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Praise for KATHLEEN O’BRIEN

“If you’re looking for a fabulous read, reach for a Katheleen O’Brien book. You can’t go wrong.”

—New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson

“Darkly gothic and disturbing, Happily Never After is a thrill ride reminiscent of V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic, with the added appeal of a robust romance and an unnerving mystery.”

—Terri Clark, Romantic Times BOOKclub on Happily Never After, 4½-Star Top Pick

“Any book written by the talented Ms. O’Brien is a good excuse to leave all your troubles at the bathroom door as you spend a couple of hours relaxing in your tub.”

—Diana Tidlund, Writers Unlimited

“Ms. O’Brien has definitely made it to my ‘must read’ list.”

—Bea Sigman, The Best Reviews

Quiet as the Grave
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

When you first met Mike Frome and Suzie Strickland, back in Firefly Glen, they were just impetuous teenagers, full of attitude and hopeless longing. They took foolish risks, as so many of us do when we’re young, trading a sensible tomorrow for a thrilling today.

A special thanks to all the readers who wrote, asking for more. What happened to those two grouchy, mismatched kids? Did they ever find contentment? Did they ever find their way back to each other?

I know how you felt. They were special kids, and they deserved a happy ending. But, as we all know, happiness isn’t handed out to the most deserving, like a merit badge. Sometimes you have to wait a long time, and trudge through a lot of tough times.

Quite simply, sometimes you have to fight for it, tooth and nail.

Now, ten years after their beginnings in Firefly Glen, Mike and Suzie are ready to meet that fight head-on. Mike’s divorced from the glamorous Justine, sharing custody of his son, Gavin. Purple-haired, fiery-tempered Suzie has reinvented herself as a cool, collected beauty, and is even building a career as a portraitist.

But the calm is an illusion—the eye of the hurricane. Justine has turned up dead, and the authorities are only a heartbeat away from arresting Mike. If he’s going to save himself, he’s going to have to find out what really happened to his beautiful, toxic wife. He’s surprised to learn that his strongest ally is the feisty girl he left behind in high school. The girl whose heart was too strong to be broken then—or daunted now.

I hope you enjoy their story.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

www.KathleenOBrien.net

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

BONUS FEATURES

CHAPTER ONE

EVEN AS THE DREAM played out, the man knew he was dreaming. Except…how could dream be the right word for anything so real? It was more like time travel. While his body lay there, helpless on the bed, twitching and whimpering and trying to wake up, his mind flew back to the cave and lived it all again.

Lived the stink. The air in the cave was wet. It had rained all day, and moisture clung to the slimy, pitted walls. Now and then a pocket of algae grew too heavy and popped from its secret pore. It slid across the gray rock slowly, an insect leaving behind a shining trail of ooze.

Everyone had come tonight, which was rare—but they must have heard that this would be special. Too many men crowded into the space, so the wet, stinking air was hot. He felt light-headed, as if the oxygen levels were too low. He wondered if they’d all die here, breathing foul air until they collapsed where they stood. How long would their bodies lie in their black robes before anyone discovered them?

Maybe they’d never be found, and they’d rot here. Poetic justice, surely. They were already rotted on the inside.

His mask was too tight. He couldn’t breathe. He adjusted the cloth so that the eye and mouth holes lined up better.

When the girl was brought in, it was obvious she’d been drugged. The man practically had to drag her through the opening. Her head kept dropping. She made small sounds that weren’t quite human, more like a puppy whining in a cage.

From there the dream went black. No sight. All sounds. The sound of metal against metal. Metal against rock. Metal against skin.

And always the puppy sound, begging. Struggling to find its way out of the cage. Sometimes the noises escalated a little, but they never got very loud. The cage held. The puppy had almost given up hope.

The cave seemed to come alive then, as if it was being sucked into an auditory whirlwind. Weeping and low moans. Wet noises, as if someone gargled fear. Heavy breathing that rode the naked back of animal grunts. Babbling, strangely religious, from the blind trance of terror.

And then, finally, at the very end, one heartbreaking human word. The word to which everyone, even the dreamer, could be reduced, if things got bad enough.

“Mommy,” the girl cried, though God only knew where her mother was. Not here, not in this wet stone room full of infected air and sweating men. The girl hadn’t been more than a child when she came in, but she was a baby now. They had peeled fifteen years from her in fifteen minutes.

“Mommy, help me!”

And it was at that moment—every time, no matter how hard he prayed it wouldn’t happen—that the dreamer felt his body jerk and release, spreading shame all over his pajamas, his sheets, his soul.

THE TUXEDO LAKE Country Day School Open House was the highlight of the elementary school season, and the Tuxedo Lake mothers knew it. They spent the entire morning getting ready. Manicures, pedicures, facials, eyebrow waxing and a hundred other little rituals Mike Frome had never known existed until he married Justine Millner.

Though he and Justine had been divorced two years now, he would never forget what an eye-opener the six years of their marriage had been. Her sunshine-colored hair, which used to mesmerize him the way a shiny bell on a string mesmerizes a cat, apparently was really an ordinary brown. Without its makeup, her face seemed to have different contours entirely. At home, he rarely saw that ivory skin. It was almost always buried beneath green cream and hot towels. Sometimes, when he turned to her at night—in the early days, when he still bothered to—he found her hands encased in gel-filled gloves that slid and squished when he touched them.

He would have been able to live with all that. It was called growing up, he supposed. Like discovering there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. He could have coped, if only she hadn’t been such a sick bitch. If he lived to be a million years old, he’d never understand why he hadn’t seen sooner what a bitch she was.

Still, he’d put up with it for Gavin’s sake. Gavin, who had been conceived when Mike and Justine were only teenagers—and who had been seven months old before his parents made things legal—loved his mother. So Mike had tried to love her, too.

He’d tried for six whole years that felt more like six hundred. Then he just couldn’t pretend anymore. He had to get out, or he’d die. He figured Gavin was better off with a part-time dad than a dead one.

Since then, he’d worked hard to make this split-parenting thing a partnership. For the past two years, he and Justine had attended every single one of Gavin’s Little League games together, and the kiddy birthday parties and, of course, the deadly dull PTA functions.

To attend this one, he’d stopped right in the most critical stage of a job. The Proctors’ boathouse was almost finished, and he should be there. But he’d told the carpenters to take the afternoon off—which surprised the hell out of them, since ordinarily at the end of a job he was hyperfocused.

The Open House was more important. The fourth-graders were staging a musical play to welcome the parents to a new school year. Learning Is Fun featured historical characters who had demonstrated a love for education. Apparently Gavin’s role was as the teacher in a one-room country school—a fact Justine had only this minute discovered.

“This must be a mistake,” she was saying to Cicely Tillman, the mother of one of Gavin’s friends. Cicely wore a small name tag shaped like a bow tie that read Cicely—Volunteer Mommy.

“No,” Cicely, the Volunteer Mommy, said. “It’s not a mistake.”

“It must be,” Justine said again, and Mike recognized that tone. Volunteer Mommy would be smart to back off. “Gavin was supposed to be the narrator. He was supposed to be Abraham Lincoln.”

“I know, I know, it’s a shame, but he said he didn’t want the part,” Cicely explained, her voice brimming with the fakest sympathy Mike had ever heard, even from Cicely. “He wanted something smaller.”

Justine scanned her program. “But this…this farmer isn’t even a named part. What about Socrates? Or even Joseph Campbell?”

“We’re five minutes from opening curtain, Justine.” Judy Stott, who was the principal of Tuxedo Lake Country Day School, and also Justine’s next-door neighbor, had noticed the fracas and joined the two ladies.

“But Judy—”

Judy reached out and patted Justine’s arm. “Some children just aren’t comfortable in the spotlight,” she said. “I’m sure Gavin shines in other areas.”

Oh, brother. Well, even if Cicely and Judy didn’t have the sense to get away, Mike did. He found a folding chair fifth row center and claimed it. While the ladies’ drama continued, he watched the stage. Someone new must be running the spotlight. The glowing circle lurched all over the blue curtain, leaped to the side and hit the American flag, then slid down the stairs, only to pop up again on the curtain.

When the overhead lights flickered, warning that the show was about to begin, Justine finally arranged herself next to him with a waft of Chanel. She hummed with fury.

“Did you hear that? Not comfortable in the limelight! Did you hear that? Can you believe how rude?”

Mike rolled his paper program into a cylinder and kept his eyes on the stage, where the curtains were now undulating with restless lumps. The kids, no doubt, trying to find their places.

“No, I didn’t hear it.” He didn’t want to get into this. “I was too busy wondering what exactly it means to be a ‘volunteer mommy.’ Do you think they’re implying that—”

But he should have known Justine wouldn’t respond to any satirical attempt to change the subject. Justine didn’t have a sense of humor at the best of times. And this was definitely not the best of times. She could really be like a dog with a bone, if she thought she’d been slighted.

“That self-important little pencil pusher,” she whispered sharply, leaning her head toward his. “Just because she’s the principal, she thinks she’s God around here. She’s a glorified babysitter. And her fool of a husband sells thumbtacks, for God’s sake.”

Mike set his jaw. He liked Phil Stott, who was kind of a wuss, but a damn nice guy.

“And she has the nerve to say Gavin isn’t comfortable in the limelight. Right to my face.”

Mike sighed and looked at his ex-wife. She was gorgeous, of course. She never ventured out of the house without looking perfect. But someone really should tell her that if she didn’t stop disapproving of everything, her lousy temper was going to gouge furrows between those carefully waxed-and-dyed eyebrows before her thirtieth birthday.

“Gavin isn’t comfortable in the limelight,” he said, deciding to ignore the non sequitur about the thumbtacks. “Why would it be rude to say so?”

Justine glared at him a minute, then, flaring her elegant nostrils, turned her head toward the stage and tapped her program on the palm of her hand.

“For God’s sake, Mike,” she said under her breath. “Don’t play stupid. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Frankly, that’s the case about ninety percent of the time. No, make that ninety-nine.”

She whipped her head around, but he got lucky. Taped music filled the air, the curtains began to open, two jerky feet at a time, and a pint-size Abraham Lincoln, complete with beard and top hat, stepped forward. It took the spotlight a few seconds to find him, and when it did Justine growled quietly.

“See? See what I mean? That’s Hugh. Cecily took the part away from Gavin so she could give it to her own son. And Judy let her. You can’t tell me it’s not deliberate.”

He didn’t answer. He had spotted Gavin in the background, on the small risers that had been set up on either side of the stage. Mike had been to enough of these performances to know that, one at a time, the students would climb down and take center stage for their two or three lines. Ms. Hadley, the music teacher, was careful never to leave anyone out entirely. She knew all about Volunteer Mommy Syndrome.

Gavin looked nervous as hell. Mike stared at him, sending it’ll-be-okay vibes. He hadn’t liked this kind of thing much, either, when he’d been in school. He’d been tons happier on the football field, and he had a feeling his son was going to take after him. Which would, of course, piss Justine off in a big way.

About halfway through the play, her cell phone began to vibrate. These folding chairs were close enough together that, for a minute, he thought the rumbling against his thigh was his own phone. But he’d turned his off completely. He gave Justine a frown. Why hadn’t she done the same?

To his surprise, she had stood up and was getting ready to edge her way down the aisle. She glanced back at him, holding her phone up as explanation.

God, she was absolutely unbelievable. Gavin was due up any minute—he was one of only about two or three kids who hadn’t performed yet. He reached out and grabbed her arm. He must have squeezed too hard, because she let out a cry loud enough to be heard up on stage.

“Sit down,” he whispered. He jerked his head toward the stage. “Gavin.”

He ought to let go of her forearm. He knew that. She was obviously strung out. She was humiliated because her son had a piddly part in the school play. She was mad at Mike for not caring. Plus, she’d had to repress all that resentment against Cicely Tillman, and self-control wasn’t her strong suit.

She was probably as hot and high-pressure as a volcano ready to blow.

But he didn’t let go. He was pretty damn angry, too. He knew who was on the other end of that cell phone. Her new boyfriend. The one she was going to be spending a month in Europe with, starting tonight. The guy was welcome to her, but, goddamn it, couldn’t she at least pretend to put her son first, for once in her life?

“Let go of me, Michael,” she said. Her whisper was so shrill it turned heads three rows away. “You’re hurting me.”

He hesitated one more second, and then he dropped his hand, aware that, in their section of the audience, they were now more fascinating than what was happening onstage. She rubbed her arm dramatically and then, with a hiccuping sob, made her way down the row.

Mike stared hard at the stage, ignoring the curious faces that were still turned in his direction. Gavin, who had just put on an old-fashioned hat, came forward.

“Our schoolroom is small, but it has to hold us all,” he sang in a horribly off-key soprano. “My students walk for miles, and I greet them with a smile.”

That was probably where Gavin was supposed to smile, but he didn’t. He finished his tiny part, and then he scurried, head bowed, back to his spot on the risers. Mike felt his stomach clench. Was this just stage fright, or had Gavin actually heard his parents squabbling?

Justine didn’t return even when the show was over, and Mike was fuming, though he managed to hide it fairly well, he thought. He ate cookies and drank fruit punch with the other parents until the kids joined them, enduring the awkward silences while everyone tried to figure out what to say about Justine’s absence.

Finally Gavin came racing out, beaming. He barreled into Mike, trying to knock chests like the professional sports figures, but instead hitting Mike’s ribs with his nose. Mike forgot Justine and his heart pounded a couple of heavy thumps of typical proud-daddy love. The kid was growing like crazy. In a year or two, that chest-bumping thing just might work.

Best of all, Gavin looked ecstatic now that his ordeal was over. He grinned up at Mike with those knockout blue eyes that were so like Justine’s. “It’s over!” He laughed. “I sucked, huh?”

Mike smiled back, relieved that the episode with Justine apparently hadn’t reached the kids’ ears. “Yep, you’re pretty bad, pal. You’re definitely no Pavarotti.”

This was the kind of candor that would drive Justine nuts. She had the theory that admitting any inadequacies was bad for the boy’s ego. But Mike knew that Gavin’s ego was perfectly healthy. Maybe too healthy. Gavin was as gorgeous as his mother, he lived in a six-thousand-square-foot mansion with his own boat and plasma TV, he pulled down straight As, and he boasted the best batting average in his Little League conference.

It would do him good to face the facts: Hugh Tillman was a better singer.

“I know,” Gavin agreed happily. “I can’t ever get the tune. Mrs. Hadley hates me. Where’s Mom?”

Mike felt the eyes of the other parents once again.

“She’s outside,” he said as casually as he could. “She got a phone call.”

“Oh, well, tell her I love her, okay? I gotta go.” Gavin and his buddies had plans to celebrate the success of the play with a pizza party at the Tillmans’ house. “Hugh’s mom is already waiting in the minivan for us.”

“Go tell her yourself,” Mike said. He knew if he let Gavin leave without saying goodbye, she’d carp about it all the way home.

The boy flew off, with Hugh and about four other boys trailing behind him like a pack of puppies. Mike grabbed a napkin, wiped cinnamon sugar off his hands and tossed his empty punch cup in the big trash bin.

“Three points,” Phil Stott, Judy’s husband, said with a smile. Mike appreciated that. He knew that Phil, a nice guy who didn’t have kids but was here to support his wife’s school, was trying to bridge the embarrassment gap.

Gavin was back in a flash. “Found her! She says to tell you she’s waiting for you in the car.” He held up his hand for Mike’s goodbye slap. At home it would be a hug and a kiss, but with Hugh and the other “dudes” standing by, a high five would have to do.

Mike obliged, and then did the same for all the other boys, who were accustomed to parading by him this way after every Little League game. He’d coached these boys since they were in T-ball. They were good kids. But he couldn’t help thinking his own smart, silly son was the best.

He wished Gavin were coming home with him right now, but he realized that was pretty cowardly. Yeah, the ride home would be a bummer, with Justine pouting or ranting, but he could handle it. He didn’t need to use his son as a buffer.

By the time he got to the car, Justine wasn’t speaking to him. Good. Pouting was ridiculous, but it was easier to ignore than the ranting.

She’d rolled back her silk sleeve and was rubbing conspicuously at the discoloration just above her wrist. He checked it out of the corner of his eye, just cynical enough to wonder which way the finger marks were facing. He was pretty damn sure he hadn’t been rough enough to bruise anything. She’d probably done it herself, while she waited for him to come out.

He considered trying to make conversation, but it seemed like too much trouble. Woodcliff Road was kind of tricky, with a twenty-foot drop through wooded slopes on the passenger side. He needed to concentrate.

Let her sulk. She loved that anyhow.

Finally, though, her resentment simply had to bubble out in words. She swiveled in her seat and glared at him. “So? Don’t you have a single thing to say for yourself? After what you did to my arm?”

Damn. He’d almost made it. They were only a couple of miles from Tuxedo Lake. He negotiated a curve through some overhanging elms, which were just beginning to go yellow. He glanced at her face, which looked slightly jaundiced in the glowing light. The shadows of the trees passing over her made it seem as if her mouth were moving silently, though he knew it wasn’t. It was a disagreeable sight.

He turned away and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe you were actually going to leave right when Gavin’s part was coming up.”

She waved her hand. “You call that a part? I can’t believe he dragged us all the way out there for that. He made a fool of me, that’s for sure.”

Clenching the steering wheel, Mike tried not to react. This was pointless, and he knew it. He’d tried for years to make Justine think about any situation, anywhere on this earth, without viewing it through the prism of her own self-interests, but she simply couldn’t do it. He’d looked up sociopath once, and it fit perfectly. It was kind of scary, actually.

But, like an idiot, sometimes he just couldn’t stop himself from responding. He accelerated, whipping the passing trees into a batter of lemony green.

“He made a fool of you? Sorry, but you’re going to have to explain to me how Gavin’s school play can possibly end up being all about you.”

She didn’t answer right away, and he knew that was a bad sign. She was lining up her ammunition, which meant this wasn’t going to be just a skirmish. It was going to be war.

“That’s just so like you,” she said. “The perfect Mike Frome can’t make mistakes. If anyone dares to point out that you’ve done something wrong, like rough up your own wife, you just launch a counterattack, trying to change the subject. Well, I won’t be put on the defensive. You manhandled me, and I ought to go to the police.”

“You’re not my wife,” he said. That was stupid, too. That wasn’t the point. But she did that to him. She made him so mad his brain shut off.

“I’m your son’s mother. I think that is just as important, don’t you?”

“No. I think it’s tragic.”

“God, you’re so melodramatic.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tragic? Because I took a call on my cell phone? I’m sorry to tell you, but that doesn’t make me a bad mother.”

He’d had enough. “No,” he said. “What makes you a bad mother is that you’re a raging bitch. You’re the most self-centered, foul-tempered bitch in the state of New York. That’s what makes you a bad mother.”

He half expected her to slap him. He definitely expected her to start yelling epithets at him. But she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she did something that shocked the hell out of him.

She opened her car door.

“Justine—”

“Stop the car.”

“Damn it, shut the door.”

“No. Stop the car. I’m getting out.”

He was already applying the brakes, but he had to be careful. She had one leg out. He didn’t want to fishtail on these narrow, curving roads. He was mad as hell at her. He might wish he’d never met her, but he didn’t want her to get hurt.

He maneuvered the car to a safe spot. His heart racing, he turned to her. “Are you insane? Do you want to kill yourself? Shut the damn door.”

She didn’t answer. She just picked up her purse and got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her.

He rolled down the down the window. “Justine, for God’s sake.”

“Go to hell,” she said without looking at him. “Just go straight to hell where you belong.”

He looked at her, so messed up with contradictory, heart-racing emotions and adrenaline that he couldn’t even decide what he felt. It was about five o’clock, and the trees behind her were already full of shadows. She had on high heels, the better to impress the other Volunteer Mommies with, but no damn good at all for walking along an uphill cliff road.

“Justine. Okay, look. I’m sorry. Get back in the car.”

She didn’t even answer. She just began to walk.

He trolled along behind her for a few yards, leaning over to beg her through the window and steering the car with one hand. He felt like a fool, which was bad enough, but when another car came up behind him and honked impatiently, the embarrassment of it was just too much.

“Justine, get in the car right now, or I’m going to drive away, and you’re going to have to walk the rest of the way home. It’s nearly a mile.”

No response, except another short toot from the car behind.

“Justine, I mean it. It’s getting cold. I’m not coming back to get you.”

She didn’t even turn her head. She shifted her purse to her other shoulder and kept walking. The people behind him probably thought he was a stalker, or a serial killer.

Honk…

Well, screw her, then. If she wanted to walk all the way home in a snit, fine. She logged about five miles on the treadmill in the home gym every single day of her life. He figured she could handle half a mile out here.

He rolled up the window and hit the gas. He watched her in the rearview mirror, getting smaller but never once looking his way or acknowledging her predicament by the slightest twitch of a muscle.

Finally he came to a curve, and when he looked in the mirror again she was gone.

That was the last time anyone—except perhaps her killer—ever saw Justine Millner Frome alive.

CHAPTER TWO

Two years later

“HOLD STILL. You’ve got a spot of green paint on your face.”

Suzie Strickland waited while the man in front of her reached up and teased the bridge of her nose with his fingernail. She didn’t believe for a minute that she had any paint there. Ben Kuspit just wanted to touch her. He’d been flirting with her ever since she arrived an hour ago to take pictures of his son.

He was paying her four-and-a-half thousand dollars for a painting of Kenny, the youngest of his four kids. It was the largest commission she’d landed yet, and she needed it. Still, if they’d been alone, she would have made it very clear that the price didn’t include groping rights.

Unfortunately, nine-year-old Kenny was still in the room, and she was reluctant to embarrass Daddy in front of his kid.

And, to be fair, maybe Ben wasn’t inventing the speck of paint. She had been using viridian paint this afternoon as she finished up her current project, a pair of adorable two-year-old twins with green eyes, green dresses and green ribbons in their hair.

She’d come a long way since the early years, when, after a day’s work, she’d find splattered color everywhere. In her hair, under her fingernails, even on the soles of her shoes. She still painted with passion, but she’d learned how to harness that intensity. Today, her sunny workroom on the third floor of her Albany townhome was the cleanest, best-organized space in the house.

Still, paint was paint, and it had a way of insinuating itself into some pretty strange places.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling politely at Ben, though her voice was tight. He needed to back up. He was seriously violating her personal space. And that smile was gross. The man was fifty, for God’s sake. His kid was staring right at him.

She lifted her camera up between them and moved to the far side of a gold chair, the kind of fragile, frilly thing Mrs. Kuspit apparently loved. The huge room was full of them.

“I’ll just get two or three more shots, and then I think I’m done here.”

“Great.” Ben looked over at Kenny, who stood next to the living room mantel, where trophies were arrayed like a metallic rainbow, catching light from the overhead chandelier and tossing it onto the flocked ivory wallpaper in little oblongs of silver and gold. They didn’t match the frilly gold chairs, but apparently Mrs. Kuspit didn’t make all the decorating decisions.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Ben said, snapping his fingers. “Kenny, pick up the football. Make like you’re getting ready to toss a long one.”

Kenny grimaced, but he bent down and retrieved the football at his feet. He lifted his arm awkwardly, glancing sideways at his father. “Like this?”

Ben made a disgusted sound. “Damn it, Kenny, why are you flashing us your armpit?” He strode over to the boy and began twisting his skinny elbow into a better position. “If you think I’m paying four-and-a-half thousand dollars to have you look like a geek, you’ve got another think coming.”

The boy flushed, but he didn’t protest. He just stared at the floor while his father adjusted him like a mannequin. Suzie lowered her camera and tried not to hate the man. Throwing a football in the formal living room? Come on. His ego had to have some limits, didn’t it?

She didn’t say anything, though. She’d had weirder requests, like the woman who wanted her parakeet’s picture painted as if he lived inside a genie’s bottle. She’d like to meet the psychiatrist who could figure that one out.

She had taken that commission, too. She needed every job she could get. If the Kuspits liked her painting—and she could already tell she’d have to add about ten pounds of muscle to the little boy in order to please Daddy—they would hang her picture where their rich friends could see it.

Their rich friends would then decide that their own little darlings deserved to be displayed in a big, beautiful rococo gold frame, too.

And voilà! Suzie could pay the mortgage on her town house, and everyone was happy.

Except Kenny.

Poor kid.

Ben was big and beefy, a good-looking former athlete. Kenny was scrawny and appeared to have about as much athletic ability as a scarecrow. Most of the trophies on the mantel were inscribed with phrases like Most Improved or Best Sportsmanship.

“Okay, that’s good, hold that. Don’t move.” Ben gestured impatiently toward Suzie. “Get one of him like that.”

Suzie lifted the camera, although the image she saw in the viewfinder was hardly inspiring. Kenny looked like he was being tortured.

He must hate football, but Ben obviously didn’t care. The three older Kuspit offspring were girls. Suzie would bet that, the minute Ben saw the little manly splotch on the ultrasound, he had scrawled “live vicariously through my son, the awesome high school quarterback” into his engagement calendar. He wasn’t going to let the dream die easily.

If he only knew what a mistake he was making. Look at Mike Frome, the most “awesome” jock in Suzie’s high school. At seventeen he’d landed Justine Millner, the prettiest girl in Firefly Glen. By eighteen, he’d been forced to marry Justine—because she’d had his kid—though he no longer even liked her. By twenty-five they were divorced.

Not that Suzie was keeping tabs on his life or anything. She knew all that only because, right after the divorce, Justine had hired Suzie to paint her son Gavin’s portrait.

It had probably merely been Justine’s way of spending Mike’s money as fast as she could, but Suzie didn’t care. She would have taken a commission from the devil himself to jump-start her career. And Gavin had actually been a pretty neat kid in spite of having been scooped out of a scummy gene pool.

“Suzie?”

She focused again, and saw both Ben and Kenny in her viewfinder. Ben was frowning. “Suzie? Is everything okay?”

Darn. It had been a long time since she’d let thoughts of Mike Frome distract her.

She pressed the camera’s button automatically, forgetting that she’d now have both father and son in the picture. No big deal. She often picked up all kinds of extraneous people and things. She could drop them out with her photo program.

“Yeah, fine. I think that’ll do it.” She smiled at Kenny. “You did great.”

Kenny looked skeptical, but he smiled back and shrugged. He turned to his father. “Okay if I go? I’ve got homework.”

Ben patted him on the shoulder. “You bet. Gotta get those grades up.”

God, could the jerk put any more pressure on this kid? Suzie began packing away her camera and supplies, reminding herself to schedule the sittings when Ben Kuspit was at work. He did go to work, didn’t he? Surely plaguing the hell out of your family wasn’t a full-time job.

“Ready?” Suddenly Ben Kuspit’s voice was very close behind her.

Oh, rats. She’d forgotten that she’d agreed to let him drive her home. Her twelve-year-old Honda, which she’d named Flattery because it wouldn’t get you anywhere, had hunkered down in her driveway and refused once again to start. She’d taken a cab over here, but Ben had insisted on driving her home.

Suddenly she didn’t like that idea at all.

“You know,” she said, turning, her camera still in her hand, “I think I should get a cab back. This took longer than I’d expected, and I know you have things to do.”

“No, no,” he said with a smile. That smile. He caught his full lower lip between his teeth in a way that would have looked stupid even on a man half his age. “There’s nothing I’d rather do than take you home. Honestly.”

Oh, yeah? Well, honestly, the idea of getting in a car with you makes my skin crawl.

Somehow she kept the smile on her face, though she was getting downright sick of this guy.

She thought of the Sailor Sam’s Fish and Chips uniform she’d hung above her easel as a reminder of what life used to be like. A reminder that she was always just a couple of blown commissions away from having to wear that blue sailor jacket, tight red short-shorts, kneesocks and jaunty red-ribboned cap.

She took a deep breath. “No, it’s okay. I’d really rather take a cab.”

“Don’t be silly.” He reached into his pocket and jingled his keys suggestively. “I insist.”

“Mr. Kuspit, I don’t think you understand. I want to take a cab.” She smiled to soften it. “I’m going to take a cab.”

He must be really rich, she thought. He looked as if he’d never heard the word no before. He gave her a playful scowl and came even closer, so close it made the hair on her arms stand up and tingle.

Cripes. Maybe she should go back to the Goth style she’d adopted in high school, the unflattering, chopped-off purple hair and the black, slouchy clothes. Passes from boy-men had never been such a nuisance back then.

“But I’ve been looking forward to it,” he said in a throaty voice. “I’m eager to get to know you better, Suzie. You’re such a talented young woman.”

Oh, man, she really, really didn’t like people invading her space, and this guy was so close she could see the tiny broken veins around his nose. If she were painting his face, she’d need a whole tube of cadmium red.

A drinker. Great. She needed that.

She tried one last time to be smart, to remember the mortgage payments. Would it kill her to ride in the car with the guy one time? Her town house was only ten minutes away. She thought of the red short-shorts and the screaming kids who puked up tartar sauce on the tables. She thought of the way she had come dragging home every night, too tired and angry to paint.

He touched her arm. Still smiling, he ran his index finger slowly up, until it disappeared under the little cap sleeve of her T-shirt. She shivered in disgust, and she saw his gaze slip to her nipples.

Oh, no, you don’t, buddy. Waaay over the line.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kuspit. I guess I didn’t understand exactly what you wanted. The portrait is forty-five hundred. But if you’re expecting to have a thing with me on the side, that’s going to cost extra.”

He blinked once, but then his grin twisted, and his fingers crept up another inch. They found her shoulder and cupped it. What an incredible sleazeball! He thought she was playing games.

“Oh, is that so?” He raised one eyebrow. “How much extra?”

She scrunched up her mouth and made a low hum of consideration. “Let’s see,” she said. “I’d say…oh, about…no…well, let’s see…”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Oh, yeah, now I remember. There’s not enough money in the world.”

His brows dived together. His hand tightened on her shoulder and pulled her in, and his other arm started to come up. She didn’t stop to find out what he had in mind. She swung out with the camera as hard as she could.

He was so close she couldn’t get much leverage. Still, the camera connected with his cheek and made a nice little thump, followed by a grunt of shocked outrage.

“Shit,” he said, recoiling. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

She didn’t bother to answer. He was holding his cheek, looking at her as if she’d broken his jaw, which she definitely had not. She knew what that sounded like. She’d broken a bone once, the left radius of a university teaching assistant who’d thought he could teach her something more than algebra and had to be set straight the hard way.

This guy wasn’t hurt. He was just a big baby.

She reached out, lifted his hand from the cheek and eyed it calmly, pleased to see she’d drawn at least a little blood. He’d have a nice colorful bruise there tomorrow.

She felt like blowing smoke from the tip of her camera, gunslinger style. But that would have been gloating.

Still, she was pleased to discover that, even after ten years of learning to play nice and conform, she hadn’t lost her touch entirely.

It wasn’t until she was halfway home in the cab that she realized what she had lost.

She leaned her head against the cracked vinyl seat and let out a groan.

Blast it. She’d lost four-and-a-half thousand dollars.

DEBRA PAWLEY DECIDED to go over to the Millner-Frome mansion a couple of hours early so that she could make sure everything was spiffed up and gleaming for the open house at noon.

She was by God going to sell this house today.

Tuxedo Lake was one of the most desirable communities in this part of upstate New York. It was about thirty minutes northeast of Albany, just close enough to be considered a bedroom community…if you didn’t plan to sleep late.

The lake itself was big and elegant, with sandy shores you could get away with calling a beach in your brochures. A picturesque ring of low granite cliffs nearly circled the lake, and if a sailboat drifted by at the right moment, your brochure illustration looked dynamite.

The mansion itself was gorgeous. A 6,462-square-foot French château jewel, complete with marble vestibule, formal library, swimming pool with central fountain and Jacuzzi. Nanny quarters over the four-car garage.

Debra didn’t often let herself envy the houses she listed. But she envied this one.

When she sold it, she’d make a bundle in commission.

If she sold it. The house might be perfect, but the house’s history was a mess. Justine Frome had mysteriously disappeared two years ago and had never been heard from since. The police suspected foul play, and so did her parents. Justine’s father had dragged the lake and jackhammered up the swimming pool looking for her, but no body had ever been found.

That was the problem in a nutshell. Debra didn’t mean to be insensitive, but who wanted to pay a couple of mil for a beautiful lakefront home if they were always going to be wondering when a body might bob out of the lake, or start stinking up the basement?

She left her car out on the street, planted her Open House sign in the most visible spot and then hiked up the long, showy entry to the mansion. She liked to let the buyers drive into the main portico. It tempted them. They loved the look of their own cars under that elegant, shady arch.

Please, God, let there be buyers today. Her last open house had brought in half a dozen gawkers and only two legitimate lookers who had scurried out of the house like cartoon mice when they heard the Where’s Justine? story. Legally, she had to tell it.

Debra propped her bag of cleaning and cooking supplies against her shin while she fumbled with the front door keys. Off to the right, she heard the growl of Richie Graham’s hedge clippers. He was probably shaping the boxwood hedge, which surrounded a glorious garden of White Persian Lilacs. They probably would be in full bloom thanks to all the rain.

Richie…well, that was a good news–bad news situation. Richie had been the gardener for this house, and many of the Tuxedo Lake mansions, for about ten years now, and he created some spectacular lawns. He’d lived in the nanny quarters, serving as caretaker for the mansion ever since Justine’s father, Alton Millner, had moved out a few months ago.

He was as scruffy, rugged and sexy as Lady Chatterley’s lover, which was the good news. Debra had watched the female prospective buyers watching Richie, and several times she’d been tempted to hand them one of the Chinese lacquer bowls to catch the drool.

The bad news was that he was terrible about tracking mud all over the marble floors, especially when the weather was as soupy as it had been lately.

The hedge clippers stopped just as she got the dead bolt to turn. In a matter of minutes, as she was arranging her supplies on the kitchen’s granite counter, she felt a shadow fall into the room, and she knew Richie had arrived.

“Hey, there, gorgeous,” he said in his husky voice that always seemed to be laced with amusement.

He might well be amused by that comment. Debra knew she wasn’t gorgeous. She wasn’t even really pretty. She was, as her mom put it, “acceptable.”

It had been a hard lesson to learn, but she’d learned it. She’d even learned to compensate for it, though good makeup and a flattering haircut could go only so far.

“Hi, Richie,” she said, twisting her head to smile at him.

Now he was gorgeous. He was wearing his regular uniform, a pair of white jeans that somehow managed to cup his butt and practically fall off his bony hips at the same time. Work boots. And nothing else.

She wondered if he picked white because he knew that, on him, smudges of earth were paradoxically sexy, making you think he might grab you and make painful, thorny, but ecstatic and perfumed love to you in the rose garden.

Or did he just know that the white set off his tanned torso to perfection? Once, hiding here in the kitchen and looking out the window, she’d watched him hose off his dirty chest, the clear water finding that fault line down the center, the one that bisected the pectorals and ended at the navel….

She wiped her flushed brow with the back of her hand and wished that she weren’t always, always attracted to bad boys.

“You showing the place today?”

She nodded, pulling herself together. She already had one bad boy lover. She didn’t need two, not even in her fantasies.

“Yes. It starts at noon. I hope you haven’t tracked mud all over the foyer.”

“I might have.” He rubbed his chest lazily, still grinning. “It’s rained every day for two weeks. It’s like a swamp out there.”

She sighed, reached over and grabbed a damp sponge.

“Here,” she said, tossing it to him. “You can clean it up, then.”

He caught the sponge with one hand. He looked at it a minute, then squeezed it hard, until water oozed between his fingers. He rubbed it slowly over his face, and then, when it was gray with dirt, he tossed it back to her.

“Can’t,” he said. “The boxwood is only half-done. Gotta get back to it. I’ll help you with that gingerbread when you’re done. Just leave it in the stove.”

She made a face, but she wasn’t really mad. She didn’t mind if he wanted the gingerbread. She made it only to fill the air with the comforting scents of cinnamon and nutmeg during the open house.

And she didn’t even mind that he wouldn’t clean up his own muddy footprints.

That was her problem. She simply didn’t know how to get mad at a sexy rascal like that, even when he deserved it. It was, as her mother was fond of pointing out, her Achilles’ heel.

Turned out Richie had been pulling her chain anyhow. The house was spotless, and the little touch-cleaning she did was largely unnecessary. She opened a couple of windows to let the fresh spring air in. Then she dusted a couple of picture frames. Finally, she vacuumed the library’s Persian rug and the plush wall-to-wall in the master bedroom.

Done. And still an hour to go before anyone showed up. She was going to sell this house, she told herself again. Her mom had called last week and offered to let her come home to live if things got too tough up here in New York.

No way in hell was she going back home. She’d sell this house today.

Still in the master bedroom, she gazed through the lake window that led onto a small, circular overlook. From up here you could see the entire lawn. Richie was still taming the boxwood, his muscular arms hoisting the heavy clippers as if they were made of feathers.

On the other side, the west side of the house, she could just glimpse Phil and Judy Stott’s yard. They didn’t use Richie, and it showed. They were out there now, fertilizing a bulb garden that was just about played out for the season. Debra and Judy were friends, but she was glad you couldn’t see much of their yard from the ground. It wouldn’t be a selling point.

The glistening blue lake was, though, especially on a clear morning like this, when half a dozen sailboats floated out there, as white as scraps of fallen clouds.

Thank God the torrential rains had ended. Debra had been here in bad weather, and it gave the lake an eerie silvery-green cast. On stormy days, you could imagine poor Justine lying there on the mucky bottom, small fish camouflaging themselves in the waving strands of her faded hair.

What had happened to her?

This tiny balcony, for instance… The wrought-iron railing was too low. If she’d been standing here, and someone had come up behind her, it wouldn’t have taken much. One push, and she could easily have lost her balance.

But who would have pushed her? The most obvious answer, of course, would be her husband, Mike Frome. And Debra knew that wasn’t possible.

Her boyfriend, Rutledge, worked for Mike. Mike was one of the good guys.

At least she had always thought he was….

She moved away from the window. None of that. She needed to fill this house with good vibes, with optimism and promise. She spied an empty cachepot beside the bed. Yes, that’s what it needed. Flowers. Nothing said “home” like flowers fresh from your own garden.

She grabbed a basket and a pair of gardening shears from the mudroom just beyond the kitchen, and then she wandered out into the yard. Richie hadn’t been kidding. It really was swampy. But it was as if the rain had intoxicated the flowers, eliminating their inhibitions, making them dress in gaudier colors, spread their lush, ripe petals wider than was prudent.

The larkspurs were the most spectacular. They dominated a multicolored patch of blooms down near the cliff edge, flanking the small stairway that led to the beach. Debra decided she had time to go that far and still wash her shoes when she got back to the house. So she settled the basket over her arm and made her way down the sloping lawn, enjoying the way the sun warmed her hair and painted lime-gold patches on the grass.

Once she stood among the larkspurs, the muddy ground giving underfoot, the lake was so close its sunny sparkles almost blinded her. When a motorboat went puttering by, someone called and waved, though she couldn’t identify the shadowy figure. Was everyone around here that friendly? She didn’t live on this lake. She couldn’t begin to afford such a snazzy address.

She squinted into the sun, wondering if it might be Rutledge, who was supposed to be doing some bookwork at Mike’s office today but who always preferred to be out on the water if he had a choice. She sure hoped he hadn’t ditched work again. There were limits even to nice Mike Frome’s patience.

When the boat curved and turned away, for several minutes she could still hear the lake lapping against the shore in nervous eddies.

She went back to cutting flowers, long purple-blue stalks that were going to look gorgeous in the white bedroom. She filled her basket to overflowing, and then stepped carefully through the mud to the other side of the stairs. She didn’t want to leave the garden lopsided.

Over here the rain had really pummeled things. The mud had run down, out of the bed, onto the grass beyond. She wasn’t sure she could find many stalks that weren’t bruised and spattered with dirt.

She bent, searching, sifting with her fingers….

Suddenly she straightened and backed up a step, her blood running cold, shrinking in her veins.

What the hell was that?

She made herself look again. She made herself stand there, her feet sinking into the cool mud. She reached out numbly and parted the tall stalks of larkspurs. She must have been mistaken.

But she wasn’t wrong. There, half-exposed by the spring glut of muddy rain, were the elegant and bony fingers of a human hand.

“SO…YOU FEEL LIKE maybe taking the boat out this afternoon?” Mike looked at Gavin, who was slumped on the passenger seat, fiddling with the strap of his backpack. “Ledge is minding the office, so I could get free if you’re in the mood.”

Gavin shrugged. He had hardly spoken ten words since Mike had picked him up from a birthday-party sleepover at Hugh’s house.

Well, okay. He didn’t have to talk. It was okay if he wanted to just stare out the window, watching the roadside flowers rush by in a smear of color.

Mike wasn’t usually the hovering type. He allowed his kid the right to a few grumps and sulks, and he didn’t try to jolly him out of them. Sometimes life just sucked, and he wanted Gavin to learn to fight his own way clear of a crummy mood.

Gavin had been blessed with a cheerful nature, and so he usually did just fine.

But this felt different. The air in the truck was dark, though it was a bright spring Sunday. And Gavin’s face, caught in a stream of light from the window, looked oddly pale. Mike had even felt his forehead, a real no-no since Gavin had been about six.

But no fever.

Then he’d probed gently into the usual suspects…teachers, tests, girls, playground scuffles.

But no hits.

He wondered whether Gavin might have wet the bed at Hugh’s, which would naturally have been mortifying. Why would Gavin have reverted to that, though? He’d wet the bed for about six months after Justine’s disappearance, but not lately.

Still…something about this mood reminded Mike of that terrible time.

Shit. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his heart aching.

He’d thought Gavin was doing so well. But maybe that had been naive. It had been two years, a long time in a ten-year-old child’s life, but maybe not long enough. Gavin seemed fine most of the time, but their psychiatrist had warned Mike that losing Justine this way might function like post-traumatic stress disorder. Despair and grief could strike without warning, with the slightest of triggers.

Especially since there had never really been any closure. Mike knew why Gavin was always jumping up to answer the phone, or the door. He knew why, when Gavin saw a blue Mercedes like Justine’s, he went rigid and followed it with his eyes until it disappeared.

He thought every car might be the car that brought his mother back to him.

Mike didn’t. In his heart, Mike knew Justine had to be dead. She’d been a bitch on wheels, and he wasn’t going to sugarcoat it—he’d hated her. But she had loved Gavin in her way. If she’d been alive, she would have been in touch with her son.

Mike parked the truck in front of the boathouse office and killed the engine. Gavin started to open his door.

“Gavin, wait.”

Mike fought the urge to put his hand on that silky gold head. “Buddy, I’m sorry, but you’re making me nervous. Please give me a hint what’s going on here.”

Gavin might look like his mother, but he had a much softer heart. He obviously heard the anxiety in his dad’s voice. He frowned, took a deep breath, then let it out heavily.

“It’s nothing, really, Dad. It’s just—”

Mike forced himself not to push. If Gavin only knew how many demons could run through his dad’s mind during even a three-second pause. What? Had someone told Gavin that his mom ran away because she didn’t love him? Had they told him that Mike himself must have killed her? Had they invented ghoulish fictions about what happened, just to see if they could make him cry?

If the little bastards had done any of that, Mike would go over there and shake them until their pea-brains rattled.

“We’re having this thing at school,” Gavin said finally. “Lunch With Mom Day, they call it. It’s super dumb, really. But it’s this Tuesday, and…”

Mike’s first thought was, thank God. That was all? Just Lunch With Mom Day?

But then he saw the tears shining in Gavin’s blue eyes, and he realized how dense that was. Lunch With Mom Day mattered. The tough stuff, the nasty, bullying stuff, Gavin could probably handle. He could punch out a bully. He could fight back.

But how did you fight back against Lunch With Mom Day? How did you fight back against the thousands of little losses, the subtle moments in every day when you were simply different? When you were somehow…less?

Mike felt himself getting mad all over again. What insensitive Volunteer Mommy had thought up this stupid idea? In any elementary school classroom, there would be kids whose moms had jobs they couldn’t leave. Moms who had divorced daddy, or even moms who were dead.

But in this particular elementary school, everyone knew there was at least one child whose mom was cruelly missing.

By lifting his chin and breathing deeply, Gavin had managed to keep his tears from falling. Damn, Mike thought. He loved this tough little kid, and he’d do anything to keep him from hurting.

But there was nothing he could do. The world didn’t revolve around them. They couldn’t deny the other families the fun of Lunch With Mom Day just because it made Gavin feel bad.

“They said we could bring some other woman, if our moms couldn’t make it. But the only lady I could think of was Miss Pawley, and everybody knows she’s Ledge’s girlfriend, not yours.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, I see the problem.”

But darn it, was there no way to get this mess right? After Justine’s disappearance, he hadn’t even considered dating. He didn’t want to confuse Gavin, and he certainly didn’t want to give the police or Justine’s dad any more ammunition against him. They already thought that, jealous of her new lover, he’d strangled Justine and dumped her in the lake.

Millner had even paid teams to drag the lake. Mike had taken Gavin away while they did it, up to Firefly Glen, where Mike’s parents fussed over him and kept him distracted.

And besides, who would want to date Mike anyhow? A black cloud of suspicion followed him everywhere he went. No woman in her right mind would voluntarily join him under there in the shadows.

“Still, you could ask Debra,” Mike suggested. “She’s fun. She’s pretty.”

Gavin looked at him. “Not as pretty as mom.”

“I know. But—”

Mike stopped there. What else was there to say? Gavin wasn’t ready yet to learn that beauty wasn’t everything. Hell, it wasn’t anything.

“I know,” he said again, lamely.

Gavin smiled a little. “But maybe I’ll ask her anyhow. She knows how to make a spitball, and Hugh will think that’s cool.”