Reed turned to wash his hands, buying time.
“I’m not believing that the bad guy makes you nervous,” Parker said. “I’ve seen you bring down a charging bear with one well-placed tranquilizer dart. I’ve seen you rope a crazed bull and wrestle it to the ground. That’s one reason I thought of you. You’re young, you’re fit and you’re not afraid of a damn thing.”
Reed flicked a glance over his shoulder, just in time to see Parker grinning.
“Hell,” Parker added, “I’ve even heard it said that you’re a whole inch taller than I am, although that part’s a dirty lie.”
Reed dried his hands, then turned around slowly.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I don’t give a damn about this Lambert character. A guy who sneaks up on women and breaks their necks is clearly a coward. I suspect I could handle him if I have to. My real problem is that—”
He paused. Like most men, he and Parker didn’t discuss their emotions much. They’d known each other so long they really didn’t have to.
“What?”
Reed took a deep breath.
“I guess I’m just hoping you don’t have some hidden agenda here. I hope you’re not thinking that, because of Melissa, I’ll be able to relate to these people in some special way. I hope you don’t think I have some gem of wisdom to offer them about surviving the loss of a loved one.”
Parker smiled. “Sorry. Frankly, ‘wisdom’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind when I think of you, old buddy.”
Reed knew what he meant. If anything, he had handled Melissa’s death with a spectacular lack of good judgment. In fact, he’d been a mess. He’d refused to see anyone except his patients. He’d barely left the house. He had drunk himself to sleep for a full year.
But damn it, he had been married only two years. Two years. Melissa had been only twenty-seven. And to see all that beauty, all that life, eaten away by cancer…
Well, it didn’t really surprise him that he’d drunk himself to sleep. It only surprised him that he hadn’t somehow managed to drink himself to death.
“Yeah, but I know you, Parker. You probably think that, because I did survive, I learned something.”
He wiped his hands on the paper towels so hard his skin burned. “But I didn’t. The only thing I learned is that eventually time will put enough distance between you and the pain, and you’ll be able to go on. I can’t help these people, Parker. Just because I came out of it, that doesn’t mean I can help them out of it, too.”
Parker leaned over to clip the leash back onto Frosty’s collar. When he stood, his face was somber.
“I never for a minute thought you could,” he said. “If anything, it might be the other way around. Maybe I thought they could help you. Truth is, you’re not as far out of it as you like people to think.”
Reed shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he said.
He wanted to be angry, wanted to dispute the implication that he wasn’t fully recovered. But the look on Parker’s face stopped him. “You’re completely wrong,” he repeated dully.
“Could be,” Parker agreed, shrugging as he headed toward the door. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Just ask Sarah.”
But that was nonsense. Parker’s beautiful new bride didn’t think a single word Parker had ever uttered was wrong. If he said day was night, Sarah would kiss him sweetly and obediently go to sleep. And it went both ways. If she said jump, Parker would soar right over the moon.
Reed remembered what that had been like. A good marriage—two people cocooned in love. It had been soft and easy, exciting and alive, real and profound and achingly brief.
He had to fight hard against the bitter envy that welled up in him whenever he saw the blissful Tremaines. But damn it, Parker didn’t know what he was talking about here. Reed didn’t need a distraction. He didn’t need a Good Samaritan mission. He didn’t even need a housekeeper.
And he damn sure didn’t need Faith Constable and her troubled nephew, with a murderer nipping at their heels.
What he needed was Melissa. Or, failing that, someone to drill into his brain and surgically remove all memories of being in love.
CHAPTER TWO
FAITH CHECKED HER WATCH in the bright mountain sunlight. She had checked her watch about ten times in the past half hour. She didn’t really care what time it was. She just needed something to do, something to fidget away the anxiety that was threatening to overtake her.
At four-seventeen, just two minutes behind schedule, Detective Bentley stopped his car at a deserted mountain pass called Vanity Gap. It was time to turn them over.
His friend Parker Tremaine was waiting at the mouth of the gap, ready to receive them. It was a strange, complicated transaction, designed to make it difficult for anyone to follow them without being seen. Faith felt a little like a ransomed hostage. Or perhaps just a parcel of smuggled goods.
Parker looked very nice, and was in fact startlingly handsome. Still, as Faith watched Detective Bentley transferring their suitcases from the unmarked cop car into Parker’s expensive luxury sedan, she felt a clutch of fear.
At least she knew the detective. After the past intense weeks, he seemed to have become a real ally. A friend. Besides, he was her tie to the city, to her sister, to her real life, which for the past three hours had been rapidly receding in the rear window.
Getting into this new car with this stranger, however handsome, would be like sailing into darkness, and she was suddenly washed with uncertainty.
Somehow she had to hide it, though, for Spencer’s sake. The little boy stood beside her, still as a statue. The only movement came from his Sheltie puppy, Tigger.
Tigger, whose boundless energy had earned him his name, was struggling to reconcile his excitement about the trip with his innate urge to stay close to his little master. Consequently, though he whined and writhed in place, he never got more than two inches from Spencer’s left foot.
Faith patted the puppy, then took Spencer’s hand and smiled down at him reassuringly.
“Okay, sweetie, here we go,” she said with an attempt at brightness.
Spencer just stared at her, his brown eyes so like his mother’s that Faith almost couldn’t bear to look into them.
He didn’t speak, of course. Spencer hadn’t spoken a word since Grace’s death. “Conversion reaction,” the psychiatrists had called it. Or perhaps “selective mutism.” But she called it something simpler—and yet far more tragic. She called it unbearable pain.
He was only six years old, and already the world had hurt him so much he no longer had the power to express it.
No, she corrected herself. The world hadn’t done that. Doug Lambert had done it.
“We’re
