years? Calling her publisher had managed to get him the name of her agent, but there his luck had run out. Her agent—Ann something or other—had refused to give him any information about Jennifer. All he’d been able to hope for was that she would deliver a message.
Jennifer turned now on the pier, drew her knees up to drape her arms across them and quietly looked up at him as he stood at the top of the steps to the pier. “Hello, Scott. I understand you have been looking for me.” Her voice was dry and her smile slightly amused.
She looked awful. The black eye had faded to an ugly dark bruise that marred her cheek, and the tenseness in her body and in her face reminded him of a rubber band stretched to its limit for a very long time. “I was worried about you,” he said simply.
She nodded and looked down to spin her wedding ring for a moment before looking back up. “Don’t be. I’m fine.”
Fine compared with what? Her black eye was now an ugly bruise, and she looked as brittle as toffee. She had been exhausted the last time he’d seen her, and the past ten days hadn’t made much of an improvement. She looked well past worn out. He walked down and sat on the steps to the pier, close, but not so close as to crowd her. The last thing he wanted to do was give her reason to move. “Been taking another walk?”
“Sort of,” she replied. She smiled, and it was a real smile. “I haven’t gotten very far.”
“Which message finally reached you?” he asked, interlacing his fingers and watching her.
“My agent called. Relayed your message. Really, Scott, ‘Come stay with me’ does raise a few eyebrows among my friends.”
She was embarrassed now; he could see the blush. He knew that his message might cause her some embarrassment with her agent, but it was what needed to be said. He was serious. His home had plenty of guest rooms. He would prefer she accept a place with his sister and her husband, but he would make whatever arrangements she considered reasonable. The idea of someone, her husband, hitting her had haunted him. “I wanted to make sure you knew you had a safe place to stay.”
She sighed and dropped her hand to rub it along a wooden beam of the pier. “Scott, I walked into a door.”
“So you said,” he agreed evenly, very aware of the fact she was not looking at him again. She did it when she didn’t want him to see the truth in her eyes.
She looked up. She didn’t even look offended that he didn’t believe her. She did look like she was in pain. She ran her hand through her hair. “Monday night before we met,” she said abruptly, “the third anniversary of my husband’s death. I got myself royally drunk. Finally went to bed about 3:00 a.m. When I woke up I headed for the bathroom. I was in a bit of a hurry. I ran right into the edge of the bedroom door.” She didn’t spare herself when it came to telling the story.
She was a widow. A chunk of his gut tightened. “Jen, I’m sorry. You’re way too young to be widow.” He put together what she had said, what he had seen, and he winced. “You must have had an awful night.”
She grimaced. “That’s one way to describe it.” The memories of that night came rushing back, and she felt the tension radiate up through her shoulders and neck. She wanted so badly to forget that night. She had thought drinking would help her forget, but it hadn’t. If anything, it had simply given her one more memory to regret.
She picked up a small twig the wind had blown down onto the pier and twirled it between her fingers. “How did you find out I was a writer?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I found Dead Before Dawn at the local bookstore.”
“Honey, it’s a perfect title. It’s short. To the point. An attention grabber.”
“Jerry, there isn’t a single murder in the whole book.”
“Then let’s add one. It’s a great title. Great titles are hard to come by.”
The memories haunted her. Jennifer tossed the twig she held into the water and watched the waves push it around. Scott’s answer surprised her. The paperback was out already? She had lost track of the publishing schedule. “Jerry liked the title,” she told Scott.
Scott wasn’t sure how to interpret Jennifer’s expression, there was distance there and memories of the past. Did she not like to talk about her work? Jerry—was that her husband’s name? “It was a very good book,” he told her, trying to feel out what she would consider comfortable to talk about.
He thought she was a very good writer. He had bought Dead Before Dawn and read it in one evening, not finishing until well after midnight. He had searched bookstores during the past two days until he found all eight of her books. They were now piled on his nightstand in the order she had written them. He was almost done with the first book in her series, the book that introduced Thomas Bradford. Her series was great. The closest comparison he could draw was to Robert Parker’s Spenser novels, and he loved those books.
“I’m glad you liked it.” She shivered slightly as the breeze picked up.
“Would you like to join me for breakfast?” The question came out before he realized it was going to be asked. He instantly regretted it. Had he learned nothing about her so far? Give her an opportunity to leave and she was going to take it. She had accomplished what she had come here to do—acknowledge his message and set him straight as to what had actually happened. How many times in the past ten days had he told himself he would be careful not to make her shy away from him again?
He felt an enormous sense of relief when he saw her smile. “That depends. Are you a good cook?”
He laughed. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself. I like to think I am.”
She moved to stand up, and he offered her a hand, feeling delighted when she accepted the offer. Her hand was small and the fingers callused, and she would have a hard time tipping a scale past a hundred pounds. He lifted her easily to her feet. The top of her head came to just above his shoulder, a comfortable height for him, and her long auburn hair was clipped back this morning by a carved gold barrette. Up close, her brown eyes were captivating. He forced himself to release her hand and step away once she was on her feet. He wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, say he was glad to see her bruise beginning to heal. Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and gently smiled as he waited for her to precede him.
The back patio door was unlocked, and they entered into a large kitchen, adjacent to a formal dining room. The coffee was brewed, the aroma rich and strong. Scott placed his jacket and hers across one of the six kitchen chairs and held out a chair for her at the glass-topped table.
His kitchen was spotless, a matter of honor with him. He found that cooking relaxed him, so he spent a lot of time here unwinding after a day of work. “Do you have any preferences for what you would like?” he asked, mentally reviewing the contents of the refrigerator. He had been planning homemade muffins, peaches and cereal for his own breakfast this morning, but that was pretty routine. He wanted this breakfast to be special. Maybe eggs Benedict, or fresh blueberry waffles, he could even do a batch of breakfast crepes with fresh strawberries.
“Since breakfast is normally coffee and maybe toast or a bagel, I think I’ll let you decide,” she replied.
He turned from the open refrigerator to look at her, knowing immediately that what breakfast normally was, was skipped. The last thing this lady needed to be doing was skipping meals. “Breakfast is the most important meal
