wanted to hire her services. She hadn’t gotten to that part of the memory yet. The part where he’d turned out to be just like all the rest. Her voice stuck in her throat.
He wanted to hire her services.
She wanted to die. Right then. Right there. What was the point of fighting anymore? She was who she was. Who she’d always been. Who she’d always be. The floor started to spin and she almost gave in, almost let that feeling of vertigo swallow her up. Almost.
And then her vision cleared again. And she could see the image she held of her laughing little girl. The trusting eyes. She couldn’t let Ashley be a part of this. Panicking, she tried to think of something to say. Did he know she’d had a child?
She concentrated on the red velvet dress she and Ashley had picked out together for the muchanticipated visit with Santa.
“Ms. Archer? Are you there?” He’d called her “Jamie” before.
“Yes. I’m here.” She didn’t know what else to say. How to keep him away from Ashley. How to keep the woman she’d been away from her child.
“So do you think you’ll be able to squeeze me in?,
Would he go away if she did?
“What exactly did you have in mind?” She hated the words, hated herself for saying them. But she was afraid that if she turned him down, he’d figure she was playing with him, would take it as a challenge, a come-on. That he wouldn’t go away. After all, men like him weren’t used to hearing “no” from women like her. Probably because women like her never said that particular word to men like him.
“You’re the professional, you tell me.” His voice was pleasant, calm, detached.
“You’re the one paying the bill.” The words practically choked her. But she had to gain some time, figure out what to do, how to get rid of him without making him suspicious—or even curious. Her daughter’s entire future depended on making this man nonexistent immediately. Forever.
She not only didn’t want him to call her again, she didn’t want him to think of her again.
“But I’ve never hired an accountant before—”
What?
“An accountant?”
“I’m sorry, I assumed you were an accountant,” he said.
His voice carried a hint of the self-deprecatory humor that had ensnared her almost five years before. That long-ago night, his humility had caused her to let down her guard, to do one of the stupidest things she’d ever done.
“Dean Patterson gave me your name,” he continued. “Said you do taxes. I just assumed you were an accountant.”
“I am.”
“Oh. Good. So, do you have time to take on one more client? Like I said, my records are in fairly good shape, but with the move from Las Vegas to Colorado and selling my house, I’ll need all the help I can get.”
Records? She’d clearly missed something.
“Dr. Patterson gave you my number?” The room had begun to spin again. Relief was making her light-headed.
“I’m sorry to impose like this on a total stranger, but the dean said you were the best.”
A total stranger. “No!” Jamie’s mind raced. “No, it’s no imposition.” The dean and his wife were good to her. They sent her seventy-five percent of her business. They had no idea who she’d been before she moved to Larkspur Grove, pregnant, single and two semesters short of her degree. She’d met them at a student-welcoming session, and for some reason Jamie had never understood, they’d shown an interest in her right from that first introduction, befriended her, helped her get established. They’d guessed, based on her silences, that she was a widow. She’d never corrected the assumption.
“You’ll take me on?”
Kyle Radcliff sounded hopeful, but she heard nothing more personal than that in his voice.
She was trapped. There was no way she could decline without arousing suspicion, maybe not his but certainly the dean’s. She’d just told Dr. Patterson about Ashley’s request for dance lessons, the tuition, recital fees, the costumes involved. Just thanked him profusely for saying he’d send another client or two her way.
Jamie took a deep breath. “It might be a couple of weeks before I can get to you.”
She’d met him once. It had been dark. She looked completely different now. She’d run into one of her college professors from the University of Nevada a couple of years ago and even he hadn’t recognized her. Surely someone who’d seen her only once, at night, wouldn’t know who she was.
“No problem. This all happened so fast I need a little time to unpack and find things, anyway. I just registered with the Las Vegas Educational Job Service in December and didn’t expect a permanent position to come through until the fall.”
The Las Vegas Educational Job Service. Which consisted of one very energetic woman, the service’s owner, Wanda Kendall. Wanda had an office at the university in Las Vegas and was the person who’d helped Jamie find Larkspur Grove, the one who’d arranged for her work-study position so she could finish her degree at Gunnison. The woman who’d introduced her to Dean Patterson.
“Were you teaching in Las Vegas?” At the university? When she’d been a student?
“Yeah,” he said easily. “I was head of the English department at a private college just outside the city.”
A private college. With no connection to Jamie at all.
Okay. So maybe here was her chance to prove there was no part of that other woman, the woman he’d known and forgotten, still left inside her. Here was her chance to put the past behind her, once and for all. To prove to herself that she could. And maybe, finally, to forgive herself....
“Mr. Radcliff, you’ve just hired an accountant.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOUSE WAS QUIET. Ashley slept soundly, tucked beneath her Little Mermaid comforter, as Ariel and Flounder smiled down at her from the walls above. Jamie had no idea how long she stood in her daughter’s doorway, absorbing the comfort of her presence. Yet no matter how long she stood there, it wasn’t long enough.
She’d made it through the day. Managed to convince herself that she was fine. That the phone call changed nothing. That it wasn’t any big deal.
Until darkness fell. And the woman Jamie had been, the woman who’d worked nights, returned to haunt her. Nighttime was often bad for Jamie; she was used to coping. But that night, none of her coping techniques were working.
She couldn’t find peace. Couldn’t shut the doors in her mind. Memories flooded her relentlessly until she was drowning, suffocating beneath their weight....
Jamie had only been four, Ashley’s age, when her widowed mother married John Archer. Though she’d loved her mother, Jamie had known, even then, that Sadie Archer wasn’t
