She scraped up her hands a bit, and it stung.

Kelly stared down at her hands now. They were clean. Pale. Well manicured. No scrapes or cuts at all.

Kelly Bird! No joke! Stop where you are and wait.

She’d understood the edge of seriousness in his tone, and she’d stood up from her fall and not moved. She hadn’t always obeyed her parents, but she didn’t want her father to be angry.

It was their Saturday hike together. They always had a good time.

As she’d been waiting, she’d heard a deafening crack of noise, then a lot of rustling. And then—nothing. Not her father’s voice. Not the sounds of his footsteps catching up to her.

Nothing.

Dad? Dad, are you coming?

Her words had echoed through the woods, met only with silence.

So finally she’d turned around and walked back down the trail the way she’d come.

When she got around the curve, she saw her father.

He was lying on his back on the ground.

When she ran over to him, she’d seen that part of his head wasn’t there anymore.

It was blood and brains and pieces of skull, but not her father anymore.

The rest of the day she couldn’t even remember. It blurred into a vague nightmare.

But she remembered the trail, and she remembered her father’s dead body.

She’d had to wait a long time before two more hikers passed by. She’d been covered with his blood by the time the police came.

She was choking now, unable to breathe, unable to see, panic and nausea overwhelming her.

She stumbled back toward the entrance, toward safety, falling twice because her eyes had darkened over.

As soon as she cleared the trees, she bent over, dragging in desperate breaths.

It took five minutes before she could stand upright again, and her whole body was damp with cold perspiration as she limped back to her car.

She wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t a coward.

That man hadn’t been right about her. She would never surrender her self-sufficiency.

But this was one thing she couldn’t face.

—

She lived in a stylish apartment in a very expensive building, one she never would have been able to afford if she’d been living on just her income as a portrait artist. The doorman rushed over when he saw her, asking in concern if she was all right.

She almost laughed. She was still pale and clammy from her panic attack earlier. She probably looked deathly ill.

She reassured the kind man and got into the elevator, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes.

When she got home, she would run herself a hot bath, pour a huge glass of wine, and soak until her mind was clear and the water got cool.

So what if it wasn’t even two in the afternoon yet?

She wondered what that man was doing now, whether he was thinking about her, whether she was lingering in his mind the way he was hers.

The truth was, she wouldn’t mind seeing him again, fucking him again. Her body actually responded to the idea, as if it hadn’t been quite satisfied with their first round.

And that was just plain annoying. She could imagine his gloating smile if he knew. He would think he’d proved something to her after all.

When she unlocked her door and stepped inside, she abruptly stopped thinking about more hot sex with that man. Something was wrong. There were no visible signs of anything unusual, but something felt wrong.

She knew why when she walked farther in, past the kitchen, and saw that there was a woman sitting on her couch.

Her mother.

Her real mother. Not the kind woman who had adopted her.

Kelly hadn’t seen her mother in over seventeen years, not since she’d walked out one afternoon, saying she needed to do some errands and Kelly was old enough to fend for herself. She’d never come back.

The woman had aged—obviously. The long gold hair was now gray and tucked back in a severe knot at the back of her head, and her face was tightly pinched, as if she’d spent too many years frowning.

She probably had. Kelly had never known anyone as bitter, angry, and despairing as her mother had been for the months after her father’s death. She’d been cool and kind of distanced all of Kelly’s life. They’d never bonded the way she had with her father. But it was so much worse after her father’s death.

Kelly had known instinctively—from the evening when she’d been sitting at home alone, wondering if she was supposed to fix her own dinner—that her mother had abandoned her. Every once in a while she thought about her, wondering what had become of her, whether she was still alive. Whether she regretted walking out.

Evidently, she was still alive. And sitting in Kelly’s living room.

“How did you get in here?” Kelly demanded, asking the most inconsequential question first.

“It’s not that hard in this kind of place. Your handyman is sweet on you, and he now thinks your mama is surprising you for your birthday.”

Kelly swallowed hard as her body swayed. Her knees were weakening. This was just one blow too many for the day.

She carefully walked over to sit on an upholstered chair across from the couch. “I thought you might be dead.”

Maybe the words sounded heartless, but this was the woman who’d walked out on her without a word when she wasn’t even eleven.

“Not yet,” her mother said, still clipped, emotionless.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’ll get to that soon enough.” She glanced at Kelly’s leather bag, which she’d dropped on the floor. “You were meeting a client?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve made a success of yourself—which can’t have been easy with such an idiosyncratic line of work.”

Kelly shrugged, finding it hard to be pleased at the approval when her mother was studying her like a pinned insect. “I do all right.”

“Your client didn’t show up?”

“No, he—” She broke off and sucked in a sharp breath. “How do you know he didn’t show up?”

“Because I was the client.”

Kelly was too dazed to put any pieces together. None of this made sense. “I spoke to a man—”

“An acquaintance of mine, since the voice needed to be male. But I arranged for the meeting in the park.”

“But why? You didn’t show up there.”

“No. I didn’t intend to.” Her mother folded her hands in her lap in an ironically ladylike gesture. “But you met someone else there, didn’t you? A man with a German shepherd?”

Kelly gasped again, her mind whirling helplessly, trying to figure out what was happening here. “Yes. How did you—”

“He always goes to that park on Saturday mornings with that dog of his.”

“You wanted me to meet him? Why? Why do you give a damn what I do?”

“You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” There was bitterness in Kelly’s tone now—a bitterness she couldn’t hide. She’d had no fantasies about her mother being here for any sort of peacemaking or family bonding. She’d never really thought her mother was particularly fond of her, and she’d been sure of it after her father died. An obsessive need for justice had consumed the woman, hardening her softer feelings, until she’d completely tossed her daughter aside, leaving her alone in a little apartment to make her own way in the world.

Kelly had learned that lesson well, and any maternal feelings her mother had ever had were obviously completely deadened now.

“You’re my blood,” her mother said, pinning her with a cool gaze. “And that’s more important than you think.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll hear you out, but I’m an adult now, and I make my own decisions about my life.” Kelly was pleased when she sounded calm and confident, since she felt nothing of the kind. “Who was the guy in the park?”

“His name is Caleb Marshall.”

If Kelly expected the identity of the sexy, arrogant man to be significant, she was sorely disappointed. She blinked. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Yes. If you loved your father at all, you would know who it is.”