Carol professionally. There’s nothing wrong with me that a little R and R wouldn’t cure. So, sister mine, bug off!”

With a sigh, Jill used her index fingers to mimic the antennae of a bug and waggled her head—an old joke between them—and they both laughed.

Then Jill said, “Okay, what about the R and R? Is your vacation still on for next week, or is that summer flu gonna put a cramp in your plans?”

“It had better not. I’ll lose my five-hundred-dollar deposit on the cottage if I cancel.”

Randi had engaged a beach cottage on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for three weeks, and she was looking forward to spending some quality time there with Matt. She’d sent in her deposit months ago.

“The hospital wouldn’t force you to cancel if they were short-staffed, would they?” Jill asked worriedly.

“Relax. I reminded Dr. Harper of it just yesterday, and all signals are go.”

“Good,” Jill said, “because I’ve got something to tell you with regard to those three weeks.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, David and I were discussing it, and we think it’s super that you’re doing this with Matt.” Jill paused, wanting to phrase this exactly right. Randi was an excellent mother, despite being a single parent with a career. She’d taken great pains, since Matt’s birth, to arrange her life to accommodate a child. No, not just accommodate. Matt was a priority in everything she did.

She hadn’t gone to work at all for the first year of her son’s life, dipping into her savings to support them. And when she went back to nursing, she frequently took night duty to allow her time with Matt during the day. Jill had helped, too.

As an interior decorator working out of her office at home, she’d been able to juggle her schedule; between the two sisters, they’d managed to raise Matt with very little outside assistance.

But as Jill saw it, there were problems lurking on the horizon. She worried about how Randi would manage after the wedding, when Jill left to make her home with David. She also worried her sister might actually be spending too much time with Matt, for every free moment revolved around the child. This hadn’t been a bad thing when Matt was an infant, but as he grew older, Jill feared Randi was in danger of overdoing it. A child needed love and affection as much as food to grow up whole and healthy; but just as too much food was a bad idea, so was too much affection; it could be smothering.

And the signs were already there. Randi’s concern for Matt bordered on the overprotective. She hired a sitter—even the older woman who lived up the block and whom they’d known for years—only as a last resort; when Jill couldn’t stay with Matt, Randi frequently canceled an engagement rather than leave him with someone else.

And Randi never spent recreational time alone; her vacations always included Matt. She didn’t seem to think she sometimes needed time for herself, to recharge her batteries.

So when Randi had mentioned this vacation on the Eastern Shore, Jill had discussed her concerns with David, and they’d come up with a plan.

“Listen, Randi,” she said, “Mart’s a great kid, and I know how much you wanna be with him. Still, wouldn’t you enjoy at least part of those three weeks by yourself?”

Randi blinked, looking bemused. “By myself? Whatever for? You know how much I—”

“—love Matt and adore spending quality time with him—I know, I know. But what about you? Didn’t you just admit to needing some R and R?”

“Sure, I did, and I intend to get it—with Matt.”

Jill sighed. “Come on, sis, get real. Matt’s a super kid, and we all love him to bits. But you know as well as I do he’s a real live wire. A weekend with him can wear you out. Where’s the rest in that, huh?”

“Jill, I just couldn’t leave him while I—”

“Not even for a trip to Disney World with me and David?”

There was a moment of silence as Randi took in Jill’s grinning face. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Never been more serious in my life. David and I are going there the week after next, and we’d like to take Matt.”

“But why? Aren’t engaged couples supposed to want, uh, time with each other?”

Jill shrugged. “We already have a lot of that, with both of us living in the same town and the ability to set our own work hours.” An architect who owned his own firm, David could arrange his schedule to suit Jill’s, so the two shared lots of their own quality time.

“And besides,” she added, “we need Matt.”

“Huh?”

Jill’s grin was ear to ear now. “What good is a trip to Disney World without a little kid along to help you enjoy it? It’d be almost as bad as Christmas without children. We need kids for these things—to keep the magic in them.”

Randi shook her head and smiled, despite her reluctance to accept the proposal. Vacation without Matt? She’d feel…naked somehow. Hadn’t she rearranged her life to include her son wherever she could?

“Aw, come on, sis,” Jill pressed. “This would be a terrific opportunity for the kid, and you know it!”

Chuckling, Randi addressed an invisible witness. “Now she appeals to my conscience. You’re a rat, Jill the pill.”

Jill laughed unabashedly. Randi was weakening and she knew it. “Furthermore,” she added, “it isn’t as if you’d be missing beach time with Matt entirely. He’d go with you for the first week. Then we’d pick him up at the cottage and drive to Florida with him, while you get the rest you need.”

Randi sighed. It made perfect sense. Which, of course, coming from Jill, was to be expected. Jill had always been the sensible one, even as a child, whereas Randi had been the dreamer. As a child. When had she stopped? Somewhere on the road to adulthood, she supposed. Dreams were all well and good, but they didn’t put food on the table or clothes on your child. And they didn’t protect you from—

“Randi?” Jill’s concerned voice cut across Randi’s thoughts. “What’s the matter, sis? You looked awfully worried there for a moment. Did I say something?”

“You sure did, you sneak. Everything needed to convince me I’d be a selfish meanie not to agree to your plan.”

“Does that mean…”

“You win! Matt goes to Disney World—and I go crazy for two weeks, trying to occupy myself without him.”

‘Oh, I don’t know,” Jill said as she jumped up to hug her. “A little crazy might be just what the doctor ordered.”

But as Randi hugged her back, Jill’s words triggered an image. Doctor… Travis McLean, former med student, was now certainly a doctor, though in what capacity she hadn’t found out. Travis McLean…Matt’s father. What would it have been like for Matt to have known him? she wondered. To have his mother and father show him Disney World, instead of an aunt and her fiancé?

With an inward sigh, she swept these questions from her mind. It was too late to worry about such things. But as she and Jill began to discuss the forthcoming vacation, a remnant of unease remained….

CHAPTER FIVE

TRAVIS GUIDED his rental car along the narrow shaded streets of Georgetown’s Heights section. He ignored the stately homes with their manicured lawns and picturesque gardens that made up the posh residential neighborhood. He’d seen it before. One of those homes belonged to his family. But no McLean was in residence now. They always went to their Virginia estate in June, staying through September to escape Washington’s notorious summer heat.

Not that he’d drop by if they were here. He was persona non grata with the lofty McLean clan, thanks to his spiteful tyrant of a father, and there was nothing to be done about it. In his own way, your father loves you… Travis’s mouth twisted angrily as Judith McLean’s words echoed through his mind. If that was love, he was damned lucky to have escaped it.

His features steadied with resolve when he spied the entrance to Georgetown University up ahead. His mother had mentioned that Sarah was taking summer courses. With the aim, he supposed, of finishing in three years. He found himself grinning. His sister was a straight-A student with energy to burn. Just like her to be in a hurry!

The grin faded as he slowed for the entrance to the university. By the time he was discharged from the hospital, he’d made up his mind to visit her. If she’d see him. At one time he’d never have questioned this; Sarah was a gutsy little thing and had always had a mind of her own. But five years could change a person, especially one as young as his baby sister. No telling how well the old bastard had succeeded in intimidating her.

Well, he thought as he swung into the entrance drive, he’d soon find out.

“TRAVIS! OH, Lord, is it really you?” Sarah McLean’s voice rose with excitement as she flew down the stairs of the old mansion that housed her sorority. Breathless, caught between laughter and tears, she reached the landing and flung herself at her brother. “Oh, Travis, I can’t believe it. You’re here!”

“In the flesh, pumpkin,” Travis managed past the lump in his throat, “in the everlovin’ flesh.” His left arm was still in a sling, yet he caught the slender brunette to him with his right, lifting her off the floor with ease.

Both laughing and crying, Sarah wound her arms around his neck, clinging as if she’d never let go. “Travis McLean,” she said, “I’d kill you if I didn’t love you so much! How come you never wrote? Never answered my letters?”

She found herself swiftly lowered to the floor, her brother’s eyes leveled intently on hers. “I never received any letters, Sarah,” he said quietly. “And I wrote over two dozen before I finally gave up.”

“But…but…”

“It’s easy to guess what happened,” he said, taking in her bewildered face. “You wrote from Sunnyfields?”

“Well, yes, since it was summer. But I always put the letters in the mailbox myself or gave them to Higgins to…”

“Yeah, well, rural mailboxes have a way of bein’ accessible to others besides the postman,” Travis said grimly. “And Higgins’s salary, of course, is paid by—”

“Daddy.” Sarah shook her head and heaved a sigh. “I s’pose I was pretty naive, but I never dreamed a servant who’s known me all my life would—”

“How ‘bout the father who’s known you all your life?” Travis asked bitterly.

Before she could respond, a pair of sorority sisters banged through the front door, calling out greetings to Sarah. She waved to them, then looked at her brother. “We can’t stay here and talk decently,” she murmured sotto voce, “so let’s find—God in heaven! What happened to your arm?”

“Nothin’ mortal, darlin’, and it hardly even hurt, I swear.” Travis put his free arm around her shoulders and ushered her toward the door. “I’ll tell you ‘bout it when we get some privacy if you want.”

“I want,” she said firmly. Just like Travis to make light of an injury. Her tone told him she wouldn’t be put off by some fairy tale.

The sorority sisters, dressed in cutoffs and T-shirts boasting Greek letters, had paused in the vestibule. They eyed Travis with interest. Not surprised—her brother definitely qualified as a hunk—Sarah took pity on them and performed introductions. Then she and Travis headed outside.

The sultry weather made it impossible to remain outdoors for long. They drove to an air-conditioned coffee shop Sarah knew would be deserted at that hour. Left alone after the waitress had served them a pair of iced coffees, brother and sister both spoke at once.

“Tell me about that…”

“Tell me all about…”

They laughed in unison, their eyes meeting with a shared humor that said the past five years might never have been. They’d always been close, despite the fourteen-year difference in their ages. Realizing how deeply he’d missed that closeness, Travis silently cursed himself for not engineering a reunion sooner. “You first, pumpkin,” he said with a hint of chagrin.

“The arm,” she replied with a gesture at his sling. “All you told me in the car was that it was just a flesh wound.”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “Not good enough, huh?”

“Better believe it,” she said as she reached for her coffee.

He sighed, then gave an edited version of the shoot-out that had resulted in the deaths of several members of an international drug cartel. For security reasons, he didn’t name names; he suggested she go to the library and view microfiches of the Miami Herald for the date in question if she really wanted to know more.

“No thanks,” said Sarah with a wave of her hand. She leaned back in her chair and studied him. A. look of awe dawned on her pretty face. It reminded him of the way she’d looked at him once when he’d scored a winning touchdown for the Harvard football team.

“So you’re truly in the thick of it.” She shook her head slowly. “Spyin’, runnin’ around the globe, chasin’ after—”

“Not all that much anymore,” he interrupted with a shrug. “The world’s changed in the past few years. Our focus has had to change with it. It’s true CIA officers have mostly operated overseas, largely as diplomats, but—”

“Diplomats?” she asked archly.

Travis smiled. “Officially, anyway. But nowadays there’s an increasin’ emphasis on NOCs.”

“Knocks?”

“N-O-C-S,” he said, spelling out the acronym; he was aware this information was public knowledge and didn’t compromise security. “Stands for ‘nonofficial covers’. What it usually means is that the agent is quietly placed in an American business that operates overseas, rather than in some war-torn country. Or, as was more often the case, in an embassy, through the diplomatic corps.”

“But why?” Sarah had done some reading on the CIA since learning her brother worked for it. She knew about the dangers for men who did “field work.” And about case officers who’d operated during the Cold War. Under embassy cover, they’d cruise foreign ministries and cocktail parties, collecting intelligence on the former Soviet Union and its satellites.

“Well,” Travis said, “more and more, we find ourselves dealin’ with individuals who aren’t fightin’ guerrilla wars and aren’t on the diplomatic circuit. Nuclear smugglers, terrorists, drug traffi—”

“Please! I don’t think I want to know that much, after all.” She shuddered. “But it’s clear you’re still brushin’ up against some dangerous characters, Trav. Seein’ you in that—” she gestured at the sling “—well, it wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t worry, would it?”

“No, I reckon it wouldn’t,” he said with a tender smile.

She took a sip of coffee, then stared pensively into the glass. “Mother worries too, Trav,” she said quietly. “She never talks much about it.” She met his gaze. “But she’s taken to readin’ the Post more than she ever did before you left. And when she’s done, I see the worry in her eyes.”

He nodded and told her about their mother’s visit to the hospital.

“Trav, that’s wonderful! She finally mustered the courage to see you.”

He stifled an obscenity and glared at her. “Come off it, Sarah! Wonderful? What’s so wonderful about a fifty-nineyear-old woman needin’ courage to see her own son?”

Sarah winced at the bitterness in his voice. With a deep sigh, she reached for his hand on the table and gave it a squeeze; the squeeze was returned, and she smiled sadly. “It’s been awful for everyone, havin’ the family ripped apart like this. Mother’s suffered the most, I think. You must know how difficult Daddy made it for—”

“What, exactly, did Daddy do, Sarah?” He’d wanted to ask their mother, but somehow hadn’t been able to; the encounter had been awkward enough as it was. “What’d the SOB threaten? To disinherit you ‘n’ Troy, maybe? That’d make sense, I s’pose. Unlike me, y’all had your schoolin’ to complete. But Mother has her own money, from her trust. Y’all would hardly’ve gone penniless if she’d stood her ground.”

Sarah heaved a sigh and shook her head. “Unfortunately Daddy knew exactly where we were vulnerable. You see—” pain and anger flashed in her eyes “—he threatened to refuse to help Troy pass his surgeon’s boards.”

Travis swore vehemently under his breath. Pushed into medicine despite having no aptitude for it, Troy had had a difficult time of it. Quiet gentle Troy, who’d gone dutifully to med school, remaining there only through vast amounts of time and money spent on tutors. They’d all known that passing his surgery boards would be the biggest hurdle. That Trent McLean himself, brilliant surgeon that he was, had been the one who was supposed to see Troy through them.

“Maybe not passin’ them would have been the best thing that could’ve happened to Troy,” he said angrily. “Maybe then he could’ve joined Aunt Louise at Stanford.” If Troy had to be in medicine, they both believed he’d have been happier in research. As his mother had reminded him, an aunt in research at the West Coast institution had offered to sponsor him. But their father had insisted on surgery. Just as he had with Travis.

“Maybe,” Sarah replied, “but I don’t think Mother was willin’ to take the chance with Troy’s future. And you were right about the will, incidentally. That was the first thing Daddy threatened, along with forbiddin’ Mother to help you.”

Travis snorted. He’d had no doubt he’d been cut off, but money was never that important to him; lean years in the military had told him he could live without luxuries. No, losing his inheritance was the least of his regrets.

“What about you, Sarah?” he asked, studying her face. “Happy in the family career plan?”

She eyed him carefully, aware she was about to drop a bombshell. “I’m not in the family career plan any longer, Travis. As of last semester, I’m not pre-med, but pre-law.”

“Huh?” His bemused look was almost comical, and she grinned at him.

“I said I’m—”

“I heard you,” he cut in dazedly, “but I still don’t believe it. What happened?”

She smothered a giggle. “Steve Townsend happened, for one thing, although that only started the process.”

“Who the hell is Steve Townsend?”

She was smiling, and he thought he detected a blush under her tan. “He’s…well, let’s just say he’s my new ‘significant other.’ He also happens to be a top-performin’ second-year law student at Georgetown.”

Travis groaned. “I think I’m beginnin’ to get the picture.” Holy Hannah! She imagines she’s in love, and now—

“No,” Sarah said, “I don’t think you do. I may or may not be in love with Steve. I haven’t decided yet—too soon to tell, I expect. But my feelin’s for the man had nothin’ to do with my decision, Trav. What happened was, after we began seein’ each other, I helped Steve with some research…” She paused as if to gather her thoughts and took a sip of coffee.

“And—?” he prompted irritably. He wasn’t certain why he felt irritated, but he felt a vague stirring of guilt. A voice niggled at the back of his mind, saying she was following in his footsteps and no good could come of it. It was one thing to be the rebel himself, but another matter entirely for his kid sister to be influenced enough to take the same route.

“And,” she said, “in helpin’ with that research, I stumbled across a discipline that fascinated me. I mean fascinated in a way medicine never could. It’s a whole new world, Trav, and I can’t get into it fast enough.”

He stared at her, hearing the conviction in her voice. It wasn’t the boyfriend, then; he’d only been a catalyst. That was a relief, but his stirring of guilt only grew; he realized just how gutsy his little sister was—and perhaps just how like himself she was.

“Does Father know about this?” he asked tightly.

“About Steve?” she asked, deliberately misinterpreting.

“You know what I mean,” he growled, then offered a sheepish smile. “Sorry, pumpkin. Guess I’m still havin’ a hard time digestin’ this. But since you brought him up…”

“Not to worry on that score,” she assured him. “Steve’s been out to the farm a few times, and they like him. ‘Course, I haven’t mentioned that we’ll be sharin’ an apartment in the fall, but I’m workin’ on it.” She grinned. “By the time it happens…well, they’ll adjust to the idea.”

Little Sarah, all grown up. Travis wondered if he could adjust to the idea. He shook his head, as if to clear it of outgrown notions.

“Back to the big one,” he reminded her. “You haven’t told them ‘bout your new career, have you?” He knew that his mother would’ve said something if she had.

“Not yet. They all think my takin’ summer courses is to finish early. I’m actually pickin’ up credits for pre-law.”

He stifled a groan, but Sarah caught the hint of regret in his eyes. “Don’t you dare go blamin’ yourself for my decision, Travis McLean! Or gettin’ involved, either. It’s about time the men in this family realize a woman—especially this woman—is capable of makin’ her own choices.”

He seemed to chew on this, silent as he sipped his iced coffee. She watched him, wondering what he was thinking. Not too long ago she’d come across material about controlling parents in some of her course work. One of the things that had made an impression on her was that controlling parents—like her father—often spawned controlling offspring. And Travis had always, though in a far gentier manner than their father, been a little too ready to take over the lives of those he cared about.

Sarah wasn’t worried about herself. She was strong enough to resist his well-meaning impulses. But she worried about him Would this blind spot in her otherwise sensitive brother cause him problems someday?

“Sarah—” Travis’s voice was concerned when he finally spoke “—are you sure, absolutely sure, about this thing?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anythin’ in my life.”

He nodded. He believed her. But sweet God almighty, did she realize what a bomb she’d be dropping? Smack in the middle of their already fragmented family? Did she see the enormity of this? Was she prepared to be cut off-like him?

“Look, Sarah,” he began carefully, “you know what’ll be runnin’ through his mind when he hears. Maybe I can—”

“Hold it right there, big brother! I meant what I said. I’m a big girl now, and I don’t need you runnin’ interference for me. I want your promise—right now—that you’ll stay out of it. It was my decision, no matter what you think, and I’ll handle it. Promise me you’ll respect that.”

He expelled a long breath, then regarded her adamant face. “You’ve got it,” he said. Baby sister really had grown up. Grown up smarter and gutsier than he’d ever suspected. He’d loved her from the first, but now he really admired her, too.

Yet as he escorted her out, Travis couldn’t help worrying that Sarah’s decision would wrench the family further apart. One thing hadn’t changed: the old man was still a heartless bastard who’d never tolerated being crossed.

CHAPTER SIX

TRAVIS RELAXED behind the wheel as he cruised south on I-95. He was headed for Langley, although he knew Jason Cord wouldn’t be happy to see him. Jason might be his friend, but he was also Travis’s immediate superior, and he’d ordered him to take a month’s leave. Travis viewed the shoulder wound as no big deal, but he intended to take that leave; he simply needed a stop at headquarters first.

He left Georgetown feeling more upbeat than he’d felt in a long time. Not that he’d been depressed or anything, far from it. But he realized his life had lacked…balance. The past few years had been entirely devoted to work. Which was ridiculous, because while he liked his job, he wasn’t passionate about it. Reestablishing ties with his sister had added a dimension he’d badly needed. After all, Sarah was the only family left to him now that—

His mind tripped on an image of a small boy with blond curls. His son, unless he was imagining things, and he didn’t think so. Especially after the discreet inquiries he’d made at Hopkins before he left.

His name was Matthew—Matt, according to a night nurse he’d charmed into sharing what she knew. Matt. He liked the sound of it. A solid masculine name. Which the kid would need, considering who was raising him: a pair of females, with not a male in sight. Or at least, none anyone at the hospital could tell him about.

He’d learned that Nurse Miranda Terhune was unmarried and to anyone’s knowledge, had never been married. She was a single parent to four-year-old Matthew, and they both lived with her sister, who was helping her raise the kid. Two women, both of them single.

The thought of a child, especially a boy, being raised without a father, or at least a father figure, didn’t sit well with him. Why hadn’t a beautiful woman like Randi Terhune ever married? Why did she want to raise a kid by herself? More importantly, why had she used a sperm-bank doner to have one? Was she involved with a guy who was infertile, maybe planning marriage at the time she’d made use of the clinic’s resources? But if that was the case, where was the guy now?

These were the kinds of questions he couldn’t ask of the people she worked with. As it was, he’d treaded on dangerous turf in seeking the answers he had. Hospital personnel, like personnel everywhere, were hardly obliged to divulge personal information about coworkers. Only by spreading his inquiries among a number of nurses and using that old standby—charm—had he managed to get the information he had. That, and the fact that Terhune was so well liked, people were happy to talk about her.

To give Nurse Randi her due, everyone he’d spoken to regarded her as an excellent mother. But what did they know? Coworkers saw only certain facts of a person’s life. Maybe only the facets the person wanted them to see. So how much insight did anyone have into her home life? Into how she handled her son?

His son. Almost certain the child was his, he wasn’t content to leave it alone. Which was why he was heading for Langley. He needed to know more. And headquarters, with its vast data base, was a good place to get information on people.

He came upon a slow-moving van in the right lane and swung out to pass. As he did so, he felt a twinge of conscience regarding the ethics—or lack thereof—in using the CIA’s data base to serve his own personal ends. He decided to ignore it.

A state-police car appeared in his rearview mirror, and Travis checked his speed. He wasn’t over the limit. He rarely broke any laws, traffic or otherwise—a legacy of Judith McLean’s rearing. Even as a youth, he’d never experimented with drugs, never raced the little MG they’d given him for graduating prep school with the highest honors. He’d been a super straight arrow, all right. Except for one fine summer night in Cambridge, when he’d gone out on the town and…

Muttering an expletive, Travis focused on his immediate objective: the life and habits of one Miranda Terhune. The final tidbit he’d learned about the lovely nurse was that she was shortly leaving on a “much deserved” three-week vacation. He hadn’t been able to ascertain where, but that shouldn’t present a problem. Airline tickets and hotel reservations were usually secured with credit cards. And credit-card use was traceable.

He frowned. The problem was getting past Jason Cord.

“YOU NEED TO WHAT?” Jason Cord thundered, his straight black brows meeting in the middle.

“I said, I need to use the main computer for a bit.” Travis ignored the scowl that rearranged Cord’s features—his aunt Louise would have called them disgracefully handsome features—and kept his voice casual. “It’s nothin’ that’ll compromise security, Jace, ol’ boy. I’ll only be a few minutes, ‘n’ then—”

“In a pig’s eye, you will!” Cord rose from behind his desk and thrust out his arm, pointing to the door. “Get your injured hide out of here, McLean, now, and I’ll forget what you just asked.”

Travis stood his ground. Cord intimidated a lot of people with that scowl. But not Travis. For one thing, he was taller than his superior, although Cord came in over six feet. For another, they’d been through hell and back together. In the old days, when they’d been field operatives, along with Rafe O’Hara and Brad Holman. Hell, when they’d lost Brad, Travis and Jason had wept in each other’s arms.

Not that he was about to mention Brad. His death was still a raw wound to the three men who’d regarded him as a good friend. Brad had been tortured and killed by a Mexican drug lord; Rafe, despite orders to take the man alive, had recently gunned the bastard down. While Travis sympathized totally with Rafe’s action, he doubted Jason felt the same.

Travis wished he’d confide in him, but fat chance of that. Jason was a closemouthed bastard when he wanted to be; the best thing, when he was in one of his moods, was to avoid him entirely. If he hadn’t needed the info on Terhune, Travis would have already been out the door.

“Look, Jason,” he said calmly, “you know me. Would I ask for somethin’ like this if it wasn’t important? In fact, when before have I ever—”

“Stuff it, McLean! You’re asking now, and it’s one time too many. Get the hell out of here.”

Travis heaved a sigh. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy, yet he’d been hoping…Ah, hell. He hadn’t wanted to tell Cord what this was all about, but it looked like that was the only way.

“Jace…this really is important,” he said quietly.

Jason had his mouth set to blister his friend’s ears, but the look on Travis’s face stopped him. McLean was a rogue sometimes, using that Southern charm to get his way. Sometimes, when he had to, he trod the gray areas—they all did—but he wasn’t dishonest and he wasn’t devious.

In fact, the worst that might be said of him was that he never took life too seriously. Not his personal life, anyway. That break with his family—it could have gotten to some men, but not McLean. “Life’s too short to sweat what you can’t change,” he’d once said when someone asked him about it. And then there was his famous pronouncement on love—that if it existed, it was for poets and fools.

No, Travis McLean wasn’t known for getting “deep-down” about things. Not that he didn’t have depths; if McLean were shallow, he’d never have had the bond they shared. It was just that Travis rarely tapped into those depths in the day-to-day. Which was why the look in his eyes now stopped Jason short.

“How important?” he found himself asking.

Travis sighed. Hooking the chair across from Jason’s desk with his foot, he swung it out and dropped into it. “This’ll take a bit,” he said. He motioned for Jason to sit, much as if their roles were reversed and it was Travis’s office.

Jason snorted, but sat.

“What I’m about to tell, ol’ buddy, stops here, okay?” Travis indicated the confines of Jason’s office. “I mean, I want it treated like it’s classified.”

“You’ve got it,” Jason said.

And then Travis told him—about the night in Cambridge, about a nurse at Johns Hopkins who’d looked familiar, and finally about a little boy with blond curls.

“And I need to find out about them, Jace,” he finished with an intensity few ever saw. “I can’t just ignore it. The kid’s almost assuredly my own flesh and blood. My son.”

Jason pursed his lips and whistled softly. When Travis decided to get deep-down, he didn’t mess around.

“Travis…” Jason began slowly, focusing on a paperweight he toyed with on his desk as he gathered his thoughts. He tried to put himself in Travis’s shoes: what would he do, faced with such a thing? And what a thing! What an incredible helluva thing! “Let’s say I…I look the other way while you do this.” He met Travis’s eyes. “What then? Where do you go from there?”

“I’m not sure. I s’pose that depends on what I find out. And I’m gonna find out, Jace, make no mistake about that.” Travis’s gaze was resolute. “If not through our files here, I’ll do it the hard way.” He shrugged. “It’ll just take me longer, that’s all.”

Jason shook his head and gave a sardonic half smile.. “And I just gave you a month’s leave,” he said disgustedly:

“Uh-huh.” Travis flashed the familiar roguish grin and stood, the movement all catlike grace, despite his size.

“Wish me luck, ol’ buddy,” he drawled. He gave Jason a flippant two-fingered salute and headed for the door.

“Now, wait a minute, McLean!” his superior growled. “Did I say…”

But Travis was already out the door. Muttering something about cocky Southern bastards, Jason sighed and returned to his paperwork.

FROM THE BACK of her Jeep Cherokee, Randi hauled out the last of the bags she’d packed. Matt was in the open doorway of their rental cottage dancing with excitement. He’d already changed into the new swim trunks she’d bought him. Since Matt’s suitcase had been the first she’d unloaded, he was way ahead of her. Randi grinned as she approached him. “Ready for the beach, huh?”

“Yeah! Can we go now, Mom? Can we?” Matt looked at the dunes visible beyond the Jeep, then back at his mother. “It’s awful sweaty here, y’know!”

Randi chuckled as he followed her inside. “That’s because this place was all closed up, sweetheart.” The air in the five rooms had been stifling, and opening windows had been the first thing she’d done; already she could feel the fresh ocean breeze sweeping through the cottage.

“Besides,” she added as she headed for the bedroom that Matt would occupy, “you might want to check out a couple of the things in this bag.” She set the bag down beside one of a pair of twin beds, and Matt tore into it.

“Barney! Yippee!” The four-year-old pulled out a pillow case decorated with a magenta dinosaur and waved it at her. “Thanks, Mom!” He began singing the Barney song as he dug through the rest of the bag.

It contained beach towels and Matt’s sheets and pillowcases from home. The cottage came furnished with linens and towels, but she knew Matt preferred sleeping between sheets decorated with Barney, his favorite TV personality.

“You bet, son,” she murmured, then went to her own room to change into her swimsuit.

The sweetly sung lyrics followed her out the door, and when she reached the other bedroom, she paused and reflected on the Barney phenomenon. Why did kids love it so? The answer came at once. Barney’s message was simple and clear: love. The eternally smiling dinosaur embodied the very bedrock of the only thing children really needed. Love, especially within a happy family.

A tiny frown knitted Randi’s brow as she absently reached for the bikini Jill had talked her into. Matt was still singing. About a happy family. Are we a happy family? a voice in Randi’s head asked. Of course we are! her rational self countered. Matt and Jill and I, we’re exactly that.

But Jill will be leaving to make a home of her own in a few months, the voice whispered. A family of her own. And then where will you be?

“Right where I’ve always been—beside my son,” she found herself saying aloud. “We’ll still be a family, and a darned happy one!” To emphasize her certainty of this, she pulled off her T-shirt with gusto and flung it on the bed. “Who says what size families have to be?”

She could still hear Matt singing about love. Right, she thought, as she peeled off her jeans. Matt loved her and she loved him—unconditionally. It was all they needed.

But as she continued to get ready for the beach, the questions wouldn’t go away. All you need? the silent voice nagged. Is it really?

THE WEATHER was perfect for the beach. With temperatures in the eighties and a good breeze off the ocean, they couldn’t have asked for better.

Randi slathered Matt’s back and shoulders with sunscreen. “There, that ought to do it, honey,” she said at last, recapping the bottle of lotion. “Wanna get wet?”

Matt didn’t answer. She was about to repeat the question when she saw where his attention was focused. A pair of boys not much bigger than Matt were tossing a beach ball. With them was a man whose matching red hair and freckles plainly marked him as their father.

Randi flicked a glance at Matt’s beach ball, a red-andyellow affair lying next to their blanket beside a plastic pail and shovel. She touched her son on the shoulder. “Want to toss your ball?” she asked.

Tearing his gaze away from the redheads, Matt glanced at the ball. “Nah,” he said with a hint of diffidence. “It’s still sweaty out here.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Randi grinned. “Race you to the water!”

Matt’s answering grin was instantaneous. With a whoop, he took off running, the trio with the ball forgotten. Randi laughed as she followed suit. She’d make it a close race but let her four-year-old win.

They shrieked happily as they splashed into the water, Matt a step ahead of her. “It’s cold!” Randi shouted with an exaggerated shiver.

“Oh, Mom, girls always say that!”

“Oh, yeah?” A handful of other bathers frolicked in the waves nearby, and she had to raise her voice above their excited shrieks and yells. “Says who?”

“David ‘n’ me! You ‘n’ Aunt Jill both said it when we went swimmin’ in David’s pool, ‘member?”

He chortled as she made a face at him. Randi was secretly pleased, however, that Matt remembered this so clearly; it had occurred when he was only three. He was bright and observant, not to mention remarkably coordinated for his age, she thought as he dodged a wave and swam a few yards. The mother-and-child swim classes they’d attended at the local Y had paid off.

They spent a good hour in the water before Matt opted for building a sand castle. Stopping to give him another. application of sunscreen first, Randi was surprised to hear him offer to coat her back with the lotion.

“Sure,” she answered. She handed him the sunscreen and plopped down on her stomach. As he went diligently to work applying the lotion, however, she saw what had likely prompted this: the red-haired father was in the process of applying lotion to the back of a woman who shared a blanket with him and his boys. Aware his own mother had no husband to help with the task, Matt had assumed the role.

Randi’s reaction was ambivalent. On the one hand, she was warmed that her son would be so solicitous of her; on the other, she wondered if Matt was beginning to think of himself as the “man of the family.” Had the lack of an adult to fill that role settled more firmly into his consciousness? Was this a fair burden to place on a four-year-old? She frowned.

Without warning, an image came to mind. Of a big blond man who resembled her son. Travis McLean. Randi stiffened. She’d actually pictured him sitting on the blanket with them!

“That’s great, son,” she said hastily, banishing the image as she rose to her feet. She reached for the pail and shovel. “Let’s see about that sand castle, okay?”

But as Matt followed her cheerfully to the wet sand near the water’s edge, McLean’s lean handsome face hovered at the fringes of her mind. Kneeling in the sand beside her son, she began digging with a spurt of energy meant to drive the image away. That, and something else. Something that felt suspiciously like guilt.

Don’t be silly, she told herself as she molded the damp sand. Matt can’t miss what he’s never had. As for McLean, what he doesn’t know isn’t hurting him, either.

Yet the argument in her head persisted. She told herself McLean’s actions precluded his right to know of the son he’d fathered. He’d chosen to donate his sperm, chosen to be an anonymous father, hadn’t he?

But far more disturbing was the question of whether it was right for her to choose to bring a fatherless child into the world. Unbidden, more questions came, try as she might to ignore them. Had she robbed her son of one of life’s inalienable rights? The right to have and know a father? Had she been selfish in doing what she’d done? Had she stolen from her own child’s future?

The sand castle was the largest, most elaborate structure built on the beach that day. Other children and their parents came to admire it, including the trio of redheads. Matt grinned at all the praise, even boasting to a man and his young daughter, “Me ‘n’ my mom’s the bestest team in the world for makin’ sand castles!”

And through it all Randi laughed and smiled, determined to shut out the doubts. Doubts that made her wonder if the happiness of one-parent families and sand castles didn’t have something in common.

Perhaps neither was built to last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“HERE YOU ARE, Mr. McLean.” The owner of the bedand-breakfast handed Travis a beach badge. “Go around the side porch and you’ll find a path leading straight to the beach.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Muncie,” Travis said with a smile for the elderly widow. He fastened the badge to his trunks, relishing the simple pleasure of having both hands free; the bullet wound was healing rapidly, and he’d discarded the sling. Waving to Mrs. Muncie, he slung a towel over his shoulder and headed for the beach.

With any luck, he’d find Randi and Matt Terhune on that beach. One of the things the Agency’s computer had turned up was the location of Ms. Terhune’s vacation spot. She’d rented a cottage on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just a stone’s throw from Mrs. Muncie’s bed-and-breakfast. Through sheer luck, he’d called Mrs. Muncie just after she’d received a cancelation; he was now booked for the weekend and two weeks following. A stay that just happened to coincide with the remainder of Randi Terhune’s vacation.

The computer had turned up other information, too. Terhune and the kid lived in a quiet suburb near D.C., sharing a home—as he’d already learned—with her older sister. Their modest house was in a good neighborhood, served by a decent public-school system. It had been left to the sisters by the aunt who’d raised them; they were orphaned in their early teens.

Randi had a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in nursing, and had twice graduated in the top ten percent of her class. She had an excellent work record, had advanced rapidly in her career.

So far, so good.

Then there was the fertility clinic in Cambridge, where she’d worked before having the kid. He’d learned it was still being operated by Dr. Philip Burgess, its founder. Posing as a journalist doing an article on such clinics, Travis had learned a few interesting facts. Facts that convinced him Randi Terhune had acted on her own unethical initiative if she’d availed herself of the clinic’s services.

Make that when, not if, he amended. Any uncertainties he’d had about whether she’d done so had all but vanished. The facts he’d assembled were just too overwhelming to amount to a coincidence. Yeah, she’d acted unethically, all right. According to Burgess, a stern no-nonsense New Englander, employees had always been barred from using the clinic themselves.

But Travis was deeply concerned about the final piece of info that had turned up about Matt’s mother: both she and her sister, Jill Terhune, had undergone years of psychological counseling when they were younger. He’d been unable to find out why, but the discovery jarred him. Just the thought of Matt being raised by two women who’d required extensive therapeutic counseling raised his hackles.

Cresting the dunes, Travis halted, his concerns thrust aside for the moment. The salty tang of the sea filled his lungs. Gulls screeched overhead, their cries vying with the rhythmic susurration of the waves. For several minutes he didn’t move. He simply drank in the panorama of sand and sea, of sunlight glinting on blue water.

Located north of Ocean City, the bed-and-breakfast and a handful of cottages enjoyed a stretch of shorefront relatively free of the crowds that packed the busier tourist spots. He noted a sprinkling of people in the water and knots of sunbathers here and there. In between were mercifully vacant stretches of clean white sand.

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