The Man from Nowhere
Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

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

Copyright

About the Author

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time. Her bestselling Conard County series (see www.conardcounty.com) has won the hearts of readers worldwide, and it’s no wonder, given her own approach to life and love. As she says, “Life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.”

For Kristin T who daily makes lemonade out of some of life’s sourest lemons. I admire you!

Chapter One

Patricia Devlin, Trish to her friends, felt edgy, edgy enough to come to the sheriff’s office. A pretty woman of about thirty, with auburn hair and moss-green eyes, she drew a lot of male attention and spurned all of it. She had and kept her secrets. Only children and fools did otherwise.

Gage Dalton welcomed her warmly in his back office at the Conard County Sheriff’s Department. With his burn-scarred face and tortured past, he’d once earned the nickname in the county of “Hell’s Own Archangel.” Nobody thought of him that way anymore. Today he was the “new sheriff,” a moniker that would probably take years to erase after he’d replaced the town’s long-time and well-beloved sheriff, who’d retired a few years ago. But it was “Hell’s Own Archangel” Trish was here to see. The man Gage had once been, maybe, would understand.

“Hey, Trish,” he said when he saw her at his office door. He smiled and waved her in. “What can we do for you this morning?”

Trish, dressed in the local uniform of jeans, cowboy boots and a light jacket over her shirt, returned his smile and slid into the creaky old wood chair. She wasn’t at all sure she was doing the right thing. “Well, I’m not sure you can do anything, Gage. I’m probably just being paranoid.”

He leaned forward a bit to rest his arms on the desk. “I never ignore paranoia.” His tone was encouraging.

“Yeah, but I don’t like to give in to it.”

“Apparently, something is bothering you enough to come here, so just tell me. We’ll figure out how to handle it.”

She hesitated, biting her lower lip. “I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.”

“I doubt you’ll get anyone into trouble who doesn’t deserve it. What’s going on?”

His logic made her smile again, uncomfortable as she was. Once more she hesitated, reconsidering, but then reminded herself this was the whole reason she’d come here: to get information so she could put this matter out of her mind. She had enough on her plate already without worrying about some stranger who was acting a little…odd.

“Well, there’s this guy who comes and sits in the park across from my house every night at one in the morning. At first I just thought he was resting there, but…” Again a moment of hesitation. It sounded so stupid when she said it out loud, but she forced the words out, anyway. “He sits in the same bench every night, Gage, and it’s like he’s staring straight at my house. He just sits there and stares. Not at my windows or anything specific that I can tell. Just at the house. Then about twenty minutes later, he gets up and walks away.”

Gage frowned slightly.

“I know, I know,” Trish said quickly. “Public park and all that. And he limps so badly, he’s probably just resting. And if he was any threat, why tip his hand by doing it every night?”

Gage held up a hand. “Hold on. Every night?”

“Since I first noticed him. I mean, honestly, I thought it was nothing, but when it kept happening night after night…well, finally I started checking to see if he’s there. He is, every night.” She sighed and looked down at her hands, feeling even more awkward now that she’d framed her concern out loud. “It’s probably nothing. I’m making too much of it.”

Gage shook his head. “You’re not. You have every reason to feel uneasy. And you’re not the only one who has noticed this guy, although I hadn’t heard before that he’s going to the park.”

Trish’s curiosity rose. “What does he do?”

“He’s staying at the motel. Walks into town every night at the same time, gets a drink at Mahoney’s and leaves. It’s enough to get a few people speculating, but not enough to get anyone wound up. But this park thing…You’re sure he’s looking at your house?”

“It could be coincidence. The bench is right across the street. But it’s like…” She spread her hands, trying to find the right words. “He never looks around. Never looks away. Just right at my house. Now maybe I’m overreacting from all the stress at work lately. I haven’t been sleeping very well, which is why I’m looking out my window at that hour. But if he’d just turn to look in another direction I wouldn’t even be worrying about it.” Which might not be exactly true, but she’d be worrying a whole lot less.

Gage nodded. “Okay, I’m going to check him out. We’ll run a wants and warrants on him, a background check, find out what’s going on. Trust me, if there’s anything squirrely, we’ll uncover it. Should I call you at work?”

“Try my cell.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small wallet, withdrawing a business card. She passed it to him. “I’m taking a few days of vacation time to try to relax.”

Gage smiled. “I could use a few of those myself. Emma wants to take a cruise, but I have trouble imagining being confined to a boat for a week.”

Trish laughed. “I hear they come into a port every other day. You’d survive.”

He winked. “What Emma wants, Emma gets.”

She knew full well Emma would get her cruise, because Gage would lay the world at her feet if he could, and not because she’d give him a hard time. She laughed, anyway, knowing that’s what he wanted to see.

After she left the office, she stood on the sundrenched street, feeling the kiss of autumn, that amazingly wonderful sensation of crisp air and warm sun that always made her glad to be alive.

Even if she was worried to death about work.

With a supreme effort of will, she forced her job from her mind. She’d taken these few days to get away from that, and she refused to spend her vacation time worrying about her work problems.

The problem, however, was that in taking her vacation on impulse like this, she’d made no plans about how to spend her time, hadn’t made arrangements with her friends to take off at the same time so they could go backpacking or drive into a bigger town for some shows and shopping.

A planner by nature, she laughed at herself now for not having thought this through, then decided she’d practice winging it. Her friends often teased that she wasn’t happy unless her life was laid out two weeks ahead in her datebook. The criticism might be a little on the extreme side, but there was more than a kernel of truth to it.

So, here she stood, and decided there was no time like now to try making up her day as she went, first with a trip to the bookstore down the street. It would be a perfect day, she decided, to curl up with a novel in her backyard. A little chilly, but that’s what she had the clay fireplace out back for. She could light it, drink hot chocolate and coffee, and enjoy the luxury of uninterrupted reading until the sun sank too low.

Feeling her spirits lift, she hurried down the street to the bookstore, a tiny, musty and wonderful place full of new and used books that covered the entire spectrum. A fictional world was just what she needed right now. Vampires, maybe, or ghosts and ghoulies. Something so far away from everyday that she could truly escape.

Bea’s Books seemed to be open all the time, but maybe that was because Bea lived above her store and loved books more than anything in the world. She could sit in a cozy corner of her shop with a mug of coffee and delve into new arrivals by the hour, distracted only when she had a customer. On weekends the place was usually full, but on weekdays it was a place where you could sit and read, and Bea never pressed you to buy the book first.

But today Trish was on a mission, and the weather was too beautiful to want to spend it inside. She chatted for a few minutes with Bea, who directed her to a stack of recent acquisitions that hadn’t yet been shelved. In ten minutes Trish found three books that appealed to her and paid for them.

Outside she inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air and began her walk home, books tucked under her arm. It was such a perfect day, she thought. Exactly the kind of day she had returned to Conard County for, that and being able to walk almost everywhere she needed to go. Not until she’d moved away to go to college and then to take a job with a big accounting firm had she realized how much growing up here had taught her to yearn for the outdoors and open space.

People she passed on the street, even those she didn’t know except by sight, all nodded and smiled. Many said hello. The breeze ruffled the leaves, making them whisper of approaching winter even as they brightened with autumn color. Not colors like she had seen in the northeastern part of the country, but still colors.

The breeze seemed to push gently at her back, hurrying her along the sidewalk toward her house. Gradually a spring came into her step, and she started smiling about nothing at all. It just felt good to be alive.

That mood lasted until she neared her house and saw the park bench where the stranger sat every night. Immediately the nervous feeling returned, much as she had tried to minimize it, both in her own mind and when she had spoken to the sheriff. Deep inside somewhere, she didn’t really believe the stranger’s presence was an accident.

Even though he wasn’t there now and probably wouldn’t be back until late that night, her sense of pleasure in the day evaporated. Maybe she shouldn’t sit outside, just in case. Maybe she should stay inside until Gage told her there was no threat at all.

Maybe she was nuts, but she ought to take just a few reasonable precautions. After all, she’d been growing increasingly uneasy even before the stranger’s appearance. And sometimes, she had learned, it paid to listen to your intuition.

In the end, she decided not to sit out back in her own yard, but rather to wait inside for news. Opening a window in the living room to allow fresh air to enter was the only compromise she would make.

Gage paid her a personal call that evening just after dusk. “Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but we had to do an intensive search.”

She invited him in and offered him coffee. “What do you mean?”

“I’d love coffee. Then we’ll talk.”

Nodding, she went to get that mug of coffee for him and refreshed her own mug. When he’d stepped through the door, she’d felt the cold clinging to him, a reminder that days were growing short, and as they shortened the winter chill approached, especially at night.

She joined Gage on the couch and wrapped her hands around her mug, looking at him. “So it’s nothing?”

“I can’t say for sure at this point. I couldn’t find out anything at all about him. No criminal record, period. No outstanding traffic warrants. No driver’s license record at all, in fact. No real estate holdings here in Wyoming, and he wasn’t born here. He pays cash in advance at the La-Z-Rest. Came to town about a month ago and didn’t use a credit card. Now before you get nervous, none of that means anything bad. Lots of ordinary citizens come up blank on a background check.”

Relief started to creep through her, then she had a thought. “Nothing? You couldn’t find anything? I mean, you’re cops. You should have been able to search in ways I couldn’t.”

“You’d think.” He hesitated, sipped his coffee, then set the mug on a coaster on the end table. “But there are limits on where and how I can search without a warrant or a subpoena, and I don’t have probable cause for either. I’m sure he has bank records, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them. There’s a half dozen people with similar names in the credit agencies, but none of them near his age.”

“So he’s using a phony name?”

He shook his head. “Look, there are people who live off the grid, as they say. People who don’t own anything and haven’t done anything that would pop up on a background check. Some just don’t like using credit. Some want to be anonymous.”

“I can’t imagine a good reason for that.”

“That’s the thing. Like I said, not everyone who chooses to live that way is necessarily a bad guy. You see the problem?”

She hesitated, aware that her nerves had begun to coil again. “I don’t like this.”

He sighed, rubbed his hands together as if to warm them, then reached for his mug again. “How nervous are you, Trish? How far do you want me to go with this? Because there are limits to what I can legally do.”

She couldn’t find a reasoned answer, which surprised her. Generally speaking, she was a reasonable person.

“What’s got you so nervous? Apart from the fact that this guy sits in the park every night for a little while?”

She lifted her brows. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve known you long enough to know that you don’t shake easily. Yeah, the guy sitting out there every night might get your attention, and you’d watch him, but you wouldn’t worry about him.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t.” She hesitated, then finally said, “I’ve got a little thing going on at work. I think I found that some product is missing, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. So I notified the CFO about it, but I haven’t gotten an answer yet. And I’m wondering if I messed up.”

“Messed up how?”

“Well,” she admitted with a wry smile, “I’m the chief accountant. If it turns out I did my numbers wrong, I’m likely to be the ex-chief accountant.”

“Ahh.” He took a deep drink of his coffee, then shook his head. “Relax, Trish. Nobody gets fired for one mistake.”

“Yeah, maybe.” And he was probably right. She should just stop worrying, check her office e-mail before she turned in for the night in case the CFO replied, and then put it out of her mind.

But part of what made her such a good accountant was her accuracy, and sitting around wondering if she’d made a mistake, no matter how many times she had rechecked her numbers, made her feel utterly unsettled.

And that, she decided, was the only reason she’d even gotten paranoid about the guy sitting in the park. She was just in a paranoid mood to begin with. “Sorry I put you to so much trouble, Gage.”

He shook his head. “No trouble at all, Trish. Tell you what I can do.”

“Yes?”

“I can do a stop and identify. Ask for his ID. Maybe we can get a little more info on the guy. But that’s all I can do unless he does something he shouldn’t.”

She nodded. “Thanks. Thanks, Gage. I’d appreciate it. But I guess I should just forget about it. It’s probably all perfectly innocent.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to be telling you. And most of the time it is. But since I can’t say so for absolute certain, I’ll try to get a little more information.”

She thanked him again. He finished his coffee and headed for the door. “We’ll keep an eye out, Trish. We won’t just ignore it.”

She was certain of that.

Put it from your mind, girl. Let it go.

But not until she checked her e-mail.

Powering up her laptop in her tiny home office, she checked her work e-mail account. And there, answering her uneasiness, was finally a response from the company’s CFO, the man who had trained her at the corporate headquarters in Dallas:

Trish, thanks for alerting me to this. Sorry my reply was so slow in coming, but your memo somehow got routed to the bottom of the stack on my desk. Apparently my secretary didn’t see the urgency.

I’m having an independent auditor come look it over. Of course, I hope you just mismatched some things, but if not, we’ll find out. Either way, you’ve done your job exactly as you’re supposed to. I tried to call this morning and they told me you’re on vacation. Enjoy the time. And thanks again for the great job you do. Hank.

There it was. Done. No need to remain on tenterhooks any longer. No suggestion that if she’d screwed up she was in trouble. The head office in Texas had basically said she’d done exactly what she should.

She put the message in her private file on her home computer, then logged off.

Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Except the stranger who sat out in front of her house every night.

Chapter Two

He was out there again. This time she started watching early and saw his painful approach as he limped down the sidewalk and finally dropped onto the park bench with evident relief.

She had twitched the curtain aside just the tiniest bit so that she didn’t have to hold it as she peered out, because she didn’t want him to know she was spying on him.

And now, watching him, seeing the way he stared at her house as if nothing else on the street existed, made her feel like a creep herself. Was she losing her marbles or something? Her house was locked. She had a shotgun upstairs, a hand-me-down from her father, which she could load with birdshot in no time at all. If the guy tried anything, he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. With birdshot she wouldn’t even need a good aim to plaster him painfully enough that she could escape.

So what was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she just ignore it? What if it had been someone local, someone she knew by sight, doing the same thing? She wouldn’t be at all worried.

But he wasn’t local, and that made her nervous.

Okay, she told herself, try being rational. The guy obviously had suffered some kind of injury, which made him less than threatening to begin with. Maybe the injury had also affected his neck and he was having trouble turning his head.

Possible, yeah. That stare might be nothing but a stiff neck.

Maybe she just needed to cool it and stop acting and thinking like someone on the edge.

Of course she did, but the realization didn’t help. At some level something was niggling at her and wouldn’t give up.

She saw a deputy’s cruiser pull up near the bench. The man didn’t move, so apparently he wasn’t disturbed by the approach of the police. Then Gage climbed out after training his spotlight on the man, who made no attempt to shield his face from the light.

Man, she thought, Gage was working a long day. And all because of her. But his concern warmed her. He wasn’t treating her nervousness as if he thought she was simply a ditzy spinster with too much time on her hands.

She watched as Gage walked over to the bench. Apparently he said something, because the man pulled out his wallet from his hip pocket and passed something to Gage. Gage took it, spoke for a minute, then returned to his patrol car.

No doubt running the guy’s ID. Finally Trish allowed relief to trump over nerves. Gage would sort it out, and the stranger was on notice that he had been seen. Good.

The man had turned on the bench so that he was looking directly at the sheriff’s car and away from her. So maybe he did find it difficult to turn his head.

All right, she should just go to bed and forget it. Gage would let her know if anything should concern her.

Except that she remained rooted. A sign, she decided, of having had too much time on her hands. She wasn’t the type to stand at her window and watch the goingson outside, unlike some of her nosier neighbors.

After a few minutes Gage climbed out of his vehicle again, approached the man and handed him something—probably his ID or driver’s license. They chatted for a moment and then Gage got back in the car and drove off.

Okay, so there was no immediate evidence that the guy was a threat. She glanced over at the digital clock on her DVD player and realized there were only minutes before the guy moved on again, assuming he followed his usual, almost compulsive, schedule.

Driven by some impulse, maybe the need to put the matter to rest now, she hurried into her kitchen, poured two mugs of the coffee she’d made a couple of hours ago, still hot and rich-smelling. Then she slipped on her jacket and went out the front door with the two mugs.

As she approached him, the man on the bench appeared startled in a way he hadn’t when Gage had stopped to speak with him. She guessed he hadn’t expected a homeowner to come out at this hour.

Reaching him, she could finally make out his features. Nicely chiseled, although not Hollywood handsome. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes and could see only that his hair was dark, short, but unkempt. The rest of him, seated as he was, remained mostly a mystery within a heavy jacket, jeans and work boots.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“I was just leaving.” Nice baritone, smooth enough to indicate a nonsmoker and probably a good singer.

“Well, you can drink fast,” she said, thrusting a mug at him. “It’ll be cold in a minute or two, anyway.”

He couldn’t refuse the mug without being rude. Which was exactly why she’d done it. She took the other end of the bench and sipped her own coffee. Yeah, it was already cooling down.

Then she looked straight at him. “Why do you sit out here every night?”

“Because there’s a bench.” Yet the reply hinted at a question, almost as if he was wondering if she was looking for a particular response. If she was, she didn’t know herself what it was.

“You limp pretty badly,” she said bluntly.

“Accident.”

“Will it heal?”

“Eventually.” He made eventually sound like a very long time, not something that might happen in the next couple of months.

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head slightly. “Things happen. I was the lucky one.”

He spoke that like a mantra, as if it was something he told himself again and again, yet didn’t quite believe. Some part of whatever had happened, she guessed, was never going to feel lucky, but she didn’t feel she could press it.

She offered her hand. “Trish Devlin.”

He hesitated, and finally shook it. “Grant,” he said. Not a full name.

Trish let it pass, thinking that Gage probably had all the rest of it now, anyway, and maybe a lot more. She watched him take a gulp of coffee and realized he was about to make a quick getaway.

Despite running to the sheriff with her paranoia, Trish had never been a wimp. She wasn’t going to let the stranger off that easily.

“You’ve been making me nervous,” she said. “Sitting out here every night staring at my house.”

He seemed to grow still, as much inwardly as outwardly. Then he said, “I guess that’s why the sheriff stopped.”

“Could be.”

She thought she saw the faint flash of a small smile. “Could be,” he agreed. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

“Well, you did. You keep staring at my house.”

He shrugged. “It’s right in front of me.” He gulped more coffee.

“So it is,” she agreed, then waited, trying to let silence do what her questions couldn’t: make him talk.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just resting, for obvious reasons.”

He was a lousy liar, she decided, because she didn’t believe that, even if it did fit. But if he was a lousy liar, that was a good thing. It meant he wasn’t practiced at deceit.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Don’t let me keep you.”

But he didn’t move. Instead, he said something she wondered if she’d heard right. “Everything’s wrong tonight.”

“What?”

Again that little shake of his head. Then, “Look, I’m really sorry. I don’t sleep well at night, never have. So I’m walking. Waiting, I guess.”

She seized on one word. “Waiting?”

He drank more coffee, this time sipping, as if to put off his moment of departure, quite different from when she’d first approached. “Do you know anybody who doesn’t have a rucksack full of emotional baggage?”

“That’s some question!”

“But an honest one.”

So she gave him an honest answer. “I guess not. More for some than others.”

“Well, mine’s pretty full. So I guess you could say I’m waiting for some resolution.”

“Don’t you usually have to work at that, not just wait?”

“I am. Believe me, I am.”

In spite of herself, Trish was growing more intrigued. But then he sighed and passed her back the empty mug. “Go inside before you get chilled,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to walk back to the motel. Maybe pop into the truck stop for a wee-hours breakfast.”

The truck stop was indeed the only twenty-four-hour business for miles.

He rose, and even in the darkness she could see him grimace. “Nice talking to you, Ms. Devlin.” He started to limp away. But after three steps, he paused and looked back. “If you want to join me at the truck stop, I should be there in about thirty minutes.”

She hesitated. “I could give you a ride.” The instant the words escaped she wanted to snatch them back. Was she nuts? Completely nuts? She knew nothing about this man.

“Sometimes,” he said, “walking is the only way.” Then he resumed his painful departure.

Trish watched him until he vanished into the shadows. Only then did she realize she was growing cold.

Damn! Meet him at the truck stop? Give him a ride? Had some evil spirit taken over her brain?

Shaking her head at her own behavior, she went back inside.

Forget about it and go to bed. Wise advice to herself. Except she couldn’t forget about it and didn’t seem to want to get ready for bed despite the late hour. She grabbed the new novel she’d started earlier and tried to read it. But all she could think about was meeting the stranger at the truck stop and maybe learning more about him. Actually seeing his face in the light. Getting his measure.

It would be safe at the truck stop, a busy place at any hour. Safer than what she had just done by accosting him on the darkened street.

A minute later she was grabbing her keys and heading out the door.

The truck stop restaurant was indeed brightly lit, and in addition to the staff held about a dozen drivers, all eating some version of early breakfast or late dinner, every occupied table boasting a generous carafe of coffee. Some of the drivers seemed to know each other. Others greeted each other, table to table, strangers in a common place and time.

Grant sat alone at a table backed up to the wall. He already had coffee, and she noted that an extra mug was at the seat facing him. Whether for her or for someone else she didn’t know.

She ignored the interested looks she received from the truckers as she eased her way between tables to Grant’s.

“Hi,” she said. In the light he proved to be goodlooking, if a bit wan. Silvery threads of gray sparkled in his dark hair. His eyes were dark, that brown so deep it would sometimes appear black. He returned her greeting with a faint smile and motioned her into the seat facing his.

“I got you a cup,” he said.

“You knew I’d come?”

“Anyone who’d come out onto a dark street to beard a stranger who frightened her must have more curiosity than a dozen cats.”

In spite of herself, she smiled back and took the chair. “It gets me into trouble sometimes.”

“I imagine so. On the other hand, you probably don’t run through life with a load of nagging questions.”

“Not often.”

He reached for the carafe and filled her beige mug. The table already held a saucer full of little half-and-half containers. She reached for one, opened it and poured the contents into her coffee. At this hour of the night, even her beloved beverage could give her heartburn. The half-and-half would help.

“I haven’t ordered yet,” he said. “Take a look at the menu. I’m buying.”

“I can buy for myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But since I caused all this uproar for you, this seems like the least I can do. And believe me, I can afford it.”

So she reached for the menu and began scanning a list that exceeded Maude’s City Diner in variety, but probably not in saturated fats. Here she could even find artificial eggs and vegetarian omelets. It gave her a glimpse of the new generation of truck drivers.

But what the heck. She settled finally on their “fluffy” pancakes.

The waitress came and took their orders, his a fullsize breakfast with all the trimmings. He certainly wasn’t worrying about his weight or his cholesterol.

With the menus tucked back into the wire holder behind the salt, pepper and ketchup, they stared at one another over coffee mugs. Trish found herself strangely reluctant to grill him, even though she’d started their conversation back on the bench by doing precisely that.

Finally he spoke. “So what can I tell you that will ease your mind?”

“What do you want to tell me?”

“That I mean you no harm. A statement that is absolutely meaningless without anything to back it up.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “Seems like one of those lines in a bad sci-fi movie that always winds up being the prelude to something terrible.”

“Hey, I like those old science fiction movies. The older and more awful, the better.”

“The ones with nuclear bombs that are both the cause and the solution to whatever is ravaging the world?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, those. Science as the be-all and end-all.”

“I take it you don’t believe that.”

He hesitated. “Not anymore,” he said finally.

She eyed him directly. “What changed your mind?”

“Let’s just say I have reason to believe that science is less of an answer and more of a question. It should be a search, not a conclusion.”

“Interesting way of putting it.”

The waitress interrupted, serving their breakfasts with a smile that seemed almost obscene at this hour of the night. Either the woman was a native night owl, or the need for tips made her pretend to be one.

After a bite of pancake, which did indeed prove to be very fluffy, she posed a question. “What brings you to Conard City? Sure, the state highway runs through, but it’s not the kind of place where people usually stop and stay without a reason.”

“I’ve been on the road for a long time. Guess I finally realized you can’t outrun yourself. Seemed as good a place as any to wait for the rest to catch up.”

The answer sounded pat. Too pat. She looked down at her mug, then picked up the spoon to stir her coffee pointlessly. “Really,” she finally responded.

“Really,” he said. “Sounds like a bad novel, right?”

She met his gaze again. “No, not exactly. Just…stock.”

He nodded slowly. “There’s a difference between citing a cliché and meaning it.”

“Well, yes.”

“And clichés become clichéd because they’re often true. Otherwise people wouldn’t use them so much.”

In spite of all her suspicions, she felt more intrigued that ever, and sensed the beginnings of an actual liking for this guy. She didn’t want that.

He shrugged finally. “It’s true. I ran from myself. From an unhappy time in my life. And like all people who run, I found all the troubles and grief just came along with me. Some memories can’t be erased. They stick like burrs on your cuffs.”

“Yes, they do. Would you want to erase your memory?”

“There’ve been times I’ve actually thought that would be a good thing. But other times…well, frankly, Ms. Devlin, you can’t give up the bad without giving up the good.” He looked out the window, but there was clearly nothing to be seen beyond the reflections of the interior of the restaurant. Darkness turned the windows into mirrors.

“I had to put my favorite dog to sleep a couple of years ago,” he said slowly. “Best dog I ever had. She taught me a lot about being a better person.”

“How so?”

He looked at her again, and there was no mistaking the heaviness in his sad, dark eyes. “I could be lazy. I could be impatient. I sometimes made her wait for the smallest of her needs. Sometimes I yelled at her for no better reason than that she was asking for a simple thing like a walk, or water. Because she was interrupting something I thought was more important at that moment. But she never held it against me. She’d go away and wait quietly, and the minute I gave her the attention she had asked for, she was hopping with joy and gratitude.”

Trish nodded. “It’s been a long time since I had a dog, but I remember it.”

“Endless love. Endless forgiveness. Endless patience. Anyway, she was a lesson, and she began to get through to me about all the truly important things in being a decent human. Simple things, every one of them, but so difficult to do. Unless you’re a dog.”

“They do seem to do it naturally.”

“I have a friend who tags her e-mails with ‘WWDD: What would dogs do?’” He smiled faintly. “A little over the top, maybe, and probably offensive to some, but to some extent my dog became my touchstone, so I understand what my friend is trying to get at. Anyway, I finally had to put the dog down. I’d waited too long because I needed to hang on, but finally I realized I was hurting her to put off my own guilt at the decision I knew I had to make.”

“It’s an awful decision to have to make.”

“It is. I guess part of me hoped I’d wake up one morning and find she’d passed peacefully in her sleep, so I wouldn’t have to make a choice at all. Life doesn’t always allow us to do that.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She paused, then took another bite of pancake, waiting for whatever else he might volunteer.

“Thing was, much as I grieved for Molly, I learned another lesson from her—it hurts, but you have to remember the good times, not the very end, which was so hard.”

Despite her determination not to respond emotionally to this guy or his story, Trish felt her throat tighten. She put down her fork.

He seemed to recognize her reaction, because he said quickly, “Sorry, I’m not trying to tug your heartstrings. It’s just…you’d think having learned that with the dog, I’d be better at handling stuff. But I’m not. When the rest happened, well, I didn’t want to be around anything that reminded me of it. So here I am, on a quest for some kind of peace. Very sixties California except it’s nothing like that. I got here and saw my journey coming to an end. So I’m going to hang around until it’s over. And then I’m going home.”

She nodded. His story made sense to her, although she would have liked to know more about what had put him on the road. However, she felt it would be prying too much to just come right out and ask. As she knew herself, some things were painful to talk about, even with friends, and impossible with total strangers. And hadn’t she herself come running home to Conard County because of a past she didn’t want to face every single day?

People did things like that, rational or irrational.

He resumed eating. She followed suit, absorbing what he had told her, weighing it in her mind and deciding that on the face of it, she didn’t need to be paranoid. People had seen them together, Gage had stopped to check him out. If he meant her any harm, he was certainly on notice now that he’d be the prime suspect.

“Are you a scientist?” she asked, at once trying to learn more about him and direct the conversation to less explosive territory.

“In a way. I work in computers. Software and system design. At least I did.”

“Will you go back to that?”

He put his fork down and for an instant he looked almost eager. “You know, sometimes I think about it. I was getting into some really interesting research.”

“I didn’t think computer people did research.”

Again that half smile. “Not all of us sit in cubicles and write code. Some of us are, or were, busy looking toward the future.”

“In what ways?”

“Well, we’re approaching the possibility of quantum computers. Do you know anything about quantum physics?”

“I had a physics course both in high school and college. I wouldn’t say I’m well versed, but I have a nodding acquaintance.”

“When it comes to the quantum world, nobody really understands it, anyway. All we can do is make predictions based on large numbers. Sort of like playing the odds.”

“Oh, that makes me feel secure.”

His smile widened. “We’re both here talking, and the restaurant hasn’t vanished. So the large numbers work just fine for most purposes.”

“But in quantum computers, what happens?”

“That’s the problem we’re trying to sort through. Things get dicier, of course, at such a small scale. But then studies actually proved the so-called observer effect—have you heard of that?”

“Something about the act of observing affects the measurements?”

“At the quantum scale, yes. But it goes way beyond that. I won’t bore you with details, but a number of experiments show that conscious intent can affect the basic randomness we expect at the quantum level. One extended study of them at Princeton, in fact. The effect wasn’t huge. Just a nudge this way or that, tiny but statistically relevant. That throws a big monkey wrench into quantum computing.”

“Wow. And you were working on that?”

“Doing some research, yes. You can’t move into nanotechnologies unless you can guarantee reasonable accuracy. If a process relies on quantum randomness, you have to correct for influences that actually reduce that randomness.”

At that she felt herself smile. “Now I’m in over my head. I just know how much I depend on my computer to be accurate.”

“Exactly. So there’s a lot of work to be done. But it’s unleashed some fascinating questions.”

“And that’s why you said science should be about questions, not answers.”

“Well, partly.” His face shadowed a bit, but he continued. “We need solutions, but solutions aren’t necessarily answers, if you get my drift. And some people don’t even want to ask the questions.” He fell silent, then dipped a corner of toast in his egg, and popped it into his mouth. He appeared to have gone elsewhere in his mind, whether to his former research or some darker place she couldn’t know.

But one thing seemed to be clearer for her: there was no reason to believe this man intended her any harm whatsoever. Once again she began to feel embarrassed by the mix of emotions that had led her to go to Gage.

Even though the sheriff hadn’t thought she was out of line for being nervous about this guy sitting across from her house every night in the wee hours, she herself felt as if she had made a mountain out of a molehill.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I overreacted by getting the sheriff involved.”

It took him a moment to drag himself out of the well of thought he’d fallen into. “I understand perfectly. The world being what it is, you’d be strange if you hadn’t gotten nervous about me sitting across from your house every night. It’s not like I’m someone you know from around town.” Then he shook his head very slightly and smiled faintly. “Not that anyone can be sure of anyone just because they know them by sight.”

“You’ve lived in a big city?” His answer would seem to suggest that.

“Yeah. So I understand. I may be out there a few more nights, because it’s a convenient place to rest.”

She noticed he didn’t ask if that would continue to bother her. Apparently he felt he’d answered her questions sufficiently. And just like that, she felt nervous again, because the bottom line was that she hadn’t learned a damn thing about him really. The death of his dog? A personal tragedy? References to computer research? Conveniently lacking any verifiable details?

All of a sudden she didn’t feel silly anymore. In fact, she wondered if she’d just been treated to a good sales job.

She pushed back her plate and stood. “I feel stalked,” she said flatly. Then she grabbed her purse, threw bills on the table and walked out.

No one followed her to her car. When she glanced back as she was about to climb in, she saw Grant still sitting at his table, staring into space.

Yes, she felt stalked. That was exactly the word, the one she hadn’t actually put her finger on until just now.

And there were a lot of good reasons for her to feel paranoid about that.

Chapter Three

Trish’s computer hummed quietly as she searched the Net for information. Outside, another bright, cool day was beginning to degrade into cloudiness that might bring rain or even snow. She didn’t know or really care. She was too busy trying to verify what Grant had told her last night about the research he’d been doing, then trying to find out if it led her to him.

Either she didn’t know the best search question to ask or the subject wasn’t one of the most popular. Either way, several hours passed during which she scanned articles that hinted at the matters Grant had spoken of last night without success.

He appeared to be right about one thing: from what she was seeing, not many scientists wanted to ask whether conscious intent could affect the quantum field.

She did, however, gradually realize that some terms were appearing repeatedly without explanation, as if they were understood. And she realized there was a certain evasiveness when they came up. Either that or they were used within such strictly defined limits that she couldn’t get the meaning.

Finally she changed her search criteria from quantum physics and linked conscious with Princeton. Up popped a Web site link for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab.

She might not have studied physics in depth, but as an accounting major with a minor in economics, she had studied a lot of statistics, and as she delved deeper she discovered that the things Grant had discussed in loose generalities were actually being investigated with mind-blowing results. While the ultimate conclusion was that conscious intent had such a small effect on random number generators that it could be ignored, the fact remained: the statistics showed the effect to be way, way beyond chance.

Good Lord! she thought. What a door to open: human thought could affect the functioning of a machine…or the rate of radioactive decay. In small ways, yes, but even those small ways were a window to a whole different view of the universe. And it further elucidated what Grant had meant about some scientists being afraid to ask the questions. Of course they were afraid to ask. None of them would want to be labeled fringe lunatics.

She sat back in her chair, stretched and thought about what she had just learned. Grant, whoever he was, hadn’t been spouting some kind of extremism last night, but a valid scientific viewpoint, however much mainstream science might try to skirt it. That much at least hadn’t been a sales job.

However, there was no way to search for him, not with only one name, first or last she didn’t know. No matter how many ways she tried it, the word grant came up more often for grant applications and awards than anything else. How convenient.

She sighed, then spoke aloud to the empty room. “Get over this obsession,” she told herself. “Just get over it. Load the damn shotgun if you’re that worried, and then forget about it.”

Not a normally obsessive person, her behavior, her contradictory responses, had begun to seriously trouble her. The man limped around town in the middle of the night, sat on a public park bench for a whole twenty minutes, had spent time last night trying to reassure her in some way, and there was nothing left to do except regain her own sense of proportion and rationality.

Sitting here at the computer working the “Grant problem” as if she had nothing better to do with her time was out of character.

Wasn’t it?

She sighed again and rubbed her eyes. “What is going on?” she asked the room. The room, of course, didn’t answer.

But some little voice in her head finally did.

It’s not about this guy, it’s about another guy. A guy who lied to you.

Was she really in some subconscious way trying to make Grant a stand-in for Jackson?

Oh, yeah. Now you’ve got it.

At once she leaned forward and pressed the button to hibernate her computer. Then she shoved back from her desk, realizing only as she stood that she had grown stiff from not moving for so long.

“Idiot,” she said to herself.

In the kitchen she made a fresh pot of coffee and a turkey sandwich.

Yeah, she was an idiot, she decided, but only because, however indirectly, she had opened that damn Pandora’s box again, the box named Jackson Harris.

That box containing a torrid fairy tale, an all-consuming eight-month romance that had ended in the heartstopping, earth-shaking discovery that he was a married man. That he had lied to her all along, claiming he was divorced. An instant of discovery and shock that had seemed to kill everything inside her in one icy blow.

Until the pain started. To this day she couldn’t say what hurt worse: losing love, being used or being betrayed so callously. It had certainly hurt to leave her job in Boston because she couldn’t face the constant reminders.

But at least she had managed to find her way home. Maybe she had thought it would all get better here. Instead, just as Grant had remarked last night, she’d brought her baggage with her. You can’t run from yourself. Probably one of the oldest clichés in the world. And so, so true, as Grant had pointed out.

She sat at her kitchen table and bit into her sandwich, thinking about the tangled mess of her mind. A mind that she always preferred to believe was relatively neat and orderly…yet as of this moment seemed anything but.

What was the psychological term? Transference? No, more like projection? Whatever, it disturbed her to think that she might be reacting to Grant in a way dictated by her experience with Jackson. After all, what had Grant done except sit on a park bench in the middle of the night? So maybe her suspicions resided less with his actions and the timing of them than they did with the horrendous betrayal she had suffered at Jackson’s hands. Maybe she felt uneasy and threatened for no other reason.

Probably a good time to have a heart-to-heart with one of her girlfriends, but a glance at the clock told her that they were all still involved in the middle of their workdays. Not the time for a conversation like this.

She took another bite of her sandwich just as her cell rang. With a muffled groan as she tried to chew and swallow fast, she pulled the phone from her pocket as the ring tone played the same bars of “Carmina Burana” for the second time.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Trish, it’s Gage.”

“Oh, hi, Gage. Thanks for calling. I’m sitting here concluding yet again that I’m overreacting to that guy.”

“Conclude away. I did the ‘stop and identify’ I promised you I would last night.”

“I saw you. You’re going to think I’m nuts.”

A quiet laugh escaped him. “Not a chance. Why?”

“Because after you left I went out and talked to him. And then I met him at the truck stop and we talked longer.”

“Well, I’ll give you credit for guts and curiosity, but I’m not going to tell you that was a wise thing to do with a total stranger.”

“Well, since I’m getting concerned about the state of my own mind right now, I have to agree. I bounced from he’s not really a threat to feeling stalked, and now I’m on my way back again.”

At that Gage really laughed. “It’s hard to reach a conclusion in the absence of facts. But I have some facts for you. Interested?”

“In anything that might help me get my balance back. When I have to stand back and look at my own mental workings, something’s not right.”

She could hear the smile in his response. “Smart people do that all the time. It’s the idiots who never selfexamine. Anyway, I do have some info for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I couldn’t find anything on him yesterday because he used a fake name on the motel register.”

“Not good.”

“Not a crime. When I stopped last night and talked to him, I got his driver’s license. No wants, no warrants, great credit rating and he owns property in California.”

“That’s a long way away. Anything else?”

“Actually, yeah. But nothing that raises a red flag.” Gage fell silent a moment. “Did he give you his full name?”

“No, just Grant.”

“Well, until the guy does something wrong, I don’t feel I have the right to share any more. Sorry, but there are limits. Just ask him his full name. Then you can find out what’s in the public record just as I did. But I don’t have the right, legally or ethically, to go beyond what I just told you.”

She almost sighed, but knew he was right. How much would she want Gage to invade her own privacy just because she made someone feel uneasy?

“Thanks, Gage. I appreciate your help.”

“You’re more than welcome. If he does anything else to concern you, let me know immediately, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

She closed her phone, slipped it back into her pocket and felt an urge to laugh at herself. Oh, it was so shocking! Yep, really shocking. Some guy sits on a public park bench, legal even at one in the morning, and nobody could do anything about it.

For some reason, her grandmother’s voice floated into her mind, the woman’s plainspoken way of telling someone to think about what they were doing: Are you tetched in the head? Always delivered in a kind voice, but always in its own way like a jerk back to a calmer state of mind.

“Are you tetched in the head, girl?” she asked out loud.

Yeah, maybe she was. And maybe tonight she’d go out and ask Grant for his full name. Or maybe not. Just because Jackson was a lying scoundrel didn’t mean every other man on the planet was.

She finished her sandwich in a calmer frame of mind. Then she grabbed a heavy flannel shirt and her book and went out back. Ten minutes later she had a small fire burning, and she curled up on a chaise with her coffee to read.

Clouds might be moving in, but that didn’t mean winter had arrived.

Yet.

The deepening night chill, which had begun its arrival with rain in the late afternoon, bit at Grant’s exposed skin as he limped his designated path from the motel to Mahoney’s, where he spent fifteen minutes sipping an excellent rye, and then again as he limped his way toward the park to sit in front of Trish Devlin’s house. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, but the night managed to bite even through his jeans, and his hood couldn’t cover his cheeks. If he was here much longer he might have to upgrade his clothing.

But he had no choice yet. His path was ordained, by what he couldn’t really say. All he knew was that he’d ignored something like this before and had lived to regret it. He wished he hadn’t lived.

So he followed the plan, according to what he knew, even though it was entirely possible he couldn’t make any difference at all to the outcome. How would he know? Science didn’t like these questions and had never tried to answer them. Theology even tried to steer away from this place.

But here he was in the midst of it. After nearly a year of thumbing rides around the country, trying to deal with his demons, he’d become aware of a different demon. And somehow he’d known he’d arrive in the right place at the right time.

The minute that last rig had pulled into the truck stop here, somewhere deep inside, he’d known: this is it. Certainty as strong as a compulsion had led him to check into the motel, then hunt for the bar he was sure he’d seen before. The clock he recognized over the bar. The time that had been nagging at him. The subsequent walk to a park and a bench that were somehow familiar.

Sometimes he wondered if his experience was something like that of serial killers who talked about a compulsion, an inner pressure to hunt a victim whom they somehow recognized even if they had never met.

Sometimes he wondered if he’d gone off the deep end. Sometimes he wondered if he himself was the demon he was hunting.

But he was here, guided by God knew what to this out-of-the-way place, and fear of failing yet again made him follow this set path night after night. The only reassurance he had that he wasn’t the demon was his own distaste for making Trish Devlin nervous.

He wished there was another way.

But there wasn’t. He just knew he had to be on that bench at that time. Period. And he couldn’t explain it to another soul without getting himself committed.

Smothering a sigh, ignoring the grinding pain in his hip and the stabbing pain in his thigh and the incessant ache in his back, which probably came from limping around so much, he plowed through the night, feeling as if he were walking through an iceberg rather than air. At times it was almost as if something pushed back at him, told him to turn around. But the compulsion overrode everything else, and because he hadn’t trusted that compulsion before, to his great grief and horror, he had to trust it now.

Time, he reminded himself, was an artifact of the large-number world he existed in. At the quantum level, past and future became one in a timeless present. So his experience was possible.

Possible.

Just possible.

A lot of rational people would tell him he was nuts. There’d been a time he would have agreed. But not since the…accident.

Except now he lived in a world where he knew there were no “accidents,” only probabilities, and there was one probability he had come here to prevent.

It was possible he had already prevented it just by coming here and making this walk every night. But the compulsion remained, so he remained, too.

He lowered himself to the bench again with a gasp of both pain and relief. Maybe when this compulsion let go, maybe when he dealt with whatever he’d come to deal with here, he’d be able to allow himself the gift of the hip replacement the docs had wanted to give him. A hip replacement he’d denied himself out of guilt.

He almost smiled then, realizing that he might actually be doing penance for something that had arisen from the morass of quantum probabilities, probabilities over which he could exercise only minimal control by making decisions. He had made a rational decision that time.

This time he was making an irrational one in order to atone.

And he was evidently scaring the woman who lived in that house. He felt bad about that, but maybe his whole purpose in doing this was to scare her. Because if he was right, she needed to be scared.

The last thing he expected to see was Trish Devlin come out of her house and march toward him. After their meeting at the truck stop, he expected her to avoid him like the plague. Instead, here she was, striding purposefully toward him, her snorkel hood up on her parka, her hands in her pockets.

When she reached him, she stood over him. The snorkel hood, even though it wasn’t fully zipped, managed to shadow her face completely.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“A very cold guy who is sorry he keeps disturbing you.”

“I’m finding that hard to believe. The sheriff says you appear to be okay.”

“Then you shouldn’t worry about me.”

“Well, I can’t stop wondering about you. I go from being annoyed to being frightened to being just plain curious. Either way, I can’t sleep until you leave. So why don’t you just come into my house and tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Why should anything be going on?” He genuinely wanted to hear her answer to that.

“Because after what I told you about feeling stalked, a gentleman would have chosen a different bench tonight.”

“Reasonable,” he said. “But not possible.”

“Why the hell not?”

His answer was simple, and as true as he could give her. “Because I can’t.”

“That’s not true. You can walk any direction you want, sit on any one of another dozen benches.”

“Theoretically.”

She made a disgusted sound. “Why do I feel as if I’m caught up in a conversation with an evasive Zen monk?”

“I should be so lucky.”

“Then just give me your full name.”

“Why?”

“So I can do a Google search on you. So maybe then I’ll be able to sleep.”

“I don’t want you to sleep at this time of night.”

She swore then, a phrase he suspected was totally uncharacteristic. It didn’t seem to pass her lips easily. “Do you always talk in riddles?”

“Enigmas, actually. I can’t explain.” He hesitated, but sensed there was no danger in the revelation. And feelings were about all he had left to guide him in this unknown territory. “But I will give you my full name. The search engines should take you on an interesting journey.”

“I hope so.”

“My full name is Grant Frederick Wolfe.” He spelled the last name for her. “You’ll probably find me most often as Grant F. Wolfe, or even G. F. Wolfe, which is the name I used on most of my papers.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, then turned to walk back to her house.

This should be interesting, he thought as he watched her disappear inside. Because he had a pretty good idea what the search engines would bring up.

He glanced at his watch. Ten more minutes, then he could go back to the motel’s warmth.

Maybe, at some point, the universe would reveal to him why he’d been chosen for this particular hell.

Because he sure didn’t have any idea why.

Chapter Four

The morning was chilly enough to cause Trish’s breath to fog. The rain yesterday had cleared the air so well that the trees seemed even more colorful, the sky even bluer and the sun even brighter. They were in the height of autumn, with a brief burst of Indian summer in the forecast for tomorrow. She looked forward to those few warmer days.

But this morning she had a mission. By nine-thirty, she was hammering on the door of Grant’s room at the motel. A few minutes passed, then the door opened and he looked out at her with sleep-puffed eyes.

“Come in,” he said. “Except you’ll have to excuse my state of dress. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

She stepped into the warmth and glanced around the room. It showed its age, of course, but Grant was evidently a neat person. His few possessions appeared to be stowed away.

On the other hand, Grant himself was something else. Maybe he slept in the buff, but he’d pulled on nothing but a pair of jeans to answer the door, and he hadn’t even bothered to snap them.

Trish’s thoughts raced down an alley she didn’t want to enter, but it proved impossible for her to ignore the fact that he had a broad, smoothly muscled chest, arms that said he could lift more than a laptop. And then there was that faint sprinkling of dark hair below his navel that acted like an arrow, pointing directly to the open snap of his jeans.

The man was beefcake, for crying out loud. He could have posed for one of those calendars.

But then he turned swiftly away, grabbing a sweatshirt on the foot of the bed, and she saw his back. Her awareness of his musculature vanished as she saw the patchwork of scars. They looked like surgical scars, but she could only imagine the injuries they represented.

Almost as if the strength had been sucked from her, she sank into the one chair beside the window.

Sweatshirt on, he dropped onto the end of the bed, facing her. “So,” he said. “Can I buy you a coffee or breakfast? I could use a cinnamon roll myself.”

“I want to talk.”

He nodded. “I figured that out. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. But wouldn’t it be better to talk somewhere public?”

“For you or for me?”

“For both of us, maybe.”

Thinking about what she had learned during her Internet search, she could understand that answer. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you across the way.”

“Actually, I was thinking about the diner. Mahoney told me the food is fantastic.”

“It is if you’re not worried about the state of your arteries.”

At that he smiled faintly. “I’m not. Are you?”

“All right, I’ll drive you there. My car’s right out front.”

Outside she stopped to pull in a lungful of cold fresh air. How could she have forgotten how attractive a man could be or how good one could smell?

Shaking her head, she climbed into her car, switched on the ignition and turned up the heat. Grant Wolfe now posed a new kind of problem, one she felt less able to deal with than a stalker. She absolutely could not afford to feel attracted to him.

Five minutes later he emerged from his room, dressed for the weather now and quite a bit less distracting. He climbed into the passenger seat of her little four-wheel Suburu and smiled. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “I honestly don’t feel like walking this morning.”

She managed a smile in return. “Too cold,” she said. “In another few weeks I won’t even notice it, but this change was too sudden and too big. I’m freezing.”

“I come from near L.A. Nice climate. Moderate, most of the time.”

“That’s what I hear. But I think I’d miss the seasons.”

“I hear that all the time from people when they move to my area. The funny thing is, after a year or so they don’t seem inclined to move away.”

She gave a little laugh and nodded. “From what I’ve heard, it can be pretty seductive.”

“It can be.”

“I don’t know if I could handle the earthquakes.”

He cocked his head. “That’s another thing I hear a lot about. But if you really give it some thought, you realize that no place is totally safe from Mother Nature’s wrath.”

She nodded slowly as she pulled into a diagonal parking place in front of Maude’s. “You’re probably right about that.”

At this hour of the morning on a weekday, Maude’s diner was empty of all but a couple of knots of retirees and a couple of tables occupied by somewhat younger women—probably ranch wives who’d come to town to do the weekly shopping. Glances came their direction from everyone, but conversations barely stopped. Just enough noise and activity to make quiet conversation possible.

After the chill outside, Trish chose a table by the window where a bright sunbeam made its way inside. It was getting close to that time of year when, because it was too cold to stay long outside, she’d stand at a window just to feel the sun on her face.

Grant limped behind her and lowered himself gingerly into the chair.

“You really hurt,” she remarked.

“It’s worst when I first get up. Once I move around a bit, it eases.”

The inevitable cups of coffee arrived, slammed down by Maude herself, who regarded Grant with evident suspicion. “Know what you want?” she asked in her graceless way.

“Cinnamon roll, please,” Grant said.

“They’re big,” Maude warned. “‘Course, you look like you could use some fattening up.” Then she turned to Trish. “Don’t see much of you around here. Watching that tiny waistline?”

Trish almost blushed. “Actually,” she said carefully, “I just like to cook at home.”

Maude sniffed. “Well, you’re here now, so what’ll it be?”

“I already had breakfast, so the coffee will be fine.”

“Rude not to eat when you’re with somebody who’s trying to enjoy his breakfast. I’ll get you a roll, too. I figure that one—” she pointed at Grant “—will probably want whatever you don’t.”

As Maude stomped away, Grant cocked a brow at Trish. “You get a roll, too, even if you don’t want one?”

Trish grinned. “She’s an institution in this town. Maude’s way or don’t set foot in here.”

“I get that sense.”

An awkward silence fell. Understandable, Trish thought. She didn’t really know how to address what she’d learned about him, or where it was safe to start, or even how to frame an appropriate apology. She felt as if anything she said might break eggshells.

And, of course, Grant wouldn’t want to talk about some of it at all.

But at last the huge, hot, fresh cinnamon rolls occupied plates in front of them, along with butter for those who needed additional calories, and their coffee cups had been topped off. Impossible to avoid talking any longer.

It was Grant, however, who broke the silence. “I doubt,” he said, “that you found out anything about me that I don’t already know. I imagine you have questions.”

“Not questions, really,” she said, trying not to squirm. “More like a feeling I owe you an apology.”

“You don’t owe me one at all. I scared you.”

“I leaped to conclusions.”

“Maybe not such bad ones. Especially given that I’m a total stranger.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him and caught again that haunted, hunted look, but this time she knew where it came from. “I’m sorry about your family.”

He nodded, his lips compressing.

“But we don’t have to talk about that,” she said hastily. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about, anyway. I read the newspaper stories. It was awful. I can’t imagine surviving a plane crash that took your wife and daughter.”

Again he nodded, his face twisting a bit. “Some things you just have to live with.”

Words deserted her, leaving her with no other option than to return his nod and look down at the roll she now wanted even less than when Maude had slapped it down in front of her.

After a minute or so Grant sighed. He picked up his fork, cut off a bite-size piece and popped the sweetness into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then said, “There are still good things in life. And this must be one of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever eaten.”

“Maude is without compare in the kitchen.”

“So it would seem.” Back to inconsequentials. She was happy to keep the conversation on safe ground. “You wrote a lot of papers.”

He almost smiled. “I think I was a little manic. I loved my work, and sharing the things I learned was one of the best parts. Working the ideas through in my head enough to actually express them cogently in papers.”

“Well, I couldn’t understand a thing you said, but I was impressed by the number of your publications.”

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