Day of Reckoning

As the door swung open, Roz caught a glimpse of the whimsical quilt her mother had spent months stitching in secret for her thirteenth birthday. It was still on the bed, just where she’d left it. Albert, the stuffed teddy bear she’d loved threadbare, sat in the corner still wearing the tuxedo her mother had made for the tea parties she and Charity always had at the brightly painted table and chairs. On the table was the little tin tray her mother served the tiny chocolate chip cookies she’d made for them.

Roz swallowed, fighting the stinging tears that burned her eyes and choked off her throat. Drew was right. Her room was exactly as she’d left it ten years ago after her mother’s death. Everywhere she looked in this room she saw her mother.

“Roz, are you all right?”

The room magnified her loss. Forcing her back to those horrible days after her mother’s death. She couldn’t face the loss any more now than she could at seventeen.

“Roz?”

“I’m fine,” she said, realizing it wasn’t near the truth. She could feel Drew’s gaze on her. She glanced over at him, ready to reassure him. What she saw in his expression stopped her.

“Hey, maybe you’d better sit down,” he said putting down her suitcase and camera bag to take her arm and lead her over to the wicker chair by the window.

Had she only imagined that he’d seemed to be enjoying her discomfort at seeing this room? He looked and sounded concerned now. She told herself she was tired. Imagining things. Like she’d imagined someone in a yellow raincoat leaping into Lost Creek Falls?

“I’m fine. Really,” she said to Drew, watching him for some sign of the expression she’d thought she’d seen only moments before. “I just need to get out of these damp clothes.”

He backed toward the door, still studying her openly. “I know how hard this must be for you. Come on down soon for a drink before dinner. You look like you could use one.”

She nodded and tried to smile.

“Mother went all out on dinner tonight.”

“Do you know who the guest is?” she asked, getting to her feet to see Drew out. She needed some time alone. Pretending she was all right was exhausting.

“It’s a surprise.” He shrugged as if to say, “You know Mother.”

Except she didn’t know Emily. She suspected though that the woman was big on surprises. She’d certainly surprised Roz by somehow getting Liam to marry her.

“Buzz me on the intercom if you need anything. Two buzzes, okay?”

She nodded. “Thanks.” Closing the door behind him, she turned to look at the room again, fighting tears of grief and worry and anger. How could her father bring his new wife back to this house? This house so filled with memories of Roz’s mother? The room seemed to echo all the unanswered questions Roz had been asking herself for the past ten years.

First her mother and now there was the chance that her father—

She brushed at her tears, refusing to let herself even think that she might lose him, too. Cold, her clothing still damp, she went to the large antique bureau. In the third drawer she found what she’d been looking for. The thick rust-colored sweater her mother had knitted for her. It was the last thing her mother had made her. The sweater still fit.

She pulled on a pair of jeans from her suitcase and hiking boots, needing to get out of the house for a few minutes. She took the back stairs, exiting through a door that opened into her mother’s garden.

The night felt cold and damp but for the moment the rain had stopped. Only the faint tingle of electricity in the air foretold of an approaching storm. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she started down the stone path to the rear of the property.

Like the house, her father had seen that the garden had been maintained. But in this part of the country, it was a constant battle to hold back the rainforest and no one had a way with plants like Anna Sawyer had. Roz could see where there had been recent digging. Emily must have hired someone to redo the garden as well as the house.

Roz walked down the winding overgrown path as far as the rock arch where a tangle of vines and tree limbs had left only a narrow opening. Quiet settled over her as she stood in the shadowed darkness. From here she could barely see the house through the trees and vines.

She no longer felt like crying, which was good. She needed to be strong now—for her father. She felt like she was the only person here who was worried about him.

“What does that tell you?” she asked the night as she looked back at the house. “I can’t understand how you could have gotten involved with someone like her.” A younger, good-looking woman? “Okay, maybe I can understand the attraction—at first. You were lonely.” The thought broke her heart. “Of course you were lonely. But something happened, didn’t it?” She knew her father. He wouldn’t just stay away like this. He’d called her the night before last and hadn’t tried to get back to her. “What happened? What was it you needed to talk to me about?”

A breeze stirred the tops of the trees in a low moan. She took another deep breath and looked up at the night sky as if it held all the answers. Clouds skimmed over the faint glitter of distant stars. No moon. She tried to fight back her growing panic. Her every instinct told her that her father needed her, and it was imperative that she find him. Was it too much to hope that this mystery dinner guest and friend of her father’s might know something?

Mist rose from the wet ground around her. She hugged herself against the dampness, not ready to go back inside. Not yet. She took another deep breath, the air scented with cedar and rainwater and damp fertile earth, and so wonderfully familiar except for—She took another sniff. A chill skittered across her bare arms. Her heart began to knock as she picked up a scent that didn’t belong on the night breeze—and, eyes adjusting to the darkness, she saw a large, still shape that didn’t belong in the garden.

Someone was hiding just inches from her on the other side of the rock arch.

Chapter Three

“Wait!” Ford reached for her, hoping to stop her before she panicked and did something crazy. Like scream bloody murder. Too late. She got out one startled cry as she stumbled back from him, then she let out a bloodcurdling shriek that he knew could be heard in three counties.

He cursed himself for not warning her he was out here. At first he hadn’t wanted to scare her. Once he recognized her voice, he wasn’t about to open his mouth. What the hell was she doing here, anyway?

He caught her arm and spun her around, figuring once she recognized him she’d at least quit screaming. But her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her mouth open, a shriek coming out.

Behind them, twenty yards away through the trees, the back porch light blinked on. Any moment the lady of the house would be calling the sheriff and—

He did the first thing that came to mind short of throttling the woman. When she took a breath, he kissed her, covering any future screams as his mouth dropped to hers. She gasped in surprise, eyes fluttering open for an instant, then shuttering closed again.

She had a great mouth, and for a few seconds, he got lost in her lush lips, in the warmth of her breath mingling with his, in the taste of her.

For those few seconds, he forgot whom he was kissing. He loosened his hold on her as the kiss deepened.

The right hook came out of nowhere. He managed to duck that one. But he hadn’t been expecting the kick. Her boot connected with his shin.

“Damn.” He should have been the one screaming.

She turned to run, mouth open, ready to let out another shriek. He grabbed her around the waist, dragged her back to his chest and clamped a hand over her mouth.

They were both breathing hard now, hidden in the dark shadows of the trees out of sight of whoever was now on the porch calling, “Rozalyn?”

“Listen,” he whispered next to her ear. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She tried to slug him again in answer.

“I’m just trying to get to dinner, dammit,” he whispered in exasperation.

THE INSTANT his words registered, Roz stopped struggling and groaned. She could hear Emily calling her name, and saw through the tree limbs the dim glow of the porch light in the distance. This man in the dark was no crazed killer hiding in the backyard. Just the dinner guest. She kicked herself mentally and wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

He slowly removed his hand from her mouth, obviously afraid she’d scream again. Behind her, she heard him clear his throat and step back almost as if he were afraid she’d kick him again.

She turned, an apology on the tip of her tongue. It never made it to her lips as she got her first good look at him.

“You?!” she whispered in horror. His face was bathed in the mottled pattern of light coming through the trees from the porch lamp. Her first impression earlier at the waterfall had been true. He was tall, broad-shouldered and dark except for his eyes, which were an eerie, pale blue-green.

He wasn’t even handsome. His expression was too severe, brows pinched together, full mouth a grim line between the rough stubble of his designer beard. But he was definitely the man who’d almost killed her at Lost Creek Falls. “You can’t be the dinner guest.”

“Emily invited me,” he said, obviously also trying to keep his voice down. “Anyway, why can’t I?”

“Because you were sneaking in the back way!” she hissed.