The Sheriff of Shelter Valley
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TARA TAYLOR QUINN

With more than forty-five original novels, and published in more than twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than six million copies sold. She is a winner of the 2008 National Reader’s Choice Award, four-time finalist for the RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for the Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Bookseller’s Best Award and the Holt Medallion, and appears regularly on the Waldenbooks bestsellers list.

Ms. Quinn is a past president of the Romance Writers of America and served for eight years on the board of directors of that association. She has a wide range of experience as a public speaker and workshop presenter for writers’ groups around the country. When she’s not writing or fulfilling speaking engagements, Ms. Quinn enjoys traveling and spending time with her family and friends.

For me.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“MAMA! MAAMAA!” Ryan’s scream tore through her fog of sleep.

Beth Allen was out of bed and across the room before she’d even fully opened her eyes. Heart pounding, she lifted her two-year-old son out of the secondhand crib, pressing his face into her neck as she held him.

“It’s okay, Ry,” she said softly, pushing the sweaty auburn curls away from his forehead. Curls she dyed regularly, along with her own. “Shh, Mama’s right here. It was just a bad dream.”

“Mama,” the toddler said again, his little body shuddering. His tiny fists were clamped tightly against her—her nightshirt and strands of her straight auburn hair held securely within them.

“Mama” was what he’d said when she’d woken up alone with him in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with a nasty bruise on her forehead, another one at the base of her skull. And no memory whatsoever.

She didn’t even know her own name. She’d apparently checked in under the name Beth Allen and, trusting herself to have done so for a reason, had continued using it. It could be who she really was, but she doubted it. She’d obviously been on the run, and it didn’t seem smart to have made herself easy to find.

She didn’t know how old she was. How old her son was. She could only guess Ry’s age by comparing him to other kids.

Stoically, Beth stood there, rocking him slowly, crooning soothingly, until she felt the added weight that signified his slumber. Looking at the crib—old brown wood whose scars were visible even in the dim August moonlight coming through curtainless windows—Beth knew she should put him back there, should do all she could to maintain some level of normalcy.

But she didn’t. She carried the baby back to the twin bed she’d picked up at a garage sale, snuggled him against her too-skinny body beneath the single sheet and willed herself back to sleep.

In that motel room in Snowflake, she’d seen a magazine article about a young woman who’d run away from an abusive husband. Like someone drawn in mingled horror and fascination to the sight of a car crash, she’d read the whole thing—and been greatly touched to find that it had a happy ending. The woman had run to someplace called Shelter Valley, Arizona.

Desperate enough to try anything, Beth had done the same.

But after six months of covering her blond hair and hiding her amnesia, she was no closer to her happy ending.

Neither, apparently, was her son. Spooning his small body up against her, she tried to convince herself that he was okay.

Ryan had only had a nightmare. Could have been about monsters in the closet or a ghost in the attic. Except that the one-bedroom duplex she was renting had neither a closet nor an attic.

No, there was something else haunting her child, giving him these nightmares.

It was the same thing that was haunting her.

Beth just didn’t have any idea what it was.

NEARLY BLINDED by the sun-brightened landscape, Sheriff Greg Richards scanned the horizon, missing nothing between him and the mountains in the distance.

A young woman had been rear-ended, forced off the road. And when she’d rolled to a stop, two assailants had pushed her into the rear of her Chevy Impala. She’d never even seen the car that hit her; she had been overtaken too quickly by the men who’d jumped out of its back seat to notice the vehicle driving off.

Stillness. That was all Greg’s trained eye saw. Brownish-green desert brush. Dry, thorny plants that were tough enough to survive the scorching August sun. Cacti.

Another desert carjacking. The third in three months. A run of them—just like that summer ten years before. Yet…different. This time, instead of ending up dead or severely injured, the victim, Angela Marquette, had thrown herself out of the car. She’d flagged down a passing car and used a cell phone to call for help.

Greg continued to scan the surrounding area, but there was no sign of the new beige Impala. Not on the highway—patrols had been notified across the state—nor in the form of glinting metal underneath the scarred cacti and other desert landscaping that had witnessed hideous brutalities over the years. In the places it was thickest, a hijacked car or two, even an occasional dead body, could easily slide beneath it undetected.

Patrol cars and an ambulance ahead signaled the location of the victim. Pulling his unmarked car off the road and close to the group of emergency personnel, Greg got out. The immediate parting of the crowd always surprised him; he hadn’t been the sheriff of Shelter Valley long enough to get used to it.

As he approached the victim, he noticed that she was shaking and in shock. And sweating, too. The young woman, her brown hair in a ponytail, leaned against one of the standard-issue cars from his division. One of the paramedics shook his head as Greg caught his eye. Apparently she’d refused medical attention.

“Angela, I’m Sheriff Richards,” he said gently when her gaze, following those of his deputies, landed on him.

“We’ve got her full report.” Deputy Burt Culver stepped up to Greg. “We just finished.” Burt, only a few years older than Greg, had been with the Kachina County Sheriff’s Department when Greg had first worked there as a junior deputy. Other than a short stint with Detention Services—at the one and only jail in Kachina County’s jurisdiction—Burt had been content to work his way up in Operations, concentrating mostly on criminal investigations. He was one of the best.

Culver had never expressed much interest in administration, had never run for Sheriff, but Greg was hoping to talk him into accepting a promotion to Captain over Operations. No one else would be as good.

Greg glanced down at the report. “This is a number where we can reach you during the day?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied, her voice as shaky as her hands. “And at night, as well. I’m a student at the University of Arizona. I live at home with my parents.”

“The car was theirs?” Greg asked her. Chevy Impalas weren’t cheap. Certainly not the usual knock-around college vehicle. She would probably have been perfectly safe in one of those. These hijackers didn’t go for low-end cars.

“No, sir, it’s mine. I also work as a dance instructor in Tucson.”

Greg looked over the pages Burt had handed him, confident that everything was complete. That he wasn’t needed here, at the scene of the crime. Still, he thumbed through the report.

Two men had done the actual hijacking. Young, in their late teens or early twenties. One Caucasian. A blonde. The other had darker skin, brown eyes and black hair. They’d both been wearing wallet chains, faded jeans—in the one-hundred and ten degree heat—ripped tank T-shirts, medallions. The blonde—the driver—had a tattoo on his left biceps and he’d been wearing dirty white tennis shoes. They’d had her radio blaring.

“Neither of them spoke to you?”

The young woman shook her head, the movement almost spastic. Other than a couple of bruises, she’d escaped physically unharmed. But she’d probably carry mental scars for the rest of her life. Greg stared into the distance for a moment, focusing his concentration. He was the sheriff now. Personal feelings were irrelevant.

The carjackers of ten years ago had been silent, as well. No accents to give any clue that might imply one social group or school over another.

“I just remembered something,” the girl said, her brown eyes almost luminescent as she struggled against tears and sunshine to look up at him. “Just after they pushed me…over the seat…one of them said something…about this ‘counting double.’ They turned the radio on at the same time and I was so scared… I could be wrong….” She shook her head, eyes clouded as she frowned up at him. “Maybe I’m not remembering anything at all.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like the paramedics to take a look at you?” Greg asked.

She shook her head again. “I’m fine…just a little sore…” She attempted a smile. “I called my parents.” Her words suddenly came in a rush. “They’re on their way to get me.”

Nodding, Greg handed the report back to a sweating Culver. “See that I have a copy of this on my desk ASAP,” he said, then added, “Wait here until her folks arrive. I want them to be able to get the assurances they’ll undoubtedly need from the man in charge, not from a junior officer.”

“Got it, Chief.”

Unsettled, dissatisfied, glad only that Culver was in charge, Greg gave the young woman his own card with the invitation to call if she needed anything now or in the future, and headed back to his car.

He could keep trying to pretend that this case wasn’t personal, but either way, he was going to get these guys. There was simply no other choice. With every carjacking that went unsolved, there was a greater chance that another would follow.

That was the professional reason he wasn’t going to rest until the perpetrators were caught.

And the personal one…

His father’s death had to be avenged.

He entered Shelter Valley city limits an hour later and drove slowly through town, glancing as he always did, at the statue of the town’s founder, Samuel Montford, that had appeared while he’d been away.

There was no reason for Greg to stop by Little Spirits Day Care. Bonnie, founder and owner of the only childcare facility in Shelter Valley—and Greg’s only sibling—would be busy with all the “little spirits” in her care, doing the myriad things an administrator at a day care did.

He pulled up at Little Spirits, anyway. It was Friday. After a week of day care, maybe Katie, his three-year-old niece, needed to be sprung.

Even if she didn’t, Bonnie would pretend she did. Bonnie understood.

Sometimes Greg just needed a dose of innocence and warmth, sweetness and love, to counteract the rest of his world.

“Dispatch to 11:15…” The words came just as Greg was swinging shut the driver’s door. With an inner groan, he caught the door, sank onto the seat again and listened.

Two minutes later, he was back on the road. There was a warrant out for Bob Mather’s arrest. As far as Greg knew, the man he’d graduated from high school with hadn’t been in Shelter Valley for more than five years, but his parents’ place was listed as his last known address.

Which meant Greg had to pay the sweet-natured older couple yet another unpleasant visit, when he should’ve been watching ice cream drip down Katie’s dimpled chin.

This was not a good day.

TOILETS WEREN’T HER SPECIALTY. But Beth made the white porcelain bowl, the fifth she’d faced that day, shine, anyway. A job is only worth doing if it’s done right.

Beth squirted a little glass cleaner on the chrome piping and handle to make them glisten, then wiped efficiently, satisfied when she saw an elongated version of what she supposed was her chin in the spotless flush handle. She ignored the pull she felt as the quote ran through her mind again. A job is only worth doing if it’s done right.

How did she know that? Had someone said it to her? Many times? Her mother or father, perhaps? A boss?

There was no point traveling in that direction. The blankness in her mind was not going to supply the answer. And Beth didn’t dare look anywhere else.

But she made a mental note to write the thought down in her notebook when she got home that night. Because these obscure recollections were her only link with a reality she couldn’t find, she was cataloguing everything she remembered—any hint that returned to her from a past she couldn’t access.

And making up new rules to live by, as well. Creating herself.

Bucket full of cleaning supplies in hand, Beth blew at the strand of hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail. Only one more bathroom to go, and Beth’s Basins could chalk up another good day’s work. She still had to vacuum the Mathers’ carpets and water mop the ceramic tile in the kitchen and baths, but those jobs weren’t particularly noteworthy. Beth measured the progress of her day by bathrooms.

The doorbell rang in the front of the house. Stopping only to rinse her hands in the sink she had yet to clean, Beth wiped her palms along the legs of her overall shorts and hurried to the door. The Mathers had told her they were expecting a package, and she didn’t want to disappoint them by failing to get to the door in time.

The man waiting outside was uniformed in brown, but he wasn’t the UPS deliveryman she’d been expecting.

“Sheriff?” Between the hammering of her heart and the fear in her throat, she barely got the word out. His face was grim.

Ryan! He has to be okay! They can’t take him! Have they found me out? What do they know that I don’t? The thoughts buzzed loudly, making her dizzy.

“Beth!”

She almost relaxed a notch when Greg Richard’s stern expression softened.

“I didn’t know the Mathers were one of your clients.”

“Just this month,” she said. He hadn’t known she was working there. So he hadn’t come after her.

Thank God.

But then…that meant he was there to see the sweet older couple she’d met in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center at Montford University six weeks before.

“I take it Bob, Sr. and Clara aren’t home?” he asked.

He had the most intense dark green eyes.

Still holding the door, Beth told him, “They went to Phoenix to have lunch and see a movie.” She frowned. “Is something wrong?” Bob, Sr. had lost both his parents during the past few months. Surely they’d had their share of bad news for a while.

Greg shook his head, but Beth had a feeling that it was the “I’m not at liberty to say” kind of gesture rather than the “no” she’d been seeking.

“I just need to ask them a couple of questions,” he added, “but it sounds like they’ll be gone most of the afternoon.” His gaze was warm, personal.

“I got that impression.”

Hands in his pockets, Greg didn’t leave. “I’ll catch them later tonight, then. If you don’t mind, please don’t mention that I’ve been by.”

“Of course not.” Beth never—ever—put her nose in other people’s business. She didn’t know if this was a newly acquired trait or one she’d brought with her into this prison of oblivion. “I won’t be seeing or talking to them, anyway. I just leave their key under the mat when I’m through here.”

“So what time would that be?”

Beth glanced at her watch—not that it was going to tell her what jobs she had left or how long they would take. “Within the hour.” She was due to pick Ryan up from the Willises at five.

Ryan couldn’t be enrolled in the day care in town. Not only was Beth living a lie, without even a social security number, but she couldn’t take a chance on signing any official papers that might allow someone to trace her.

Especially when she had no idea who that someone might be.

So she left the toddler with two elderly sisters, Ethel and Myra Willis, who adored him. And she only accepted cash from her clients.

“How does an early dinner sound?”

That inexplicable headiness hadn’t left her since she’d answered the door. “With you?” she asked, stalling, putting off the moment when she had to refuse.

He nodded, the movement subtly incorporating his entire body. It was one of the things that kept Greg on her mind long after she’d run into him someplace or other—the way he put all of himself into everything he did. You had to be sincere to be able to do that consistently.

“I have to feed Ryan,” she said, only because it was more palatable than an outright no. It still meant no.

Pulling a hand from his pocket, he turned it palm upward. “The diner serves kids.”

Beth’s eyes were automatically drawn to that hand and beyond, to the pocket it had left. And from there to the heavy-looking gun in a black leather holster at his hip.

“Ry’s not good in restaurants.” Her mouth dry, Beth knew she had to stop. Too much was at stake.

Yet she liked to think she was starting a new life. And if she was, she wanted this man in it.

If he weren’t a cop. And if she weren’t afraid she was on the run from something pretty damn horrible. If she were certain she could trust him, no matter who she might turn out to be, no matter what she might have done.

“He’s two,” Greg said. “He’ll learn.”

“I have no doubt he will, but I’d rather get him over the food-throwing stage in private.”

Greg stared down at his feet, shod, as usual, in freshly shined black wing tips. “In all the months I’ve known you, I’ve never done one thing to give you reason to doubt me, but you always brush me off,” he said eventually.

“No, I…” Beth stopped. “Okay, yes, I am.”

“Is it my breath?”

“No!” She chuckled, relaxing for just a second. With the truth out in the open, the immediate danger was gone.

“My hair? You don’t like black hair?” He was grinning at her, and somehow that little bit of humor was more devastating than his earlier intensity.

“I like black just fine. Tom Cruise has black hair.”

“Dark brown. Tom Cruise has dark brown hair. And he’s the reason you’ve come up with an excuse every single time I’ve asked you out?”

“No.”

“It’s the curls, then? You don’t like men with curls?”

“I love your curls.” Oh God. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her throat started to close up again. She couldn’t do this.

And she couldn’t not do this. Beth’s emotional well had been bone-dry for so long she sometimes feared it was beginning to crumble into nothingness. She had no one else sharing her life—her fears and worries and pains; worse, she didn’t really even have herself. She was living with a stranger in her own mind.

“Ryan has curls,” she finished lamely.

Greg’s expression grew serious. “Is it the cop thing? I know a lot of women don’t want to be involved with cops. Understandably so.”

His guess was dead right, but not in the way he meant. “I’m not one of them,” she said, compelled to be honest with him. About this, at least. “I’d consider myself lucky to be involved with a man who’d dedicated his life to helping others. A man who put the safety of others before his own. One who still had enough faith in society to believe it’s worth saving.”

“Even though you’d know, every morning when you kissed him goodbye as he left for work, that you might never see him again?”

“Every woman—and man—faces that danger,” she said. “I’ll bet that far more people die in car accidents than on the job working as a cop.”

“Far more,” he agreed.

“And, anyway,” she said, feeling a sudden urge to close the door, “who said anything about kissing every morning?”

“I was hoping I’d been able to slide that one by you,” he said.

“Nope.”

“So—” his gaze became challenging “—if it’s not the cop thing and it’s not my breath, it must be you that you’re afraid of.”

“I am not afraid.”

He sobered. “If you need more time, Beth, I certainly understand. We could grab a sandwich as friends, maybe see a movie or something.”

More time? She frowned.

“It’s been—what?—less than a year since you were widowed?” he asked, his face softening.

Widowed. Oh yeah, that. It was the story she’d invented when she’d come to town. She was a recent widow attempting to start a new life. You’d think she could at least manage to keep track of the life she’d made up to replace the one she couldn’t remember.

“Look,” she said, really needing to get back to work. Ry was going to be looking for her soon. Routine was of vital importance to her little boy. “If you were serious about the friend thing, I could use some help.”

She was testing him. And felt bad about that. But not bad enough to stop herself, apparently.

“Sure.”

“I just bought a used apartment-size washer and dryer.” Taking a two-year-old’s two and three changes a day to the Laundromat had been about to kill her—financially and physically. “I need someone with a truck to go with me to pick it up and then help me get it into the duplex.”

He’d know where she lived, then. But who was she kidding? He was the county sheriff—a powerful man. And Shelter Valley was a small town. He’d probably known where she lived for months.

“I have a truck.”

“I know.”

She’d passed him in town a couple of times, feeling small and insignificant in the old, primer-spattered Ford Granada she’d bought for five-hundred dollars next to his beautiful brand-new blue Ford F-150 Supercab.

“If I offer to help are you going to brush me off again?”

“No.”

“You aren’t just setting me up here?” He was smiling.

“No!” Beth said indignantly, but she was smiling, too.

“I’m tempted to force you to ask, just to win back a little bit of the pride you’ve been quietly stripping away for months. But because I’m afraid to chance it, I’ll ask you, instead. May I please help you bring your new appliances home?”

Beth laughed out loud…and was shocked by the sound. She couldn’t remember having heard it before. Couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with bruises and a child who called her Mama crying on the bed beside her.

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind, I could sure use the help,” she said, all laughter gone. She had no business even thinking about flirting with the county sheriff, but she and Ryan needed those appliances. And she couldn’t get them to the duplex alone.

“What time?”

“Tonight? After dinner?”

“Sure we couldn’t do it before dinner and just happen to eat while we’re at it?”

“I’m sure.”

Beth hated the conflicting emotions she felt when he gave in with no further cajoling and agreed to pick her up at six-thirty that evening for the ten-minute drive out to the Andersons’. They were remodeling the one-room apartment over their garage and no longer needed the appliances, which, while five years old, had hardly been used.

Conflicting emotions—one of the few experiences Beth knew intimately. Intermittent relief. Disappointment. Resignation. Fear.

Peace. That was, and had to be, her only goal. Peace for her. And health, safety and happiness for Ryan.

Nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER TWO

HE’D SEEN HER DOWNTOWN, coming out of Weber’s Department Store, at the grocery store, the gas station, and in the park just beyond Samuel Montford’s statue. Seen her at Little Spirits once or twice when he’d stopped in to visit Bonnie or spring Katie. According to his sister, Beth Allen never left her son at the day care, but she volunteered once a week so he could have some playtime with the other kids.

He’d seen her at the drugstore once, and at Shelter Valley’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

But he’d never seen her at home.

The duplex was not far from Zack and Randi Foster’s place. But it didn’t resemble that couple’s home with its garden and white-picket fence. Her place was very small. One bedroom—the door was shut—a full bath squished into a half-bath space, a living room with a kitchen on the other end. And a closet that would fit either coats or the stackable laundry unit Beth had purchased. But not both.

The closet had washer-dryer hook-ups, and a clothes bar and single door, both of which had to be removed to fit the washer and dryer. The door he could rehang. The clothes bar’s removal would be permanent for as long as the closet remained a laundry room.

The entire house was meticulous.

“Where’d you say you lived before coming to Shelter Valley?” Greg asked as, pliers in hand, he attached a dryer vent to the opening on the back of the appliance.

“I didn’t say.”

“That?” Beth’s two-year-old son was standing beside Greg’s toolbox.

“It’s a hammer,” Beth said.

“That?”

“A level.”

“That?”

“A screwdriver.”

Glancing between the top rack of the toolbox and the little boy, Greg frowned. “How do you know which tool he’s referring to?”

Ryan hadn’t pointed at anything. His index finger had been in his mouth ever since Greg had collected Beth and her son more than an hour before.

She shrugged, hoisting Ryan onto her hip. “I could see where he was looking,” she said.

“You don’t have to hold him.” Greg returned to the metal ring he was tightening on the outside of the vent. “He’s welcome to help.”

She held the boy, anyway, as defensive about her son as she was about herself.

Greg still liked her.

“Here, Ryan,” he said, standing to give the little boy his wrench. “Can you hang on to this and give it to me when I ask for it?”

After a very long, silent stare, the toddler finally nodded and took the tool. He needed both hands to handle the weight of it, meaning that finger finally came out of his mouth—but he didn’t seem to mind the sacrifice.

“You changed.”

Beth’s words threw him. “Changed?” he asked. “How?”

“Out of your uniform.”

“I’m off duty.”

“I’ve never seen you out of uniform.”

He hadn’t thought about that, but supposed she was right. He’d been on duty the Fourth of July. And just coming off duty each time he’d stopped in at Little Spirits. She hadn’t been there the afternoon he’d spent building the sandbox on the patio of the day care.

“You look different.”

Giving the dryer vent a tug, satisfied that it was securely in place, Greg moved down to the washer. “Good different?” he asked. The jeans were his favorite, washed so many times they were faded and malleable, just the way he liked them.

“Less…official.”

He screwed the washer tubing to the cold-water spigot. “So, you going to tell me where you’re from?”

“You going to tell me why you’re so nosy?”

“I’m a cop. It’s my job to be nosy.”

“I thought you were off duty.”

“Touché.” Leaning around the edge of the washer, he grinned at her.

Beth wasn’t grinning back. Her expression showed both anger and hurt. And defensiveness—again. She hugged Ryan closer, almost knocking the wrench out of the little guy’s hands, but the boy didn’t complain. He just held on tighter.

Ryan Allen was one of the quietest toddlers Greg had ever met.

“You think I’m some kind of threat to the people of Shelter Valley?” she asked.

“Of course not!” Greg would’ve laughed out loud if he wasn’t so surprised by the tension that had suddenly entered the room. “I’m interested, okay?” he said, eager to clarify himself before the evening dived into dismal failure. “As a guy, not as a cop.”

“Interested.” Her hold on the boy loosened, but not much.

“Yeah, you know, interested.” He went back to the job at hand, thinking it was probably his safest move. “Men do that,” he grunted. He could tell the water spigots hadn’t been used in a while. If ever. He was having one helluva time persuading the faucet to turn. “They get interested in women who attract them.”

“I attract you?”

An entirely different note had entered her voice. Though the sound of battle hadn’t left, he was no longer sure he was the target.

“I haven’t made that perfectly obvious by now?”

The room had gone too still. Greg glanced around the washer once more, half thinking he might find he was alone, and his gaze locked with Beth’s.

“I need to be more obvious?” he asked. He’d never worked so hard for a woman in his life. Not that he’d had that many. His life had taken unexpected turns, been filled with unexpected responsibilities, but when he’d wanted a woman, he hadn’t had to work at it.

“No,” she said, looking down. From his silent vantage point, Ryan stared up at her, as though following the conversation with interest. “I, um…guess—” her eyes returned to his “—you have to be looking to see the obvious, don’t you?”

“You’re trying to tell me you aren’t looking. Period.” He couldn’t deny his disappointment.

“No. Yes.” She set her son down. “I’m saying maybe I didn’t notice your, um, interest because I wasn’t looking.”

The woman challenged him at every turn—something he particularly liked about her—and yet she’d never, until that moment, been difficult to follow. Just difficult to get any information from.

Of course, she’d been hurt, was wary. Probably loath to risk letting anyone get close again. Greg could understand that. It had taken him a long time to open up after Shelby left.

“And now that I’ve pointed it out to you?”

“I know.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.” As Ryan toddled toward Greg to see what he was doing, Beth leaned over the washer. “How’s it going back there?”

Greg twisted the faucet again and it gave immediately. Probably because exasperation had added strength to his grip. “Good,” he told her. “Another five minutes and you can throw in your first load.”

“Can I have the wrench, Ryan?” he asked, surprised when he turned his head to see the little guy so close to him, staring him right in the eye. Without blinking, the boy handed over the wrench.

“He’s a man of few words,” Greg said to Beth.

“We’re working on that.”

With his only living relative in the day care business, Greg knew a lot about kids. “He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

“I hope so.”

Greg made one more adjustment. “Here you go, little bud,” he said, handing the wrench back to Beth’s son. “You want to drop that in the toolbox for me?”

Ryan put the tool down on top of the hammer.

“I’ll bet he has more to say when it’s just the two of you,” he said as he slid the appliances in place against the wall.

“Not really.”

She sounded worried. Greg figured it had to be hard for her, a single mother—all alone in the world, as far as he could tell. She had no one to share the worries and heartaches with, to calm the fears, to share the mammoth responsibility of child-rearing.

More than ever, he wanted to change that.

If she’d let him.

“Did you get to the Mathers’?” she asked as he packed up his toolbox.

Greg nodded. It had been just as difficult as he’d expected.

“Bad news?”

“A sheriff rarely gets to deliver good news.”

“Clara told me they lost a daughter.”

Resting a foot on his toolbox, Greg leaned his forearm on his leg. “It’s been almost twenty years,” he told her, nowhere near ready to leave. Ryan was sitting on the floor a few feet away, a toy on his lap, pulled from a neat stack of colorful objects in the bottom drawer of the end table. The boy was obviously occupied, but Greg lowered his voice, anyway. “She and some friends were in a boat on Canyon Lake. They hit a rock. She was thrown and ended up underneath the boat.”

Beth’s eyes clouded. “They have pictures of a boy in their bedroom. I’m assuming they have a son, too?”

Greg nodded.

“Is he still around?”

“He’s still alive.” Greg sighed. The Mathers had physically deflated as he’d told them about the latest trouble Bob had gotten into. “After Molly, their daughter, was killed, they focused everything they had on Bob. He became their reason for living. He was a rebellious kid, but they pinned all their hope, love and energy on him.”

“You knew Bob?”

“We graduated in the same class.”

“Is he good to them?”

Greg wasn’t surprised by the compassion he read on Beth’s face. He’d been touched by her natural warmth the first time he’d run into her at the day care. He hadn’t needed his sister’s priming—her point-blank match-making attempts—to get his attention. Odd how someone could be so closed off and yet emanate such caring.

“Bob somehow came out of it all believing that the world owes him a living. He’s a conniver who works too little and drinks too much.”

“He’s not good to them.”

Most of what Greg knew, he wasn’t at liberty to say. “He hasn’t been home to see them in over five years.” He could tell her that much.

“What a shame. They’re such nice people.”

“They are.”

“It’s not right, you know,” she said softly, her arms wrapped around her middle as she leaned back against the wall, facing him and the room where her son played.

“What’s that?”

“Life, I guess. You have people like the Mathers, filled with unconditional love, great parents in an empty house, and their son, a jerk who’s completely wasting one of the greatest gifts he’ll ever get in this life. I’d literally give a limb to have what he’s just throwing away.”

She stopped, stepped away from the wall and busied herself with closing the closet door and picking up the packaging from the dryer vent, the papers she’d been given with the appliances.

She’d said more than she’d meant to. He could tell by the stiffness in her back. The way she wouldn’t look at him. Greg knew the signs well. He’d seen them again and again over the years as he’d questioned suspects. Could tell when just another push or two would wring the confession he was seeking.

“How about we take this little guy out for ice cream?” he asked, walking toward Ryan.

“Cweam?” the boy echoed, staring up at his mother.

“He’s messy,” Beth warned.

It wasn’t a no. Greg was elated. Probably far beyond what the situation warranted.

“Messiness is an unwritten rule when you’re two,” he said lightly.

He could read the uncertainty in her face. Which only made him want her capitulation that much more.

If he was a nice guy, he’d give up. Go away and leave her alone, quit bugging her, as she seemed to want. Except, Greg didn’t feel at all sure that was what she wanted. From the very beginning, whenever their eyes met, which she didn’t allow often, he’d felt the communication between them.

Something about this woman kept bringing him back, in spite of her refusal to have anything to do with him. And he had a pretty strong suspicion that she was drawn to him, too.

Her mouth said no. But he wasn’t convinced the rest of her agreed.

“Aren’t you worried about what people will think?” she said in a low voice.

As excuses went, it wasn’t one of her better ones. “It isn’t against the law for sheriffs to eat ice cream with messy kids.”

“Cweam?” Ryan asked again. Beth picked him up.

“Greg—” She stopped abruptly.

It was the first time she’d called him by his first name. He liked it. Too much.

“You know what I mean,” she said, her shoulders dropping. “I’ve only been here six months and don’t know many people, but I’ve certainly seen how well-oiled the gossip wheel is in this town. It might make things uncomfortable for you if you’re seen with the cleaning lady.”

“We aren’t snobs in Shelter Valley.”

“I know, but I’m a nobody who cleans houses and you’re the boss of the entire county.”

“I don’t think Mayor Smith would be too happy to hear you say that.”

“Even I know that Junior Smith is just a figurehead in this town.”

“Cweam?”

The boy might not talk a lot, but he was persistent. Greg liked that.

“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re so hesitant to be seen with me,” he said.

She didn’t. But he had a pretty good idea that she wanted to. Her eyes were telling him so much, frustrating him because, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t translate those messages.

She’d mentioned gossip. “You’re worried that they’re going to see us together once and start planning the wedding.”

“I might worry about it if I believed for one second that anyone would think I was good enough for you.”

“Bonnie’s been trying to hook us up for two months.”

“No way!”

“Yes, way. She’s invited you to dinner every Sunday for the past five weeks.”

“So?”

“I was invited, too.”

“Cweam?”

“Just a minute, Ry,” Beth said softly, kissing the top of the boy’s curly head.

“That’s just a coincidence,” she told Greg, adjusting her son on her hip. Ryan slid a finger into his mouth.

Katie would’ve been crying by now, demanding ice cream. Beth’s son didn’t seem to demand much at all. Something he had in common with his mother.

“Trust me, there are no coincidences with my sister,” Greg told her, prepared to stay there arguing the point all night if necessary. “And she wouldn’t leave something as important as this to chance, anyway. She’s not the least bit subtle or embarrassed about how adamant she is to change my marital status. Nor has she been subtle about telling me what a fool I’d be if I let you get away—I’d be missing my chance of a lifetime.” He mimicked the little sister he adored.

“So you’re doing this for her.”

Greg took more hope from the disappointment he heard in her voice than any other thing she’d said or done since he’d met her.

“No.”

He had no idea what had tied Beth Allen up in knots so tight they were choking her, but it bothered the hell out of him. She shouldn’t have to fight this hard all the time.

“I noticed you before Bonnie said a word,” he said, telling her something he would normally have kept to himself. “In fact, I’d already tried to get you to go out with me before she told me there was someone I ‘just had to meet.’”

“Oh.”

“Cweam?” Ryan said around the finger in his mouth.

Greg’s eyes met Beth’s and that strange thing happened between them again. As though something inside her were conversing with something inside him….

“Not tonight, Ry,” she finally said, breaking eye contact with Greg.

But she hadn’t looked away fast enough. He’d seen the pain in her eyes as she’d turned him down. It was the most encouraging rejection he’d had yet.

“Another time, then,” he murmured.

He could’ve sworn, as he said goodbye and told her he’d be in touch, that she seemed relieved.

Yep, there was no doubt about it.

Beth Allen wanted him.

“BONNIE, CAN WE TALK?” Monday was not her usual day to volunteer at the day care, but Beth had come, anyway. She’d been thinking about this all weekend.

“Sure,” the woman said, giving Beth one of her signature cheery smiles. Other than the dark curls that sprang from all angles on her head, thirty-four-year-old Bonnie looked nothing like her older brother. Short where he was tall, plump where he was solidly fit, she could be, nevertheless, as intimidating as he when she got an idea.

Beth knew this about her and she’d only known the woman a few months. Until now, she’d liked that trait, identified with it somehow.

With Ryan in clear view, Beth followed Bonnie into her windowed office and, canvas bag still over her shoulder, sat when Bonnie closed the door.

“What’s up?”

“I want you to quit bugging Greg to ask me out.”

“Why? Greg’s great! You two would have so much fun together.”

In another life, Beth was certain she’d agree. It was precisely because she wished so badly that this was another life that she had to resist. She’d thought about it all weekend and knew she had no choice.

Yet, how she longed to be able to confide in this woman, to talk through her thoughts and fears, benefit from Bonnie’s perspective.

Almost as badly as she longed to go out with Bonnie’s brother.

“I just don’t want to be a charity case,” she said, hating how lame she sounded. “I don’t want anyone asking me out because he feels sorry for me or he’s forced into it or—”

Bonnie cut her off. “You don’t know Greg very well if you think I could force him to do anything he didn’t feel was right. Nor would he ever date a woman simply because I wanted him to. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be thirty-six years old and still single.”

“He told me you’ve been trying to get us together for months.”

“And if he’s asked you out, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

Bonnie’s green eyes were so clear, so sure. She was the closest thing Beth had to a friend in this town. Although she knew it would probably shock the other woman, Beth’s relationship with Bonnie meant the world to her.

“Well, just stop, okay?” she said, standing. Somehow she’d convinced herself that if Bonnie quit pushing, so would Greg.

Or was it because she secretly hoped he wouldn’t that she’d been able to take this stand?

“Sure,” Bonnie said. “But it’s not going to change anything. If Greg asked women out because I pushed them at him, he wouldn’t have had eight months—at least—without a real date.”

Beth sat back down. “He hasn’t had a date in eight months?”

“I said at least eight months. That’s how long I know about. That’s how long he’s been back in Shelter Valley.”

“Back? I thought he grew up here.” She didn’t care. Wasn’t interested. Ryan was playing happily with Bo Roberts, a three-year-old with Down syndrome. Bo, a high-functioning child, was a favorite at Little Spirits and particularly a favorite of Ryan’s.

“He did. We both did. But Greg moved to Phoenix ten years ago.”

“To be a cop?”

Hands clasped together on the desk in front of her, Bonnie shook her head, eyes grim. It wasn’t something Beth had seen very often.

“He was already a cop,” Greg’s sister said. “Our father was severely injured in a carjacking and required more care than he could get in Shelter Valley. Greg moved with him to Phoenix and looked after him until he died.”

Beth’s heart fell. A dull ache started deep inside her. She didn’t want Bonnie—or Greg—to have suffered so.

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was twelve. From a bee sting, of all things. No one knew she was deathly allergic.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

Beth needed to say more. Much more. And couldn’t find anything to say at all.

“So it was just you and Greg and your dad after that?”

Bonnie nodded, and the two women were silent for a moment, each lost in her own thoughts. Bonnie, Beth supposed, was reliving those years. Beth was searching desperately for anything in her life that might help her to help Bonnie. But, as usual, she found nothing there at all.

“Anyway,” Bonnie said suddenly, spreading her arms wide, “Greg moved back here to run for Sheriff last January and hasn’t had a single date since he was elected. And it hasn’t been for lack of trying on my part, either.”

“So I’m just one in a long line to you, eh?” Beth asked, trying to lighten the tension a bit, make sure Bonnie knew there were no hard feelings, and the two women chuckled as they returned to the playroom.

Bonnie went back to supervising and Beth to finding crayons and engaging little minds in age-appropriate activities. On the surface, nothing had changed. But Beth was looking at her friend with new eyes. She’d had no idea Bonnie had led anything other than a blessed life.

There was a lesson in this.

Bonnie had suffered, and still found a way to love life. The other woman’s cheerfulness, her happiness, could not be faked. It bubbled from deep inside her, and was too consistent not to be genuine.

Beth had a new personal goal. Peace was still what mattered most—behind Ryan’s health and happiness, of course. But she didn’t plan to completely scratch happiness off her list. At least, not yet.

The next time Bonnie asked her and Ryan to Sunday dinner, she was going to accept. What was she accomplishing by denying herself friends? She literally didn’t know what she had to offer, so there was no way she could embark on an intimate relationship. But where was the harm in taking part in a family dinner? How was she ever going to create a new life for Ryan and herself if she didn’t start living?

CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS WAS GRUELING.

“I think we’re wasting our time here, looking in the wrong places,” Deputy Burt Culver said. Greg studied the photos, anyway.

It was the third Friday in August, and there’d been a fourth carjacking the night before. This time the victim hadn’t been so lucky. A fifty-three-year-old woman on her way home from work in Phoenix had been found dead along the side of the highway. There was still no sign of the new-model Infiniti she’d been driving.

“I understand why it’s important to you to tie these incidents together with what happened ten years ago, Greg, but you’re letting this get personal.”

Anyone but Burt would be receiving his walking papers at that moment. Eyes narrowed, Greg glanced up from the desk strewn with snapshots. “I appreciate your concern,” he said, tight-lipped, and turned back to the pictures—both old and new—of mangled cars. Of victims.

“But you’re not going to stop,” Burt said. In addition to obvious concern, there was a note of something bordering on disapproval in the other man’s voice.

Studying a photo of the smashed front end of a ten-year-old Ford Thunderbird, Greg shook his head. “I’m not going to stop.” The front end of a year-old Lexus found abandoned earlier that summer, its driver nearly dead from dehydration, unconscious in the back seat, looked strangely similar to that of the Thunderbird. They hadn’t started out looking similar. “Neither am I going to let my personal reasons for wanting this case solved interfere with the job of solving it.”

His trained eye skimmed over the image of the nearly nude young woman found in the desert ten summers before. The carjackers had become rapists that time. Her car, a newer-model Buick, had turned up twenty miles farther down the road. Also smashed.

Greg frowned. Another front-end job.

“My instincts—” He paused. “My cop instincts are telling me there’s some connection here.”

“Why?” Culver asked, barely glancing at the photos. Of course, he’d seen them all before. Many times. As had Greg. “Why these two sets only? Why not look into the rash of heists down south?”

“Those cars were being put to use.”

“So?”

“Whoever’s doing this is taking brand-new or nearly new cars, expensive ones, and smashing them up.”

“Joyriders.”

Yeah. It happened. More often than Greg liked to admit.

And yet… “Look at these front ends,” Greg said, lining up a few of the photos on another part of the desk.

Burt looked. “They’re mangled.”

“They’re identical,” Greg insisted.

“They’re smashed, Greg.” Burt wasn’t impressed.

Hell, maybe he was letting it get personal. Maybe he should agree with his deputy and back away. Still…

“They all look like they hit the same thing at the same angle and speed,” he said slowly.

Pulling at his ear—something he only did when he was feeling uncomfortable—the deputy leaned his other hand on the desk and gave the photos more than the cursory glance he’d afforded them earlier. “Could be,” he said.

It would be pretty difficult, especially after the hard time he’d just given Greg, for the older man to admit he’d missed something that might be important. Greg had no desire to belabor the issue. His eyes moved to the table behind his deputy and the partially constructed jigsaw puzzle there, which gave Burt a moment to himself.

“Let’s not write off the past just yet” was all he said.

“I’ll order some blowups of these….”

Burt didn’t meet Greg’s eyes again as he left the room. Standing over the puzzle, pleased to fit in the first piece he chose, Greg sympathized with his friend and coworker. There was nothing a cop like Burt—or Greg—hated more than to have missed something important.

WHY HAD SHE THOUGHT this was a good idea? With her canvas bag clutched at her side, Beth stood in Bonnie Neilson’s sunny kitchen on the third Sunday in August, watching Ryan and Katie ignoring each other as they played quietly in the attached family room. She longed for the dingy but very organized interior of her rented duplex. Better the hardship you knew than one you didn’t.

The duplex wasn’t much, but for the time being, it was hers. She was in control there. Safe.

“Keith just went to town for more ice,” Bonnie was saying as she put the finishing touches on a delicious-looking fresh vegetable salad. Already in a basket on the table was a pile of homemade rolls. Really homemade, not the bread-machine kind she used to make…

Beth froze. She’d had a memory. A real one. She had no idea where that bread machine was, no picture of a kitchen, a home, a neighborhood, a town or state—but she knew she’d had a bread machine. And she’d used it.

And been chastised for it?

“Can I do something?” Beth asked, probably too suddenly, reacting to a familiar surge of panic. She needed something to occupy herself, calm herself.

Staying busy had worked for months. As far as she knew, it was the only thing that worked.

“You can—”

“Unca!” Katie’s squeal interrupted her mother.

The ensuing commotion as Katie tossed aside the magnetic writing board she’d had on her lap and jumped up to throw herself at her newly arrived uncle—and Ryan dropped the circular plastic shape he’d been attempting to shove into a square opening on the shape-sorter to make his way over to his mother’s leg—served to distract Beth. She was so relieved, she didn’t have nearly the problem she had anticipated with the arrival of Greg Richards.

Instead, she was almost thankful he’d come.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Beth had very mixed emotions about Greg’s presence at his sister’s house. Bonnie and Keith, her husband, had left to drive over to his grandmother’s. Katie was asleep in the new trundle bed in her room. Ryan was also asleep, his little body reassuring and warm against her. He’d climbed in her lap after lunch, when they’d all migrated to the sitting room before trying the new chocolate cream cheese dessert Bonnie had made that morning.

That was when Keith’s grandmother had called and Beth had suddenly found herself alone with a man who launched her right out of her element.

Not that she had any idea what her real element was. These days, all she had to go by was the Beth Allen Rules of Survival. A notebook with frighteningly few memories. Plus the perceptions she’d had, decisions she’d made, since waking up in that motel room.

He lounged on the leather couch, dressed in jeans and a cotton-knit pullover that emphasized the breadth of his chest. He was surveying her lazily, and appeared content to do so for some time to come. Beth didn’t think she could tolerate that.

“Bonnie said you’d explain about Grandma Neilson,” she reminded him. His younger sister had begged that Beth stay, insisting they’d only be gone a few minutes and she’d hate it if their day was ruined.

“She refuses Bonnie’s invitation to join us for dinner on a fairly regular basis, insisting she doesn’t want to impose, and then, inevitably, has some kind of mock crisis that’s far more of an imposition than her acceptance of the dinner invitation would’ve been.”

“Mock crisis?” Soothed into an unusual sense of security, Beth leaned back against the oversize leather chair she’d fallen into after lunch.

“Something that seems to need immediate attention, but that she could handle perfectly well by herself—or that turns out to be nothing at all. A toilet that might be clogged, for example. Or a strange noise in the attic, due to a loose shingle.” Greg was smiling.

“But today’s call—a seventy-five-year-old woman who’s lost electricity in half her house, including her refrigerator—sounds pretty legit to me.”

“Most likely a blown fuse.”

“Still, for a woman her age…”

“Baloney,” Greg exclaimed.

Ryan stirred, but settled back against her, his auburn curls growing sweaty where his head lay against her.

“She might be seventy-five years old, but she’s as feisty and as manipulative as they come—and I’ve loved her as long as I can remember.”

“You knew her before Bonnie and Keith got married?”

“She used to be the librarian at the elementary school. Every kid in town knew Mrs. Neilson. And loved her, too, I suppose. She’s been a widow since Keith’s dad was little. She’s also the strongest person I’ve ever met. She’d go to the wall for any one of us if she believed in our cause. Nothing as trivial as a blown fuse is going to get in her way. Lonna Neilson could rewire that whole house if she put her mind to it.”

“Then, why do Bonnie and Keith keep running over there?”

Greg’s shrug drew her attention to the width of his shoulders. Shoulders a woman could lay her head against…

If that woman wasn’t Beth Allen. Or Beth Whoever-she-was.

“In the first place,” he said, “because they never know whether she’s crying wolf or whether it might be the real thing.”

She liked that. A lot. That they didn’t give up on the old woman.

“And more importantly, because what’s really driving her to call is the need to know she’s loved. That’s why Bonnie always goes, as well. It takes both of them to either make her feel good enough to be happy at home, or to convince her to join them here.”

Beth smiled, praying he couldn’t see the trembling of her lips. “So you’re used to being left here with Katie every Sunday?” she asked. Keep talking, don’t think. Don’t envision a vacant future, or, maybe worse, one that isn’t vacant, only intolerable.

“Nah, Grandma Neilson comes over about half the time she’s asked, and then there’s the occasional Sunday when no crisis arises.”

His words were something to focus on. Something to take her thoughts away from the fact that her past held a threat so great she’d taken her baby and run.

“But I’m used to time alone with Katie,” Greg continued lazily. “She’s a big part of my life.”

“Have you ever thought about having kids of your own?”

Beth’s gaze shot down to Ryan as soon as she heard her own words. She’d broken a major Beth Allen rule. Never ask personal questions. Doing so was often taken as an invitation by the recipient to ask questions, too.

Damn. Give her a good meal, a comfortable chair and she lost all sense of herself. Which was scary when one didn’t have much of that to begin with. When one was making things up as one went along…

Lifting an ankle to his knee, Greg slouched down farther. He looked more like a college kid than the head of an entire law enforcement organization. “I used to think I’d have a whole houseful of kids by now,” he said. “You’ve probably noticed that Shelter Valley families tend to be rather large. You don’t have to live here long to figure that out.”

His grin was sardonic, half deprecating, half affectionate, as he spoke about the people he protected day in and day out.

“Especially if you spend any time at Little Spirits,” Beth said, his easy tone allowing her to continue a conversation she’d meant to shut down. “It seems like everyone in Shelter Valley is related.”

“Either by blood or by a closeness of the heart,” Greg agreed. He sounded proud of the fact. “Everyone in Shelter Valley has family of one sort or another.”

It was the perfect opportunity to ask why he didn’t have that houseful of kids he’d envisioned. She badly wanted to know.

Only the very real threats she lived with every second of her life kept her silent. The threat of being found out. And of never finding out. Never learning who she was. What she was hiding from.

And why she hadn’t been strong enough to solve her problems rather than run from them.

The threat that he might ask questions she couldn’t answer. Or find answers she didn’t want him to have.

“Did you and your husband plan to have more children?”

Blank. That was the only way to describe the mental picture his question elicited. But there was nothing blank about the instant panic that accompanied the emptiness. As the dull red haze blotted out her peripheral vision—a reaction she’d long since recognized as her body’s danger signal—Beth again looked down at her son.

She could do this, get through whatever life required, for Ryan. Without a single memory, she knew he was the reason she’d run. And she’d keep running forever, from her memory, her needs, her heart, if that was what it took to keep him safe.

“I’m perfectly happy with Ryan,” she said.

“So you’d planned for him to be an only child?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Did your husband spend a lot of time with the boy?”

I don’t know! “What’s with the inquisition, Sheriff?” Guided by survival instincts, she stared at him, chin raised, as she offered the challenge.

And then turned quickly away. Those dark green eyes scared her with their intensity. When he looked at her, Greg Richards saw more than she could allow. She didn’t know how or why; she only knew it had to stop.

“I’m just trying to get to know you, Beth, but for some reason you make that very difficult. I can’t help wondering why.”

Because if she told him the smallest thing—truth or lie—he’d be able to find out more. Because she couldn’t afford to trust. Not even him. No matter what her heart said.

The red haze was back. “I notice you didn’t answer my earlier question about your own empty house,” she said, making a quick amendment to Beth Allen’s Rules of Survival. Avoiding personal questions was no longer the issue. Sidetracking him was.

“A couple of things happened to change my plans.”

“What things?” The fact that she really wanted to know made the query a dangerous one. But she had to keep him talking—about him. And not her. It wouldn’t be much longer before Bonnie and Keith returned. “You haven’t met the right woman?”

It was a common enough excuse.

“I met her.”

Oh. Beth frowned. “Was she from Shelter Valley?” Had the woman died? Why hadn’t Bonnie told her?

“Born and raised,” Greg said, his thumb tapping a rhythm on the couch beside him. “Shelby and I met in grade school. Dated all through high school. I think I always knew I’d marry her someday.”

“What happened?” And why was she taking this so personally?

“I asked her to marry me, but I wanted to wait until after I graduated from Montford and the police academy.”

Beth didn’t think she’d have agreed to wait—and was bothered by that thought. Did it mean she was impatient by nature? She certainly hadn’t had any indication of that up to this point. But she’d been so busy surviving, self-discovery hadn’t been much of an option.

As life in Shelter Valley grew more routine, things were starting to slip out from her hidden past, her hidden mind. She wanted that so badly.

And yet…she didn’t want it at all.

Ignorance allowed her to stay safe in Shelter Valley and raise her son.

Of course, maybe the reason she wouldn’t have agreed to wait had nothing to do with her; maybe it was just because of Greg. She couldn’t imagine having him in love with her and agreeing to wait a week, let alone years.

“During my last year of college, Shelby went to Los Angeles to visit a girl who’d lived with her grandparents in Shelter Valley during our senior year in high school. Shelby met some guy in California and was married within a month.”

“What?” Beth sat forward, completely forgetting that Ryan was sound asleep. Disturbed, the child lifted his head, eyes unfocused as he opened them. He fussed for a second and then settled against her and went back to sleep.

“She wanted out of Shelter Valley. Didn’t want to be trapped in this small town, raising a bunch of kids. She just hadn’t bothered to tell me that.”

“She was an idiot.” The words weren’t conciliatory or polite. Beth honestly couldn’t think of any dream better than a real home in this town, shared with a loving man. One who’d love Ryan, teach him the things a son should know. One who’d give her another baby or two…

But was it the real Beth thinking these thoughts? Or were they simply the desperate longings of a lost woman on the run?

“I like to think so,” Greg said, grinning at her. “Anyway,” he added, growing more serious, “that kind of put a kink in my plans for home and family.”

The softly spoken words lured her further into the dangerous conversation.

“That must’ve been at least ten years ago,” she said. “I can’t believe there haven’t been opportunities since then.”

“I spent the past ten years taking care of my father.”

“Bonnie told me,” Beth said, compassion welling up so strongly she wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I’m so sorry.”

Tight-lipped, Greg didn’t say anything. Beth could almost feel his frustration…and pain.

Which was ridiculous. She barely knew this man.

She adjusted Ryan, moving him to her other shoulder. His sweaty hair had left a damp spot where his head had lain.

“So you didn’t date for ten years?” The superfluous words were probably all wrong, but what else could she ask?

“I dated,” Greg answered with a dim version of the grin he’d given her earlier. But he looked relieved, too, to have been rescued from whatever thoughts had been hounding him. “I just couldn’t find a woman willing to take on a paraplegic senior citizen.”

And Greg was not a man who would put his father in a full-time care facility unless there was no other choice.

Beth had never wished more than she did in that moment that she was free to like this man—and maybe let something develop between them. Something more than liking…

DR. PETER STERLING and Houston prosecuting attorney James Silverman faced each other in the elegantly furnished waiting room of Sterling Silver Spa, in the newly incorporated town of Sterling Silver, Texas. The spa’s last client had just left for the evening.

“Damn, it’s hot.” Dr. Sterling pulled at the collar of his pristine white shirt. He’d just walked over from visiting a new resident in the apartment complex a couple of blocks away. “August has got to be the worst month of the year.”

Silverman didn’t agree. He thought January’s cold was pretty miserable. But it wasn’t worth an argument to say so. Loosening his tie, he unfastened the top button of his dress shirt. How did Sterling do it? Just keep going every day, always looking perfect?

Didn’t the man ever get tired?

And what did it say about Silverman that he was damn exhausted?

“It’s time to hire someone new,” Sterling said, his eyes black points of steel as they pinned Silverman. “Winters isn’t working out. We should’ve heard something by now.”

“I know.” James undid a second button. He’d been unhappy with the private investigator for weeks. But he didn’t know whom he could trust. There was too much at stake.

“Every day that goes by puts us all in more jeopardy.”

“I know.”

“We can’t think only of ourselves,” Sterling reminded him, as he did in just about every conversation the two men had these days. “We have many, many good people relying on us.”

“I know.” No one knew that better than James Silverman. He didn’t need Sterling reminding him, pressuring him. He carried the burden of his mistake every waking—and sleeping—moment of his life.

He wasn’t going to fail his new family, his friends. If nothing else, he believed in the cause. In them. He might have lost his faith in most things, but he still believed in a better tomorrow, a world free of negative energy and aggression.

They’d worked too hard, for too long, and come too far to let a traitor ruin everything for them now.

“Beth’s dangerous.”

“Yes.” James felt sick.

“There’s no telling what she’s capable of.”

Silverman nodded.

“She has to be stopped,” Sterling said, his voice colder than any of his patients had ever heard. “At all costs.”

“I know.”

Satisfied, Sterling got to his feet. The meeting was over.

“We’ll get through this together,” he said, his tone softer. “Together we always find the cure, don’t we?”

James nodded, more because it was expected of him than because he was in a trusting mood that night. As he locked up, he wondered if the doctor’s cures were losing their effectiveness. For him, anyway… And that made Beth’s defection more dangerous than ever.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS HE LOCKED THE DOOR of his office, Greg thought about how he couldn’t lock away the impressions that continued to bombard him. There were puzzle pieces that definitely fit together—as clearly as the myriad jigsaws he’d worked on over the years. If only he could figure out how… Culver was right, there’d been many carjackings in the past ten years. No reason to believe that this year’s series had anything to do with the ones that had happened ten years ago. Except that in both cases, there had been a series.

Of course, Burt was also right in his claim that the occurrences near the border had been a series, too.

But…

The pieces floated in and out, settling, moving around, changing location without offering him a single answer.

He was outside Beth’s nondescript apartment on one of the older streets in Shelter Valley. Greg chuckled to himself. Considering where he was, his thoughts seemed fitting. Because, judging by past experience, he wasn’t going to find out any of the hundred things he wanted to know here, either.

And just as he did with any other puzzle, he kept looking at all the pieces. Turning them this way and that, trying to fit them here or there to create the whole picture. When something mattered enough, when the feeling was strong enough, there wasn’t any other choice.

“Greg. Hi.” It wasn’t the most welcoming tone as Beth opened her door to him that Wednesday night. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since she’d left his sister’s right after dessert, late Sunday afternoon.

She’d blamed her early departure on Ryan’s grumpiness on waking, but Greg wasn’t convinced that was the only reason.

Maybe he should’ve taken time this afternoon to stop at home and change out of his uniform.

“I knew that if I asked you to dinner or a movie—or anything else, for that matter—you’d say no, so I decided to just come by.”

Face softening, though not quite into a smile, Beth leaned against the door. She was wearing a black tank top and black sweats cut off just below the knee. One of the sexiest outfits he’d ever seen.

“If you know I don’t want to go out with you, why bother?” she asked.

She hadn’t shut the door. Nor did her question seem nearly as off-putting as it could’ve been. As a matter of fact, she sounded curious.

Good.

“I don’t think we’ve established that you don’t want to go out with me. Only that you’d say no if I asked.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Glad he’d come, Greg shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He paused, pretending to consider. “Nope, not at all.”

She straightened. “Well, it seems like the same thing to me,” she said.

She’d tensed again.

“It would be a good idea to ask me in,” Greg said quickly, before she had a chance to dismiss him. “You know, before the neighbors see a uniformed officer at your door and start to talk.”

Beth grinned, looking out at the street in front of her house where he’d left his car. “Oh yeah, like that thing with the big ‘Sheriff’ emblazoned on the side isn’t going to raise any suspicion?”

“Hell, no.” He grinned, too, hands in his pockets as he stood his ground. “They’ll just think the sheriff’s sweet on you.”

“And that won’t cause talk?”

“Well, not the kind I was referring to. You know, the kind where everyone whispers about the possible secret life you’re living and they start to weave fantasies about bank robberies or jewel thefts and lock their windows and doors at night and give you a wide berth anytime they run into you at the grocery store.”

“Oh, that.” Beth started to pale at the ridiculous situation he was describing, but then she laughed. “Yeah, that’s about as likely as the sheriff being sweet on me.”

“I sure hope not,” he said, almost under his breath. And then wished he hadn’t. That was good for a slammed door in his face.

Because he didn’t know what else to do, Greg met her eyes. And that was when it always happened with them. From the first time he’d met her, he’d recognized something in that deep blue gaze. And until he knew what it was, what it meant, he had to keep coming back.

She didn’t shut him out or close the door.

“May I come in?”

Beth just stared. Her eyes were trying to tell him something…if only he could decipher what it was.

“I won’t stay long.”

Still without a word, she stood back, holding the door wide. Greg quickly stepped inside and followed her into the small living room. It was as neat as it had been the last time he was there. Neat and bare.

“Where’s Ryan?” he asked. He’d expected the boy to be playing quietly on the floor, had expected to see some toys out, stacked along the wall, something.

As far as he could tell, Ryan Allen hadn’t discovered the terrible twos yet.

“He’s asleep already. Normally bedtime isn’t until seven-thirty, but I had a cancellation today and we spent the afternoon at the day care. He was beat.”

“Did he and Katie acknowledge each other?” Greg asked, taking a seat on the edge of an old but relatively clean tweed couch, elbows on his knees.

“Nope.”

“Your son doesn’t like my niece?”

“More likely, your niece isn’t interested in giving my son the time of day.” She had a challenging glint in her eyes.

God, he loved it when she was feisty. And wondered why he saw that side of her so infrequently.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head as he grinned up at her. “Katie’ll make friends with anyone.”

“You make it sound like she shows no discrimination at all.”

He shrugged. “She’s a day care kid,” he said. “She really will play with anyone. So the problem has to be Ryan. The boy’s stuck on himself.” He was being outrageous and didn’t care. He’d made her smile.

“Or maybe Katie thinks since she’s so much older, it would be beneath her to play with a two-year-old.”

“Were you that way in high school? Too good to go out with the younger guys?”

“Probably not.”

“Why just probably?”

She looked away, her shoulders hunched as she rested her arms along the sides of her chair, an old but sturdy rocker. “Oh, you know,” she said, “you never see yourself in quite the same way other people do.”

True enough. “Tell me what you think you were like in high school.”

It took her a long time to answer. “Not one of the stupidest kids in class, but not one of the smartest, either.”

“I’ll bet you never failed a single test.”

“Not that I can remember.”

“And you had dates every weekend.”

“Well, I don’t recall a single weekend without one.” She grinned, but was still evading his eyes.

“Did you have a steady boyfriend?”

“Nobody who stayed with me.”

She was finally talking to him. Sort of. He wondered what she’d been like before the loss of her husband, before his death had locked her so deeply inside herself.

But Greg wasn’t going to let her reticence deter him. He understood the grieving process—from personal experience—but he also knew you didn’t stop living.

“What do you enjoy doing?” For someone who interviewed people regularly, he was doing a pretty lame job of gaining his subject’s trust.

But then, Beth wasn’t a subject. She was a woman who had insinuated herself into his thoughts so thoroughly that she was interfering with his calm, predictable life.

“I’m good at business. Numbers. That kind of thing.”

Not quite what he was looking for. And yet, perhaps the first piece of personal information she’d given him.

“So did you go to college?”

He’d just assumed she had no higher education—based solely on the fact that she was cleaning houses for a living. Yet Greg knew better than most how often things turned out to be exactly the opposite of the way they appeared. He knew what a mistake it was to assume anything. To judge anything by appearances.

“I sure didn’t learn about business law in high school.”

“You majored in business?”

“As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to own my own business.” She was so passionate in what she was saying that Greg almost missed how adeptly she’d sidestepped his question.

“I don’t know how we got that far off topic,” she added, before he could attempt to wade any further through the vagueness surrounding her, “but maybe Katie just doesn’t like kids who are a little more serious in their endeavors and that’s why she won’t play with my son.”

No matter how beautiful the teasing grin she shot him, it didn’t cover the fact that she had, once again, completely turned the conversation away from herself.

From his probing.

“I still think Ryan’s the problem,” he said, quite purposefully egging her on.

“My son is not a problem.” The teasing glint remained in her eyes, but she’d crossed her arms over her chest. Usually a defensive gesture.

At least, when you were a suspect being questioned.

“Okay, problem is the wrong choice of word. But if the kid’s anything like his mom…”

“Ryan plays with other kids,” she said. She’d lost the glint.

Sobering, Greg said, “Bonnie told me the reason you volunteer at the day care in exchange for playtime is that you’re trying to draw the little guy out more.”

“I want him to have a homelike environment during the day when I work, but I did think being around other kids his age might encourage him to talk.”

Greg nodded. He knew how much Bonnie and Keith—and he, too, for that matter—ached over every little glitch in Katie’s life. A measurement that wasn’t right in the middle of the chart. Teeth coming too soon, steps taken too late. Fevers, ear infections, runny noses. An aversion to vegetables. Shouldering all those worries alone had to be hard.

And that on top of losing the man you’d meant to spend the rest of your life with…

“If there’s ever anything I can do—teach him to play catch, empathize with you when he’s sick—you know I’m here, right?” he asked, certain that he was crossing a line he shouldn’t cross.

“Thanks.” Beth smiled again. A sad, very real smile, instead of the quick assurance he’d been expecting.

It wasn’t agreeing to a date. But in Greg’s book, it was far better than that.

And even though she’d given him more information about herself than he’d ever had before, he still didn’t have a clear picture of who Beth Allen really was.

“SO WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?” Beth asked Greg when silence fell between them and she was afraid he might take that as a sign to leave.

She felt buoyed up and wasn’t ready to be alone.

He sat back, his uniform creased from a day in the August heat. That uniform made her uncomfortable. It reminded her of everything she couldn’t have. Freedom from fear. Freedom to speak openly. Sex.

“I can’t be sure, but I might have wasted the majority of it.” The words, accompanied by a tired sigh, completely surprised her.

Greg always seemed so on top of things. In control. Able to handle anything.

She couldn’t believe how quickly she wanted to help when she found out that wasn’t the case.

“Anything you can talk about?”

“I’m attempting to find a connection between some recent carjackings and the one involving my father ten years ago.”

Knowing how close Greg and Bonnie were, how much family meant to them, that couldn’t be an easy job. “You think there is one?”

He clasped and unclasped his hands. “I’m sure of it. Problem is, the deputy in charge—the best man in the whole damn department, as far as I’m concerned—doesn’t agree with me.”

“What does he say?”

“That I’m making it personal.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Beth didn’t know much about herself, but thought she had a pretty good sense of this man. The type of person he was. “You’re a smart man, Greg. And an honest one. I don’t think you’d kid yourself about something as serious as this.”

His eyes were grateful when he looked over at her, making Beth feel elated for no reason at all.

“I don’t think so, either,” he murmured.

“So what are the similarities you’re finding? Anything you’re free to discuss?”

“In the first place, we’re dealing with a series of carjackings in both cases. There are other random occurrences, but these fit an identical pattern—several assaults with the same MO over a relatively short period of time. Two guys, late teens-early twenties, just after rush hour—either morning or evening.”

“It’s the same two guys every time?”

“No.” Greg looked more than frustrated when he shook his head. “In fact, they aren’t always even from the same ethnic background.”

“So what else?” There had to be more. Greg wasn’t the type to be this concerned over flimsy evidence.

“They only take place in the summer, for one thing. I have no idea what that means, but it has to mean something. They start midsummer, there’s a rash of them, and then, inexplicably, they stop. No arrests. Not even any real suspects. They just stop.”

“What about the drivers?” Beth asked. “Could they be the tie-in somehow?”

With another shake of his head and a raised brow, Greg said, “I don’t find a single thing to connect them.

Not age. Not where they work or live. Not their religion, where they bought their cars or even their injuries.” A shadow of pain crossed his face.

She winced inside, thankful suddenly for the blessing of amnesia. “They weren’t all hurt?”

His brows drawn together, Greg gave her an apologetic glance. “You don’t have to do this.”

“What?” she asked, a bit afraid of how important it had suddenly become to talk this through with him. To do something to help him. “Talk to a friend?”

“Is that what we are? Friends?” His expression lost none of its seriousness.

“I don’t know.” Beth had to be honest. After a pause, she returned to her earlier question “So, they weren’t all hurt?”

“Of this current group, all but one,” Greg said. His voice was tightly controlled but she could hear the anger.

“Most were killed,” he went on. “But not in the same way. One was shot. Another raped and strangled. One was left unconscious in the desert to either succumb to the heat or die of dehydration, whichever came first.”

Beth swallowed.

“I can stop now.”

“No, go on,” she said. “It’s okay, really. I’m not squeamish. I’m just sorry for these people and their families.”

She wasn’t squeamish. Another characteristic to add to the list she was keeping in her memory notebook. This was a good one. The kind she liked to add. Rated right up there with orderly.

“This summer, a college girl chose to throw herself out of the back seat of her moving car rather than submit to whatever else her abductors had in mind. She was a dancer and knew how to land and roll. She was miraculously unhurt.”

Beth frowned, struck by an uncomfortable thought. Could something like this have happened to her? Had she merely been the victim of a random crime and not the runaway she supposed herself to be?

Of course, that didn’t explain the canvas gym bag, obviously grabbed in a hurry with a couple of diapers and a change of clothes for Ryan stuffed in with various sweats, T-shirts and socks that fit her, or the two-thousand dollars. Not many people traveled with that much cash. And no identification.

Not smart people, anyway.

Beth didn’t know what that bag signified. But she always kept it close. As though it somehow connected her to the self she’d lost.

As for the two-thousand dollars—part of it she’d invested in equipment and supplies to set herself up in business.

“There’s something else,” Greg said slowly. “The front ends of all the stolen cars—ten years ago and now—were smashed in such a way that no matter what make or model, they look remarkably the same.”

“Like they all hit the same thing? Or something similar?”

Greg’s brow cleared as he nodded. “Yeah. Odd, huh?”

“Very. Your deputy didn’t think so?”

“Didn’t seem to. Nor did he seem impressed by the fact that they were all new-model cars. Most carjackers are looking for quick transportation. They aren’t usually so picky.”

“You’re sure this guy knows what he’s doing?” Beth asked, somehow not surprised at the thought that this deputy might not be all that he seemed.

What she found startling was that she was so cynical. She’d just naturally assumed the man was up to no good. People didn’t think that badly of the human race without reason, did they?

Oh God. She was cynical. Two things for the list in one night. This second one was not a characteristic she was particularly eager to have.

These past months of almost no self-revelation at all weren’t looking as bad as they once had…

“I know he does,” Greg said somberly, his words rescuing her from the familiar dark hole she’d been sinking into.

“WERE YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF WORK OR SOMETHING?” Greg asked, pointing to the piles of papers, receipts and ledgers on the scarred desk at one end of the room. Beth had grown silent, and he was kicking himself for bringing up such a personal subject. But then, it was difficult to tell what she considered personal. He’d worked so hard for so long to get in the door, and he hated the idea of losing the little trust she’d given him.

“Just doing my books,” she said, sounding completely relaxed. Maybe for the first time in their acquaintanceship.

He smiled. “Looks like you’ve got enough stuff going on to be running a business the size of the Cactus Jelly plant.”

“I told you I liked numbers. I’m actually keeping a tally of month-to-month percentages on the variance in cleaning supply costs. I check at the local Wal-Mart and at several places in Phoenix. I then keep track of how much cleaning I can do per ounce of solution. I’ll bet you didn’t know, for instance, that Alex Window Cleaner does linoleum more cost-effectively than any of the ammonia-based floor cleaners.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” There was apparently much more to cleaning than he’d ever realized.

But what was of far greater interest to him was the woman who was rattling off dollars and ounces as easily as he did police radio codes.

“I take it your business is doing well,” he said, when she’d given him a rundown on the benefits of bulk purchasing versus storage costs. Not just for cleaning supplies, but for business in general. Beth hadn’t been kidding. She knew her stuff. More than any business student he’d ever known.

“As a matter of fact, this is the first month that Beth’s Basins—and the Allens—are completely in the black! The bills are paid, money’s put aside for emergencies and Ryan’s education, and I even have some to spare. Ry’s been wanting this balsa wood airplane he saw downtown, and even though it’s really for older boys, I’m going to get it for him.”

“He told you he wants an airplane?” Greg couldn’t believe the change in her. She could have been any normal woman.

Certainly she was a beautiful one. Beth’s loose auburn hair falling over shoulders left bare by the tank top she wore was driving him just a little crazy.

“Ryan hasn’t said so, of course,” she was telling him, her bare feet pushing off the floor as she rocked gently. “But his eyes light up every time we pass it. Hopefully I’ll have time to take him tomorrow.”

“You really love that little guy, don’t you,” Greg said. About that, at least, she was completely open.

“More than life itself.”

Somehow one hour became two and Greg was still there, sitting on Beth’s couch while she rocked in her chair. She’d gotten up once to get them both cans of soda and to check on Ryan, but that was all. Greg, who usually had a hard time staying in one place, was surprised by how much he enjoyed just sitting there looking at her.

Maybe that was why he didn’t push his luck with any more personal questions. He didn’t want her to show him the door.

Even now that she was more relaxed, Beth’s eyes were still inexplicably expressive. Was it just her intelligence he saw there? He didn’t think so.

The woman was a contradiction. Vulnerable one moment, and completely in control the next. Able to accomplish anything. Needing no one.

Teasing—and instantly defensive.

Insecure. And then confident.

And those breasts. He was ashamed of how much he was noticing them, how many times he thought about touching them.

Greg stayed long into that night, talking, mostly about growing up in Shelter Valley—including his college years at Montford University, the Harvard of the West, Shelter Valley’s pride and joy. Beth had a million questions, making him wonder if she’d been storing them up for the entire six months she’d lived in town.

A million questions, but very few answers.

He got to know nothing at all about the circumstances and facts, the history, that made up Beth Allen’s life.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO LIE. Driving her old Granada to Bonnie’s for her second Sunday dinner in three weeks, trying to distract her thoughts with the grand beauty of the mountains surrounding them, Beth finally accepted that she’d have to make up a past—not just the couple of lines she’d recited anytime anyone asked about her. Up until now, the fact that she was a grieving widow had sufficed. Recognizing that her recent past was painful, people were sensitive enough not to ask further questions.

But that was when those people were only acquaintances.

Bonnie Neilson and her family—her brother—wanted to know Beth Allen. Where she came from. Where she went to school. Her most embarrassing moment. Happiest moment. The men she’d dated.

The man she’d married.

They wanted to know it all.

They had no idea how badly she wanted to know all those things herself.

What she didn’t want was the rest of the memories that would come as part of the package. She was scared to death to find out she might have stolen her son.

If that was the truth, and if she remembered it, she’d be forced to give him back.

Still, before she’d left home today, she’d read over the few entries in her memory notebook, trying to piece together a picture she could give people.

“We’re going to Katie’s house, Ry,” she told her son, sending him a big smile. His feet, hanging over the edge of the sturdy beige car seat, were still. But his eyes were alert, intent, as he looked back at her, straight-faced.

“You remember Katie from Little Spirits,” she continued, knowing that Ryan understood everything she was saying, even if he wouldn’t respond. “We went to her house for dinner a few weeks ago and you fell asleep on Mommy’s shoulder. You played with Katie’s blocks. And she has a Magna-Doodle, too.”

Ry’s little voice filled the car, but Beth couldn’t make out the words. From his intonation it sounded like a question.

So Beth replied to what she could only assume he’d asked. “Yes, I think she’ll let you play with the Magna-Doodle, but I want you to promise something, okay?”

Ryan nodded.

“I want you to promise that you’ll play with Katie today. Okay? Just like you play with Bo and Jay and Bethany Parsons.”

Ryan watched her lips and then her eyes.

“Okay?” she repeated.

He nodded again. Slowly, deliberately, his little chin moved up and down. The chin that had the same cleft in the middle as hers.

Ryan might not say much, but when he agreed to something, she could count on it. Soon after they’d arrived at the Neilsons he picked up one of Katie’s puzzles and took it over to sit by the little girl. He dumped the wooden pieces and, with the hand-eye coordination of a two-year-old, he started putting them awkwardly back on the board. Within seconds Katie turned around and placed another piece. Not a word was spoken between them.

Beth wished her own interactions could be so clean and simple. She spent the first five minutes staying out of the way, clutching her canvas bag.

Dinner was excellent—another cold main-course salad in deference to the weather. It was the first Sunday in September, and still too hot to even think about turning on the oven. Or eating anything warm, for that matter.

She was saved from having to sit next to Greg by Katie’s last-minute insistence that she get to sit by “Unca” which resulted in Grandma Neilson and Greg switching chairs to accommodate Katie’s booster seat.

“Lou can lose my high chair, Wyan,” the little girl said importantly as she climbed up and set her little bottom down in her new blue plastic booster.

Well before the end of dinner, Beth had fallen in love with Grandma Neilson. The white-haired, barely five-foot-tall woman didn’t let anything—not age, infirmity nor death—get in her way. She’d reduced life to its simplest terms. Being loved and loving others were what mattered. Anything else was simply an inconvenience to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

“So, Bonnie says you’ve got a cleaning business here in town,” Grandma said to Beth as she chomped on her Chinese chicken salad.

Dressed in a long-sleeved button-up blouse and pair of navy slacks in spite of the heat, Keith’s grandmother looked like she was ready to go to the office.

“I do,” Beth said, on edge that afternoon as she waited for a question she couldn’t answer.

Maybe this was too much of a life for her—having friends, trying to have family experiences. And yet, seeing Ryan sitting there in his high chair, pulled up to the table as though he belonged, watching him grin at Keith and babble a sentence to Bonnie, she wasn’t sure she had any choice.

She had no idea what she’d taken Ryan away from. Aunts, uncles? Maybe a grandmother or two like Grandma Neilson?

A father?

How could she not do everything possible to provide him with some of the same now?

“Good for you,” Grandma was muttering. “Get on with it, that’s what I say.”

Head bent over her plate, Beth nodded.

“Use your spoon, Katie, not your fingers,” Keith said. Greg leaned over to help his niece do as her father directed.

“Losing a husband is hard,” Grandma said. “I’ll grant you that, but you still have to get on with it, or the Good Lord would’ve taken you, too.”

“Sorry about that,” Keith said. “Grandma just tells it like she sees it.”

“I don’t mind,” Beth said. She had a feeling that if there was ever a time she needed someone to confide in, Keith’s grandmother would probably be her most sympathetic audience.

The least judgmental, anyway.

She’d understand how a woman could love her baby so much she’d do anything for him.

“Do you have room for another customer?” Grandma asked. “I’ve gotten myself on so many committees, I sure could use some help keeping up the house.”

Beth didn’t miss the way Bonnie, Keith and Greg shared surprised looks. But she didn’t really care.

“What committees?” she asked.

She gave up even trying to keep them straight after Grandma described the fifth one. The woman seemed to run the entire town single-handedly.

With a little help from Becca Parsons, apparently. Little Bethany’s mother had been mentioned several times during Grandma’s dissertation. Beth had yet to meet the woman who was not only a prominent member of Shelter Valley’s city council, but wife to the president of Montford University, as well.

“So, you got the time?” Grandma asked.

“I do,” Beth said. She didn’t really, but she’d make time. She really needed to be putting away more for Ryan’s education than she was currently able to allot each month.

If she were anyone else, she could just hire an employee or two. But she wasn’t. She was Beth Allen, nonexistent person. While she was diligently figuring out her taxes and setting aside the money to pay them if she was ever free to do so, she couldn’t actually file. She didn’t even know her social security number.

“I don’t accept checks or credit cards,” she said.

“Smart woman.” Grandma nodded approvingly. “Cuts down on bank fees.”

“You want to do my house, too?” Greg asked. “I could—”

“Forget it, buddy,” Beth interrupted before she was somehow trapped, in front of the sheriff’s family, into doing something she knew would be far too dangerous.

Greg Richards was in her thoughts too much already. She didn’t need to see where or how he lived. Didn’t need to know where his bedroom was, what his sheets looked like.

Didn’t need to know if he kept his refrigerator clean. If it was empty. If he picked up his clothes and left open TV Guides lying around.

But Grandma Neilson’s house was a different matter. Beth had a feeling there was a lot she could learn from Keith’s resilient grandmother.

THERE WASN’T SEATING for everyone in the family room, with Grandma Neilson added to the Sunday party. Conscious of the fact that she was the one who didn’t belong in that house, Beth quickly pulled out the piano bench and sat down after dinner when they all trooped in to watch a movie on Bonnie and Keith’s new LCD flat screen TV.

“Afraid you might have to sit by me?” Greg whispered on his way to the couch.

It was only because he was carrying Katie, who would have overheard, that she refrained from calling him a name she wouldn’t have meant, anyway. But it sure would’ve been good to say it. To at least pretend she wasn’t aware of every move the man made.

If she didn’t get control of her reactions to Greg, she’d have to stop coming to Sunday dinner. She could not be influenced by the woman inside her who wanted to love and be loved. Too much was at stake.

“You know how to play that thing?” Grandma asked, settling herself in the armchair next to the piano. Her wrinkled face was alight with interest as her watery blue eyes rested on Beth.

“Maybe.”

A rush of tears caught Beth by surprise, she blinked them away and turned to face the keyboard. Lifting and pushing back the wooden cover with practiced ease, she wished so badly that she had a mother or grandmother of her own. Someone to love and comfort her, someone who’d counsel and watch over her… She wondered if she’d left either—or both—back home. Wherever home might be.

No, she decided. Surely if she’d had someone like Grandma Neilson to run to, she’d have done so. She certainly wouldn’t have awakened, badly bruised and alone, in that nondescript motel room. Registered under the name of Beth Allen but with nothing to prove who she really was.

Unless she did have a Grandma Neilson someplace, and she’d had to run to protect her, too?

The ivory and black keys did not look strange. Or feel strange, either, as she rested her fingers lightly upon them.

“You know how to play?” Bonnie asked, stopping beside the piano bench. “Keith’s parents bought that for us when Katie was born, but none of us play.”

“A little, I guess,” Beth said, confused. She caressed the smooth white keys with the pads of her fingers, comforted by their coolness.

And their familiarity?

Did she know how to play? Have lessons as a child?

“All I can play is chopsticks,” Keith said, standing beside his wife.

“Mama. Uh. Mama. Uh.” Ryan toddled over to the bench, both hands grabbing hold of it.

“You want to watch Mama play?” Greg asked. Handing Katie to Keith, he picked the boy up.

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