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“Yeah, it was good timing.” He glanced around the living room, as if assessing its vulnerability in a five-second sweep, then turned back to her. “I’m not leaving for Chicago for another couple of weeks, and I’d already given notice. I just need to phone in while they’re finishing up my cases.”
She had been lucky to catch him before he left work, Kirsten realized. But if today was his last day— “Did you miss your farewell party, coming down here?”
He gave her a look of disbelief, as if such a notion had never entered his head. “The police department doesn’t throw parties every time someone leaves.” Then, with a wry grin, he amended the statement. “At least not without a few hours’ notice.”
“Oh, well, I guess they’re busy solving crimes.” While it saddened her that J.D. didn’t seem to care about leaving people he’d worked with for the past three years, he evidently didn’t feel anything lacking from his life. He didn’t seem to want any more closeness, any more sense of connection with others, than he’d wanted eight years ago.
Remember that, Kirsten.
“I’ve got the photos of Brad and the children,” she told him, forcing her attention back to business and taking her list and photos from the bookshelf. Settling on the Navajo-patterned sofa, she waited until J.D. seated himself at right angles to her. “Here’s a list of everywhere he’s mentioned visiting, with any phone numbers I could find. And a couple of credit-card numbers—we divided up the cards, but he’s probably still using the same ones as when we were married.”
J.D. accepted the handwritten paper from her, scanned it rapidly and nodded in appreciation. “Nice job, Kirs. You’ve been busy.”
It had been a relief to have a mission, something to keep her from crying all over Lindsay’s stuffed lion while she sorted through the photo albums. Some opportunity to use the self-sufficient strength she’d worked at building ever since Brad had announced, a month after their divorce, that he was leaving Miss Scottsdale and expected to be welcomed back with open arms….
The dogged determination that she’d forced herself to develop two years ago was finally going to get some use, Kirsten knew. Keeping her children happy was the only thing she had any power to control, but she was going to pursue that mission with all the force she possessed.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” she vowed, “to get my children back.” She hadn’t yet contacted her parents aboard their cruise ship, but they would immediately offer all the assistance they could provide. “Oh, and I need to write you a check.”
Her saddle-leather purse was only a few feet away, but he interrupted her before she could reach it. “No, you don’t.”
“J.D.—”
“We’ll settle it later,” he said, gesturing her back to the sofa as if to indicate that other matters deserved priority. “I’ve been thinking about where to search, and this list is a great beginning. But I always get better results in person than by phone. So I’m thinking the place to start is Seattle…talk to some people there, neighbors, whoever might know something they wouldn’t spill over the phone.”
That sounded like a good plan, Kirsten thought. But what else would she expect from a professional detective? “Okay, sure. I’ve got a key to Brad’s house if it’ll help.”
From the gleam of amusement in his eyes, she realized that for someone like J.D. Ryder, a key was only one of many options. But he gave her a faint smile of acknowledgment. “It’ll help.”
She ought to be used to that speculative expression, to that hint of unexplored territory, but she found herself taking another deep breath against the out-of-control sensation that flustered her yet again. “Can I get you some iced tea?” she asked hastily. “Or—”
“No, that’s okay,” he interrupted, barely scanning the snapshots she handed him—a selection she’d anguished over—before stacking them in a tight sheaf. “I’m figuring on leaving first thing in the morning, and I want to get these photos copied tonight.”
Business, Kirsten thought desperately. Business was good. “There’s a one-hour place right up the street.”
“Yeah, I saw it. Thanks.” J.D. stood up, deftly pocketing her handwritten list and photos without even a second glance at the faces of her children. “And if you want to get that key….”
The key. Right. She had to find the key Brad had given her two years ago, when she’d escorted the kids to Seattle for their first summer visitation. “It’ll take some digging, but I can find it while you’re getting the pictures.”
He reacted with what looked like a moment of readjustment, then nodded. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour,” he said, starting for the door. Then, with one hand on the hammered-pewter knob, he turned back to her. “Be sure and let me know everywhere I can reach you, okay?”
During the next hour? “I’ll be right here,” Kirsten told him.
J.D. looked at her curiously, as if she’d missed something obvious. “Well, yeah, but if there’s anywhere else…I figure you’ll want to hear how it’s going.”
At the photo place? That didn’t make sense.
“Unless you’d rather skip the day-to-day reports,” he offered. “Some people just want the results without all the notes.”
Suddenly she realized what he meant, and she felt a chill of disbelief. How could he expect to find her children alone? “J.D.—”
“Either way’s okay. But I thought you’d probably rather stay up to date, and I don’t mind calling whenever something happens.”
Oh, no. He couldn’t possibly believe she’d stay at home waiting for a phoned report. “You don’t need to do that,” Kirsten said.
He didn’t even seem to hear her, he was so focused on his list of options. “Or if you’d rather I phoned at a certain time—”
“You don’t need to do that, either,” she interrupted, clenching her fists in the folds of her bright-flowered skirt. “Because, J.D., I’m coming with you.”
For the second time in the past few hours, J.D. experienced the same sucker-punch sensation he remembered from the nights his father would come home. He knew better than to show any sign of surprise, but he could feel the strain of keeping his voice level. “You are?”
“Well, of course.” Kirsten sounded more defiant than he could ever remember hearing her. “You can’t think I’d send you off alone to bring home my children. They don’t even know you!”
He hadn’t viewed that as a problem, but obviously she did. Having her with him on the search, though, would present an even bigger problem. “You want to come along?” he asked, struggling for a coherent response.
“I am coming along.”
“Kirsten, wait a minute.” He wasn’t prepared for dealing with this, for spending that much time with her. Not when he’d realized, from the moment she’d opened the door for him, that she was still everything he remembered…and more. “I wasn’t—” he stammered. “I mean, what if Brad tries to call you here?”
She twisted her hands even deeper into the soft fabric of her skirt, drawing it tighter across her body and making him wish he could close his eyes. “I’ll keep checking the answering machine,” she said, and in her voice was a thread of steel he’d never heard before. “J.D., there’s no use arguing about this. I’m not letting you go alone.”
He could understand her wanting to see her kids at the earliest possible moment. And he couldn’t very well back out of the case, not when he’d already promised his help. But neither could he tell her how barely five minutes together was making him want her as much as ever. “What if I told you,” he countered, “I can work faster by myself?”
That argument didn’t seem to impress her. “How can it slow you down having somebody along?” she protested. “I can share the driving, if we need to drive anyplace. I won’t be sleeping, anyway, so that’ll let us keep going twenty-four hours a day.”
It might come to that, if they didn’t strike gold in Seattle. “Yeah, it’s just…”
“These are my children,” Kirsten said evenly. “And Brad’s telling them I need a break from them—” She broke off and took a deep breath, then burst out in a cry that tore his heart, “J.D., they’re somewhere out there thinking their mother doesn’t want them!”
Other children had known that for certain and survived, but there was no denying how much the knowledge hurt. And he hated to see Kirsten imagining her children in such pain….
“I’m going with you,” she repeated, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
“All right.” He would deal with it, J.D. told himself. Twenty-four hours, two days, hopefully no longer…he could get through that if he had to. Look at it as penance for having failed to warn her back in January after that Super Bowl conversation. He took the car keys from his pocket and reached for the door again. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“What?” She sounded as startled as he’d felt just a minute ago. “Where are you going?”
To clear his head. To get himself ready for spending an undefined amount of time with the only woman who’d ever made him want a life he could never have. “To the photo place,” he answered shortly. “And then the Hyatt.” He hadn’t bothered with a reservation, but there shouldn’t be any problem getting a room in Tucson during a hundred-degree summer.
“You don’t need to stay at a hotel!” Kirsten protested, gesturing toward the Saltillo-tiled hallway behind her. “I have a guest room.”
Another situation he hadn’t been expecting. “Ah. Well…”
“It’s not really decorated yet,” she apologized, with the first note of hesitation he’d heard from her. “The movers just finished unloading a few days ago, and I’ve been doing the kids’ rooms first. But we can save time getting to the airport tomorrow if you’re already here.”
Kirsten Laurence inviting him to spend the night under her roof? His skin felt tighter than ever, which he knew was all the more reason to refuse her offer. A woman like her had no business with a man like him…and yet he couldn’t quite make himself say no. “You don’t even know me anymore,” he reminded her.
“I know you.”
She said it so simply, so certainly, that he felt as if she’d just touched him. Touched his face, his hands, his heart, with the same achingly graceful innocence he remembered from their last and only summer together. “Well…thanks,” he mumbled. If she was willing to give him the gift of such trust, there was no way he could refuse it. “But I’ll call you from the photo place before I come back here, because I can always stay at the Hyatt. Stock up on those little shampoos.”
Looking both amused and impatient, Kirsten straightened her shoulders. “We’re going to be traveling together, anyway,” she told him. “And your staying here is no different than us staying at the same hotel.”
Caught by surprise at her practical turn of thought, he nodded in acceptance. “Okay, good point.” He’d never worried about sharing a roof with anyone else on a job, and Kirsten obviously saw this as nothing but a business arrangement. Which proved he’d made the right decision eight years ago. “See you in about an hour.”
He still hadn’t opened the door before she interrupted with another offer. “I can have some dinner ready by the time you’re finished with the pictures.”
“No, that’s okay,” J.D. said. He couldn’t expect her to take him in and cook dinner besides, as if he were an invited guest. “Thanks, anyway.”
“Oh, well, if you ate on the way down here…” she conceded, as if there could be no other reason for his refusal. “I just didn’t want you going hungry.”
The mixture of embarrassment and concern in her voice struck him with vivid clarity. He’d heard that tone before, eight years ago, nine, ten…. In spite of all the polish Kirsten had acquired, all the trappings of a custom home and vacations with Brad in Europe, she was still a nurturer at heart. And even though he didn’t need it, had never needed it, the realization touched him.
“You’re still looking out for me,” he said softly. “Aren’t you?”
“I guess so,” she admitted, looking a little shy. Then, with a glance at the keys in his hand, she gave him a flicker of the teasing smile he remembered. “And you’re still looking out for me, too. Some things never change.”
He supposed that was true, although—except for his last, silent sacrifice—she’d done far more of the nurturing than he had. Even back in tenth grade, he and Brad had recognized that Kirsten took pleasure in helping them with their English essays, their forgotten lunches or whatever else she could offer.
“Well, of course,” she’d said when Brad had commented on it. “I like helping people. And you guys are my best friends.”
It had amazed J.D. the way she and Brad had seemed to take their trio’s friendship for granted. The easy connection, the genuine interest, the kind of caring he’d never before witnessed firsthand, were nothing extraordinary to either one of them.
But then, they both came from a world he’d never imagined could exist in real life. He’d heard of things like birthday cards, Thanksgiving dinners and invitations from grandparents…but those were the stuff of TV shows, which everyone knew were created by the same writers who created space aliens. To know people who took such traditions for granted was startling, intriguing and—to his shame—irresistible.
He suspected, though, that no one had ever resisted an offer of friendship from Brad Laurence. Even at age fifteen, the future class president had possessed a gift for drawing people into his high-spirited vision of good times for all. It was Brad who had nicknamed the three of them Tubac’s Terrific Trio, back on the first day of tenth grade when they’d shared a lengthy bus ride. “Everybody else lives a lot closer to town,” the football captain had announced upon boarding the school bus and seeing J.D. alone in the back. “Except Kirsten Taylor—she’s only a few minutes from here. You’re new, right? Where you from?”
By the time Kirsten joined them, Brad had decided that the three of them were a team, and the curious friendship had endured…in spite of the innumerable differences between an outgoing prom king, a sheltered princess and a loner who knew they would never comprehend his gritty kind of life. But J.D. had been accepted as part of their team with an ease that baffled him…and had gladly contributed his skill in math toward the task of getting them all through school, while Kirsten contributed the caretaking and Brad the exuberant sense of adventure that labeled everyone he met a lifetime friend.
They had been friends, all three of them, and they’d stayed friends even after Brad and Kirsten started dating in their senior year. J.D. had known he couldn’t expect anything different, not with the two of them so well matched—even he could see, in spite of his fantasies that someday Kirsten would look at him with new eyes, like those two belonged together.
Together in a world he would never fit into. Which was why, when he’d run into Brad shortly after returning from his tour of duty, he’d resolutely refused his buddy’s repeated invitations to “stop by the house, see Kirsten and the kids” and confined their infrequent meetings to sports bars.
But those meetings had cost him. They’d kept him asking about Kirsten with the same perverse sensation he would get from exploring a sore tooth with his tongue. He’d spent eight years wondering about her, hoping he’d made the right decision, and knowing all the while that he couldn’t have done anything else. Even though Brad had been completely wrong in pursuing Miss Scottsdale, J.D. knew that his friend—with his shining heritage of family traditions and love—came from the only kind of world Kirsten deserved.
Which reminded him of something he should have told her before now.
“By the way,” he said, hesitating with his hand on the doorknob, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Brad.”
She looked a little embarrassed, but gave him a polite smile. “Thank you.”
No, he needed to explain it better than that. To let her know he was on her side, in spite of the fact that he’d let her down so badly. “I was gonna call you when Brad said you were getting divorced,” J.D. continued. “Just to let you know…well…I mean, he and I stayed in touch, but I always thought you—” There was no good way of saying this, but he had to make sure she knew where his loyalties lay. “What Brad did was wrong, okay? I don’t want you thinking I’d ever take his side over yours.”
Although by convincing himself there was no reason to call her, back in January, he’d done exactly that.
“You mean, when it comes to finding the kids?” Even though she still looked embarrassed, her smile grew warmer. “I never thought that.”
He could look at her smile for weeks, J.D. realized, feeling a clutch of uneasiness in his chest. “Just so you know….”
“I do know,” she murmured, meeting his gaze with such luminous intensity that he instinctively tightened his grip on his keys to keep himself from reaching for her. “J.D….thank you.”
This was business, Kirsten reminded herself the next morning, pinning her French braid into place with the gold-colored hairpins Lindsay loved. All her uneasiness about phoning J.D. Ryder yesterday had been completely pointless…because this was business, and nothing more.
He’d made that very clear last night, when he returned from the photo place with a take-out bag of burgers and fries and offered her a choice of regular or diet soda. “I thought you’d already had dinner!” she protested, setting a woven placemat on the kitchen table where she’d choked down a carton of yogurt half an hour ago. “J.D., I would’ve been happy to make you something.”
“I know you would’ve,” he answered, putting the bag on the granite-topped counter and fixing her with a steady, steely gaze. “But that’s not your job, Kirsten. Your job is to help me find the kids…and that’s all.”
He couldn’t have made it any clearer if he’d drawn a line across the table between them, she thought now, dropping some extra hairpins into her travel bag and zipping it shut as the last step toward departure. And it was silly of her to feel hurt by his deliberate distance, since she didn’t need an old friend searching for her children. She needed a professional.
But it seemed the long-ago wound still hadn’t healed as well as she’d like. Not that she had ever noticed it before, not when she’d been so wrapped up in caring for her family. It was only seeing J.D. Ryder again, only the realization of how he hadn’t changed at all, that was making her wish things had ended differently.
If they’d ended differently, though, you wouldn’t have the family you’ve got.
She needed to remember that, Kirsten told herself, taking her travel bag down the hall toward the kitchen, where she’d laid out coffee and whole wheat bagels shortly after dawn. All she cared about was finding her children, and a detective who knew Brad’s way of thinking would be her best possible choice for such a mission. As long as they both stayed focused on the task, there would be no worry about old memories getting in the way.
But when she found J.D. studying her refrigerator-door snapshots and cradling a stoneware mug in the palm of his left hand, exactly the way he’d done eight years ago with the Snack-n-Go cups, she felt a visceral flood of memory rising so swiftly that she had to tilt her head back against the tide of warmth in her chest.
“Morning,” he greeted her, glancing away from the photos of Halloween costumes, the twins’ soccer party and Lindsay’s graduation from kindergarten…photos she should have removed yesterday, even though he evidently hadn’t noticed anything worth commenting on. Maybe because such scenes were completely foreign to him. He’d mentioned last night, while describing his new job in Chicago, that he’d never come close to—or even wanted—a family life of his own. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“I’ve had mine,” she said hastily, trying not to notice the fit of his well-worn jeans and slate-blue polo shirt any more than she’d notice her tax accountant’s wardrobe. “We can leave anytime…unless you were waiting for raspberry jam on the bagels.”
J.D. gave her a startled glance, as if wondering how she knew what he used to order at the Snack-n-Go. “You remembered that?”
She remembered virtually everything about that summer, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. She wasn’t even going to think that way, not with all the risks involved. Instead she said lightly, in the tone of voice she’d perfected during her years with Brad, “It’s funny, the things that stick with you.”
“Yeah…funny.” From the edge in his voice, it appeared he didn’t want to discuss old memories any more than she did. “Anything you need to take care of before we leave? Mail pickup, someone to water the plants, changing the phone message?”
She’d recorded a new answering-machine message last night, hoping the phone company would fix her call-forwarding system before another week passed. It was a long shot, Kirsten knew, but if either Brad or the children phoned they would hear her plea for a swift return.
If only she’d taught them the new number before they’d left….
“Everything’s taken care of,” she told J.D., cutting off the self-reproach before she could start choking up again. Crying wouldn’t do the children any good, and she needed to stay in control of herself all the more with this man so close. “My friend Cheri’s coming around eight, and she offered to house-sit until we get back. So if Brad shows up with the kids, there’ll be somebody here.”
“Okay, then.” Moving with his usual quick, controlled grace, he dumped the last of his coffee down the sink, deposited the mug in the empty dishwasher, then picked up her travel bag as well as his own from beside the kitchen door. “Shampoo all packed? Let’s get going.”
He hadn’t lost the knack, she realized, of throwing out those little side comments that always made her smile. Usually after he’d turned away, because J.D. never waited to see whether anyone reacted to his remarks. But she found herself smiling, anyway, as she locked the door behind her and slid the key for Cheri under a terracotta pot.
When she turned to watch him stowing their bags in the back seat, Kirsten noticed with a flicker of fascination that, at least on the surface, this man’s car was a lot like him. A dark exterior, windows that revealed nothing of the inside, any damage carefully hidden—and probably capable of meeting any demand that might arise.
Yes, she had been right in calling J.D. Ryder.
“I know you can’t say how long it’ll take us to find Lindsay and the boys,” she told him as they drove to the airport, “but I’m hoping it’s a good sign that you didn’t bring a week’s worth of clothes.”
He gave her a slight smile, and in the early morning light she saw the faint relaxing of his hard shoulders. “With any luck,” he said, “we’ll have them back today.”
Please, God…
“I hope so.” While there was no excuse for having allowed this disaster to happen, she could forgive herself more easily if all it cost the children was one more day of junk food, indifferent supervision and unbrushed teeth. One more day for Lindsay to fall asleep without her bedtime story, for Adam and Eric to be called by each other’s names, for them to wake up in a strange place not knowing—
