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Besides, at the sound of Blake’s voice the boy reared back from her and pivoted on his heel. His eyes skittered around desperately for the knife, even as he wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
“This is Lucille Watkins’s brother, Tomas,” she said smoothly. “Remember Lucille told us if we couldn’t find him, he’d find us?”
Blake smiled, but she saw he was gauging the boy, and that his muscles were coiled tight, ready to deal with all the anger and fear rolling off the boy.
“She said it about a hundred times a day,” Blake agreed, meeting the boy’s defiant gaze steadily. “Tomas, I’m Blake Fallon, director of the Hopechest Ranch.”
“I don’t care if you’re the director of Sing-Sing. Where’s my sister? I found out she was here, but this place is like a ghost town. All these empty buildings. It’s creepy.”
“We’ve had an incident here,” Blake said, and cast Holly a look.
It amazed her how often they did this. Communicated over kids’ heads with just a look. And how accurate they had become at reading each other.
His look asked what she had told the boy. Her look answered nothing. Handle with care. He’s fragile.
“What kind of incident?” Tomas asked, panicky.
“Lucille is fine. Our water was contaminated.”
The boy’s face went a deathly shade of pale. “Is she sick? Is she okay? If you’re lying to me—”
“I have no reason to lie to you.” The tone of Blake’s voice never altered from that calm, steady voice that Holly had come to hear in her dreams. “She was in the hospital for a few days back a couple of months ago. As you can see, we’ve moved the kids off the ranch. Though the water seems free of contamination now, we’re a little reluctant to bring them back just yet.”
Holly knew he didn’t want to tell the boy, who was upset enough already, the ugly truth. The ranch’s water had been poisoned—on purpose—by a toxic substance, DMBE.
Blake had been out this morning meeting with two old friends who were working on the investigation, Rafe James, a private investigator, and Rory Sinclair, a forensic scientist from the FBI. Rory wasn’t officially on the case anymore, but since he was now living in Prosperino and working out of the San Francisco FBI lab, he was keeping tabs on the case, and helping out when he could. Sergeant Kade Lummus of the Prosperino Police Department had also been at the meeting. Blake suspected they were narrowing in on a suspect, and had been doing so for some weeks.
Holly desperately wanted to know if there were any new developments. Ever since it had been discovered the water was contaminated with a substance that did not occur naturally, she was haunted by the horrid truth that someone had deliberately hurt these children—who had so rapidly become her children. It even worked its way into her dreams.
Terrible dreams, where a thing, a monster, poured a substance into the wellhead. The monster kept shifting shapes in her dreams, and so did the substance.
Then she would hear Blake’s voice calling her, soothing her, and she would wake, trembling, the sweat beading on her body, knowing the monster was real.
There was a monster in their midst. Someone who would poison the children she had come to love so much. Children who dropped by her office with trust held out to her in the palms of their fragile hands.
They came with small excuses. Could she mail this letter? Could she find that phone number? Could she check where a brother or sister was? But they stayed because she kept a jar of butterscotch hard candies on her desk, and a warm inviting fire going in the fireplace, and a stack of Archie comic books on the coffee table in front of the worn blue sofa.
They stayed because she never, ever pressured them to talk, but when they did, she always stopped whatever she was doing, joined them on the sofa and took the time to listen.
That was not in her job description, and neither was dispensing hugs to those who could handle them. And smiles to those who were not there yet.
Maybe it was the time with these children that had made that phrase come so confidently to her lips.
I understand love.
Her bond with them filled her in ways her life had not been filled before, and so she was eager to know what new developments Blake had managed to unearth in the ongoing investigation about the poisoning of their water system. She needed to know.
But if there was one thing her eight months on the job here had taught her, it was that the kids came first here.
Kids who had come last everywhere else came first here.
Blake had taught her that. And he had done it without saying a single word to her. He had done it by hanging up the phone on a powerful corporate sponsor when a tough-looking towheaded boy had burst into the office moaning over a scratch on his arm. He had done it by clearing his schedule of appointments to go shoot some one-on-one hoops with a boy who was getting ready for a court date or a girl who was getting ready to go home.
He had done it by accepting the badly knitted toque one of the hugely pregnant girls at Emily’s House had made for him, and wearing it with such pride. He had done it by laughing when the baseball broke the window of the dining hall. He had done it by going into the dorms at The Shack and the Homestead every single night without fail, to help tuck in, find teddy bears and read stories to the little kids and tell scary ones to the bigger kids.
He had taught her, with the expression in his eyes when he looked at these children, his children, that they came first.
And, somehow, before she knew it, they felt like her children, too.
But that thought—that they shared children—followed a little too swiftly on the heels of the secret that now lived inside of her, rising and falling with her every breath.
“Why don’t you run Tomas over to the Coltons?” she suggested softly.
“Is that where Lucy is?” Tomas asked, frantic.
Holly smiled reassuringly at him. “The children were evacuated there when we had the water crisis. We haven’t been able to bring them back yet. Lucille is going to be so excited to see you.”
She looked up from the boy, to see Blake’s somber gray eyes resting on her.
“Is everything okay?” he said, looking at her, one brow up and one down, the way it was when he was looking at a kid who was trying to get one past him. A lie about school. A joint in the backpack.
“Of course,” she said, flashing him a quick smile.
He didn’t look fooled, any more than he would have by one of the kids. “Are you sure? You look…strange.”
Tomas shot her a quick, apologetic look and waited for her to tell on him, his shoulders hunched as if waiting for a blow.
“Strange?” she said lightly. “Blake Fallon, you sure know how to make a girl’s day.”
“I didn’t know you were a girl,” he teased, and gestured for Tomas to come with him. As the boy passed, he clapped a hand lightly on his shoulder. The door whispered shut behind them, and Holly went behind her desk and collapsed into her chair.
It seemed to her the secret that had come to her like a flash of blinding light when that knife had been pressed to her throat was now shining in her eyes, trembling on her lips, waiting for the whole world to see it.
Waiting for Blake Fallon to see it.
Who, in all honesty, really probably hadn’t even noticed she was a girl.
To him, she was just part of the furniture. An efficient and indispensable secretary. Someone he liked and respected. But thought of in that way?
The you-girl-me-boy way?
She laughed shakily, tried to get her focus back on something safe. Letters that needed to be typed. Transfer documents for a couple of kids. The funding proposal that still had to go out…
It wasn’t working.
Impatient with herself, she got up and tended the fire. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the oval mirror that hung inside an ornate gilt frame on one side of the fireplace.
No wonder he hadn’t noticed she was a girl.
She looked every inch the old spinster secretary who had made herself indispensable, but was about as alluring as that stout old grandfather clock in the corner. Not that she was stout. She knew she had a lovely figure—that she had gone to great and very professional lengths not to draw attention to.
Today she was wearing a below-the-knee navy skirt and matching jacket, a white silk blouse done up primly to the very place on her throat where the knife had rested only moments ago. Her pumps were sensible and added no height to her five-foot-seven frame. Her hair was light brown, virginally untouched by dyes or highlights, and kept in a no-nonsense bun. Her glasses, which she did not really need, covered her face, brow to cheekbone, and did nothing at all to show off the delicate shades of eyes so truly hazel that they appeared blue when she wore blue, brown when she wore brown, and green when she wore green.
The portrait she presented was the one she had worked to present: the world’s most efficient secretary.
Growing up in the shadow of her socialite mother, who had made glamour her goddess, Holly had rejected using appearances to gain power. She wanted to be respected for what she was, not for how she looked.
What she was was hardworking, honest, reliable, well-grounded, competent and mature beyond her years.
Not at all the kind of person love happened to.
If she was honest—and now that she had her moment of clarity, there was no going back to lying to herself—it had happened the first time she had seen Blake.
The look in his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his chin, the smile that had lit his face when little Dorothy Andrews had brought him a rock she had painstakingly painted. It had happened right then.
Determined not to be ruled by her newfound realization, nor to be terrified by it, Holly turned from the mirror, added a few logs to the fire that was sputtering and marched back to her chair.
She looked at her agenda, flicked open the computer file for transfer documents, and typed in the first name on her list.
Her heart felt like it was going to explode inside her chest, and her face felt like it was on fire.
She squinted at what she had typed.
Dismayed, she read the very thought that had come to her with such startling clarity when a knife held at her throat had made her face her deepest secret and her strongest yearning, her soul telling her what would make her life complete.
Instead of the name Clifford Drier, she had typed, I am in love with my boss.
She stared at it. She highlighted it to erase with her delete button, and instead managed to put it in bold print.
I am in love with my boss.
Ridiculous, that she, a paragon of responsible secretarial behavior, would write such a thing, nurse such a childish and unprofessional crush. Ridiculous that she would believe she had loved him from their first meeting. As if love could happen that fast!
Everybody loved him. The kids loved him. The staff loved him. The benefactors, especially Joe Colton and his beautiful wife, Meredith, loved him. She’d have to get in line to love Blake Fallon!
She went to insert a bold not in between “am” and “in.”
The line magically deleted, as if it had never been.
Two
B lake climbed in his ranch vehicle, a brand-new silver-gray Nissan Pathfinder that had been donated to the ranch recently by Springer Petroleum. A surprising donation, authorized by Todd Lamb, who had replaced David Corbett as vice president of Springer after Corbett had been arrested for poisoning the water.
A premature arrest as it turned out, to the surprise of no one who knew Corbett. Blake, whose skills at judging people had been honed to razor fineness because of a childhood that required a number of interesting survival skills, including the ability to read people quickly and accurately, had suspected they had the wrong man.
But he had been wrong many times, too, most notably when Joe Colton had come to his rescue, after a judge had decided that was one motorcycle too many that Blake had helped himself to. An angry young teen at the time, Blake had nearly been bitter enough to not listen to the voice deep within him that had told him, loud and clear, this man you can trust.
Joe just had never given up on him. Ever.
Since then, Blake had learned to listen a little better to that voice that whispered within him. It helped, especially, in dealing with these kids. Kids who had learned to lie and cheat and steal when most kids were learning their alphabet. Blake could tell in a glance if a child was lying—and why. There were so many motivations, and few of them had anything to do with the kid being bad. Self-preservation and fear were the two that usually headed the list.
He could also tell if it was a tortured, unexpressed sadness that had motivated an act of vandalism, or a need for attention, or just plain old garden-variety belligerence.
So, when he’d first heard David Corbett had been arrested, he’d told his pal Rafe James his thoughts on the subject. Short and sweet. No way it was Corbett.
Rafe came from the mean streets, too. He read people as well as Blake did, maybe better. The happy ending to David’s tragic false accusation was that Rafe was a changed man—the quintessential lone wolf’s heart had been warmed by David’s fiery daughter, Libby.
The thing that struck Blake as odd about Todd Lamb having Springer donate the vehicle to the ranch was that it was the type of thing David Corbett might have instigated, but not Todd. David, on the few social occasions when they had met, had always impressed Blake as being open, generous, authentically kind. It had been such a relief when David’s name had been cleared and he’d been let out of jail. Always a man determined to find reason in all the events of his life, David said the whole incident had propelled him toward doing what he really wanted to do with his life. He’d retired. Still, if the culprit was not David it did mean that a very dangerous individual, one capable of harming children, one who had tossed the dice with human lives, was still on the loose out there.
Todd Lamb, on the other hand, whom Blake had also met at the odd ranch fund-raiser or at Colton social functions, seemed to be cold, ruthless and ambitious. Not the kind of man who would give away a vehicle without a string attached.
The vehicle had come with the official explanation that Springer knew what an incredible inconvenience the residents and staff had been put to because of the ranch being evacuated. The official letter said that though they claimed no responsibility even though the chemical found in the water, DMBE, was used by them, as a responsible corporate citizen they hoped to be of assistance by offering extra and reliable transportation while kids were still being ferried around the countryside as a result of the contaminated water.
Blake’s first conclusion had been that Holly must have gone to Todd, her father, and asked him to help out. She’d had to put a lot of miles on the old ranch vehicle, a minivan that had probably been the prototype for minivans, but when he’d asked her, Holly had looked as surprised as he by her father’s generosity.
It seemed incongruous that she could have sprung from the same tree as Todd Lamb. Though Blake detected a slight physical resemblance between the father and daughter, that seemed to be where all similarity ended. Holly had qualities of warmth and gentleness and integrity that shone right through those convent-approved suits she wore.
In just eight months, Blake was amazed how absolutely indispensable she had become to him. How her presence had changed the whole office.
Her predecessor, Mrs. Bartholomew, had been a battleship in pink polyester. Efficient, yes. Pleasant, no. The kids had been terrified of her. She called it respect. He might have been a little terrified of her himself, though he’d done his best never to let it show—another trick of an old street fighter.
Certainly the whole ranch staff seemed to have sighed a big sigh of relief when she had announced her retirement.
And then Holly had come. His office was in a lovely old white clapboard ranch house that had been converted. He had a simple apartment upstairs, which the downstairs served as office space for the Hopechest Ranch.
Holly had loved the house on sight.
“Oh,” she’d said dreamily, of the outer office, “this used to be the front parlor of this house.”
He’d seen a certain gleam in her eye when she investigated the old river rock fireplace that seemed so out of place among filing cabinets and her desk, and the government office reject chairs lined up against the walls for kids who were in the office having paperwork done or were waiting to see him.
Soon she had a fire crackling away in that hearth every single day. The kids loved it, and the older ones lined up for the opportunity to chop and haul wood for her.
Then her desk had been pushed back into a corner, and the ugly metal frame green and orange vinyl chairs had disappeared. From somewhere she’d found an old blue sofa that she’d put a bright plaid throw over, and several wingback chairs which she had grouped around the fireplace.
An old trunk served as a coffee table, and it always had a heap of comic books, coloring books and crayons on it. She had hung lace valances on the tall old windows, and their wide casings held an assortment of plants that the children clamored to water.
A huge round fishbowl with four residents of various colors and fin shapes had a place on top of her filing cabinet. Standing on a chair to sprinkle feed for the fish seemed to be a special honor reserved for newcomers who arrived confused, frightened and tearstained.
Often the quiet murmur of voices drew him out of his office and he would find her, work stopped, having a quick snuggle on the couch with a needy child.
With something approaching reverence she took the artwork the children had made, and while they watched, she would pop it into a cheap frame and hang it on a bare spot on the wall. One whole wall, floor to ceiling, was nearly completely covered with these bright testaments to the resiliency of the human spirit.
The only pictures that had hung on the walls before were the worker’s compensation posters that Mrs. Bartholomew had put up religiously. As if she was in any danger of falling off a ladder, or being backed over by a truck. Pretty hard to miss something that big in that shade of pink. But if someone had hit her with a truck, he had the uncharitable thought it was the truck that would have needed repairing, not Mrs. B., as she had reluctantly permitted herself to be called.
“What are you going to do when you run out of walls?” he’d teased Holly one day.
“Run out of walls?” she’d said, astounded. “We have a whole ranch.”
