couple of chairs, some kind of coffee table.
Only all of that was gone now. The living room was empty, as was the dining room beyond. There was nothing. Not a cushion or a box or a scrap of paper. It was as if no one had ever lived here at all.
Patience slowly walked through the house. Her breathing sounded loud in the stillness. She didn’t understand. How could everything be gone?
The kitchen was as vacant as the rest of the place. The cupboards stood open, the shelves bare. The sink was empty, as were all the drawers. In Justice’s bedroom, there was no hint he had ever lived there.
She returned to the living room and blinked away sudden tears. She turned in a slow circle, fear growing inside her.
This wasn’t right. People didn’t just disappear in the night. Something had happened. Something bad.
She darted out the front door and ran all the way home. She burst in the back door and yelled for her mom.
“Justice is gone! He’s gone and his uncle’s gone and all their stuff.”
Her mother hurried into the living room. “What are you talking about?”
Patience told her what had happened. Ava grabbed a jacket, then followed her out the back door. Ten minutes later she was gazing at the empty interior. Fifteen minutes after that, the police had arrived.
Patience watched the activity and listened to the conversation. No one knew what had happened. No one had heard anything or seen anything. But they all agreed it was very strange. Justice and his uncle had disappeared. It was as if they’d never been there at all.
“TRIM UPmy eyebrows,” Alfred said, wiggling his white, bushy brows as he spoke. “I want to look sexy.”
Patience McGraw held in a smile. “Big night planned with the missus?”
“You know it.”
A concept that would be romantic, if Alfred and his lovely wife were a tad younger than, say, ninety-five. Patience had to keep herself from blurting out a warning that, at their age, they should be careful. She supposed the more important lesson was that true love and passion could last a lifetime.
“I’m jealous,” she told her client as she carefully trimmed his brows.
“You picked a piss-poor excuse of a man,” Albert told her, then shrugged. “Excuse my French.”
“I can’t complain about you telling the truth,” Patience said, wondering what it would be like to live in a bigger city. Where everyone didn’t know every detail of your personal life. But she’d been born in Fool’s Gold and had grown up with the idea that there were very few secrets between friends and neighbors.
Which meant the whole town knew that she’d gotten pregnant when she was eighteen and the “piss-poor excuse for a man” who’d been her baby’s father had walked out on her and her daughter less than a year later.
“You’ll find someone,” Alfred told her, gently patting her arm. “A pretty girl like you should have them lined up for miles.”
She smiled. “You’re very sweet. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were flirting with me.”
Alfred gave her a wink.
Despite his compliments, she managed to find herself amazingly man free. Fool’s Gold wasn’t exactly swimming with prospects, and as a single mother, she had to be especially careful. There was also the fact that most of the men she met weren’t interested in other men’s kids.
As Patience picked up the scissors to clip a couple of errant hairs, she told herself that she was very comfortable with her life. Given the choice, she would rather open her own business than fall in love. But every now and then, she found herself longing for someone to lean on. A man to care about, who would be there for her.
She stood back and studied Albert’s reflection. “You’re even more handsome than before,” she said, putting down her tools and unfastening his cape.
“Hard to believe,” Albert said with a grin.
She laughed.
“Patience?”
She didn’t recognize the male voice, but turned anyway. A man stood in the entrance of the shop.
Her mind registered several things at once. Albert was her last appointment of the day. If the guy was a walk-in, he wouldn’t call her by name. The man was tall, with dark gold-blond hair and deep blue eyes. His shoulders were broad and he had the kind of face that would be happy up on a movie screen. Nice, but she had no idea who he...
She felt the cape flutter to the floor as she really looked at the man moving toward her. He was a few inches taller, a lot more muscular, but his eyes... They were exactly the same. They even crinkled when he smiled at her.
“Hello, Patience.”
She was fourteen again, standing in that empty house, more scared than she’d ever been in her life. There hadn’t been any answers. Not then or since. No solution to the mystery. Just questions and a gnawing sense that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Justice?” she asked, her voice more breath than sound. “Justice?”
He gave her a slight shrug. The familiar gesture was enough to send her flying across the shop. She flung herself at him, determined to hang on this time.
He caught her against him and held on to her nearly as tightly as she held on to him. He was warm and solid and real. She pressed her head against his shoulder and inhaled the scent of him. A clean, masculine smell that had nothing to do with the boy she remembered. This wasn’t happening, she thought, still dazed. Justice couldn’t be back.
Yet he was. But the man was very different from the boy, and the moment got awkward quickly. She stepped away and put her hands on her hips.
“What happened? You left me! Where on earth did you go? I was so scared. The whole town was worried. I called the police and everything.”
He glanced around the salon. Patience didn’t have to follow his gaze to know they were the center of attention. She was used to the friendly interest of the shop, but Justice might find the attention uncomfortable.
“When can you take a break?” he asked.
“Five minutes. Alfred is my last client of the day.”
“I’ll be outside.”
He was gone before she could stop him, moving with a combination of power and purpose. The second the door closed behind him, the other stylists and half the clients descended.
“Who is he?” Julia, her boss, demanded. “What a handsome man.”
“I’ve seen him around town before,” another woman said. “With that ballet dancer. He was her bodyguard.”
“Has
