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“I need some help.”

“You got it.”

Still meeting Patsy's gaze head-on, Tricia said, “No questions asked.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.” The stern voice was one she hadn't used in many, many months.

“Oka-a-ay.” Patsy's gaze didn't waver. She stood her ground two inches away from Tricia.

“You know everyone on this island.”

“Pretty much.”

“So you can find me a private detective who's competent enough to get me one little piece of information—without being so competent that he follows up on it or surmises anything I don't want surmised?”

Patsy's brown eyes narrowed. She didn't respond.

“Not that there's anything
to
surmise. I just don't want the complication of any false assumptions.”

Nodding, Patsy appeared to be thinking.

“Somebody who'll forget he ever knew me.”

She hadn't made a mistake. She'd given Patsy nothing she could do anything with.

“Arnold Miller.”

Heart beating faster, Tricia stood there, thinking it through, ensuring that she made no errors. It wasn't too late to stop this. All she had to do was walk away.

And let the guilt eat her alive. If Leah needed her, if she could help and she did nothing…

“Mamamama!!” Taylor's voice rang out from the front of the store.

If she did this, if she was found out, her son's life could be in danger. That was something other people might not believe, but Tricia knew the truth beyond doubt.

“Do you want me to call him?”

Could she do it? Leah's life against Taylor's? The baby squealed as though Doris had tickled him.

Taylor wasn't currently in danger. Leah very well could be.

“He's not some hotshot out to prove himself?” she asked.

“Used to be,” Patsy said, leaning back against the rack holding the gold-and-Lycra Whitehead gown. “He pushed things a little too far and there was retaliation. A little girl died. His little girl. He's still, hands down, the best investigator around. He's also a drunk. Can't keep it together long enough to solve a case. But I know that one of the most sought-after divorce P.I.s on the island uses him pretty regularly for fact-finding.”

“Okay, let's call him.”

T
here were no Tricia Campbells listed in Reno. Scott wasn't surprised. He hadn't expected the answers to come easy. Turning off the computer in his bedroom Thursday night, he grabbed a book he'd been reading about the history of Ireland, traded jeans for a pair of light-cotton pajama pants then propped himself up in bed and tried to read, waiting for Tricia to finish her shower.

With her hair being so long, she liked to wash it at night so it had time to dry naturally. Scott generally liked to help her. Tonight he was tired.

And determined not to lose the distance they'd set up between them at the very beginning. It had occurred to him during the past couple of long, slow days at the station, with no one but bored guys for company, that perhaps he was beginning to care about her too much.

“I've never seen those before,” she said. She was standing, naked, in the doorway between the bedroom and attached bath, a towel wrapped around her head.

She'd missed a drop of water on the top curve of her left breast. And another just below the groin.

Scott's blood ran down to his dick.

“My mother bought them for Christmas a couple of years ago.” But that didn't explain why he was wearing them to bed. He'd been sleeping nude since he'd graduated from college.

Her blue eyes narrowed slightly as she stared at him for a few seconds and then, nodding, she turned away, reaching for the short violet cotton gown she had hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Still holding the book, not quite ready to give up on the idea of reading it, he watched as she brushed her teeth, combed her hair, put lotion on her legs.

She always did that, or let him do it, after she shaved. Which meant those long, slim, softly muscled feminine legs would be smooth as silk tonight. His first night home in four days.

Then, switching off the bathroom light, she padded barefoot to her side of the bed. Though she didn't normally wear any more than the brief gown to bed, he'd half expected her to stop at her dresser for a pair of panties. She didn't.

And that sure didn't help his surging blood. Still, the tension he'd felt in his back and neck all day dissipated just a bit.

Maybe sex was all he needed.

“You've seemed kind of remote today.” He was care
ful to keep his tone neutral. There was no room between them for accusations.

“I'm sorry.” She slid under the covers, her leg brushing up against his through the sheet and comforter separating them. “I'm just caught up in ideas for Patsy. I really want to get this right for her.”

She'd talked of little else that day, though he could have sworn she'd used the project as a shield. Maybe she was feeling nervous about their closeness as well.

Could be he'd made a colossal mistake telling her about his past—his other identity. He'd let her know him a little too well for his own comfort, and apparently for hers. As nearly as he could figure—and he'd spent far too much time figuring—that morning the previous week when he'd confessed all seemed to be when things had started to change between them.

Only the small lamp on his side of the bed was still lit. He should turn it off, slip underneath the covers with her. Reach for her. A little forgetfulness…

Her toes moved up and down his calf, touching him through the covers still between them.

“Who's Taylor's father?” His stomach dropped when he heard his own question fall starkly into the silence. He should take the words back. He sat there with that knowledge, waiting to see what would happen next, feeling an almost morbid curiosity, as though detached from the whole thing.

Her feet pulled away from his leg. And that was all.

After a couple of long minutes, Scott picked up his
book. Read about the Vikings coming into an Ireland made up of separate warring clans that left them vulnerable to takeover.

“Where is he?” The book fell closed in his lap.

She turned over, showing him her back.

“Is he here? In San Diego? Over on Coronado?”
Had he taken leave of his senses?

There was no movement on the bed at all. He took a deep breath. And another. Considered going out to the kitchen for a beer. Might have done so but he didn't feel like drinking.

“Listen, Trish, I'm not trying to give you a hard time here. But the other day, when you went missing like that, it scared the hell out of me.”

There. He'd admitted it. To himself. To her.

She still said nothing, but rolled over onto her back, her head turned slightly toward him.

“I was scared for you, thinking you'd been abducted or badly hurt. And I was scared for me and Taylor, too.”

“I'm sorry.”

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. He really needed to get it cut again, much as he hated the bother. “You don't have to be sorry. I understand and accept your explanation. I don't care about that. But what if something had happened?” He turned to look at her but she didn't quite meet his gaze.

“I have no legal rights to Taylor, no way to enroll him in school. If some stranger comes knocking at the door
claiming rights to him, I have no way of knowing if they're valid or not.”

“We agreed not to—”

“For that matter,” he interrupted, realizing he had no patience for reminders at the moment, “I have no idea whether there's even anyone out there to contact about him. Anyone who'd need to know if something happened to you.”

“There isn't.”

There was no logical reason for him to take satisfaction from that response. So what did it say about him that he did?

“What about his father?”

“There's no one named on his birth certificate. You know that. And without that, no one has a claim.”

“There's always DNA testing. If someone suspects he might be the boy's father and cares enough to pursue the issue.”

Shadows danced across the room, making ghostly shapes on the wall.

“If someone cared enough, don't you think he'd already have done that?”

So the guy knocked her up and took off. The thought shouldn't surprise him so much. It was an age-old story. Happened all the time.

It just didn't seem to fit with his vision of Tricia. She wasn't the type of woman a guy ran from.

And then something else occurred to him, cooling his blood. “Do you know who he is?”

She glanced over at him, her brows raised.

It was a fair question. Considering.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You do.”

“Of course I do.”

“Is he alive?” His gut told him to shut up. He didn't often ignore that message.

“Last I knew.”

“When was the last you knew?”

“Listen, Scott, this isn't going to work.” She sat up, shoved aside the covers, her legs over the side of the bed as though ready to take off. She twisted around to face him. “I can't do this. I understand that you've reached a point where you need answers. I do. Really.”

He doubted it. How could she understand something he didn't get himself?

“You're absolutely right, too,” she continued. Being right had never sounded so much like a death sentence. “With Taylor here, in your care, you deserve to know his pertinent information. But I'm not giving it. No amount of…anything…is going to change that.”

He didn't doubt the sincerity of her statement. The truth was in her eyes, her posture, the tone of her voice. He was looking at a woman who'd been pushed to her limit.

And since, until half an hour ago, he'd done very little pressing, he had to assume that there was someone else—something else—putting on the pressure. Either
now or in her past. To such an extent that she wasn't healed yet.

Would she ever be?

“I hate to wake Taylor,” she said, standing. “You know how fussy he gets. So if you don't mind, I'll sleep on the couch tonight and then make other arrangements tomorrow.”

He had no idea what to say. Except
no.
To everything. To her leaving. Her refusal to tell him anything. To trust him. To his feelings for her. For Taylor.

“Where will you go?”

“I don't know. I'll find someplace.”

With what, her non-government issue photo ID? It was all the plastic he'd ever seen in her purse.

Plastic she could've picked up from a booth at the beach or any number of other places, depending on her connections.

Particularly if she was somehow mixed up with the California drug scene. Or, more importantly, trying to escape it. Depending on whom she'd been involved with, escaping the illegal underground could be as difficult, as seemingly impossible, as getting away from the Mafia of the 1940s. A drug connection could explain her apparent familiarity with moneyed ways.

“Where?” he asked again. She was pulling on some jeans.

He needed sleep. Had to be overreacting. She was probably the daughter of some rich guy who'd kept his pampered offspring pinned too tightly beneath his thumb.
When she'd gotten pregnant, she'd been afraid of daddy's ire and run. He'd heard that story more than once, too.

“I don't know yet.”

“Back to the shelter you were staying at when I met you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was for pregnant women.”

A privately run, no-questions-asked place for pregnant runaways and battered women, mostly. He'd checked it out.

“You have no credit cards, no proof of income.”

“Where there's a will there's a way.”

There was no doubt she believed that cliché. He'd wager a bet she'd already proved it true.

It was then, between one second and the next, that he panicked. Right or wrong, healthy or not, he wasn't ready for her to leave. He would be someday. But not now.

And while he might lack the power to persuade confidences from her, he knew how to make her stay.

“It would be much better for Taylor if you stayed here.”

She stopped, head bent, wearing jeans and the short cotton gown. “I can't.”

“Yes, you can.” For the first time that night, his words carried the feelings he held for her in his heart. He hadn't wanted that to happen; he was just too tired to resist. Or even to understand completely why he should try.

When she turned to look at him, there was a glimmer of moisture in her eyes. She wasn't crying. Tricia
wouldn't. Not at a time like this. But she was struggling to maintain control.

And his heart settled. She wanted to be there. He wanted her to be there. They were both consenting adults. Case closed.

“No more questions, I promise.” He held out his arms to her.

And without another word she quietly slipped into them.

San Francisco Gazette
Friday, April 15, 2005
Page 1

Trembling, Tricia walked the beach on Coronado, willing it to hold her up, to take her burdens, to calm her with the even cadence of its waves, its salty smell, its promise of life ever after. Newspaper pages blew across the sand, someone's morning leftovers. The San Diego daily. With the same headline carried by the
San Francisco Gazette.

Leah dead?

Tricia felt dead, too. Or worse. Buried alive.

Short of its being Taylor's name in the papers, this was her worst nightmare.

And it was her fault.

It had never dawned on her, during all these months of living every possible scenario in her mind, that Leah would sleep with Thomas Whitehead. She'd worried her friend would hate her for what she'd done. Worried
how Leah was getting along alone. Worried about what Thomas Whitehead might do to someone else…