"Mommy!"
Blakeley's cry had Devan dropping the hot pan of garlic
bread onto the kitchen counter. Ripping off her new
sunflower pot-holder mittens, she threw them after it,
sending one skittering off the edge of the granite top,
but she let it go. All she cared about was the panic in
her child's voice.
By the time she yanked open the back door, Blakeley was
scrambling across the stone patio. At the same time she
flung herself into Devan's arms, the little girl also
locked all four limbs around her and clutched handfuls of
her glittery autumn-motif sweatshirt.
"Sweetie, what on earth...? What's wrong?"
"There's a man out there! A stranger in my park!"
For once Devan didn't correct or reprove her four-year-old
daughter for her habit of calling everything she had a
personal attachment to as "mine." Instead she lifted her
gaze to confirm that the back gate on the chain-link fence
was open. That was enough to send her imagination into
overdrive. She'd warned Blakeley repeatedly never to open
the gate on her own, let alone venture beyond it without
her — especially into Mount Vance, Texas's woodsy Regan
Park. The headstrong minx had inherited too many of her
genes, all the wrong ones!
"Are you all right?" she demanded, hugging the child
closer until she could feel her small heart through her
light red jacket. She inhaled that unforgettable but
fading baby scent to help calm her own pounding
heart. "Did he touch you? Try to hurt you?"
"No." Blakeley's voice wobbled with emotion. "Because I
ran. He scared me, Mommy. He just stood on the other side
of the creek and stared."
She'd gotten as far as the creek? Devan couldn't believe
she had let her out of her sight for that long without
glancing outside. Her impulse was to dial 911, but she
reminded herself that in the meantime, the creep could be
getting away. She needed to find him, to see if she could
identify him. The police would need an accurate
description.
Just then the front door opened and her mother-in-law
Connie poked her head inside. Devan had left the door
unlocked expecting her at any minute to pick up a box of
outgrown children's clothing for a church fund-raiser this
weekend.
Setting down Blakeley, Devan grabbed her jacket from the
hanger behind the back door and called, "Connie, lock the
door and call 911! Blakeley, tell Nana what you told me.
Lock this door, too."
"Where are you going?" Blakeley cried, her blue eyes huge.
"I promise I'll be right back, sweetie. Now do as I say."
Planting a kiss on top of Blakeley's blond head, Devan
grabbed Jay's old baseball bat, which she always took on
walks in the park against the threat of some stray, sick
dog attacking them. Then she rushed from the house,
ignoring Connie's protest and her daughter's whimpering;
she ran across the yard, and alley, and entered the woods
marking the east boundary of their neighborhood.
Regan Park framed Regan Creek, land donated by one of the
most powerful families in the northeast Texas county.
Barely an acre wide and eighteen long, parts of the outer
perimeter were deceptively brushy, but the bike trails
were well tended, as were the picnic areas. Often used by
joggers and weekend cyclists, at odd hours it had been
known to be the rendezvous site of occasional drug deals.
I should have put a lock on the gate.
I didn't even ask her what the guy looked like.
As she berated herself, Devan charged through the thicket
of holly and prickly vines, then between stately pines and
bushy cedar. She willed the creep who'd scared her baby to
still be out there. She could and would stop him — at
least long enough to make sure the police were given an
excellent description, and to give the man an earful. That
scumbag would know what awaited him if he messed with any
youngster in Mount Vance.
After another few yards she crossed the bike and jogging
trail, but when she came in view of the creek, she
stumbled to a halt.At first she thought the heavy shade
cast by a sinking October sun was playing tricks on her.
But no, that was a man standing monument-still on the
opposite bank just as Blakeley described. More unnerving
was who he reminded her of; there was something so
familiar about him.With every shallow breath, her impulse
to charge and swing receded like the most fleeting dream
and left her feeling...what? "Mead." She'd seen the
article in the Mount Vance Report, had heard the gossip
flooding town like whitewater bursting from a broken dam.
Most she'd managed to ignore in her struggle to repress
the fear that her past could finally have caught up with
her. However, there was no hiding from the reality that
stood in front of her.
She shifted so what sunlight trickled in through the trees
worked to her benefit and drew a steadying breath. She
remembered those compelling eyes — dark as the promise of
Poe's raven whispering, "Nevermore." Gone was the near-
black mane of windswept hair of his youth, though she'd
seen it almost this short on his last visit home. The
bristles now appeared to be seasoned with a hint of gray,
as was his beard. He had been home for more than two
weeks, but he looked as though he was still existing on a
diet of air and willpower, the latter no doubt force-fed
him by his mother. Devan estimated him to be at least
twenty pounds lighter than was normal for his strong-
boned, six-foot-plus frame. The blue bandana not quite
hiding the scar at his right temple suggested one of the
reasons why.
Her next step forward was involuntary. "Mead...do you hear
me?"
Hunkering deeper into the upturned collar of his denim
jacket, he stared into the glistening water as though
willing himself to merge with the few inches of cold
liquid. But her question finally had him raising his eyes
in slow motion.
As their gazes met, she almost believed she saw a slight
flicker of something like a dawning, only to wait with a
mixture of disappointment and relief when he failed to
respond. "So it's true...you don't recognize any of us,"
she finally said.
He made no reply.
She'd known when he left town six years ago that his first
destination would be somewhere dangerous...and the next,
and the next. Some sixteen months ago, his luck, and that
of his crack commando team had finally run out. On a
mission to the Middle East that had made national
headlines despite the government's attempts to keep
information classified, something went catastrophically
wrong, and everyone save Mead had been killed. After that,
she'd shut her ears and mind to any more information, and
thereafter tried not to think about the Mead Regan who was
undergoing operation after operation, was no longer
himself, and was reportedly lingering somewhere
between "strange" and "scary." Small wonder that Blakeley
had been spooked, she thought, sighing inwardly.
"It's...it's good to see you on your feet," she finally
added. That was all she could get past the lump in her
throat.
"Do I know you?" he said at last.
Like it or not, that stung. She remembered him as a
kidder, the guy with the slow, wicked smile and a "come
hither" invitation in his eyes, characteristics she'd
insisted for years annoyed her...until, eventually, she
had been drawn in like so many before her. This Mead's
countenance was as gray as the stone it appeared to be
chiseled from, his deep-set eyes lacking any visible sign
of interest in life let alone curiosity about her. Devan
decided it would have been easier to deal with news of his
death than this. What hell had he seen? What agony had he
suffered to come back this far?
You do not need to go there. "Ah...not really. Sorry to
intrude," she replied, taking a step backward. It was
definitely time to go. Connie was waiting and Blakeley
needed reassuring, she reminded herself as she pivoted to
return home.
She barely registered the meaning of water splashing
before strong fingers closed around her upper arm. Devan
had neither time to protest nor to catch the bat slipping
from her damp grasp; she was spun around and had to plant
her hands flat against his chest not to fall into him.
"No!" Her cry was torn from some sleeping place inside her
and sounded foreign to her ears; she couldn't blame Mead
for frowning at her.
"Who are you?"
"Devan. Devan Anderson." Then she grimaced and
amended, "You knew me as Devan Shaw." She could tell he
was trying to make some association and failing. Under her
hands, she felt his heart beating as powerfully and
rapidly as hers, and sweat began to stain his headband.
"Are you a reporter?"
Of course that would be what was bothering him most. It
made sense that he would naturally shun prying eyes and
probing questions. His politically savvy, reputation-
conscious mother Pamela would have encouraged that
caution, warned him to shun the media first and foremost
if she wasn't available to monitor each utterance. Devan
didn't want to think about what she would have to say if
she heard about this.
"No, I co-own Dreamscapes. It's a florist-nursery-
landscape business in town."
"I — I don't..."
His gaze shifted away as though she'd asked him a question
about quantum physics. Dear heaven, she hated witnessing
this and had to fight a strange pressure in her chest,
making it even harder to breathe. "It's all right, Mead.
It didn't exist when you left." And she had been only
weeks away from changing her name, but that could remain
fried with the rest of his memory. Removing her hands and
easing from his hold, she strove to get their focus back
to priorities. "Mead...you just terrified my daughter."
He glanced back toward the creek as though rousing from a
nap. "There was a child...she left."
"No kidding. She ran home scared to death by some guy
skulking around. Was that you?"
Slowly he touched his forehead near the angry red scar. "I
was walking. I needed air."
Devan refused to let memories or sympathy come before her
concern for her precious girl. "Well, could you please
walk in your yard until you're more...more yourself?"
"There are walls."
True again, with electronically operated iron gates at the
end of the driveway. His mother had long been a person to
separate herself from the rest of the world, unless it
suited her. Some called her Mount Vance's Liz Taylor. For
a man who always enjoyed the outdoors every bit as much as
Devan did, that kind of restriction had to be suffocating,
and it momentarily eased some of her maternal fury. "You
still have to go home," she told him. "Your mother's going
to initiate a county-wide search for you if she hasn't
already."
Once again she began to leave, retrieved the bat and
started worrying about explaining this to the police — not
to mention Connie.
"Can you answer one question?"
She froze. It had been six years since she'd felt such a
mix of emotions and she was terrified what he would ask
next. Once, she'd made herself his for the taking.
Frustrated, hurt, infatuated, she'd risked everything to
hear him speak to her and her alone...touch her as she'd
never been touched...encourage her to be free, to be truly
herself.
But just as he'd changed, she had, too.
With no small reluctance, Devan half turned back to him.
This time his eyes looked clearer, even curious. "What?"
"Did you know me? I mean, really? Were we...friends?" His
hesitation was as sad as the question was bittersweet.
Friends? For a night, he'd been everything she could dream
of wanting or needing. By dawn he'd raced away to
adventure, violence and catastrophe, leaving her with a
scrawled four-word message. Take care of yourself.
She didn't want to remember. She was a widow with a small
child. Mead had been a mistake, a wild indulgence of her
youth. "We didn't have time," she replied, shrugging.
"Why?"
This was getting more difficult by the minute. "Pick a
reason. There are several that would do."
"I don't understand."