Mother by Fate Read online

  The thirtysomething, dark-haired, bare-chested source of her irritability glanced her way. But left her alone.

  He was a stranger to her, as were a good many of the owners with whom she shared common ground. She appreciated his respectful distance.

  But...what was he doing? Usually when someone sunbathed they didn’t just sit straight up like that. And if that someone was a guy and he wasn’t reading, or drinking and socializing, if he didn’t have kids to watch, or women to ogle, he laid back and closed his eyes.

  She knew these things. Human nature was her business.

  “Have you lived here long?” The sexy tenor of his voice broke the silence.

  “Two years in this complex. Three in Santa Raquel. You?” Might as well talk. It was better than sitting there thinking about Nicole. Wondering what effect she could have on a woman running from her white-supremacist husband.

  Her question garnered no more than a shake of the handsome stranger’s head.

  “Are you a guest?” Sara didn’t typically socialize with men at pools. In her current life—working in a secured shelter filled with damaged women—she rarely dealt with men at all.

  This whole day was turning into an aberration. She couldn’t find her calm. Was lying at the pool. And encouraging a man to get to know her better.

  No. He was shaking his head again.

  “You’re an owner, then,” she ventured, coming to the only other conclusion available. There were only two ways to gain entrance to the pool. As an owner. Or as the guest of an owner.

  Part of the exclusivity of Sara’s community was that it didn’t allow units to be rented out. Her brother, a financial guru in LA, had made certain of that stipulation before he’d reluctantly agreed to quit badgering Sara over her choice to live in a condominium complex rather than in a far too big luxury mansion like everyone else in the family did. She’d owned her place for over a year at that point—and had known without his help that property values would remain steadier if rentals weren’t allowed.

  The man had fallen silent. He was clearly a man of few words.

  Nice. Sometimes the best company—at least for someone like her, who spent her days, and a lot of her nights, listening to other people talk about their problems—was the silent type.

  Sometimes, but not that afternoon. Sara was restless.

  She needed to rest.

  He wasn’t wearing a ring.

  She didn’t care. Hadn’t needed to know. It was just what she did—notice all of the little things about people. They were the “tells.”

  His were telling her something she wasn’t prepared to hear.

  It didn’t matter that he might be available. She wasn’t looking.

  Men tended to feel a bit intimidated by her job—as if they feared she’d see some sign of aggression in them, or assumed she went around assessing all men and spotting abusive tendencies. Her last date had had a problem taking a backseat to her work. But when a battered woman showed up at the shelter, you bet she was going to leave a dinner date to tend to her.

  Glancing the stranger’s way, Sara tried to get a read on him. What kind of man was he? Other than quiet. Respectful of her privacy. Her space—he’d chosen the lounger farthest away from her.

  He lacked nothing in the attractiveness department.

  The thought made her uncomfortable, though why it should, she didn’t know. She was busy. Not dead.

  How long had it been since her last date?

  It had been the interrupted dinner date. They’d been on the terrace of La Mange, a coastal restaurant between Santa Raquel and Santa Monica, and it had been warm outside. Definitely summer...

  So that made it, what? A year ago? At least.

  Wow.

  The delicious-looking stranger was still sitting there, his arms at his sides, wide-awake, glancing her way now and then. Accessible was how she translated his body language. “Are you new to the area?”

  “No. I grew up in Santa Raquel.”

  A native. She envied him.

  “You’ve lived here all your life?”

  “I left to go to college and lived in Santa Monica for several years after that.”

  “And now you’re back.”

  “Yep.”

  No ring. Recently moved home. A breakup, she surmised.

  Living in an adult-only complex. No children.

  Hot and still looking at her.

  Nice.

  * * *

  HE HAD HER INTEREST. Michael Edison allowed himself a satisfied inner smile as he relaxed back to reel in his prey. The involuntary thought bothered him.

  He wasn’t reeling her in. He wasn’t like that. Studying the crystal-clean kidney-shaped pool before him, with the waterfall cascading over boulders at one end, he had a sudden vision of Mari there. She’d be climbing the boulders in no time, just to show him she could.

  And then jumping off them—in spite of his admonition to get down—to make the biggest splash a sixty-pound body could make in that glistening pool.

  She was who she was because he was teaching his daughter to face her fears lest she become prey to them. His mother never ceased to point out this fact to him. Each and every time Mari did something the slightest bit dangerous. Taking another year off his life while she was at it.

  Several more minutes of silence passed, and Michael knew it was time for him to make his move. Lest she think that he wasn’t interested.

  He did what he did—lying and conniving when necessary to get access to bail jumpers—for Mari. He was keeping the world a safer place in the hope that she’d never again come face to face with a bogeyman in the dark of the night who was as real and dangerous as any monster one could conjure up.

  “There’s no ring on your finger,” he said. Because he’d seen her gaze linger rather pointedly on his hands. He already knew that she wasn’t married. That she lived alone in the upscale complex. He knew she’d owned the place for two years.

  “Not anymore.” That quiet tone again. Every time she opened her mouth it struck him anew. Made him think of a meadow where breezes blew soft and cool.

  “Were you married or just engaged?” He already knew that, too, but asked anyway. Because if this meet had been genuine, he’d have asked.

  “Married.” The answer didn’t surprise him. The few questions he’d asked in the right places on the street the day before when he’d seen her with his mark had given him what he needed to find the rest on the internet.

  “Me, too.” Number one rule in getting information out of someone. You had to give some to get some.

  “But not anymore?” He liked the way she was looking at him. Kind of hopeful, as though she wanted him to be single.

  Not part of the plan. Her hope. Or him feeling glad that she was hoping.

  He sat there in the swim trunks he’d dug out of the laundry after his phone call that morning and quickly washed in the big sink at the kennel, contemplating his next move. The guy he’d hired to watch Sara Havens had interrupted feeding time with his call saying that she’d headed down to the pool in her complex, five miles from where he and Mari lived. Michael had one goal: to find out what he needed to know as quickly as possible. The flirtation was carefully calculated. It wasn’t real.

  “Nope, I’m not married anymore,” he said lightly. But for once in his life he was tempted to say more.

  He wasn’t the type to bare his soul. Most particularly when it came to talking about Shelley.

  “Was the breakup recent?”

  “Three years.” The same time she’d been in Santa Raquel. Chosen deliberately for that reason. To give them more in common. In reality, Shelley had been dead for four. Which was why her daughter didn’t remember her.

  “Your choice or hers?”

  He hated sym
pathy. Detested it. But wanted to be honest with this woman with her unfussy dark blond hair, no makeup and a body that tempted him like he couldn’t remember ever being tempted.

  He watched her. Was she a witch? Doing some kind of voodoo on him?

  The thought was preposterous.

  So maybe the chance meeting by the pool hadn’t been his best move.

  “It was mutual.” Mutual in that neither he nor Shelley had chosen to end their marriage. Neither of them would ever have done so. But this wasn’t about truth. It was about answers.

  And it was time to get them.

  With his degree in psychology, Michael knew a thing or two about human behavior, body language and how to use interpersonal communication to his favor.

  Manipulation, his sisters called it. Of course, they also claimed they were immune to his skills. And were proud of the work he did. The way he used his “gift” as they’d termed it.

  His sisters were nuts. Mostly.

  “You happy to be back home?” She smiled. And for a brief second, no more than a breath, he wanted that smile to swallow him up.

  “Yes,” he told her. The plan had always been to move home when he finished medical school. Shelley, his beautiful, funny, sexy wife, had loved Santa Raquel. She’d loved his garbage-collector father, stay-at-home mother and four younger, nosy sisters, too...

  Shelley. He had a job to do.

  “What about you?” he asked, determining that he’d spent enough time establishing the parameters of this seemingly chance meeting. He was there to get information. The sooner he did that, the better. “You like Santa Raquel?”

  “Very much.”

  “So you’ve lived here since your divorce?”

  Michael was a hunter of people. Sara Havens was going to lead him to his target.

  “Yes,” she said, holding his gaze. Her eyes were blue.

  He allowed his eyes to express his appreciation of the woman he was just meeting. Feigning an interest that wasn’t supposed to be real.

  He asked her about her favorite restaurants. Pretended that one of the three she named was his favorite, too.

  “We’ll have to go sometime,” he said without thinking. What the hell? Conversations didn’t usually get away from him.

  “I’d like that.”

  “You free tonight?” If not, he could ask where she’d be, with whom, and possibly get what he needed so he could scram.

  Her pause gave him hope. That he’d have a dinner date with the first woman who’d made him think twice about sleeping with someone who wasn’t Shelley? Or that she’d give him what he’d come to retrieve?

  “Or we could do it another night,” he suggested, rescuing them both.

  “Another night might be better.”

  Because she was harboring a dangerous criminal? A woman on the run whom bounty hunter Michael Edison was going to catch.

  “I’m...uh...possibly working tonight.” She smiled again.

  She wanted him to know she wasn’t brushing him off. He wanted inside the door she’d just opened. He’d seen her on the street with his perp the day before. He’d asked around the area—at a thrift shop, a car maintenance garage, a computer repair shop—and finally found a young girl, a shop clerk, who, when he’d described his target, had replied, “Oh, you mean Sara? Sara Havens?”

  He’d gotten a name. After which the girl, while still congenial, had clammed up completely in terms of giving him any pertinent information.

  Everyone on the block had been that way. They couldn’t have done better if they were trained. Impressive, really, that the general public of Santa Raquel was that aware. Or scary that they had to be.

  “What do you do for a living?” Using her lead, Michael turned his conversation in the direction he needed it to go.

  His online national reporting service told him Sara Havens was a licensed professional clinical counselor. He knew her address. Her former address. The fact that she’d once gone by the last name Stover and her phone number was unlisted.

  “I’m a counselor.” She hesitated, a somewhat tentative expression on her face, as though she expected some kind of negative reaction. On another day he might have been curious.

  “A therapist?” She and Nicole Kramer, an unstable and armed felon, could be old friends, he supposed. Ones who hadn’t been in touch for many years. They’d both grown up in LA.

  If they were friends, did Sara Havens even know who and what Nicole had become? Sara could be in danger and not even know it.

  If he showed his hand to her, and she did know what Nicole was up to, he’d lose his only real lead...

  “I...counsel women,” she said slowly, clearly choosing her words.

  “Only women?”

  “And children.”

  “But no men?” He tried for a smile. Maybe to tease her. His mind was too busy assessing what she’d just told him to pull it off. What kinds of counseling services excluded men?

  She looked away and then back at him. “I counsel victims of domestic violence.”

  His mind played a fast-motion visual of all the people he’d met on the street where he’d seen her the night before. There’d been men about. But a lot of women. Women who’d crossed their arms when he’d approached them, or looked over his shoulder instead of meeting his gaze. He should have noticed then. And would have, if he hadn’t been hell-bent on nabbing Nicole before she got away.

  No wonder those women had been so reluctant to give out any information to strangers. They were protecting their own.

  “Do you work at a shelter?” he asked.

  Her pause this time told him what he needed to know. He could hardly stay still long enough for her to finish her innocuous comment about being part of a high-risk team that included police, medical personnel, parole officers and other professionals. “The team’s sole purpose is to prevent domestic-violence deaths,” she explained, deftly not answering the question he’d asked about her place of employment.

  She wasn’t going to tell him where she worked. He no longer needed her to. What a perfect place for a woman on the run to go—a shelter where the personnel were trained to hide and protect.

  “I run a shelter for abused animals,” he said, intent that she not become suspicious of him. If she and her people were hiding Nicole, they could all be in danger. If he said anything and they didn’t believe him, if they chose to believe, instead, whatever story Nicole had concocted to get them to take her in, they’d whisk her so far away he’d never find her.

  The only way for him to keep all of them safe was to get his job done as quickly as possible. The women and children at a women’s shelter weren’t Nicole’s target. Her own two-year-old son was. But desperate people took desperate measures.

  Nicole would be in need of a fix soon. And that would make her desperate.

  “A rescue shelter?” she asked, leaning forward, her eyes wide.

  “Yes.”

  “I... Wow... That’s cool.” She’d been about to say something else.

  He could, too. With very little provocation. Talking about the dogs and cats and occasional bird that ended up at the shelter came easily to him. But he was supposed to have just bought a condo in her complex. He couldn’t be living in the little house on several acres he’d bought when he’d brought Mari home to grow up surrounded by family. He stood. “I have to get back to my unpacking,” he said. “But it’s been... I’m Michael Edison, by the way.”

  “Sara Havens.”

  “I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you.” The truth of his words gave them the power he needed them to have. And maybe there was a bit too much warmth in his gaze to pass for playacting as he added, “About that dinner. I’ll need some way to contact you...”

  “I’d give you my number, but I don’t have a pen.” She didn’t
offer her unit number. Or ask for his.

  “I have a good memory.”

  She rattled off her phone number. It hadn’t been listed.

  He thanked her.

  And tried to forget the smile on her face as he strode the long way from the pool through the complex—to make it look as if he was going back to his unit—and headed to his black SUV, which was sitting in the parking lot closest to the pool.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SARA SPENT A couple of hours at the pool. Feeling decadent, she slathered herself with oil and enjoyed the way her skin tingled beneath the sun’s warm touch. She closed her eyes but didn’t sleep. Her mind kept jumping between Nicole Kramer and the lithe, muscled man she’d just met whose eyes held secrets.

  And sadness.

  She didn’t expect him to call.

  But kind of hoped he would.

  Like Nicole, he was different. He’d caught her attention at a time when she’d needed the distraction.

  Stepping into the tiled double walk-in shower in her master bath later that afternoon, Sara pictured him there, as well. He was standing at the slightly taller showerhead next to the one she used, water sluicing over his broad chest...

  Sara’s eyes flew open as her phone rang.

  On the second peal she dashed for a towel, embarrassed that she’d been having such thoughts...

  What if it was him calling?

  Every ounce of desire fled as she recognized the number.

  With her towel held up to her chest, covering her to just above the knees, she leaned back against the bathroom counter and pushed the answer button. “What do you want, Jason?”

  “It’s not for me,” he said quickly. As though that made a difference. Or was any different. “It’s for Bessie.” It always was.

  “How much?”

  “Three hundred. The art program we sent her to this summer has an after-school program and she really wants to go.”