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The Arrangement
Suzanne Forster


Her story could blow apart the secrets they’d both agreed to keep.Alison Fairmont Villard wakes in a hospital bed with a face she doesn’t recognise and a husband she doesn’t know. Andrew Villard, a self-made millionaire, has a bright future but a shadowy past. When he tells Alison the details of their life together, she has no choice but to believe him – and to accept the shocking proposal he offers.It isn’t just the partial amnesia that Alison suffers. She has her own terrifying secrets that can’t be entrusted to anyone, even Andrew. Even the police suspect he was behind Alison’s near-fatal accident aboard his yacht and were ready to charge him with murder before her body was found, battered on the razor-sharp coral reefs. When the veil of amnesia lifts, it’s too late. Alison is caught in a web of her own making.And now an FBI agent with a personal vendetta is about to blow the lid off her deadly marriage of convenience.







Praise for New YorkTimesbestselling author

SUZANNE FORSTER

“No one combines steamy suspense and breathless

thrills like Suzanne Forster!”

—bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips

“[Forster is] a stylist who translates sexual

tension into sizzle.”

—Los Angeles Daily News



SUZANNE FORSTER




The Arrangement





www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


This book is dedicated to my mother, who breathed her last on 2nd February 2006, and who, despite tremendous physical challenges, managed to come through it all with her dignity, her compassion for others and her lively sense of humour intact.

Every life should end so gracefully.

Rest in peace.

Edith Mary Stephenson-Bolster

1916–2006




Prologue


Andrew Villard couldn’t remember when he’d last closed his eyes. Waves pounded his sixty-five-foot sloop like fists, hammering his senses as mercilessly as they hammered the hull. This wasn’t just a storm at sea. It was an assault on his world. He was searching for a body, his wife’s—and God help them both, he had to find her alive.

Andrew had a life most men would have killed for—enough wealth to wield influence, enough power to attract privilege. In a world split between winners and losers, he had won big. But as of seventy-two hours ago, his streak was over. He was a murder suspect. Prime.

Lightning ripped a hole in the black-and-blue sky. Wind lashed Andrew’s hair. He hugged the mast, bracing as another wave crashed over the bow. He’d hired a small crew so he could be free to search. He had an experienced skipper at the helm, as well as a crewman who had already reefed the main sail and trimmed the storm jib to help stabilize the boat.

His wife, Alison, had disappeared at sea three days ago. The sun had gone down, and they’d been heading back to port when a squall had blown up. Andrew had gone belowdecks to hunt for life preservers that weren’t in the cockpit locker where they should have been, and while he was down there, something slammed into the yacht almost hard enough to capsize it. By the time he got back on deck, a storm was raging, and Alison was gone.

Searching for her had been virtually impossible. He’d been alone on a big yacht in the dark with a fierce storm blowing. High winds had driven him back into port, where he’d radioed the Coast Guard, but their search of the coastline had yielded nothing. They’d found no trace of her, even though they’d continued searching until last night, when gale-force winds had made them call it off.

Andrew had been out in the storm every day since she vanished, but that hadn’t stopped the Coast Guard from questioning whether it was an accident. They’d gone over his boat, seen the damage and called in the county sheriff’s office. It was no secret that sailing was Andrew Villard’s passion. In his twenties, he’d been part of the team that raced Lasers for the summer Olympics. Andrew knew the waters, was a seasoned navigator. He was too good to lose someone at sea.

A team from the sheriff’s office had searched his sloop, Bladerunner, and they were treating him like a suspect. They’d found the damaged lifeline and the scuffed deck. It was only a matter of time until they’d find the insurance policy. And there was the tragic way his ex-fiancée had died. The media had made sure everyone knew about that. It was hailed as more proof of the Villard Curse.

If he didn’t find Alison, he would be charged with her murder. Tomorrow or the next day. Soon. He would be arrested.

The bow rose and crashed down. A wall of water knocked Andrew to the deck and nearly ripped him away from the mast. When he dragged himself back up, he couldn’t see any sign of his crew. Dread sent him crawling toward the cockpit, where he spotted the pilot crouching and clinging to the wheel. The other man had taken shelter in the doorway of the pilot house.

“Come about!” Andrew shouted, gesturing to the man at the wheel. “We’re heading back in.”

He saw relief on both men’s faces and knew he’d done the right thing. This was his desperate mission, not theirs. He had no right to endanger their lives.

Another wave lifted them into the air. They were sailing like the Flying Dutchman when the crewman began to gesture wildly. “There!” he bellowed, pointing southeast. “The rock reefs. Look at the reefs!”

Andrew couldn’t see what the man was talking about. The reefs were obscured by mist, and before he could get back to the mast, the Bladerunner had sunk into another deep trough. Water poured over them in sheets, but as they rose again on a crest, Andrew could see that the seas to the southeast were less wild. The storm seemed to have moved past them, heading out to the Pacific.

He spotted a white speck in the black claws of the reefs. As they headed toward it, Andrew forgot all about the danger. The waves were still heavy as they neared, but he was mesmerized by what looked more and more like a human body. The yacht’s engines roared to life, helping turn the boat into the wind. Andrew didn’t have to instruct the pilot. He knew exactly what to do.

As they came within range of the rocks, Andrew realized that it was a body, a woman, either unconscious or dead. She wasn’t impaled on a reef as he’d feared. She was floating on the surface, nearly naked. It looked as if the clothes had been ripped from her body, probably by the force of the storm. But somehow she’d gotten caught on a large piece of driftwood.

She was battered, too. His gorge rose as he saw that there was little left of her face but bloody pulp. He could discern what might be her mouth, her nose, but other than that, she was virtually unrecognizable. The driftwood may have kept her afloat, but it hadn’t kept her from being dashed against the rocks.

Andrew and the crewman rushed to lower a lifeboat. Moments later they climbed down the ladder and pushed off. But even when they were close enough to pick her up, Andrew wasn’t able to identify her. Her injuries were a grisly sight, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He thought he’d seen her move her hand. Was she alive?

As he freed her limp and bleeding body, he saw that she’d been snagged on the driftwood by a delicate gold wristlet—Alison’s birthday gift. Andrew didn’t know whether it was relief or horror that made him shudder. His wife had been found.

Andrew was ready to rip the No Smoking sign off the hospital wall. Every time he turned around that plaque was in his face, reminding him how badly he wanted to smoke. He’d quit his pack-a-day habit over a year ago, having no idea how desperately addicted he was. Desire had finally begun to wane in the last couple months. Now it was back with a vengeance—and this sign was a constant reminder, lest it slip his mind.

At the moment he was the only addict pacing the floor of Providence Saint Joseph’s VIP lounge. A concert promoter by profession, Andrew knew all about such lounges. Celebrities required green room treatment wherever they went, and that included hospitals. This one had a concierge during the day, free coffee, gourmet snacks and flat screen TVs. It also had sleeping quarters, but Andrew was too wired for that. He could only guess what had earned him VIP status. Maybe the ten thousand dollars he’d donated to the hospital benevolent fund.

He checked his watch. It was 6:00 a.m., and he was waiting for an update on Alison’s progress. She’d been in surgery twelve hours, and Andrew had heard nothing since three that morning, when they’d told him she should be able to resume a normal life, but it would take several more hours to reconstruct her face. He’d also been warned that this would be the first of several surgeries.

Thank God he’d insisted she be Medevaced to Saint Joseph’s. He’d called from the yacht on the way back into port, and there’d been an ambulance there to meet them. The paramedics had taken her directly to the trauma center at San Diego General, but after it had been determined that she had no serious internal injuries, Andrew had arranged for her to be transferred to Saint Joseph’s, where the reconstructive surgeons were the best in the world.

The trauma center’s surgeons could easily have repaired the broken bones in her body, but he knew it would take virtuosos to put her exquisite face back together.

Alison’s face. Andrew could see it so clearly in his mind, fine-featured and fair, the Rapunzel of her generation, which happened to be X. She would rather have lost a limb than her looks. As beautiful as she was, she was also deeply insecure and sought constant reassurance, which may have explained her crazy dreams of superstardom, and her belief that Andrew could use his connections to make those dreams come true. It wasn’t the only reason their marriage had fallen apart, but it was one of them.

A flash of blue in Andrew’s periphery caught his attention. A young female plastic surgeon, still garbed in scrubs, came through the waiting room door and approached him. Andrew recognized her as one of the operating room team.

He couldn’t read her expression. Obvious exhaustion masked whatever emotion she might be feeling. And doctors weren’t supposed to telegraph those things, anyway. Alison could be dead, and this doctor’s face would show nothing more than professional compassion. Right now, he didn’t even see that.

“How is she?” he asked.

She wiped her brow, and he saw the bloodstains on her sleeve.

“It’s delicate work,” she said, “but it’s going well.”

Andrew felt light-headed, probably from relief. “She’s going to be all right?”

“As you know, the worst damage was to your wife’s face,” she told him. “We’ve reset her jaw and reconstructed her nose. She’ll need more surgery in the future, possibly several operations, but there’s a good chance we’ll be able to restore not just the structure, but the character of her face.”

“You’re working from the pictures I gave you?” Alison had been nearly unrecognizable, even after they cleaned her up, so Andrew had described her at length and given them the wallet-size pictures he carried, most of them close-ups of her face. His hobby was boat design, precision work that made him very aware of details.

“Yes, from the pictures.” She smiled, seeming pleased despite her obvious fatigue. Her expression said that this was a victory for medicine, and for her personally. “We’ve even managed to remove what was left of the birthmark on her throat,” she said proudly.

“The birthmark?” Another wave of light-headedness caught Andrew, rocking him back on his heels. The room got very bright, and he didn’t realize he was staring at the doctor until he heard her calling his name.

“Mr. Villard? Are you all right?”

“Yes, fine.” He forced himself to smile at her as if everything was fine, but he was still unsteady. He kneaded his forehead, warding off the threat of a blinding headache. “It’s been awhile since I slept.”

“We won’t be much longer.”

“I’ll get some coffee,” he said, aware that he sounded out of breath. It had been several days since he’d slept, and he was exhausted. If he was acting strangely, that was the reason. And it was the only reason he was going to give, especially to this doctor.


1

New York, Six Months Later

Alison Fairmont Villard opened her eyes reluctantly. She was in her own bedroom, but the first moments of consciousness still brought bewilderment. Andrew had insisted she recuperate at his home on Oyster Bay in Long Island, but it wasn’t being on the east coast that confused her. Each day since the accident had started with a realization that felt almost physical, as if she had to grasp her mind and wrench it to this new time and place, to a world she actually knew very little about. And yet more about than she wanted to.

Her amnesia wasn’t as total as the doctors had thought. She remembered nothing about being battered against the reefs and nearly drowning, nothing about the plunge into the raging ocean, but she could remember just enough of what had happened before that to be terrified by it.

Those flashes of memory acted like a spotlight that could blind you to everything except its beam. What she recalled now were the harrowing moments. Everything else was hidden in the surrounding ring of darkness.

Maybe it was the pills. She took them to sleep and to keep the dreams at bay. Whether night or day, when she swallowed a tiny blue pill, she was transported to a cool, safe place, a shaded tropical lagoon, her mind free of clutter and turmoil. She slept in innocence, like Eve before the apple.

Her fingers clasped the small battered loop of copper attached to her charm bracelet. It was an ugly stepsister compared to the other delicate gold charms, but she was relieved to find it still there. She’d reached for it so often it had become a reflex. An embarrassing tic. But the brush with death had made her superstitious, and the old copper penny ring had literally saved her life when it snagged on a piece of driftwood. Its protective powers had been tested.

She rolled to her side and sat up, not bothering to cover her nakedness. There was no one to see her, anyway. She and Andrew didn’t share this beautiful suite where she slept her life away, and as far as she knew they never had. Before the “accident,” which was how they now referred to it, they’d lived in his Manhattan apartment. Here, in his much larger estate on Oyster Bay, their rooms were in different wings. Different rooms. Different lives.

She had almost no interaction with her husband these days, except occasionally to discuss a social or business event that he wanted her to attend with him, and there had been very few of those. In the first weeks after the accident, he’d spent hours with her, filling in the blanks of her life with him, as well as her life before him. He’d shared as much as he knew of her past, but it was what he’d told her about their relationship that made her realize they’d been on the brink of a divorce before the accident—and Andrew didn’t seem to have any desire to reconcile now.

He didn’t even seem to like her, which made her feel strangely empty and resentful, even though she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d felt about him before. He’d refused to go into the intimate details of their relationship, which had left her both curious and suspicious, but mostly, lost. How was she supposed to pick up pieces she didn’t have?

They were together now only because of the agreement they’d made—and that was strictly business. Once she’d recovered enough to lead her own life, such as it was, he’d left her to it. That was how he wanted it. What she wanted didn’t seem to enter into anything, though to be fair, he had asked her about that once.

What do you want to do with your second chance?

Her answer had surprised him. She told him she didn’t remember asking for one.

She rose and stretched, using her arms and feeling the ripple come from the base of her spine. Her listlessness was replaced by a vague sense of guilt as she considered the state of her bedroom and what she could see of her sitting room through the connecting arch. Clothing had been dropped here and there; books and magazines lay about.

Had she always been this sloppy? Maybe she was rebelling against his need for order and organization. He’d called home once when he was away on a trip, and had her search for some papers in his study, which was next to his bedroom. She’d been amazed at the precision of his life.

She didn’t feel precise. She felt messy.

“What you are is a zombie,” she murmured, startled at the husky tone of her own voice. Part of that was from the surgery and the rest was the way she’d always sounded, apparently. “Do something,” she said. “Anything other than sleep.”

She started for the bathroom, thinking she might shower and dress, perhaps go to the kitchen and find something to eat. It was late morning, and she probably should have been hungry, but she rarely had much of an appetite, especially for the organic food that Andrew preferred.

He had someone come in twice a week to clean and do the grocery shopping, but other than that they had no staff. He’d let everyone go shortly after he brought her home from the hospital. He’d had concerns about prying eyes and the tabloid press, but they would have been interested in her only because of him.

He’d made a name for himself in the music business, not just for the high-profile events he organized, but for the talent he’d discovered. And it didn’t hurt that he was the personification of tall, dark and dashing. Years ago he’d been engaged to one of his own finds, a pop princess named Regine, when she’d drowned, apparently rather mysteriously, in their swimming pool.

Another accident. The women in Andrew’s life were prone to them.

The media had tagged it the Villard Curse, but Andrew wouldn’t discuss it, except for a few paltry details that Alison could have read in a newspaper. His mother had been a rising star with the New York Opera when she’d suffered a freak accident during a rehearsal. She and Andrew, who was a teenager at the time, had been living with her mentor, the opera’s artistic director, and Andrew had stayed on with the director after she died, rather than disrupt Andrew’s schooling. His parents had divorced when he was a baby, and his mother had desperately wanted him to have culture in his life. No one had objected, least of all Andrew’s father, who’d moved to the wilds of Wyoming and had a family of his own.

When Alison had pressed for details about Regine, Andrew had startled her by lashing out. Apparently the loss was still too painful, but it had been five years. He’d told her not to ask about Regine again, but he’d alluded to a love triangle, of which she, Alison, had been one of the points. Alison had no recollection of that at all. It was her mother, Julia, who’d come between her relationship with Andrew when Alison was eighteen. As far as Alison knew, Andrew’s association with Regine had been strictly business up to that point, although it did turn romantic after Alison and Andrew parted. Things quickly became serious between he and Regine, but she was dead before they could marry.

A year after that Andrew had secretly married Alison…and now this.

Her spine rippled again, a shiver this time. She lived with a vague sense of dread that never left her, except when she forced it away. Were there men who found it easier to dispose of women than to leave them? They would have to be patholotical in the extreme, and she didn’t want to think about her husband in that way. She was still rattled and disoriented. Right now there was nothing to anchor her, no touchstones, but that would change.

The large sage-green-and-white bathroom soothed her as she stepped barefoot onto its cool limestone tile. The mostly glass-and-steel house had several levels, domed skylights and was built on low, rolling sand dunes. It was one of the few modern structures in Oyster Bay Cove, and Andrew had kept the decor inside as light and natural as the shores and the sea outside.

As she entered the shower stall, the charm bracelet jingled on her wrist. She never removed it these days, even to bathe. Doing so made her feel too vulnerable. A chunk of her life was gone and the details of her past were confused and fuzzy, but she had a sense of herself as an adventurous person before the accident. Some might even say reckless. Now she was in constant search of ways to protect herself. She kept a marble paperweight on the nightstand next to her bed and a kitchen carving knife in the nightstand drawer, just in case.

She turned one of the knobs on a sleek stainless steel panel, and warm water began to mist from above. Possibly her favorite part of the bathroom was the rain forest showerhead. Standing under it, she really did feel as if she’d been caught in a tropical cloudburst.

When she came out of the shower moments later, wrapped in a bath sheet, she sensed that something was different. But as she walked through the room, still dripping, she didn’t notice anything out of place.

As she entered the sitting room, she saw that an envelope and a handwritten note had been left on her writing desk. The embossed envelope was made of pale blue linen as soft and slippery as silk. It was addressed to her, but it had been opened and the contents read. She knew because of the note from Andrew lying next to the envelope. He’d written just two sentences and signed his name with the usual slashing capital A.

Alison, there’s no way out this time. We have to go. Andrew.

Alison pulled the matching blue stationery from the envelope and read the entire page in one gulp, as if it were a single sentence. Nerves, she thought. The kind that made you eat too fast and caused the food to ball up in your stomach.

My darling daughter,

Your silence is breaking my heart. You will be twenty-eight soon, and though no invitation is needed because this is and always will be your home, I’m extending one so that you can understand how desperate I am to see you again.

Please come to Sea Clouds and celebrate the occasion of your birthday with your brother and me. Of course, Andrew is invited, too.

I long to see you.

All my love,

Your mother

Alison’s breath had gone dry in her throat. Invitation? It was a summons from her mother to appear. She’d known this was coming, but that didn’t make it any less a disaster. Andrew had been holding her mother off since the accident. He’d said he was doing it to protect Alison, to give her time to heal and prepare, but Julia Fairmont had extended an olive branch. She wanted to see her one and only daughter, and no one could protect Alison now.

She had visions of putting the pricey stationery through a shredder and grinding it into a pile of slivers. But she didn’t have the nerve, even for a symbolic act of defiance. It felt as if she’d lost control of even the smallest details of her life. She was a chess piece being moved around by master players, one of whom was her husband.

The letter was just one example. It was addressed to her, but Andrew had opened it, read it and told her how they were going to respond, even though the decision had to do with her life, her family—and should have been her choice. He believed it was time to repair her relationship with her mother, and even though it was part of the arrangement Alison had made with him, she hated the thought of going back to Mirage Bay under these circumstances.

She had only agreed because of personal reasons that were deeply important to her. Those reasons were also why she stayed in this house and put up with Andrew’s interference. Unfortunately, she’d had to take him into her confidence, because she would need his help when they got to Mirage Bay. But this wasn’t the right time for her to go.

Her mother’s invitation almost certainly had something to do with the fifty-million-dollar trust that would have come to Alison on her twenty-eighth birthday, if she hadn’t decided to walk away from the family wealth and marry Andrew. Julia Fairmont had been apoplectic. She’d cut off all contact with her daughter for four years, and according to Andrew, it was mutual. Alison had made no attempt to repair the rift.

But last February, in a fit of remorse, Alison had talked him into wintering in Mirage Bay so that she could make amends to her mother. Earlier that year, Andrew had shipped Bladerunner back to the West Coast manufacturer for modifications, so they would have his beloved sloop there as well.

It might have worked if her mother hadn’t brutally rejected Alison’s overtures—and if the weather hadn’t turned nasty, whipping up a storm that had sent Alison into the drink. But now, suddenly, all was forgiven. Her mother wanted her back. Something about that didn’t feel right, and Andrew’s ultimatum only added to the pressure.

It bothered Alison that he’d come into her room while she was showering. Or possibly while she was sleeping. It wasn’t the first time. On at least two other occasions while she slept he’d left evidence of his presence. A door ajar, a note, like today.

It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d wanted her to know, so that she would never feel totally safe, even when she slept. Her pills took care of that, but he didn’t know about the pills. The doctors and nurses who treated her had quietly refilled her prescriptions and given her samples over the months.

At times she felt like a hostage in this house, which had disturbed her to the point that she’d looked the word up online and learned the dynamics of hostage taking. A captive’s resistance—and her will—could be systematically undermined by randomly invading her privacy. When a person’s most basic boundaries were violated, anxiety levels spiked—and had the paradoxical effect of making the hostage more dependent on the one who had the control.

Her first reaction had been to deny it. Andrew hadn’t been undermining her. He was protecting her. He’d saved her life. But eventually, she’d had to admit the truth. She had no idea how many times he might have slipped in without her knowing, no idea what he might have done while he was there—and just the thought had made her want to take another pill. She would probably become an addict before she figured out how to regain some control of her life.

Her walk-in closet was the size of a small bedroom. She could have been shopping in a boutique, there were so many choices of what to wear. She grabbed the same outfit she’d worn yesterday, a pair of white shorts and a black tank top. Hard to go wrong with shorts on a July morning at the beach. If the clothes were a little roomy, it was because she hadn’t yet gained back the weight she’d lost during her ordeal.

Her hair was still wet from the shower and would curl into flyaway waves if she let it dry naturally. What she had decided to let go natural was the color. In defiance of Andrew’s wishes, she’d let the blond grow out until it had begun to look ratty, and then she’d dyed it. Now it was almost completely grown out to a rich doeskin brown, and it was the one thing that made her feel like her own woman.

She clicked her blow-dryer up to High. This was the part of her morning ritual she liked least—blow-drying, styling, makeup. None of that had any appeal for her—and who was she going to see, anyway? She lived in the same house with a man she hadn’t seen a trace of in over a week. The odds of an encounter were slim. Maybe she would just grab an apple from the refrigerator and go for a walk on the beach.

She turned off the dryer without using it and slipped it back in the wall holder. Her husband’s apparent surveillance didn’t make sense. He was the one who’d insisted they live separate lives, except for their social obligations. They’d both agreed there would be no physical intimacy, so it wasn’t her fidelity that concerned him. And yet he seemed to feel the need to keep tabs.

She should have challenged him, but that was a battle for another day. She couldn’t expend the energy now. Nor could she make this trip to Mirage Bay. She needed more time. She hadn’t even been able to master the piano lessons he’d insisted she take. She was supposed to have been a good player once, but the lines and notes were a foreign language now.

Still, mixed in with her suspicions and the strange brew of emotions she felt toward Andrew was some gratitude. He had saved her life and for that she owed him, but he was asking too much. And she had already decided how to handle it.

“Andrew, are you there? What am I supposed to do about all these open concert dates?”

The frustrated voice of his trusted assistant, Stacy, yanked Andrew’s attention away from the graph paper on his drafting table. He turned his head to the speakerphone, where he could hear her sharp sigh.

“Once you have McGraw, Crow and Alvarado confirmed,” he told her, “you can lock in the remainder of the U.S. dates. Be sure you tell their people we’re not taking special orders. All the proceeds are going to charity. The performers get carrot sticks and tap water.”

“Seriously? Tap water?”

“Seriously.” Andrew rubbed the graph paper with his thumb, as if he could massage away any resistance. He’d awakened with the impulse to create something, and that hadn’t happened in a while. He assumed it would have a hull and a sail and move through water. Sailboats were all he’d ever designed, and all he sketched now, but so far, this one was eluding him.

“Andrew, are you still there? Christina Alvarado’s people won’t talk to me. They want to deal with you directly—or she won’t do the gig.”

“In that case, she’s going to be the only world-class American pop artist missing from this benefit. Tell her people that Rock Rescue will be bigger than We Are the World. If she wants to blow that off, it’s her choice.”

“I can’t call Christina Alvarado a pop artist!”

“Stacy, you’re losing sight of the bigger picture. This is for charity. The stars are invited. Their egos aren’t.”

He advised her to breathe and then he gave her his usual pep talk about megastars in need of tough love. He finished by reminding her that he’d hired her because of her moxie. What he got back was another sharp sigh, to which he responded, “Whatever you do you have my complete support,” and hung up the phone.

He pushed back from his drafting table. Stacy could handle the Alvarado camp with both hands tied behind her back. She just didn’t know it yet. You couldn’t always accommodate. Sometimes you had to push back. Sudden fame and wealth turned too many young celebs into brats and bullies, and their publicity flacks followed suit. When that happened, nothing worked except an ice bath of reality. Everyone was expendable. It was a sad by-product of the American Dream.

Andrew’s home office had a wall of louvered windows that looked out on the white sands and cresting surf of the Atlantic. He crossed the room, cranked open every one of the panels and felt the balmy sea breezes feather his eyelashes and lift his hair. He breathed in salt and the fresh scent coming off the dune’s green-and-gold grasses.

As the summer heat permeated the room, and the blue endlessness of the ocean blinded him to all but its brilliant sparkle, he wished that he were out on the water. The yearning was almost palpable. He needed to sail. He hadn’t done that since Alison’s accident six months ago.

The Bladerunner had already been in Mirage Bay when they had gone back last February. Andrew had sent her out there for some modifications to the hull, and then after the accident he’d left her there, dry-docked for repairs. Now, he realized it was just as well that he hadn’t brought her back. He wanted the sloop there when he and Alison returned, even if he decided against taking her out.

Sailing wasn’t the same now. A darkness shadowed even the thought. He’d become almost as insular as she had—the strange, silent woman in the other wing of the house. For some time now, he’d been backing away from his business, turning more and more responsibility over to Stacy, but that was intentional. He’d also largely withdrawn from the social circuit. It was awkward going out alone. There were always the questions about Alison.

Interesting how all roads led back to her. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his thoughts, but maybe that was to be expected. She was at the core of the mystery that dominated his days. Possibly, she was the mystery.

His stomach rumbled and he glanced over at the plate he’d left on the built-in counter and cabinets he used for work space. It was an array of summer fruit and a whole-grain croissant that he’d forgotten in his quest to be creative.

He went to the refrigerator that he stocked with juices, fruits and raw vegetables. He’d naturally gravitated toward healthier food since quitting booze after Regine died. He’d never been a falling-down drunk, but every day it had seemed to take more and more to lubricate his inane conversations with the celebrity crowd and their entourages. He’d drunk his way through too many lunches, bullshitted through too many dinners and award show parties.

Garbage in, garbage out. It all sounded the same. One day he’d lost track of his messages and called the wrong hot new rock star. He’d congratulated her on an award that she’d lost to a feuding competitor. She’d filled Andrew’s ear with obscenities, which had struck him as funny. He’d dropped the phone and laughed until he cried, and when he’d gotten up to freshen his drink, the liquor bottle was empty.

It had seemed like a sign.

Now, Andrew’s goal was to hand over as much as he could of the concert promotion business to Stacy. They were reorganizing so that the bulk of it could be handled out of his Manhattan office, and the rest he could deal with from wherever he happened to be, including here in Oyster Bay. Stacy would have to hire more staff, which would raise the overhead, but that was fine. It was time he needed now, not money.

He grabbed a bottle of carrot-and-pineapple juice and walked over to his drafting table, still thinking about his new sketch. That’s where it seemed to start and end these days, with the sketches. He never got to the building, never even got to the design, though that was his first love.

The walls of his office were lined with photographs and paintings of classic boats, most of them crafted of wood, and to his mind, works of art. Today’s serious racing yachts were built with man-made materials, and though their lines were beautiful and their speed breathtaking, they lacked the soul of their graceful forebears.

He set down the juice unopened, picked up his pencil and drew in the hull with a couple of strokes. It was coming now. She would be small, fast and graceful, a sloop. Like her.

Once again, his mind went directly to Alison, like a car heading into a curve and driving off the road. How could you not think about a woman who slept naked in a cool dark room, shades drawn, even during the day?

He’d gone there to talk at various times, but she hadn’t answered the door, not even when he pounded. He’d let himself in and found her in bed, entwined with the sheets and stretched out like a nude in a painting.

At times he could have sworn she was sleeping with her eyes open, like a sphinx. He never quite knew what to make of the strange creature he’d fished out of the sea, but he could not make the mistake of falling under her spell and wrecking himself on the rocks.

Someone had tried to frame him by making his wife’s accident look like murder. Posing as him, they’d taken out a two-million-dollar insurance policy on Alison a month before her accident. All the arrangements, including the results of her annual medical exam, had been handled by fax and phone, and it could just as easily have been Alison herself doing it. Voices were easily disguised on the phone.

Just days before the accident, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Their prenuptial gave her a million dollars for every year of marriage if he initiated a divorce, and nothing if she did. Without blinking an eye she’d asked for the money. He’d had it wired to the account she indicated, and forty-eight hours later, she’d disappeared off his boat.

It was enough to make a guy think. The wife he’s about to divorce vanishes with a nice chunk of change and he’s prosecuted for her murder? It was a tidy bit of revenge, if that’s what the wife had in mind. Of course, it had backfired.

“Andrew?”

Her voice always startled him. It wasn’t Alison’s. But then, how could it be, he reminded himself, after all those operations?

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study, lithe and tan in her white shorts and flowing, slightly wild, dark hair. She held a note in her hand. Good, he thought, she’d found it.

She was up, walking and talking.

She wasn’t sleeping like the sphinx.

Good.


2

She glanced down to see if her breasts were properly exposed in the plunging wrap top. Her fringed skirt hit midthigh, which was baby stuff on this street corner. Most of the girls’ fannies were falling out of their clothes, and some of the flesh was disgustingly jiggly. Not a pretty sight in broad daylight. At least she was toned. And she’d known enough to wear a skirt, the working girl’s uniform. Short skirts weren’t just sexually suggestive, they were efficient.

A sleek silver Porsche pulled to the curb. Not very discreet of the silly bastard, she thought as she walked over to the passenger door. The window zipped down and the baby-faced thirty-something driver checked her out.

“I was looking for a blonde, younger and stacked,” he said.

“Aren’t you lucky.” She gave him a flirty wink and pulled off her silk scarf, exposing platinum-blond curls that would have done Gwen Stefani proud. It was a wig, but this guy wouldn’t care. He just wanted to get his apples picked, and that meant serving up as much of his particular fantasy as she could manage.

Young wasn’t an option. Stacked, she could do something about. She cupped her breasts and pushed them up, bending toward the car window. Silly bastard, she thought as she saw his salacious grin.

“Get in,” he told her.

She barely had the door shut when he peeled out, leaving a streak of smoking rubber behind them.

“The perfect place,” he announced as he turned onto a deserted side street a couple blocks up, and parked. The grin reappeared as he unzipped his pants and made himself readily available.

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

Cheeky little SOB was going to pay for that remark, she promised herself.

He continued to laugh and joke as she worked him over, pleasuring him with her hands and her mouth until suddenly, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was begging her to stop. Of course, she redoubled her efforts, and within seconds he was squealing like a baby pig.

“Damn, woman, let me at you,” he gasped.

He reached for her in his apparent ecstasy, and she shoved him away. “No intercourse! We agreed.”

“Yeah, but I need to get off again. That’s how freaking hot you are, Julia.”

“Don’t call me by my name!”

“Oops, sorry.” He pointed past her nose, gesturing toward the badly maintained public park they’d pulled up next to. “There’s a park bench. Let’s check it out.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“You won’t be either, sugar. Get your sweet ass on that park bench. I’ll make a cushion out of my coat like the hell of a guy I am.”

Moments later, Julia was sitting on the bench, spread-eagled. She tried not to scream with pleasure as he mounted her with the agility of a gymnast. He could have been doing push-ups. His hands were braced on the back of the bench as he leaned over her and pumped ferociously.

Moans of ecstasy gurgled up in her throat, but she didn’t want him to know he was giving her the most intense sex she’d ever experienced, the little bastard. She’d refused to let him penetrate until he put on a condom, but that’s where her common sense had ended. Here she was, in a public park on a bench under a tree, and she probably wouldn’t have cared if the park patrol had driven up.

“Say I’m the man,” he sputtered, “tell me I’m the man! Say it!”

She got the words out, and his face contorted. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Oh, Jesus!”

Julia gasped as he pulled out abruptly and ejaculated all over her breasts, soaking her wrap top as well as her skin. That, she wasn’t so thrilled about. He could have waited for her, like a damn gentleman. But that thing he’d told her to say might come in handy.

She managed to clean up the mess he’d made with a hanky she’d tucked in her bra. In her mind the perfect square of fine lace separated her from the role she had to play in order to get what she’d come for, so to speak. She realized how sordid the situation would look to anyone who didn’t understand what was at stake, but she knew the truth, clung to it. This wasn’t an illicit afternoon tryst for her. It was a quest, and he had what she sought, the holy grail.

As soon as she had her feet on the ground and her skirt back where it belonged, she made her pitch. “Okay, we did your damn fantasy. You got what you wanted. Now, when do I get what I want?”

He was still engrossed in putting himself back together. “You’re pretty good, but not that good. I’m going to need another session or two, or three.”

“Jack Furlinghetti, you dirty rotten liar.”

“Hey, I’m an attorney, aren’t I?” He laughed uproariously and then reached over and caressed her lips with the pad of his thumb. The sound he made was the hiss of escaping steam. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said.

Julia was steaming, too, and not just from the sex. She damn well better not have anything to worry about. She’d specifically requested him because she thought he was young, gullible and would do her bidding. She didn’t want to be wrong about that.

“I’m not going.” Alison stood in front of Andrew and ripped the envelope into shreds, letting it fall to the floor like blue snow. “I’m not ready to deal with this yet, and you know it.”

He could hear the force in her low, shaking voice. She was putting on a good show, lots of bravado, but underneath it all she was afraid. He’d counted on that.

He set down his pencil, unscrewed the juice bottle top and took a drink. “Don’t be dramatic. No one’s forcing you to go back to Mirage Bay.”

“Your note said we had to go. We couldn’t put it off any longer.” Her stare accused him, and that was no small thing from this woman. Her eyes were a deceptive baby-blue that turned into blazing fire opals when she got upset.

“Alison, don’t be ridiculous.” He rose from the stool. “It’s your family.”

“Exactly. It’s my family. They eat their young.” Her bracelet jingled as she caught the battered copper charm in her fingers. “I’m not ready.”

“We’re never ready for some things—marriage, children, major surgery. But we screw up our courage and get them done. And afterward, we’re glad we did.”

“Andrew, please, you know them. They’ll crucify me.”

“It’s your mother, your brother.”

“And they both hate me. My mother’s been furious with me since I walked away from the trust fund my grandmother left me—and married you. What she can control she hates. What she can’t control she hates more.”

“And your brother?”

“Bret’s had it in for me since birth. I was the oldest and the favorite, and he was desperate to dethrone me.”

He gave her an encouraging nod. “Congratulations. That’s you and Bret to a tee. You remembered it perfectly.”

Her headshake was suddenly weary. “I can’t remember anything, especially when I’m frightened. My mind goes blank. I may not know what silverware to use. What if I make mistakes at the dinner table? I’ll be humiliated.”

She was still rubbing the copper loop between her fingers. It was a dead giveaway of her nerves, and as she brought the loop to her lips, he spoke up. “I’ve asked you to take that thing off the bracelet. It isn’t one of the charms I gave you, and it’s sure to be noticed.”

Her head came up, defiant. “So what if it’s noticed? I added it myself, and it’s brought me luck. I’m not removing it.”

The desire to exert his will was strong, but he told himself to let it go for now. He had bigger battles to fight. “No one in Mirage Bay is going to humiliate you,” he said. “I’ll handle that.”

“Really?” Sarcasm invaded her tone. “How?”

“Leave it to me. I’ve held your family off until now. You’ll be fine. I’ll be there with you.”

He’d blocked Julia’s attempts to see Alison when she was in the hospital, explaining that her presence would be too much for her fragile, recovering daughter. Julia had backed off, seeming to understand, but she’d also become more insistent with every passing month, and she wasn’t going to be put off any longer.

Andrew made it a point not to look at the cabinets behind Alison, specifically at the locked drawer where he’d put the missive he’d received earlier that week. “I accepted your mother’s invitation,” he said, his tone harsh. “It’s been six months. It’s time.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Tears welled, glittering like fire. “You had no right.”

He turned away from her, not wanting to be swayed by the agony swimming in her gaze. Her eyes got to him when nothing else could. Except for the dark hair, she looked uncannily like the Alison he’d known before the accident. But that woman he could resist. This one was different. Her fears were real, persuasive. Hell, they were heartrending. And somehow, on rare occasions like this when she broke down, she managed to get to him, no matter how expertly he steeled himself against her.

That was why he stayed the hell away from her.

As he waited for her to compose herself, he realized that she was up to something else. The plate with the breakfast he hadn’t eaten sat on the counter just behind her. In his peripheral vision, he could see her pilfering pieces of the fruit and stuffing them in her mouth like a starving child. He wasn’t sure she even realized what she was doing.

He turned, catching her as she crammed three of the orange sections into her mouth at once. She froze at the sight of him. Her knees seemed to buckle. Heat flushed her cheeks and she gulped hard, apparently swallowing the entire mouthful.

“Alison? If you’re hungry—”

“No, it’s not that. Sometimes I panic and forget myself.” Her eyes took on that anguish again. “Do you see?” she said. “Do you see now? I’m not ready.”

He did see, but there wasn’t much he could do. They had to go. Julia was extending an olive branch after four years of silence. Alison’s accident had been the catalyst for Julia’s change of heart. She’d wanted to see her only daughter, the child she nearly lost, but this was much more. She’d invited them to stay at Sea Clouds, the Fairmonts’ compound on the cliffs near Mirage Bay.

The three-story Mediterranean mansion had been in the family for generations, but had been used primarily as a vacation home to escape the harsh East Coast winters. When Julia’s husband, Grant, died, she’d begun spending more of her time at Sea Clouds, and now it was her permanent residence.

Andrew needed this opportunity. If Julia rescinded the invitation, he might not get another chance to enter that house, up close and personal with the Fairmonts—one of whom he suspected had set him up for a fall.

Andrew used the smallest key on his chain to unlock the drawer. Inside was the six-month-old edition of the Mirage Bay newspaper he’d found in his P.O. box yesterday, rolled up and bagged in plastic. He’d been having the Mirage Bay paper mailed to him since Alison’s accident, but this edition wasn’t courtesy of the newspaper’s subscription service. This was personal. Someone was calling him out.

He unrolled the paper and laid it on the counter. Alison had just left in a huff and he didn’t expect her back, but he’d locked his office door all the same. If she saw this, he would never get her on the plane to southern California. The paper’s date was February third, and the lead story was about her disappearance from Bladerunner. But the article had been marked up by whoever sent it. Words had been circled with a permanent marker to create an ominous message, clearly intended for him.

I know what you did. Soon the police will, too.

You won’t get away with it this time.

How much are your secrets worth?

It smacked of a blackmail attempt, but the sender hadn’t given him any contact information. Andrew couldn’t risk dismissing it as a bluff. He had plenty to hide and too much at stake, and the sender seemed to know that.

He picked up the plastic casing the paper had come in and examined the mailing label. It didn’t have the newspaper’s logo, which added to his theory that a private party had sent the paper, and if not for the blackmail aspect, Andrew would have said it was Julia Fairmont. He didn’t think it a coincidence that her invitation had arrived within days of the newspaper message, and she had more reasons than most to want him out of the way.

He’d come between her and her only daughter, and even if Julia didn’t buy the media hype about the Villard curse, she undoubtedly had some concerns about Alison’s safety. She might also think he was trying to use Alison to get his hands on the fifty-milliion dollar trust fund.

How much are your secrets worth? The clumsy attempt at blackmail brought Bret Fairmont to mind. There’d be no other reason for Bret to expose him, certainly not to protect his sister. There was no love lost there. Unfortunately, the blackmail aspect opened the field up to suspects Andrew might not even know. Anyone could have seen something, heard something, although why would they wait all this time? And the second line must refer to Regine, which meant the sender knew something about his past. But then, who didn’t?

He put the paper back in the drawer and locked it, but he was still mentally embroiled in the quandary. What were his secrets worth? Christ, there wasn’t enough money.

He passed the drafting table on his way to the windows. For some reason, the bright blue horizon called up a vision of the first time he’d met Alison, twelve years ago. He’d flown to the west coast to live out his dream of commissioning a sailing yacht from Voyager Yachts, one of the country’s foremost luxury boat manufacturers. Andrew had no idea that Voyager had been owned by Grant Fairmont while he was alive, or that the exclusive marina had been one of Alison’s hangouts.

She’d been there that day, flitting like a butterfly around the shipyard, a shapely sixteen-year-old in a bikini, flirting madly with the college boys from the rowing club next door. She was underage and too young for Andrew anyway, but that didn’t stop her from flashing him a melting smile every chance she got.

He saw a lot of her over the next year as he commuted between the coasts to watch the sailboat’s progress, and eventually Andrew realized he was smitten. His intentions were serious by the time he slept with her, but when she took him home to Mama, everything changed. No one was good enough for Julia Fairmont’s daughter.

Andrew continued to see Alison anyway, even after Bladerunner was done and had been shipped back to Oyster Bay. On her eighteenth birthday he gave her the bracelet adorned with musical charms to encourage her singing aspirations, only to have Julia demand he take it back. She also offered to write him a check if he would name his price. He’d refused the bracelet and the money, but he’d ended the relationship. Julia had been right. He wasn’t good enough.

It was the last time he saw Alison until she moved to Manhattan the following year to attend Julliard. By that time he was involved with Regine, his protégé, and Alison’s unexpected visit to the rooftop apartment where he and Regine lived was not a welcome surprise. But Alison had sworn she only wanted to meet Regine, that she was a huge fan.

Andrew stared out the window, looking hard at the horizon.

Who’d sent him that threat? And what were they trying to accomplish?

He’d even asked himself if the sender could have been part of Alison’s plan to frame him, if there’d ever been such a plan. Maybe the accomplice had decided to finish the job, with or without her. That seemed like a stretch, but Andrew had to pursue every lead—and he was going to start where it had all begun, in Mirage Bay—whether Alison was ready or not.

His first shot put a gaping hole through the perp’s heart. Bullet number two drilled right between the thug’s eyes. And then, just for good measure, Special Agent Tony Bogart shot the guy’s balls off. It was the wrong order. If you were going for a quick, efficient kill, you aimed for the head first. Targets shot in the head did not shoot back. But Tony was letting off steam. This was his release valve for the pressure cooker of law enforcement. Better than taking it out on live suspects, which was frowned upon by the brass.

Another perp sprang up before Tony could eject the spent magazine and jam .40 Glock semiautomatic. The thug came straight at him, howling like a banshee. The clip jammed.

Tony flicked his head and sweat sprayed like raindrops. With a hard snap of his wrist, he Frisbee’d the gun at the target carrier system in the ceiling. It hit the drive motors and gummed up the works, stopping the paper assailant in his tracks.

Laughing, Tony pulled a .45 caliber pistol from his thigh holster and blew the bastard away. Four holes in his forehead. Just call him Mr. Efficient.

The target carrier was dead, too, but Tony wrote it off to the cost of doing business. This was a private range, and the owner knew Tony was good for the repairs, but probably wouldn’t charge him. The law enforcement gig still got him a few perks. Maybe he’d donate the Glock to Goodwill. He didn’t give second chances to guns—or women—who screwed him over.

He holstered his pistol and grabbed a towel to mop his brow. He’d stopped using Quantico’s firing ranges. The Bureau took a dim view of their agents killing the equipment, and they’d started docking his pay. Anyone else probably would have been disciplined, but Tony was this year’s top gun. Even outside law enforcement circles, he was known as the agent who’d tracked down Robert Starr, a cunning and deadly Uni-bomber copycat. He’d also been key in averting another Waco-like tragedy in a religious cult in Oregon.

Yeah, the Bureau loved Tony Bogart these days, so much so that they’d just put him on six weeks’administrative leave and strongly suggested he take anger management classes. And all because he’d been working his ass off trying to convince them to admit him to the training program for the Bureau’s elite crisis response team.

CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group, was roughly the equivalent of the army’s Special Forces. Tony had the physical skills, but lacked the temperament, according to the psychologist who’d evaluated him. She’d diagnosed him with intermittent explosive disorder. And why? Just because he’d taken offense at some of her snide and insinuating questions and called her a free-associating bitch? She’d accused him of having a flagrant disregard for the rules. Ha. When was the last time she’d danced to the tune of a submachine gun’s bullets? The rules were great until they got you killed.

In his whole life, Tony had only wanted a couple things really badly—and he’d been denied both times. CIRG was one. A woman from his past was the other. He’d grabbed for the gold ring twice, and it had been snatched away both times. But sometimes fate threw you a bone, even years later, and it looked like he might have another chance at the woman.

He grabbed his bag of gear and stuffed the towel inside.

She would never know what hit her.

After ten years of “stellar service,” according to his performance reviews, Tony was taking an enforced leave of absence. The only good news was that it coincided with an opportunity that was deeply personal. For the last two weeks, he’d been receiving anonymous messages on his cell phone, informing him that he had the wrong suspect in the unsolved murder of his younger brother.

Butch had died a grotesque death six months ago of multiple wounds from a pitchfork, and Tony had vowed to bring the monster who killed him to justice. In his last voice mail, the snitch had been kind enough to reveal some vital information about the crime, and Tony had finally decided it wasn’t a hoax.

Tony banged out the door of the firing range and into the muggy Virginia heat. Tonight, he was on his way back to Mirage Bay to catch a cold-blooded murderer. He just had time to drop by his apartment, take a quick shower, grab his already packed bags and catch his flight to LAX.

He was looking forward to this trip, and not just because it was a chance to avenge his little brother. Butch had always been a nasty piece of work, a big tough kid who enjoyed pushing his weight around, and Tony wasn’t surprised that he’d had enemies. Butch had deserved a good pounding, maybe more than one, but he hadn’t deserved to die.

Tony had that other score to settle in Mirage Bay, and thanks to his voice-mail snitch, he might be able to get two birds with one bullet. He liked complicated cases and dealing with clever psychopaths. In this case, he might just have both.

He certainly had no other reason to revisit the town where he’d grown up. He had no family there now. He and Butch had lost their mother in a freak accident that may have been suicide. She’d driven her car up a freeway exit and into oncoming traffic with her two young sons in the back seat. Nobody could explain why she’d done it, although postpartum depression was suggested. She’d been killed instantly. Tony and Butch had been protected by seat belts. They hadn’t suffered a scratch. The scars were all internal.

Their father had raised them, though not well. He’d tried to exert control over both his sons, but in different ways. He’d used brute force on Tony, who’d been openly defiant. Butch, he’d spoiled with bribes and overindulgence. After Butch’s murder he’d moved away, probably because the memories were too painful. Tony had already left years before to become a G-man, only to be rejected for not having a college degree. He’d stayed in Virginia, found himself a night job, attended school during the day, doubled up on his coursework and reapplied two years later, degree in hand. After the Bureau’s traditional thirteen weeks of training, he’d been on his way to amassing one of the most impressive records of any rookie agent in years.

His fervor to be a Fed had shocked everyone who knew him. He’d shocked himself most. He didn’t like kids or dogs. He was admittedly antisocial. And in school he’d been voted most likely to end up in San Quentin. None of that had changed, but he had excelled at catching criminals and deviants, the more deviant the better. Maybe because he knew how they thought.

The collar of his cotton shirt was damp with sweat by the time he got to his car. He was looking forward to California’s dry heat. He wondered what the odds were that anyone or anything in the sunshine state was looking forward to his visit.

Bad. Really bad.

A smile compressed his lips again. This was going to be a good trip.


3

Alison paced her bedroom, the cell phone pressed to her ear as she listened to the incessant drone at the other end of the line. No one was answering. She’d been trying at various times of the day and night for the last two weeks, but no one had picked up, and that worried her terribly. She didn’t know what she would do if something had happened to the one person in Mirage Bay she actually cared about.

She couldn’t tell whether the phone was out of service, accidentally unplugged or no one was home, but she couldn’t wait any longer for the answer. None of Andrew’s arguments had been as powerful as this one, unanswered phone call.

For her, Mirage Bay was hell on earth, a watery graveyard where all her ghosts’ demons lay in wait. But like dream monsters, ghosts and demons had to be confronted or they would give you no peace. When you ran from them, they howled at your heels for eternity.

Like about ninety percent of the men in America under thirty with computers and Internet connections, Bret Fairmont had a special affinity for cyber porn. He preferred the video streaming sites, but unlike most other aficionados, he made no attempt to hide his dirty little habit. He liked to leave it on the screen for the whole world to see, and his mother in particular.

He had fantasies of her going as white as the diet pills she popped, and nearly choking on her own revulsion. Not that it was ever going to happen. She was a beady-eyed barracuda beneath the facade of perfect manners and designer clothing. But just once he wanted to see his mother fall to pieces. He could hardly imagine anything better.

Sad, Bret, sad. How old are you now? Twenty-five going on two?

He yawned and stretched, deeply encased in the belly of the backyard hammock. As he gazed up at the boughs of the giant sycamore overhead, boredom burned through him. Lethargy had its own special kind of ache. He’d been lying around all morning in a T-shirt and swim trunks, sipping iced lattes, and he had no plans to do anything else.

He knew how she hated sloth.

And speaking of Julia Fairmont, where was the prize bitch?

You’re a sick man, Bret. A sad, sick man. Why the hell do you hate her so much? She’s never done anything to you….

But when he closed his eyes he could see the disdain that hardened her beautiful face when she looked at him. It never left him, that look.

Except wish you didn’t exist. That’s all she’s ever done.

His laughter tasted like an old ashtray. It didn’t hurt anymore when she blew him off. He felt nothing. Maybe deep down there was a vestigial flicker of outrage, but on the surface, he was as cold and bitter as she was. He didn’t give a fuck what she thought. Why should he?

“Bret! Where are you?”

That was her, probably calling him from one of the balconies. Her shrill voice made him flinch. He hadn’t done that since he was a kid. Her tone told him she was pissed, but he’d expected that. He’d missed the job interview she’d arranged for him this morning, blown it off totally.

“Bret? Why don’t you answer me?”

He saw her coming, striding across the rolling green lawn in her crisp capris, sleeveless blouse and bejeweled sandals. He threw an arm over his eyes, pretending to be asleep, though he still could see her.

Apparently his silence got to her, because when she reached him, she did something totally unexpected. She grabbed the edge of the hammock with both hands and upended it, dumping him onto the ground.

He hit with a thud. “Hey! What the fuck? I’m never going to get these grass stains out of my trunks, Mom.”

She held up the letter in her hand. “I have important news, and it concerns you.”

“You’re dying, and I’m going to inherit everything?” He stood up and brushed himself off.

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. “Your sister’s coming to visit, and I need you to help me get ready.”

Her voice was shrill. It was shaking, but she wasn’t angry. She was nervous, he realized. Shit, this was a dream come true. Julia Fairmont was cracking.

As he stood there, taking in his mother’s agitation, it dawned on him what she’d said. “Alison? She’s coming here?”

“Yes, and I want to do something really special. I didn’t think she’d accept my invitation, or that he’d let her come. This is my chance to win her back, Bret.”

Bret’s legs went weak. He felt sick to his stomach, but somehow he managed to speak. “She’s married, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“He stole her. You know that as well as I do.”

“Stole her? She walked away from a damn fortune to be with him. What don’t you get about that? She chose Andrew.”

Julia’s expression was glacial. “He’s coming with her, and if you won’t help me get ready for their visit, you will at least be here. I just spoke with Andrew on the phone, and he assured me that she’s anxious to see you.”

It could not possibly be true that Alison was anxious to see him, but Julia had reverted to her polite mode, and Bret played along, even though inside he was still queasy enough to vomit.

“So, I assume she’s recovered?” he said.

Unconsciously, Julia used her thumb to center the large emerald-and-diamond wedding ring set she never took off, even though her husband had been dead for years. The ring wasn’t about marital devotion, however. She wanted the exquisite stones to show because they represented everything she wanted her life to be and wasn’t. Anyway, that was Bret’s theory.

“He said she’s shaky,” Julia said, “but that’s to be expected. She’s been through hell, and who knows what’s happened to her in the last six months. He’s never let me speak to her, the bastard.”

Bret didn’t doubt that his mother wanted Alison back in the family fold, but he questioned how deep her concern actually ran. She’d always favored his sister, even to the point of seeming obsessed, a stage mother’s fixation with her impossibly beautiful child. Sometimes Bret wondered if Alison was Julia’s second chance—but at what, he didn’t know.

But he was only guessing. This could also have something to do with the trust fund that was supposed to have gone to Alison. Julia never told her black sheep son anything, so he had no idea what her real motivation was.

“I’ll be here,” he said, more to get rid of her than for any other reason. “Now, can I get back to my nap?”

Bret had nothing more to say about his long-lost sister. This felt way too much like watching the sci-fi channel. His mother was coming unglued. He’d been waiting years for this moment, and it had nothing to do with him. It was all about his sister. That was fucked up.

Julia glanced at her watch. “Didn’t you have an interview this morning?”

His smile was quick and bitter. She never failed him. “It was a marketing job, Mother. I don’t do marketing.”

“You don’t do anything.” She was madly rubbing the ring with her thumb. “It’s embarrassing, Bret.”

“For who? I’m not embarrassed.” He had actually held down jobs, modeling mostly. Nothing that met her standards.

“No, obviously not,” she said.

Her face had already turned into a mask of indifference. Apparently she didn’t even care enough to hold him in contempt. He wanted to laugh, but the pain in his chest had the fiery heat of a twisting knife.

She stormed off, taking the letter with her, and he fished in the pocket of his trunks for his cigarettes.

He lit one, took a deep drag and held the smoke in his lungs. If he went through enough cigs, got black lung and started coughing up blood, would she notice?

He knew the answer to that. He could disembowel himself in the living room in front of her, and she wouldn’t flinch unless he dirtied the carpet. And he was probably as much to blame for that as she was. He’d been taunting her for so long she refused to take the bait anymore. He was the disease, and after years of exposure, she’d developed an immunity.

He sank down, sitting on the tipsy edge of the hammock with his bare feet on the ground. He gave his head a good shake, thinking it might make his curly blond hair look messy rather than adorable. He tried hard to look scruffy and unkempt, but sadly, he was as perfect as she was. Their family was a Ralph Lauren ad, and only he seemed to know how ugly the reality could be.

The hammock creaked under his weight. This really was absurd. He was a quarter of a century old. He needed to get some balls, pack his bags and get out of this place for good. He was rotting here. The flies were circling his head.

“Fuck.” He let out a moan as helpless as it was savage, and flopped back into the netting, staring through the tree branches at the cloudless blue sky. Yes, he ought to leave, but how could he now that his sister was making an appearance? He was as deeply suspicious of her motives as he was his mother’s. He and his sister shared some things in common besides their looks. There was always something they wanted, always an agenda. And then there was her husband. Bret had only defended Andrew Villard to annoy his mother.

He reached down for his iced latte glass and saw that it had tipped over. Either the grass would enjoy a growth spurt from all the caffeine, or it would be dead by tomorrow. As he picked the glass up and rolled it in his hand, he let his mind roll along with it. Yes, his mother could count on him to be here. The opportunities Alison’s visit presented were just too good to pass up.

“Alison, the car is here. Are you ready?”

Andrew’s voice came to her from the foyer down the hall. She was standing in front of her dressing room mirror in her underwear—a white lace camisole and panties that seemed strangely alien on her lean, boyish body.

She studied her reflection, trying to imagine how her family would receive her when it was such an ordeal for her to look at herself. The surgeons had performed a miracle. All the scars were cleverly hidden, and her features looked remarkably natural, even though some areas of her face were still numb and dead to the touch. Her smile wasn’t quite right, but she so rarely smiled.

She ran a finger down the bridge of her nose and over her glistening lips, trying to make a connection to the image she saw. It was uncanny how much she looked like the woman in the snapshots Andrew had given the surgeons. Except it was an illusion. She’d been stitched together from so many disparate parts, she didn’t feel like a whole person.

The world might see loveliness, but the net effect for her was Frankensteinesque. Often, in the dark of the night, she felt vaguely monstrous, and at times her husband looked at her as if that’s exactly what she was.

“Alison?” he called again. “Can I send the driver up for the bags?”

She wasn’t dressed and her bags were lying open on the floor, empty. She’d given up on packing an hour ago, thinking that if she took a break to get herself dressed and ready, she might be able to finish. Everything about this trip was overwhelming. She wasn’t even sure what clothes to take.

The driver was coming down the hall, and she couldn’t seem to move. She touched the charm bracelet, the penny ring. Get some clothes on. Cover yourself with something.

Her walk-in closet had racks of beautiful clothes, but they were all baggy on her reed-thin frame. Even the shoes didn’t fit. She tried to concentrate on the vast array of clothing. It was coordinated by color, type and season, but her mind wouldn’t focus. The dressing room seemed to be growing darker, though she knew it was her eyes. She was shutting down, not the lights.

“This is too much for you, isn’t it?”

She looked up, surprised to see Andrew behind her. He was a shadow in the mirror, more spectral than human. What struck her was his tone. She’d picked up an unexpected hint of concern. She had to admit that he’d done everything he could to make this trip easier for her, including arrange for a private charter so they didn’t have to deal with airport lines and security.

Still, she avoided his direct gaze, not knowing what she might see there. She couldn’t bear disdain, and pity would be worse. They’d never had a perfect marriage, and had been on the brink of a divorce when the accident happened. People might assume this was a new start for them, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was an arrangement, and a fairly cold-blooded one.

“I don’t…I can’t seem to pack.” She almost laughed, it was such a ridiculous understatement. She couldn’t seem to breathe, either.

“I’ll help,” he said. “Can you finish dressing?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. You do that, and I’ll get your bags packed.”

“You know what I need to take?”

Irony darkened his smile. “I have a pretty good idea. It’s the middle of summer in Mirage Bay, too.”

When she didn’t move, he laid his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, apparently intending to reassure her. But she was too exposed, and he so rarely touched her that a chill settled in the pit of her stomach. Fear. It was an emotion she’d learned to heed the way an animal heeds a dangerous scent. But she wasn’t going to let it—or him—control her.

She looked up at him. “Cheating death was hard. This is harder.”

“Family reunions? You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know what they’re expecting.” Frustration rang in her voice. He was patronizing her again, managing her like one of his clients. He’d coached her so thoroughly that she’d memorized his pep talks. You have transient amnesia and can’t be expected to remember anything but bits and pieces of the past. There won’t be spotlights and interrogations, so don’t make it hard on yourself. I’ve already told your mother how difficult this is for you.

He bent to pick up her white silk kimono, which was lying on the floor where she’d dropped it. “You’re not the same person,” he said. “How could you be? They’ll see that immediately.”

She took the robe from him before he could help her with it. Once she had it on, she turned away and tied the belt. He didn’t care about her, not really. He was fixated on finding out who’d tried to frame him for murder. That was the reason he’d given her for returning to Mirage Bay, but she had a gut feeling there was more to it. He wasn’t telling her everything.

His voice came to her, low and restrained. “We need to behave like we’re married, Alison.”

She glanced up at his reflection. He used the mirror to make eye contact with her, and she found it hard to look away. There wasn’t a hint of revulsion or pity in his eyes. He was razor-focused, curious and very aware of her, much like any man interested in a woman. But it was all part of the illusion, the arrangement.

“And in love,” he said. “People will expect that much.”

She knew it was true. Everyone would be insatiably curious, her family most of all. But she didn’t know how they were going to do it, or whether anyone would be convinced. It would require acting skills beyond either of their ability. Would anyone believe they were the same passionate, overheated couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other?

Tears rolled down Julia Driscoll Fairmont’s cheeks as she plucked the downy hairs from above her upper lip. One by one, she extracted the barely visible offenders, leaving an occasional spot of blood. But the sharpest sting came from the errant nose hairs that dared to protrude from her aristocratic nostrils.

Her esthetician would have been happy to do the honors, with much greater speed and far less pain. But that would have defeated the purpose. It wouldn’t have calmed Julia’s nerves the way plucking did.

For the last half hour, she’d been sitting at her vanity, balancing a hand mirror and her surgical tweezers—and wincing with every extraction. She was probably adding a wrinkle for every hair. She had heard physical pain caused the brain to produce endorphins that could become addictive, but that wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t a pain junkie. If anything, her obsession with plucking was in large part thanks to her dear departed mother.

Eleanor Driscoll had been named for Eleanor Roosevelt, and she took that responsibility very much to heart. From her teens, Eleanor Dee, as everyone called her, had been an activist. She’d thought of herself as a modern-day crusader, which included defending society’s downtrodden wherever she found them.

Eleanor Dee believed in volunteerism and self-sacrifice. She was against self-indulgence in all its forms, including drinking, smoking and, of course, indiscriminate sexual behavior. Sadly, her daughter and only child, Julia, had failed her on nearly all counts, and in the most disgraceful and embarrassing ways.

“Mea culpa,” Julia muttered. At forty-nine, she was still riddled with guilt and would be until the day she died. Only her mother and devoted husband knew what she’d done all those years ago in her twenties, and they’d taken her secrets to their graves. Julia had tried to atone. She’d lived an exemplary life…well, until very recently. But she had raised her two children and become a pillar of the community, as all the Driscolls and Fairmonts had before her. Still, none of that was sufficient penance for the damage she’d done. Nothing would ever be.

So, yes, she was guilty. But she was angry, too, and not just at herself. She was still seething at the way she’d been failed back then. That was the reason Julia plucked and winced. There were times when she wanted to yank out every hair on her body. She was ridding herself of the infidels who’d broken her heart when she’d had a heart to break, the ones who’d betrayed her.

She went after her eyebrows next. This wasn’t plucking. It was cleansing, and if the pain was some kind of penance for her sins, at least she was inflicting it on herself.

With a sigh, she put down the tweezers and studied her pensive reflection in the hand mirror. Was that spidery thing on her cheek a broken capillary?

Another wince. Another wrinkle.

The mirror landed on the granite countertop with a clink. Even her scalp hurt from sitting so long in an unnatural position. She had no time for this. Her daughter and son-in-law were arriving tonight, in a matter of hours, and she wasn’t prepared. Her house was perfect, and her assistant would help serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Even Bret was mysteriously cooperative. Everything was as ready as it could possibly be. But she, Julia, wasn’t prepared.

Her black silk halter dress was displayed on a molded hanger in her dressing room. As she entered the room, she took in the dress’s simple, elegant lines, aware of how it would set off her stunning diamond brooch and drop earrings.

She should have been looking forward to this evening, but what she felt was foreboding. She knew it wasn’t possible, given what Alison had been through, but that hadn’t stopped Julia from imagining her daughter exactly as she’d looked when she left: lithe and carefree, luminous as summer itself. Alison had a quality greater than mere beauty. She had magic. And if Julia could have put her in a time capsule and kept her the golden debutante forever, she would have.

It was a mother’s fantasy, and probably a selfish one, but she only wanted to keep her daughter safe—and protected from predators like Andrew Villard. Just because Alison wasn’t dead didn’t mean the man hadn’t tried to kill her. Julia’s suspicions were so strong she’d hired a detective to investigate him—and learned several disturbing things.

She’d never understood why someone with Alison’s advantages had thrown herself at a man like Villard. She’d had some crazy dream of being a pop idol, but Villard had never intended to help her with that. Julia probably knew more about him than Alison ever would.

As Julia dressed, she couldn’t help but wonder what her own mother would have thought of this strange homecoming party. It had taken a massive heart attack to bring Eleanor down, but she’d lived to see her granddaughter publicly defy her mother’s wishes and run off with a sideshow impresario.

Yes, Eleanor had seen it all—and blamed it on Julia’s lack of parenting skills. She’d also threatened to invoke the morals clause on the fifty-million-dollar trust that would have gone to Alison on her twenty-eighth birthday. But Eleanor had never made her wishes known to the family’s estate attorneys, and technically, the money might have gone to Alison, if she hadn’t turned her back on it.

Julia hadn’t been so lucky. Eleanor had also imposed the morals clause on her, two decades ago, making it impossible for Julia to collect a dime of that same fund when it was supposed to have come to her on her twenty-eighth birthday. And now the money was sitting in a trust account, controlled by lawyers.

“You were a heartless bitch in so many ways, Mother,” Julia muttered. “And I’m becoming just like you. You must be so proud.”

Fortunately, Julia had never needed the trust money. Her husband, Grant Fairmont, had made his fortune in the yachting industry and left everything to her when he died. Still, Julia wasn’t content to leave that much family money in the hands of attorneys who were extracting hefty fees for doing what amounted to nothing. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even American, and Julia had already started taking steps to correct the error of her mother’s ways.

Eleanor was probably sitting up in her grave and howling.

Julia snorted and cupped a hand to her ear. “Louder, Mother, I can’t quite hear you.”


4

“What have you done to your hair?”

They were the first words out of Julia Fairmont’s mouth as she flung open the doors of Sea Clouds and gaped at her estranged daughter.

Alison reached for and found Andrew’s hand, grateful to have him beside her. The woman terrified her and always had. Evidently there were going to be no hellos, no welcome homes, no hugs. Alison wouldn’t have been comfortable with that, anyway, but this was very strange.

“They shaved my head,” she explained to her mother. “It grew out this way, darker, so I left it.”

Julia still couldn’t seem to believe it. “But you’ve always been a blonde.”

Alison touched her dark waves. “Not always. I started lightening it several years ago.”

“Yes, and I assumed you would go on doing that.”

Alison felt Andrew’s hand tighten, as if to tell her she was doing fine. But they were outside, flanked by the marble columns of the grand portico, and Alison wasn’t certain her mother was going to let them in the house—or that she wanted to go in. Julia’s black halter dress was stunning, and her long dark bob softened her angular features, but her face was pale and masklike. She had on too much makeup, or maybe it was too much Botox. Something was wrong.

“Do you dislike the color that much?” Alison asked. She wondered what her mother thought of the blue silk shantung capri outfit that Andrew had helped her choose.

“It’s just so popstar. Not you at all.” She shot Andrew an icy glance, as if it was all his doing.

“Oh! Is this your daughter and her husband?” A younger woman appeared in the doorway behind Julia. Her round pretty face was wreathed in smiles as she edged beside Julia to extend her hand.

“I’m Rebecca, Julia’s assistant. Nice to meet you both! How was your trip?”

Andrew stepped forward to take her hand. “Andrew Villard,” he said, “and the trip was fine, thank you. This is my wife, Alison, of course.”

Alison and Rebecca exchanged nods. It would have been awkward to reach around Julia, who was still peering at Alison as if she were trying to piece her together like a puzzle.

This was exactly what Alison had feared. Worse.

Rebecca gently took over, whispering something to Julia, and then inviting Alison and Andrew in. “You must be exhausted,” she said, beckoning them to follow her into the mansion’s breathtaking pink marble foyer. “Did you leave your bags in the car? I’ll be happy to get them, but first can I fix you something to drink? Lemonade or a wine spritzer? It’s such a warm day.”

“We’re fine,” Alison told her. “We picked up some iced tea at the airport.”

Julia seemed to have found her voice. “Rebecca can unpack for you, if you’d like.”

“That’s very kind, but I can handle the bags.” Andrew gave Alison a glance. “We would like some time to freshen up.”

“Of course.” Julia nodded to her assistant. “Rebecca, show them to their room, would you? The second floor, facing the mountains.”

“Oh, Julia, did you forget? The guest room on the ocean side is all ready for Alison and Andrew.”

“My memory’s just fine, Rebecca.” Julia’s tone was as sharp as her glance. “I’m sure they’ll love the mountain view. Show them up, please.”

She and Andrew had just been downgraded, Alison realized—and Julia was making sure they knew it. They hadn’t been here five minutes. Unbelievable.

“Oh, by the way,” Julia added, “drinks are at seven on the terrace. You remember, Alison. We always gather on the terrace before dinner.” She looked searchingly at her daughter. “You will join us, of course.”

Alison didn’t know anything about drinks at seven. She just wanted to run. Somewhere in the murky depths of her memory, she could hear demons howling.

“That was terrifying,” Alison whispered, speaking more to herself than to Andrew. “She looked like a mannequin in a window display. Has she always looked that way?”

Rebecca had just left them in their suite of rooms with a cheery reminder about drinks at seven. Alison found her to be effusive and overly helpful, but then anyone would have seemed effusive compared to Julia.

The suite was actually a combination bedroom and sitting room, which opened onto a balcony with wrought-iron railings. To Alison’s eye, everything about the room was soothing and beautiful. The palm trees and elegant cane furniture created a cool garden of tranquility.

Andrew had gone over to check out the liquor cart, a wheeled brass-and-leather showpiece that was probably an antique. It was weighed down with crystal decanters, all filled a variety of expensive and exotic spirits, of course. Julia Fairmont’s hospitality was legend. So was her bitchiness, apparently.

“Do you think she’s changed her mind?” Alison asked. “Is she going to ask us to leave?”

“No, she has her reasons for wanting us here, just as we have ours.” He glanced over at her. “You can’t have forgotten what your own mother looks like. We went through the albums. I showed you the pictures.”

“I do know what she looks like. That’s the point. She’s changed. Didn’t you see it?”

“You’ve changed. You scared her half to death with your wild-ass hair.” He laughed and picked up a slender decanter that glowed amber in the waning light. “How about something to drink? Sherry? It’ll calm you down.”

“Ugh, I’d rather drink mouthwash.” Alison sat on the edge of a wicker chaise near the bed and tried to envision the many faces of Julia Fairmont, the ones she remembered and the ones she’d seen in the snapshots. But the masklike image never left the screen of her mind. It hadn’t seemed to bother Andrew, but for Alison it was too stark and disturbing to be dismissed.

To calm herself, she began to mentally rehearse some of the other details she’d conjured up about her mother, with a lot of help from Andrew. Julia had never worked outside the home, but had made a career raising money for various charities. She was allergic to cats, but not dogs, and had an aversion to the color red. Her musical tastes were highbrow, but she was addicted to reality television. And almost nothing had seemed to ruffle her except the sound of crying babies. Alison had no idea why, but a wailing infant could make her mother tremble and slam doors to block the sound.

There was more, but none of it came readily to mind. She still slipped into a fog at times and couldn’t remember anything, especially when under stress.

“Was she always that statuelike?” she asked Andrew. “She didn’t look quite real. You’d think she had the surgery rather than me.”

He started to say something, but Alison stopped him. “Why did we come, Andrew? She doesn’t want us here. She acted like we were avian flu carriers.”

Alison had caught the horrified flicker in her mother’s eye, even if he hadn’t. She could only guess what it meant. Maybe all wasn’t forgiven, and she and Andrew had been summoned for some kind of confrontation. Or her mother was repulsed because Alison really did look as strange and different as she felt.

He picked up a fifth of scotch and examined the label. She watched him, aware that he no longer drank alcohol.

“You know why we’re here,” he said.

His voice had taken on an edge that prompted her to change the subject. “I love this room,” she said, “but the house… It’s huge and bewildering. I’m not sure I could find my way back down to the foyer.”

“Julia mentioned on the phone that you wouldn’t recognize the house. She’s totally redone it since you were here last. I forgot to tell you that, sorry. It’s been pretty chaotic.”

As if by way of apology, he brought her an aperitif glass of something pale pink. She sniffed and then took a sip. Definitely not sherry. It tasted like strawberries.

“Julia is nervous, too,” he said. “Couldn’t you see that? She wants you here. She never stopped trying to see you after the accident.”

“Yes, but why? It’s not as if we were close in any normal mother-daughter way. Is she still angry with me? Is she curious? She has plenty of money, so this probably isn’t about the trust that was supposed to have come to me…unless she wants me to promise in writing that I’ll give up my claim.”

“Would you do that? The money was yours. It was you who decided to walk away from it. You could always change your mind.”

“And start another war? No, I can’t do that.”

Did he want her to go after the money? Was that the real reason they were here? She buttoned up the light cardigan she’d slipped on over her capri outfit, but not because she was cold. It was to hide the warmth spreading over her skin. When she was nervous she broke out in hivelike splotches on her chest and face.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she said.

He knelt next to her chair. “Alison, your mother almost lost you. She hasn’t seen you in four years. Give her some time.”

“But she invited us. At least she could be civil.” She touched her face. “Do I look that horrible?”

“You’re stunning. Maybe she’s jealous.”

Stunning? She could feel the red heat crawling up her neck. Soon the brilliance would invade her face and make her look like a burn victim. It had been a day of nasty shocks, and this was one more. Since the accident, Andrew hadn’t given her any reason to think he found her attractive, other than an occasional polite reference to her hair or her outfit.

Now, suddenly, he was dishing out compliments, and her mother, who’d always been so proud of her daughter’s beauty, was acting like she was a leper. It was too much.

Andrew rose and left her on the chaise, taking off his linen sports coat with the ease of someone who’d always worn fine clothes and took for granted the cachet they lent the wearer. She could still conjure up a mental picture of the first time she’d seen his face. Somehow he’d come into her line of sight, dark and striking in a white sweater that contrasted beautifully with his coloring. Undoubtedly, she’d seen the dark eyes first, framed by the tanned, strong face. But she couldn’t seem to remember exactly where the sighting was. A harbor somewhere, possibly on the bow of the Bladerunner, with a beautiful blonde on his arm.

The image reminded her that one of her goals while in Mirage Bay was to get a look at his boat, without him or anyone else around.

“Are you up to unpacking?” he asked. “I can do it if you’d like to lie down for a while.”

One bed. She shot a glance at the lovely swirls of the white iron bed with yards of sheer veil draped from the canopy frame. It appeared to be at least king-size, but there was just one. That was going to be awkward. Sharing a room was going to be awkward, too, even in this spacious suite.

“I’ll unpack,” she said, “but maybe I will lie down for a few minutes first.” She sounded formal, stiff. She always sounded that way with him. Why couldn’t she relax? What did she think he was going to do to her? Realistically, what?

She’d barely completed the thought when he came across the room, drawing something from the pocket of his slacks. “This is for you,” he said, handing her a small, black-velvet jewelry box.

She opened the lid to the most beautiful earrings she’d ever seen. The pink, emerald-cut diamonds sparkled so brightly they were almost painful to look at. Pale-yellow diamond chips surrounded the large center stones.

“Why?” she said, looking up at him.

“Because you wore diamonds everywhere. I thought you might wear them to dinner tonight.”

“They’re exquisite.”

“Alison, so are you.”

She sucked in a breath. “Why are you doing this?”

His shrug suggested that it was no big deal, but his gaze was focused on her face, intent on her eyes and her startled mouth—especially her mouth. Her stomach dipped and her pulse was quick, hot, crazy.

“You remember,” he said. “You even wore them to bed—and nothing else.”

She could feel heat flare to the tips of her ears, scorching her face. “Amnesia comes in very handy at times.”

She set the velvet box on the end table next to her, a clear rebuff. What looked like generosity on his part was beginning to feel like something else to her. Was this one more insidious attempt to control her, right down to what she wore on her earlobes?

“The earrings are yours, regardless.” He casually changed the tone of the conversation. “I’ll use the bathroom first, if you don’t mind. I’ll take a quick shower and be out of there.”

Her heart pounding, she watched him go to the valet stand, open his suitcase and take out his shaving kit. It wasn’t going to be easy getting ready with just one bathroom. They could take turns with their showers, but where were they going to dress? She hadn’t seen any dressing rooms.

“I’m going to hang my suit to steam out the wrinkles while I shower,” he said. “Shall I hang your dress?”

She agreed, aware that he knew exactly which dress she was going to wear because he’d packed her bag. It felt strange watching him go through her things, knowing that she’d granted him access to her dressing room and allowed him to pick and choose what she should take. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, but now it made her feel vulnerable.

He unzipped her garment bag and drew out the ankle-length black jersey gown that appeared shapeless on the hanger, but clung to every curve on the female body. It looked particularly good on a leaner figure like hers.

Once he’d disappeared into the bathroom, she breathed a sigh of relief and took advantage of the time alone to make a quick cell phone call. She keyed in the same number she’d been calling for days, but again got no answer. Concern weighed heavier on her heart with every attempt. She was going to have to rely on Andrew’s help, after all. Promising herself she would come up with a better plan, she turned off the phone. Right now, it was too risky to go herself.

She took a furry, animal-print throw from the back of the chaise and went to lie on the bed. Sleep had been her escape since the accident, but she couldn’t imagine drifting off in this situation. She had pills with her, but if she took one now she’d never wake in time for dinner.

The shower came on full force in the next room. He’d left the door partially open, probably for ventilation. Clearly, he was more comfortable with their accommodations than she was. But that didn’t stop her eyes from going straight to the crack in the door. Only the sink and mirror were in her line of sight, but that was enough to present what seemed like an irresistible opportunity.

Moments later the water abruptly stopped and the shower door banged open. He appeared at the sink, which allowed her to see him lather up and shave. He’d knotted a white bath sheet around his hips, and her eyes were unavoidably drawn to the knot. But his arms were the sexiest part of his body. She could have watched the play of his triceps, the ripple of cords and veins, for hours. God help her. This was not the distraction she needed.

She closed her eyes, but the memories came flooding back, anyway. She remembered so vividly when she’d first become aware of him in the periphery of her life, the wild infatuation and hero worship, the falling in love from a distance and never believing it could be reciprocated.

Was this the same man she’d felt all those things for? If she couldn’t answer any other question about her life, she wanted the answer to that one. She wanted to know if he’d hurt the other woman in his life—and if he meant her harm.

Her feelings for him were massively conflicted. She flinched when he got too close, yet a part of her still wanted that, and she couldn’t explain why. Or maybe she could. Maybe what she missed was the slow-burning dream, the wondering what it would be like with him. She wanted the Andrew Villard she’d fallen in love with from a distance.

Tony Bogart printed his name in block letters in the motel’s guest registry. He was in Mirage Bay unofficially, but he had no desire to hide his presence or his intentions. He wanted people to know he was investigating the murder of his brother—and possibly a second murder associated with his brother’s death, though he had no actual proof of that yet, just a telephone tip from his anonymous snitch.

“I got a room with a partial view of the water, special for you,” the aging female desk clerk said, sliding an old-fashioned brass door key across the counter to Tony. Disco music throbbed at low volume from the clock radio on the rusting metal file cabinet behind her.

“You gonna want more than one of these?” she asked.

The woman’s too-quick smile revealed a missing back tooth and skin like fine red fishnet, yet she wasn’t above flirting. Her wink sent a flash of annoyance through Tony. She wanted something, probably a tip, but she’d done nothing to deserve that except BS him, and badly at that. Tony despised lazy con artists. They insulted their mark’s intelligence.

“I worked at this motel when I was a kid,” he said. “Every room has at least a partial view. Most have full views.”

“Yeah? You worked here, at the Sand Castle?” She turned the registry around to read it. “Tony Bogart?”

She tilted back, inspecting him with a gimlet eye. “Are you related to Vern Bogart? I went to high school with him.”

Tony nodded. She’d made no excuses about the view. That got her points for being ballsy. “Vernon is my dad.”

A quick, sly grin appeared, as if she were remembering. “Your dad was a handsome man,” she said. “Tall with real narrow hips, and sandy-brown hair, cut close to his head, a lot like yours. Nice pair of ears, too. A man’s got to have good snug ears with short hair.”

She tapped her long sparkly fingernails to the theme from the movie Flashdance. “What’s Vern doing with himself these days? Probably married with a pack of grandkids. How about you? You married?”

She cocked an eyebrow, and her sexual boldness made Tony feel sick to his stomach. But she was clearly a long-term local, and might know something. No harm letting her think she was seducing him while he pumped her for information.

“Dad moved away a few months ago,” he said, “after my brother, Butch, died.”

“Butch Bogart? That kid who got himself stuck with a pitchfork was your brother? The whole town was talking about that. Happened last winter, right? Hotter than hell that day, Santa Ana winds, electrical storms?”

“Stuck seventeen times,” Tony corrected. “Not very likely he did it to himself.”

“Oh, right, sorry.” She wrinkled her nose. “How awful for Vern—and you, too.”

“Yeah, well, life goes on. You do the best you can.” And sometimes you make a mess of it, like Vernon Bogart had, but Tony didn’t feel like telling this woman that his father had failed miserably with his children. He’d been too hard on Tony, probably because of the grief he couldn’t express, and too soft on Butch. He’d coddled and overindulged the latter to the point that Butch didn’t think anyone else’s rules applied to him.

“Did they find out who did it?” the clerk asked. “The last I remember they thought it was that local girl, Marnie something. She vanished, right? Did they ever find her?”

“Not yet.” Marnie Hazelton had been everyone’s prime suspect back in February, but Tony wasn’t so sure now. He had another lead, but he still had every intention of hunting down Marnie. Last February, he’d paid a visit to Josephine Hazelton, the crazy old lady who’d raised Marnie. She sold vegetables and odds and ends at the flea market, and people seemed to like her, but Tony’s gut had told him she was holding back. So he and Gramma Jo would go another round as soon as he was settled in.

After that, he had a social call to make on a cheating ex-girlfriend. That should be interesting. What Tony didn’t have was a solid motive for any of his suspects, except that his brother had been a classic bully who enjoyed harassing anyone weaker than he was, women as well as men.

“You tell your dad I asked about him,” the clerk chirped. “You never said whether he was married or single.”

“Single since my mother died over twenty years ago. He’s not the marrying kind.”

“Well now, that don’t matter. Don’t need to be married to have a cup of coffee, as far as I know.”

Tony nodded, trying to be polite, which was more than his dad would have been. Vernon had never cared about anything except riding hard on his two boys and fly-fishing on a river, any river. He wouldn’t have given this toothless floozie a second look, but then, he probably wouldn’t have given Pamela Anderson a second look. He wasn’t a big fan of the fairer sex. He thought women talked too much and did too little. “Whiny, conniving liars, all of them,” he was fond of saying.

The clerk shut off the CD player. “I wonder if I knew your mother. She probably went to school with Vern and me.”

“Mind your own fucking business.” Tony’s voice dropped to a whisper. He brought his fist down on the counter with enough force to knock over her empty coffee cup. “There is nothing you know or need to know about my mother.”

The clerk’s eyes widened. She stepped back from the counter, eyeing the phone that she’d just distanced herself from. “I didn’t mean nothing. I was just being nice.”

Tony flashed his agent’s badge. “You and I are going to be fine,” he told her. “Just make sure I get fresh sheets once a day. Fresh, not flipped—and don’t ever mention my mother again.”


5

Alison was swishing with peppermint-flavored mouthwash when she heard a tap on the bathroom door.

“Can you help me with this tie pin?” Andrew called to her.

She gurgled for him to wait as she spat out the stream of blue, then blotted her mouth on a towel. With nothing on but panties, she grabbed her dress off the hanger on the door. A bra wasn’t possible because of the halter-top cut of the gown, but at least it should be quick and easy to slip into.

“Did you say something?” He knocked again.

Before she could answer, the door opened, and there he was, forcing her to turn away and quickly shimmy into her dress. She pulled the material up and tied the jeweled halter strings. No time to do up the back.

“What do you need?” she asked, tugging various things into place as she turned around.

He seemed amused at the speed with which she was moving, twisting and tying. “Can I help?” he asked.

“It would help if you’d respect my privacy.”

“I thought you said to come in.”

She heaved a sigh. “Just tell me what you want. I need to finish getting ready.”

“This.” He pointed to the onyx tie bar that hung lopsided on the diagonal pinstripes of his tan-and-white tie. “I’m going cross-eyed trying to get it straight.”

“You don’t look cross-eyed.” She gave herself a moment to look into his eyes and wonder about the soul that resided in those dark windows.

“Did I buy this tie for you?” she asked him.

“No, it was a gift, but not from you.”

“Good,” she murmured, “otherwise, I would have been questioning my taste.”

“What’s wrong with my tie?”

She stepped back, ignoring his mock indignation. “The tie bar is straight. Now, let me see the whole look.”

She twirled her finger, and he turned around, his smile sardonic. “Do I look fat?”

His sand-colored blazer and slacks looked fabulous, as always. He was a meticulous dresser no matter what he wore, but the dark shimmer of intrigue that resided in his eyes, and his windblown hair, banished any notion of fussiness. He could have been a blood-and-guts hooligan on a soccer field, except that his sport was sailing. Instead of scars, he had a year-round tan and a certain unkempt elegance.

She straightened her bare shoulders, trying to hold the dress in place. The halter ties had loosened, and the back of the dress was gaping open.

“Let me help you with that.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, a stern note to his voice. “Turn around.”

She did, and felt his fingers purling down her spine as he fastened the buttons. She steeled herself against any desire she might have to shiver—and prayed the splotches wouldn’t return. But the featherlight contact was wildly stimulating, and no amount of control could stop her pulse from becoming fast and thready.

Was this why he’d chosen the dress? So he could help her with it? If so, it must be part of the happily married couple act—and he was damn convincing. No one watching them would have known that before this trip he couldn’t stand to look at her, much less touch her.

The buttons went down to the small of her back. When he’d done them all, she turned and saw that he’d taken the gold mesh belt off the hanger.

She was still vibrating as she reached for it.

He didn’t release it. “You didn’t buy the tie, but I did buy this dress,” he said. “And I insist.”

“You bought the dress?” She knew nothing about that. He must be talking about before the accident. “I really am able to dress myself,” she said. “I can handle the belt and the rest of it, thanks.”

He touched her hair, and she froze. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he said.

“Don’t kiss me, don’t even think about it. It’s not happening.”

The look of disbelief on his face gradually transformed into a faint smile. “Actually, I was thinking about it.”

“Well, think about my knee kissing your balls. Think about that.”

The belt hit the floor. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She touched the sink to steady herself. For a moment it was hard to breathe. What was wrong with her? She just couldn’t do this. She couldn’t casually play this lover’s game, and she hated that he could. None of this was affecting him the way it was affecting her. He wasn’t vulnerable, wasn’t shaking inside the way she was.

“I came here with you,” she said. “I agreed to that, but I never agreed to make out with you.”

He nodded slowly, as if he was just coming to understand some things about her. “You don’t even want me close to you, do you?”

“I guess it must be hard for you to grasp that a woman exists who wouldn’t want you close.”

“Jesus, Alison, I’m just trying to get clear on what you want.”

“Don’t take it personally,” she said. “Let’s do what we came to do and leave this place. I don’t want to be here.”

There was a moment when she thought he was going to say something, do something besides pick up the belt and drop it on the counter.

“You’re calling the shots,” he said as he left the room.

She shut the door behind him, wondering why she couldn’t have talked to him in civil terms, why she’d had to be so cutting. And why she was so angry still. The solution was simple. If they had to act like lovers in public, that was one thing, but there was no reason to keep up the pretense in private. She didn’t want sham intimacy from a man who was pretending not to be repulsed by her.

It was five after seven when Alison and Andrew walked out onto the terrace off the living room. The slate deck swept out over the ocean, and in the distance the horizon was as silvery bright as the setting sun.

The terrace was beautiful, almost beyond Alison’s ability to describe. Billowing ferns and banana trees shaded the wrought-iron furniture and the ornamental arches. Fountains splashed from deep pools of mosaic tiles set in swirls of blue and green. But Alison had no idea whether she was supposed to remember it or whether it was part of her mother’s massive renovation.

Only Rebecca was there to greet them, and she seemed flustered as she rushed over. “Julia’s running a little late,” she explained. “Can I get you a pisco sour? We’re having Peruvian food tonight, and the sours are luscious. They’re made with grape brandy and lime juice.”

“Make mine a virgin,” Andrew said.

Rebecca looked surprised, but he didn’t explain.

“Make mine a double,” Alison said, surprising her again.

As Rebecca went over to the bar, she gestured toward a granite-topped sideboard laden with bowls of seviche, colorful salsas and platters of mussels and other seafood. “Help yourself.”

Andrew waited, letting Alison go to the sideboard by herself. They hadn’t spoken two words since their face-off in the bathroom. Silence was the norm in their relationship. She’d even thought of it as a conspiracy of silence, but they rarely fought, and that had put a different edge on things. She had no idea what to expect, but she wasn’t backing down.

She tried a chunk of braised grouper with some spicy salsa that brought tears to her eyes. Luckily, Rebecca returned quickly with a tray of drinks. She served Alison a foamy, pale yellow sour, and then gave Andrew his virgin. The sour tasted like limeade with a donkey’s kick.

“How do you like the terrace?” she asked Alison.

“Breathtaking.” Alison went to admire a graceful iron crane that was taller than she was. “This sculpture in particular. I wonder where my mother found it.”

Rebecca hesitated. A nervous smile surfaced. “Oh, but that piece isn’t actually new. It’s been in the family for years, I believe. It may even be an heirloom.”

Alison gasped. “Oh, of course. I must be conf—Everything’s so different.”

Andrew wandered over and looked at the sculpture from another angle. “Why does it remind me of the iron piece in the foyer?” he said. “Does Julia collect Oriental cranes?”

“Well, yes, she does.” Rebecca set down the tray of drinks and helped herself to one. “Her mother did, too, I believe.”

Alison shook her head, embarrassed. “I should know these things. I still get confused.”

Rebecca’s smile was gently reassuring. “Well, no wonder. It’s amazing you survived such a terrible accident.”

Andrew broke in again, explaining that Alison suffered from a condition called transient amnesia. “But it could all come back to her in time,” he said. “We’re hopeful that it will.”

“Ah, yes, how very convenient.”

The sarcastic comment came from the terrace doors, where Bret Fairmont stood, looking flushed and disheveled. Alison didn’t know if it was a fashion statement or if he’d been in a scuffle, but he looked a mess. His hair was a blond rag mop, and his jacket was off-kilter.

He squinted at her. “My God, look what the tide dragged in. Is it really my long-lost sister? Rebecca, get me a drink. Chop chop!”

Look what the tide dragged in. It was a terrible joke. Delayed shock seemed to paralyze everyone there.

Alison and Andrew said nothing. Bret leaned against the door frame, as if to steady himself. Finally, Rebecca moved, going to the bar to get his drink, which was the last thing he needed.

“You must remember me,” Andrew said. He boldly walked over to shake Bret’s hand. “I’m the guy she married.”

Bret glanced at Andrew’s hand, but didn’t take it.

Andrew slapped Bret’s arm rather vigorously and continued to make conversation. “What did you mean by ‘how convenient’?”

Bret’s eyes took on the gleam of a hungry rat’s. “Oh, nothing, just thinking how convenient it would be to have an unreliable memory.”

Alison brought the sour to her lips, wincing at the sudden pungency of the lime. She could tell by Bret’s behavior that he was drunk, but it was hard to believe anyone would put on such a pathetic display. If she’d had any doubts about the abject hatred she and her brother were supposed to have felt for each other, she could put them to rest. He was an obnoxious boor, and he’d obviously had it in for her since he was old enough to say her name.

What was it he’d called her when they were growing up? Alisuck. How mature.

“I see we’re all here. Isn’t that wonderful!”

Alison turned as her mother walked onto the terrace. She’d changed into a silk Emilio Pucci print in bright pink and turquoise, and her mood seemed to have lightened with it.

“Forgive me for holding things up. Does everyone have a drink?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Bret said.

“You look like you’ve had plenty, Bret,” Julia said sharply. “Sit down and sober up.”

Bret’s bloodshot eyes widened. He looked good and rattled, but got himself to the nearest chair and sat down.

Alison caught the twinkle in Andrew’s eye. Was he thinking the same thing she was? Possibly the dragon lady of Sea Clouds had some redeeming qualities.

“Alison, don’t you look beautiful. I love what you’ve done with your hair.”

Julia sounded pleasantly surprised as she walked straight over to her daughter and embraced her. Alison tried to relax in her mother’s arms, but affection was the last thing she expected after the front door fiasco. She’d worn her hair up, thinking it might make a better impression, and evidently it had.

Clouds of expensive perfume swirled around them as Julia stepped back and clasped Alison’s hands. A smile softened the angles of her face, but Alison’s intuition was working overtime. She could sense the crackling tension. Julia was as anxious as she was.

Alison also caught a whiff of alcohol mixed in with the perfume, and it wasn’t her own drink.

Somehow, just knowing this very formidable woman was nervous allowed her to relax. But it also made her wonder what flaws her mother’s seeming quest for flawlessness might be hiding. She was known in the society pages as a fashion maven, but Alison had never thought of that as a cover until now. The makeup and designer clothing seemed more extreme than before, and she couldn’t shake the notion that Julia Fairmont was slowly transforming herself, whether intentionally or not, into something resembling a department store mannequin.

“Alison isn’t the only who looks beautiful tonight,” Andrew said, coming over to them. He offered his hand, and Julia hesitated only slightly before taking it. She was clearly making a supreme effort to be cordial.

Andrew sounded as if he meant it, and Julia smiled, to Alison’s great relief. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a nightmare, after all. Only Bret hadn’t risen to the occasion. He’d ignored his mother’s time-out and left the chair to storm into the house. Interesting how the rebellious little brother routine made him appear much less sinister.

“Here you are,” Rebecca said, bringing Julia a brandy sour and a plate of assorted appetizers. “Try one of the mussels and see what you think.”

Alison excused herself and walked to the edge of the deck, which overlooked a charming cove of sapphire water, thirty feet below. Beyond that the Pacific stretched like an infinite edge pool. At high tide, the waves crashed thunderously against the rocks, but now all was calm.

Julia came and stood next to her, holding the stem of her glass with perfectly manicured fingers. Her emerald-and-diamond wedding set glowed in the waning light.

“The view doesn’t change,” Alison said, “but this house has. It’s beautiful.”

Julia shrugged as if it was nothing. “I could hardly improve on the view, but the house needed attention. It hadn’t been redecorated since you and Bret were small.”

That would have been over twenty years ago. “I don’t remember,” Alison said, “but I can’t imagine it being more beautiful than this. You’ve preserved the classic lines, but made it look fresh.”

She hoped that was what Julia wanted to hear. She’d begun to understand the plight of Anastasia, who was either a total fake or the rightful heir—and not even she had known which.

“Alison, look what I found.”

Alison turned to see Bret coming toward her, carrying framed family photographs. He had two, which he held up as if for show-and-tell. He seemed to have miraculously sobered up.

“Do you remember where this was taken?” he said, pointing to what looked like an enlarged snapshot of a lighthouse on a lonely promontory. He even turned so the others could see it.

The scene didn’t look remotely familiar to Alison. Andrew was standing by Rebecca, watching the Fairmont family reunion. Alison gave him a covert glance, but he shook his head. He couldn’t help her this time.

“Sorry, I don’t,” she said.

“You don’t?” Bret pretended to be shocked. “Let me guess, transient amnesia? Sounds like a bum with a bad memory.”

Alison didn’t respond. He was baiting her. His eyes gleamed when he was pleased with himself, and they were gleaming now. He’d been suspicious of her since he arrived this evening, but Alison didn’t have it in her to deal with his sniping tonight. Being under attack like this was what she’d feared most.

“Let me see that.” Julia snatched the photograph from Bret, pried off the backing and drew the picture from the frame. She read the date on the back.

“This picture was taken on your trip to the British Isles, Bret. It was the summer you graduated college. I put the date and place on the back when I had it framed.” She glowered at him. “Apologize to your sister. She doesn’t recognize the place because she was never there.”

Bret’s shrug was nonchalant, but Alison realized he’d been trying to pull one over on her. Thank God she hadn’t taken a wild guess. He wasn’t just out to test her. He was trying to trap her.

“Oops, my mistake,” he said. “How about this one? The little prodigy couldn’t possibly forget her big recital, could she?”

Bret held up the other photo. It was of Alison at the baby grand in the living room of this house. It was her sixteenth birthday, and she was probably playing Für Elise, the only piece she’d ever committed to memory.

Alison had the oddest sensation as she stared at the picture. It felt as if the dead places on her face were spreading to the rest of her body, and she was going numb. This really was too much. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d reduced her to rubble.

Julia let out a hiss of frustration. “Bret, your sister nearly died from head trauma, and she didn’t come home to play the piano for your amusement. Now give me that picture and stop badgering her.”

Bret handed over the picture. “I guess you’re right. You never liked her playing, anyway.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You said it to anyone who would listen. You said it to her, isn’t that right, Alison? Mom never thought you had any talent.”

“Drop it, Bret,” Julia said threateningly.

Bret had some kind of comeback, but Alison wasn’t listening. She slipped around and left them arguing as she went into the living room. She saw the baby grand against the windows of the far wall, and her pulse quickened.

A moment later, she sat down at the piano and stared at the keys. The blood pounding through her heart made her hands shake. Her head buzzed so loudly it blurred her vision. She could barely distinguish black from white.

She placed her hands on the keys, an octave apart. She pressed one key and then another, trying a chord or two, but nothing was coming back to her, nothing at all. She could hear the music playing in her head, but her fingers didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t make the connection.

She closed her eyes a moment, straining to remember, fighting, but her mind was empty. There was no point. She started to get up, and then glanced back at the keyboard. Her hand hit the keys in frustration. The noise jarred her, but her fingers opened and began to move. It didn’t feel as if she was making conscious choices, but something was happening. She hit one wrong note after another. She winced and grimaced and tried again, and gradually it came, one tentative note and then a second. Soon she had a recognizable melody. Für Elise.

She didn’t play it well, but she played it, and when she looked up, the entire family was there, watching her. Julia, Andrew, Rebecca, even Bret. Andrew was the one who started the applause.


6

Alison lay awake in the dark, unable to believe that she was sharing a bed with her husband. He was lying on his back, as quiet as she was, but he wasn’t sleeping, either. It was too still. Not even a breath could be heard. And yet electricity crackled in the space between them. She could almost hear the noise it made.

That was why he hadn’t moved, and neither had she. Not even to roll over and look at the clock. She was afraid to do anything that would force him to speak or in any way have to acknowledge his presence in this bed with her. God forbid they should touch.

Within the veil of their private world, they were separate agents. If anything was holy, it was the distance they’d created between them. They rarely even communicated beyond the necessities of their arrangement… and Alison found it a totally desolate existence.

She had never understood her feelings for him, but tonight it was impossible to deny that she had them. The potent mix included awe, intense curiosity and rampant doubts and fears. She was also attracted to him—what woman wouldn’t be struck by his dark, poetic mop of hair and deep-water eyes? How could she not want to know what his mouth would feel like on hers? But sex was not part of their arrangement, and if that wasn’t entirely satisfactory to her, it should have been. She’d insisted the relationship be platonic. She’d been as adamant about that as he had, but her reasons had probably been different than his.

Of course, she hadn’t anticipated sharing a bed with him, or that he would suddenly turn into the white knight who would protect her from her big, bad family. She was appreciative, and that was the problem. Positive feelings were starting to outweigh the negative ones, which made it hard to keep the feelings in check.

Attracted? Yes. Wildly.

She touched her face and felt the familiar heat creeping up her throat. Thank God it was dark. No one could see this. No one could hear the blood rushing through her heart or see how difficult it was for her to swallow.

No one knew her pathetic little secrets.

They both slept restlessly, and perhaps it was inevitable that they would come into physical contact. Sometime before dawn, Alison brushed his arm with her hand. It was an accident, but he rolled toward her, and their eyes came open at the same time.

She knew instantly what was happening. And by the hitch in his breathing, he did, too. It was the dark of night and no one would know. Maybe they would pretend not to know themselves that they were about to take this further than a touch, much further.

It was dark. A dream. It didn’t count.

He moved over her and she rose toward him. His hand slid beneath her and his mouth came down on hers. She was engulfed by that one act, a kiss. It was softness, warmth and dinner wine. It was their first.

What changed everything was the sigh in his throat. There was no return from that sigh. Was it pleasure or anguish?

His thigh brushed hers. His hand was on her breast. Every touch was new and terrifying. She was torn between conflict and yearnings. She wanted to be taken, possessed. Penetrated. Please.

Her stomach clenched with anticipation. She saw herself raking his flesh with her nails and pulling his hair. She wanted to be the object of his awe, as he was hers. But she didn’t trust him—or anything about the situation they were in. This wasn’t just a kiss in the dark. It was an act of sweet desperation, of surrender, and he already had too much power.

He bent to her again. She could feel the heat of his breath, hear his noisy heartbeat, but somehow, he stopped before their lips met.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

His voice dropped low. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “It won’t again.”

He turned and sat on the side of the bed. Alison was dizzy with disappointment. She couldn’t pretend it was anything else. Where did he get that kind of willpower? And who had he been kissing? The woman he married or the one transformed by plastic surgery? She wanted urgently to know, but told herself it was better that they weren’t intimately involved, safer. There was too much conflict and confusion between them.

She was well aware that there were times he couldn’t bring himself to look at her, perhaps like right now. And there were times when she wished he wouldn’t look at her, because he couldn’t hide the suspicion, even revulsion, in his eyes. When had he begun to hate her? she wondered. Had he always felt this way?

She rolled over, away from him. The wall between them was so high it couldn’t be scaled, and yet she knew she wouldn’t sleep. There would be no peace. Thank God she’d brought the pills with her. She had to do something to obliterate this new and painful awareness of her bed partner.

Alison heard chimes ringing as she stole through the beach house, wondering where everyone was on this hazy July morning. Andrew had left earlier for a walk on the beach. He hadn’t asked her to come with him, and she would never have suggested it. She was still reeling from last night’s rejection. There’d been no discussion of what he’d done, except in the privacy of her own mind, where she had come to a decision regarding Andrew.

He had preyed on her vulnerabilities for the last time.

Aware that the chimes were still ringing, she lifted her head and sniffed the air. Was that coffee she smelled? After dinner last night, Julia had taken her and Andrew on a tour of Sea Clouds, including the new family room downstairs. She’d told them Rebecca, who had her own room on the third floor, set out a continental breakfast in the family room each morning.

Alison realized that must be where everyone was now. But she was lost in the huge house—and those damn bells wouldn’t stop! She couldn’t tell if it was the phone or the door, but the chimes crescendoed as she entered the foyer. A dark form was silhouetted against the etched glass of the front doors, and she assumed it was Andrew, back from his walk.

She opened the door, exasperated. “You don’t have to ring,” she said. “You’re part of the family.”

But it wasn’t Andrew standing there.

“Oh, sorry.” The man’s tigerish hazel eyes and predatory stare brought a flutter of recognition to Alison’s stomach. He hadn’t changed at all. His fine features had always made him look sinister rather than sensitive. No pretty boy, this one. “Tony Bogart?”

He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her hair. “I’ve never thought of you as anything but a blonde,” he said.

Alison felt like a lab specimen the way he was scrutinizing her. She’d slipped on a cotton sundress this morning that was quick, easy and cool, but it showed some skin, and already he was making her regret her choice.

“This is my natural color,” she said, deciding not to explain any further. He must have heard about her accident, but she doubted that was why he was here. She fervently hoped it had nothing to do with the secret past that she and Tony Bogart had shared over a decade ago. Against her parents’ wishes, they’d hung out together during her family’s stays in Mirage Bay. They’d been teenagers at the time, but their rich girl/poor boy relationship had probably been doomed from the start. It had ended for good when Tony discovered there was another man in her life. He’d actually been trying to propose to her in a local restaurant when Andrew walked in on them. Alison could only imagine how humiliating that had been for Tony. Shortly after that, Tony had packed up and left town, and that was the last contact they’d had.

“Have you moved back home?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I live in Virginia now,” he said, “near Quantico. I’m back in Mirage Bay on personal business.”

“Quantico? That’s—”

He nodded. “FBI headquarters. I’m a special agent.”

Of all the careers she’d imagined for Tony Bogart, FBI agent wasn’t one of them. Right now he was standing on the porch in ripped blue jeans and a black crewneck T-shirt, looking more like the rebel he’d been when they were younger than a lawman. He was holding something in his hand that looked like an eight-by-ten photograph, but she could only see the back.

“Are you visiting your father?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Obviously, you’re not gifted with second sight. I’m here because of Butch’s murder. You must have heard about that?”

Alison prayed her skin wouldn’t catch fire again. She knew about Butch’s case in detail. She’d gone through Andrew’s office when he was away on a business trip, trying to find out more about her mysterious husband and the life he led apart from her, and she’d found issues of the Mirage Bay newspaper that had dated back to her accident.

The discovery hadn’t surprised her, after she’d thought about it. Andrew had a personal interest in the yachting accident and its investigation. Butch Bogart’s murder had occurred the same day, so it was heavily covered, too. But Alison had found the newspapers stashed in a garbage bag inside a hassock that was also a storage unit, as if Andrew had intended to hide them. That had given her pause. Everyone knew it wasn’t the crime that got you into big trouble. It was the cover-up. But what did he have to hide?

She’d read the papers carefully before returning them to their hiding place, and then she’d added the question to her growing list of questions about Andrew, and filed it away. She’d never said a word.

“I did hear,” she said, “and I’m very sorry about your brother.” The right tone of sympathy evaded her. “Did you come to see Bret? Or Julia?”

“I’m here to see you, Alison.”

“Me? Why?”

“You don’t know? The local paper’s abuzz with the news that you and your hubby are here in Mirage Bay for a visit. I thought someone should come by and welcome you back.”

Alison couldn’t imagine how the local paper would know about their visit unless Julia had told them. Apparently the woman thrived on fanfare, and one way or another, she was going to make a social spectacle out of this visit. Alison hoped it didn’t backfire in all of their faces.

She glanced at the photograph in Tony’s hand, but couldn’t see what it was. Surely not a picture of her and Andrew.

He flipped the photograph over, handing it to her. Alison’s stomach rolled as she took it. She pushed his hand away as he reached out, possibly to steady her. “What is this?” she asked, but she knew. It was Butch Bogart’s mutilated body, a crime scene shot.

“There’s a new lead in Butch’s case,” Tony said. “I thought that might interest you.”

She swallowed back nausea and held out the picture until he took it. “Why would Butch’s case interest me?” She really didn’t understand what he was doing. “According to the newspapers, they named a prime suspect. Marnie Hazelton was supposed to have killed your brother, and then vanished. Have you found her?”

“No, Marnie hasn’t been found—and I never said she wasn’t a suspect. But since you brought her up, let’s say our murderer is someone other than Marnie—just for the sake of argument. Where were you on February second while Butch was being disemboweled with a pitchfork?”

“I was falling off a boat in a storm, Tony.”

He smiled, finally, matching her sarcasm. “Right, you went into the drink around six in the evening, according to your husband. The county coroner findings say Butch was killed that afternoon.”

Alison took a step back—and spotted Andrew hovering in a doorway that Tony couldn’t see from where he stood. What was Andrew doing? Her heart began to pound. She felt spied upon, cornered—by both of them.

“Alison?” Tony pressed a hand to the door and stopped her from shutting it. She hadn’t even realized she was about to.

“You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with what happened to Butch,” she said. “Why would I want to kill your brother?”

When he said nothing, she rattled on, unable to stop herself. “The only viable suspect is Marnie Hazelton. Everyone knows that. The night Butch died, she was spotted on the cliffs by LaDonna Jeffries.” Alison touched the penny ring on her bracelet. “Marnie jumped, didn’t she?”

The Mirage Bay newspaper had done an extensive profile on Marnie, attempting to unmask the strange child-woman. Rumors were rampant that she’d committed suicide. She’d often been seen swaying on the edge of Satan’s Teeth, the jagged rocks at the end of the jetty, as if she were listening to someone no one else could hear.

The article had said every village had its tormented outcast, and Marnie was Mirage Bay’s. Even at twenty-two, she was a wary, half-wild little thing that no one could get close to except her friend, LaDonna, and her Gramma Jo, who wasn’t her real grandmother at all.

Josephine Hazelton sold fresh fruit and vegetables from a cart alongside the road and was known in town as the produce lady. If you gave her some extra change, she’d read your palm, and if asked about Marnie, she would swear that she’d found her as a baby, in a creek near her house that emptied into the ocean. The infant had been swaddled in blankets and floating downstream in a willow basket, like Moses in the Bible.

Even Butch’s friends had been interviewed for the article, and every one of them believed Marnie had killed him because he’d made fun of her disfigurements. Her face was off-kilter. Her eyes didn’t line up right, and her smile twisted into a grimace, on those occasions when she did smile. She also had a ruby birthmark that emerged from the nape of her neck and crept around her throat like fingers, as though trying to strangle her.

Marnie’s macabre looks had made her a target since earliest childhood, and when the town’s fear and loathing became unbearable, she’d taken to hiding. But Butch and his ilk had hunted her down for sport. He’d teased her so mercilessly many people believed she had reason to kill him, except that Butch was the most feared linebacker on the high school team. It took a pile-on to hold him down, and Marnie was no bigger than a mosquito.

She’d had a body, though. The article had quoted locals who’d sworn she’d had the breasts of a Botticelli Venus, lithe limbs and a firm bottom. Alison remembered the references word for word. The boys from town all knew about Marnie’s figure because she’d loved to soak in the tidal ponds on her gramma’s property—and she hadn’t worn much beyond what God gave her.

That’s what had started the other rumor—that Butch had seen her bathing and tried to force himself on her, and Marnie had stopped him with the pitchfork. Brutally, viciously stopped him.

And now, for some unknown reason, Tony Bogart thought Alison had something to do with that monstrous crime?

She angled a glare at him. “What is this lead you have? If you’re going to accuse me of something, you’d better be able to back it up.”

“I haven’t accused you of anything. I asked you a question that you haven’t answered. Where were you when my brother died?”

A door hinge creaked and Tony stopped talking. He looked beyond Alison, searching the foyer, where the sound had come from.

“Villard, is that you?” he said. “Come and join us. I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you on your marriage to our fair Alison.”

Andrew stepped out of the shadows. As he came over to the door, Alison watched the malevolence seep into Tony’s expression. He truly hated Andrew—and probably her, as well.

Andrew’s voice was cold. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“You should know,” Tony said. “You were listening to every word.”

Andrew strode over to the other man as if he were going to get physical. Alison almost wished he would. Someone needed to back Tony off. Andrew wasn’t trained in deadly force, as Tony must have been, but he was several inches taller.

“My wife is off-limits,” Andrew told him. “I don’t care what agency you’re with, if you have something to say to Alison, you go through me first.”

Nothing moved except Tony’s trigger finger. It twitched, as if he was firing a gun. His smile was as cold as his eyes.

“How did you get through the gate?” Andrew asked.

“Someone was kind enough to leave it open.”

“Then you won’t have any trouble getting out.”

“None whatsoever.” Still smiling, Tony excused himself with a tip of his head. As he strolled down the marble expanse of the grand portico, he called over his shoulder, “I hope this wasn’t inconvenient for either of you. Have a nice day.”

Andrew shut the door, and Alison sank onto the nearest settee. Her legs felt weak, but she shook her head, refusing his hand when he offered it.

“We should go down to breakfast before the rest of them come looking for us,” he said.

Alison couldn’t even think about food. The image of Butch’s mangled body kept coming back to her.

“There you are!” Julia came into the foyer, looking fresh and immaculate in a white crocheted slacks and top. “If you want something to eat, you’d better hurry. Bret has almost finished off the almond biscotti.”

She walked over to Alison and touched her cheek. “Are you all right, darling? Your face is red. Are you coming down with something?” As she talked, Julia glanced around the space. “Was someone just here? Bret thought he heard voices. This foyer is such an echo chamber.”

Alison pulled away from her mother’s touch. “It’s not a fever,” she said. “I have a skin condition, probably a reaction to all the surgery. I can get something for it at the drugstore.”

Julia seemed to approve of that idea. “Your little BMW convertible is still in the garage. It’s the only car Bret hasn’t wrecked,” she added dryly. “I’ll get the keys for you.”

Julia pressed the back of her hand against Alison’s forehead, apparently not convinced that she didn’t have a temperature. A moment later she was off in search of car keys.

Alison fanned herself with her hands to cool her skin—and looked up to find Andrew staring at her.

“What the hell was that about?” he asked, his voice harsh.

“You mean Julia?”

“No, Tony Bogart.”

She shook her head. She didn’t know. She truly didn’t know.


7

Tony gave the key of his rental Corvette a gentle turn, and soft jazz music oozed from the speakers. Eyes closed, he rested his head against the seat back. Jazz had always reminded him of women. It was sensual and complicated in a way no other music was. Good jazz relaxed him and cleared his head. Bad jazz taunted and irritated. It confused. But it all reminded him of women.

He’d locked in his favorite FM stations when he picked up the car so he could have what he wanted at the touch of a finger. He’d also programmed a shock jock and a bellicose political commentator for entertainment value. For the amount of time he spent in a car, he wanted some perks. Corvettes were pricey, but the agency wasn’t paying for this trip, he was—and he’d coveted a Vette since high school, like every other speed-crazed teenage male of his generation.

Tony was still parked across the street from the gates of the Fairmont compound, within easy eyeshot of the grand portico and the front door. He needed to think, and this was the perfect place to do it. If it made the rich folk nervous to have him parked outside their front door, too fucking bad.

Alison looked good in bright red blotches, anyway. A couple more wouldn’t hurt her. Abruptly, he switched the music off and rolled his head, stretching his neck. He wouldn’t have thought it possible that she could look more beautiful—or that she would ever have turned her perfect golden locks into something dark and wild. Jesus, what a vixen. Her eyes were big and soulful, her mouth a work of pure, unadulterated sensuality. They’d called her the ice princess when she was a teen. He wondered what they would call her now.

He still couldn’t think of her as Alison Villard. But at least he’d stopped seeing her face on the targets in the firing range. He was no longer obsessed with the trust-fund babe, his pet name for Alison in the old days, but the thought of her with Andrew still rankled. The smug bastard probably thought he’d just faced Tony Bogart down.

Make that stupid bastard, Tony amended. He’d been keeping tabs on Villard for a while now, which was how he’d learned about their trip to Mirage Bay. He’d called Villard’s assistant, pretending to be a rep with a Fortune 500 company that wanted to sponsor a charity concert. She’d volunteered that Andrew and his wife were taking a trip to southern California on personal business. The local newspaper item had confirmed their destination as Mirage Bay.

He glanced over at the house. He had a reasonable view of the grounds through the iron bars of the fence. Alison’s bedroom window was around the other side. He could remember climbing the trellis and scrambling inside to be greeted by her wearing nothing but a sexy smile. She was hot, and she knew it. What had pissed him off was the way she’d amused herself with him until someone better came along, and then dismissed him like he was a joke.

He’d known he was losing her when she started making excuses not to see him, and then when she turned eighteen she’d begun to travel on her own, making trips to the Fairmont’s apartment in New York. Tony had seen her hanging around with Villard in Mirage Bay, but she’d sworn he was just a sailing friend, and Tony had believed her. He’d figured the problem was that he, Tony, had nothing to offer. Desperate, he’d convinced her to meet him at a local restaurant, and he’d poured out his heart. He would go to college, make something of himself. He wanted to marry her.

She’d thought he was joking, and her laughter had cut him apart. Worse, there’d been no chance to explain himself. Villard had walked in and Alison had called the man’s name with an excitement she couldn’t conceal. Tony had seen it instantly. They were in love, or at least she was.

The bitch had cheated on him. She’d laughed at him for his feelings and his dreams. She was probably still laughing. He’d sworn to get her for that.

Was she sleeping in that bedroom with her husband? The man everyone thought had killed her? Tony was still suspicious about her miraculous return from the dead. Fucking convenient that was, especially for Villard. He might be on death row now if Alison hadn’t come floating to the surface.

Men like Villard lived a charmed life.

And so did she. Or had. Once upon a time.

All that was going to change.

Tony pulled his cell from the belt clip and dialed his voice mail. He’d already listened repeatedly to the anonymous snitch’s messages, but there was always the chance he’d hear something he hadn’t heard before. A clue to the snitch’s identity. A hint at the motive for the calls.

The first tip had come in as a voice mail message, which Tony had saved. After that, he’d inserted a modified subscriber identity module, otherwise known as a SIM chip, in the Global System for Mobile Communications slot on his cell. The spy-tech gadget, which he’d learned about during his FBI training, had allowed him to record conversations and permanently save each call. But right now he was only interested in the last message.

He touched a key to play it back.

“The police got everything wrong,” the whispering voice said. “Two people died on February second. Marnie Hazelton didn’t kill Butch. She was murdered, too, and then framed for killing him.”

The caller went silent, and Tony remembered thinking the call was over. But the real motive had been to create anticipation, he’d realized.

“Mirage Bay’s real monster is an old friend of yours,” the voice said. “Alison Fairmont Villard is the double murderer. She did them both.”

Tony clicked off the phone. He didn’t smile, but he wanted to. He had a very personal stake in this case, and he hadn’t told anyone yet, including local law enforcement. Considering how they’d handled the investigation so far, he didn’t trust them with information this vital. He had more work to do first. With the tipster’s help, he hoped to break this case before he told the cops anything.

Unfortunately, the tipster had never once mentioned motive. No one would be able to make a case against Alison without that, and Tony had no idea what her motive might be. No idea in hell. That’s why he was here.

He closed his eyes, imagining the face of the woman he’d just confronted. The accident hadn’t made her less beautiful, but it had changed her. He’d watched her throat blotch and her hands shake like anyone else’s. That could not have happened to the preaccident Alison. She’d been above it all, supernatural. Now she knew what it was like to be human, and breakable.

She hadn’t walked the same earth as everyone else. She’d floated on a cloud of perfection. Her whole family had. And if Tony couldn’t have been the one to bring her down, he was glad something had. Maybe there was some justice for those born less fortunate than Alison Fairmont, which was almost everybody.

By southern California standards, Mirage Bay was neither an upscale beach town like La Jolla or a funky art enclave like Laguna Beach. There were no brick streets lined with fashionable boutiques, no monogrammed awnings or oceanfront hotels with five-star restaurants and expensive art in the lobbies.

Despite the skyrocketing value of California coastal property, the town had managed to stay small, dusty and decidedly unglamorous. Kids drove from all over to surf the mostly gentle waves, and on weekends, small gangs of rough-and-ready marines from Camp Pendleton took over the main beer joint and pool hall.

“Beach shabby chic” was how one L.A. restaurant critic had described the local ambience. Alison wouldn’t have used the word chic in any context, although the weekend flea market did boast fresh-grown organic produce, a variety of handmade items—and Gramma Jo, who was something of a legendary local fortuneteller.

And Mother Nature had been good to Mirage Bay. Cliffs and tidal pools abounded. The towering palms were said to be over a century old and planted by the Franciscan missionaries. And of course, Sea Clouds, the Fairmont compound, was considered one of the most beautiful pieces of real estate in the area.

For serious shopping, you drove to La Jolla’s famous Prospect Street or farther south to San Diego, which was rich with malls. It was her mother’s favorite way to while away an afternoon, but Alison had never been a power shopper. She’d had another preoccupation back in the days when her family had come to Mirage Bay each winter. Alison had had a secret yearning for fame and fortune, for love and attention. She’d desperately wanted to be a rock star, to put it mildly.

Thank God her needs were much more basic today. All she wanted to do was get to the drugstore, which sat between the supermarket and the dry cleaners in a busy strip mall that was the town’s main hub. She’d had to wait for Tony Bogart to drive away before she could leave. He’d sat in that ridiculous Corvette, parked outside the gates, for nearly two hours. It was an obvious attempt at intimidation, but rather than have him following her around, she’d decided to outwait him.

She’d also been debating whether to make a side trip, but had talked herself out of it. The risk of being seen was too great, especially with Bogart skulking around. She’d taken Andrew into her confidence, and he’d promised to help her find out why her phone calls weren’t being answered. For now, she would have to trust him.

Alison was relieved not to find the store crowded as she slipped inside and walked straight back to the aisle where the topical cortisone cream was shelved. In most drugstores, the shelves were periodically rearranged, supposedly to confuse the customers and keep them in the store longer, but not in Mirage Bay. Nothing ever changed here.

Until six months ago, when everything had changed.

Alison had claimed her skin condition was surgery-related, but she’d actually been using the cream for years. The rash had nothing to do with her many operations, but that wasn’t something she could easily explain, so she’d used a convenient excuse. Near fatal accidents, multiple surgeries and transient amnesia were all very handy for explaining away just about anything.

She picked up one of the tubes and read the ingredients. Not the brand she normally used, but close enough, as long as it was effective. This was the worst reaction she’d ever had, probably because her nerves were shot. The encounter with Tony this morning had left her shaken, even though she’d been trying to convince herself that he was only baiting her, payback for the past. It was still hard to believe that he actually worked for the FBI.

“Oh, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

Alison felt a hand on her bare arm and veered away. She hadn’t realized the comment was meant for her—or worse, that the young woman gaping at her was LaDonna Jeffries. If the town had a gossip, it was LaDonna. She was the last person Alison wanted to see right now.

“Oh, did I frighten you?” LaDonna said. “It’s just that, except for your hair, you look a lot like someone who used to live around here. Alison Fairmont? Anyone else ever tell you that? We called her the ice princess. Funny, huh?”

Not to Alison. LaDonna must not have read the newspaper, which meant Alsion could probably get away with denying everything.

LaDonna peered at Alison, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head. “Wow, you really do look like her. It’s almost creepy. Sorry, I’m losing it here. Is there something I can help you with?”

“You work here?” Alison could hear her voice giving out. The intense scrutiny made her feel almost ill, especially since she knew this was only the beginning. Once LaDonna spread the word, everybody would be whispering and staring at Alison as if she were some kind of sideshow freak.

“Is something wrong?” LaDonna asked.

“Yes.” She began to laugh softly. This was all so absurd, trying to pretend everything was fine, that she and Andrew were fine when they were anything but. Trying to remember—and to forget—and holding so much inside. Sometimes it felt as if she were going to crack like a piñata.

“What is it? Are you all right?”

Hysteria bubbled in Alison’s throat. The laughter turned into a coughing spasm when she tried to quell it. “You were right,” she gasped at last. “I am Alison, but it’s Villard now. I got married.”

LaDonna nodded, apparently absorbing the news. “I knew it,” she whispered. “The darker hair threw me off, but I knew I was right.”

Nowhere to hide, Alison realized. Open season.

“And you got married,” LaDonna said, nodding. Tendrils bounced free of the claw clip that held her curly auburn hair. “I heard about that. You married that hot French guy, huh? Congratulations.”

Alison nodded, fighting against her body’s need to erupt in some terribly messy way, laughing or coughing. “Thank you, but we were married four years ago.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” LaDonna said. “Your voice sounds strange.”

Alison cleared her throat. “It’s the surgery. It affected my vocal chords.”

“Oh, yeah, the accident. You look great, though. No one would know you lost most of your face—or anyway, that’s what I heard. Sorry, that must have sounded gross.”

Alison just stared at her, helpless. She wasn’t about to discuss the devastation to her face. She still felt like a complete freak no matter how good people said she looked. And this one seemed willing to go where angels feared to tread. No sense of boundaries at all.

“Are you sure I can’t help you find something?” LaDonna offered. “Please? I can’t just stand here and yack, they’ll fire me.”

Alison realized she was still holding the tube of cortisone cream. She put it back on the shelf behind another larger tube of something else. “I’m looking for hand cream. Where would I find that?”

A smile replaced LaDonna’s worried expression. “Come with me,” she said. “We’re actually overstocked right now. I like the colloidal oatmeal, myself. It’s very soothing, and if you have sensitive skin like I do, it’s a must have.”

LaDonna shot Alison a pleased look. “Don’t take this wrong, but I didn’t think people like you shopped in stores like this. I mean, regular old drugstores. I think it’s great. Oh, are you sure you’re all right?”

Alison had stopped and clapped a hand to her chest. She was still fighting off what felt like a coughing fit. It burned through her lungs like fire. Maybe she really was sick.

“Excuse me, I need to go,” she said, brushing past LaDonna. It was incredibly rude, but if she didn’t get out of the store, something terrible was going to happen. She struggled not to cough as she ran.

“What about the hand cream?” LaDonna called after her. “Did I tell you it has colloidal oatmeal? It’s great stuff. Alison, are you all right?”

Alison shot through the drugstore door and froze, momentarily paralyzed at the sight of the unfamiliar parking lot.

Where was she?

Mirage Bay, the strip mall in the center of town.

How did she get here?

The black BMW convertible that had once been hers. It was parked not twenty feet away from her. The keys were in the pocket of her dress.

Who was she?

Alison had no answer to that one as she plunged her hand in her pocket and grabbed the keys.

February second, six months earlier

She liked the black water best of all. A leafy canopy of oak trees blocked the afternoon sun, and something about the tide pool’s glassy surface seemed to smooth all the imperfections from her reflection. She looked serene and peaceful. It was almost a normal face gazing back at her, not freakish at all. The times she bathed here were like a meditation on her own solemn beauty. For a little while, she was whole.

She was about to rise from the water when a rustling sound caught her attention. She hesitated, crouching down and searching the shadows. A whimper of despair formed in her throat. Someone was watching her. Him. She knew even before she saw him step out of the bushes.

That bastard. The sick bastard had found her.

“Ugly slut,” he hissed at her. He crashed into the shallow pool, black spray exploding in every direction. Slowly, as if in shock, she rose from the water and watched him come thundering toward her. She was naked, dripping.

He was the one who tormented every pathetic moment of her pathetic life. He called her names and crudely groped her. He and his friends chased her everywhere she went, surrounding her like dogs in a pack, laughing and jeering at her disfigured face. Once, they’d tripped her, knocked her to the ground and peed on her, and no one had stopped them.

He had made the whole town loathe and despise her. And now he was going to rape her and leave her for dead. He would have to get rid of her, wouldn’t he?

You fucking bastard! I won’t let you destroy me!

Tears soaked her face. She couldn’t run anymore. Hatred locked her in place. Maybe it was time to die. Time to be free of him—and the crippling shame. He had turned her into a cowering animal.




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