was all starting to make her nervous again. And no amount of telling herself she was perfectly safe here, out in the open in a public parking lot with people coming and going around them, seemed to help. Without Dane solidly by her side, she felt vulnerable.
She summoned up all the old coping tricks she’d been taught in the days after her world had been shattered. It was only normal she be nervous around strangers, even after all this time, she told herself. And she knew how to deal, really she did.
“Please,” she said, trying to sound merely polite instead of pleading, “that’s personal.”
“Someone’s in trouble,” the woman said. It wasn’t really a question. But her voice was so soft, so gentle, it eased Kayla’s rising anxiety.
“Yes,” she admitted. That much was clear in the note now open for all to see, so there didn’t seem much point in denying it.
The man spoke. “Time for names, I think. I’m Quinn Foxworth. This is my fiancée, Hayley Cole.”
“Congratulations,” Kayla said, not sure what else to say in this odd situation.
“And this rascal,” Hayley said, scratching the dog’s ear again, “is Cutter.”
“Nice to meet you.”
It was automatic and sounded utterly inane. She needed to get out of here, collect her thoughts. But first she had to get that note back.
On the thought the dog moved once more, this time closer to her. And then he was leaning against her leg, looking up at her with what for all the world looked like reassurance.
“What an…unusual dog,” she murmured, half to herself.
“You have no idea,” Hayley said, her tone wry.
“He has a nose for trouble,” Quinn agreed. “In this case, apparently, yours.”
She looked up at the man then. And read the same kind of reassurance in his eyes that she’d fancied she’d seen in the dog’s.
“It’s my brother’s trouble, really.”
Now why had she said that? She didn’t make a habit of discussing her ugly family history with strangers.
“And now ours,” Hayley said quietly.
Kayla blinked. “What?”
The woman gestured at the dog. “This wasn’t coincidence. But we’ll explain all that later. In the meantime, let’s go somewhere where we can talk and figure out what to do about your problem.”
Kayla took a step back. Or tried to. The dog, once again, was there. He seemed uncannily able to sense her every move before she made it.
“Who are you?” she asked, something dark and unsettling churning in her stomach.
“Friendlies,” Quinn said, as if he’d sensed her fear.
“We just want to help,” Hayley said. She glanced at Quinn, such pride in her face that it went a long way toward soothing Kayla’s nerves. “It’s what we do.”
“You can’t help. Nobody can.”
Bitterness spiked through Kayla. She’d accepted the lost years, the thrown-away money, but Dane…. Losing Dane was—
She cut her own thoughts off.
“This is beyond anyone’s help,” she said. “It’s a lost cause.”
“Well, now,” Hayley said, “isn’t that convenient? Lost causes are our specialty.”
Chapter 2
Dane Burdette paced the width of his home office, turned, made the return journey, then turned again. Although the apartment was large enough, this den was a small space, one that overflowed with equipment that now also filled the adjoining dining area.
A sound from outside brought him out of the reverie he’d slipped into and back to reality. A reality that, for the first time in more than a decade, didn’t have Kayla in it.
His jaw tightened. He rubbed at the back of his neck, trying not to think about Kayla doing the same, as she so often did when he’d been working too many hours. And he barely managed not to look for the hundredth time this morning at the photograph on his desk, the picture he’d taken at the Washington coast last year, catching her at her most beautiful, happy, smiling, looking almost carefree. It was clear to even the most casual observer that the love and warmth in her eyes was aimed at the person behind the camera.
It nearly ripped his heart out every time he looked at it. He’d done the right thing. Finally. He’d meant what he’d said—he couldn’t go on like this. Ten years was enough.
Too bad knowing that didn’t stop the urge to give in, to go to her and patch things up. Again.
But he’d meant it this time. He’d spent too long living with her obsession. She’d idolized her big brother, believed completely in his innocence and had never given up trying to find him. She’d traveled thousands of miles, going every time one of those damn notes arrived, chasing postmarks. And every time it came to nothing. She’d spent time, money and much of her energy on the quest, and there was no end in sight.
He glanced at the heavy dive watch Kayla had given him for his twenty-fifth birthday. She’d be at the post office even now; she went every Friday to pick up the mail for her counseling group, but in truth she was both hoping for and dreading the arrival of another communication from her brother. Dane himself was long past hoping; he was firmly in the dread category.
He needed to quit wearing the watch, he thought. Even though he liked the solid weight of it on his wrist, that Kayla had chosen it and given it to him—and the passionate night that had followed—was not something he wanted to be reminded of at every move.
“I had to do it,” he muttered under his breath, as if actually saying the words would be more convincing to a heart and mind that felt as if something vital had been torn away.
At this point, Chad Tucker’s guilt or innocence didn’t matter much to him. What mattered was that Kayla couldn’t seem to move on. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he did. He’d been there that night, in the bloody, awful aftermath. He’d been the one to hear her scream, the one to run to her, to pull her out of the room that held the nightmare. To this day he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the teenage girl to walk into that hell.
That it was a girl he cared about made even thinking about it difficult. And he had cared about Kayla since the first day he’d seen her, a slight, fragile-looking fourteen, sitting on a limb high up in the old tree between their houses. She had been staring downward, turning her head this way and that, and he’d realized after a moment what was going on.
“Stuck?” he’d called to her.
“Not yet,” she’d answered, making him laugh.
She’d been in his life one way or another ever since that day. Until now. Until he’d had to leave her, had to walk away. Even though it was like leaving a part of himself behind.
