The One Safe Place. Kathleen O'Brien

a noisy flutter.

      The little boy was chasing the dog, making periodic futile attempts to snag the leash. His pinched face was as serious as a judge, and he never took his eyes off the puppy, as if his life depended on catching him.

      The woman was chasing the boy, stumbling over clumsy ducks who waddled into her path. “Spencer! Tigger! Stop! Please, sweetheart. Stop.”

      At the same instant, Reed observed his friend Parker rounding the corner, his arms full of suitcases, which he promptly dropped when he spied the chaos before him.

      “Spencer, don’t,” Parker called out, echoing the woman. Then he noticed Reed standing at the clinic door and gave him a sheepish grin. “This isn’t exactly how the introductions were supposed to go, but that great-looking lady down there is your new housekeeper.”

      “So I gathered.”

      Parker’s grin deepened. “Well? It’s your pond. Your ducks. And you’re the superhero in this story. You’re the gallant protector.”

      “Damn it, Parker, I knew you had a hidden agenda here. I am nobody’s superhero, and you damn well know it.”

      “Okay, okay.” Parker looked meek. “But you’re in your work clothes, while I, unfortunately, am wearing Sarah’s favorite overpriced suit. Maybe you should…um…do something?”

      With a dark glance at Parker—a glance that reminded him whose idea all this had been in the first place—Reed moved toward the pond, which seemed to be churning with wings and webbed feet.

      Suddenly, without warning, the dog took a flying leap into the pond and began to paddle furiously toward the nearest mallard.

      Without a moment’s hesitation, the little boy barreled in after him, making a hell of a splash.

      And, of course, the woman followed frantically.

      She probably thought the boy was in danger. She couldn’t know, of course, that the pond was a mere two feet deep. The puppy was the only one who couldn’t touch the bottom quite easily.

      Reed started to lope toward them, but Faith looked over, her lovely mouth pressed tight, her wide gaze embarrassed. She shook her head.

      “No, please,” she said. “It’s okay.”

      He stopped. Her voice was low and pleasant, a little husky—the kind of voice that drove men wild without even trying. But it was emphatic. She was already embarrassed, and she did not want to be “rescued.”

      So he honored that, standing at the edge of the pond, watching in case anyone slipped on the way out.

      Now that her clothes were drenched, he couldn’t help noticing that her body was spectacular. He glanced at Parker suspiciously, wondering if his friend had known that Faith Constable was a bona fide beauty when he decided she should hide out at Autumn House. It would be just like him to try a little matchmaking.

      But Parker looked every bit as mesmerized as Reed felt. Parker might be happily married, but that didn’t mean he was blind. And, even soaking wet—maybe especially soaking wet—this woman was enough to drive an army to its knees.

      “Please,” she called out again. “I don’t want you to get wet, too, Dr. Fairmont. We’re fine, really.”

      She was holding out her hand to stop him, and Reed realized he must have unconsciously taken another step toward her. He reined himself in with effort.

      She was right, of course. They were fine. Spencer had quickly caught the dog, who wriggled in his arms, ecstatically licking mud from his chin. Faith put her arm across the boy’s wet, bony shoulder and bent down, ignoring the water, to give him something that was a cross between a hug and a stern talking to.

      It was quite a scene, the two drenched and muddy creatures standing knee deep in water, their clothes ruined, their hair streaming in their faces. And all around them, the ducks paddled peacefully, staring straight ahead with stately boredom, as if, sadly, nothing interesting ever happened on their little pond.

      Just then, Justine appeared at Reed’s elbow, chewing on some spearmint-scented gum, her sleeping baby propped on her shoulder.

      “Wow,” she said without much inflection, scanning the weird tableau before them. “That half-drowned thing in the pond is your ‘fox’?”

      “No.” Reed shook his head slowly, and then, seeing that Faith’s minilecture was over, he began to move a little closer. Maybe he could just lend a hand, just make sure they could climb out without any further dunking.

      He glanced back at Justine briefly with a small smile. “Actually,” he said, “that’s my new housekeeper.”

      Justine stared a minute, and then she chuckled, stroking her baby’s cheek softly.

      “Wow,” she said again as she turned to go back into the clinic. “And I thought you were nuts for hiring me!”

      CHAPTER THREE

      FAITH HAD NEVER BEEN so humiliated in her life. What a great first impression! She couldn’t imagine what Reed Fairmont must think.

      She had to fight the urge to come staggering out of the pond, dripping mud all over everyone, and start compulsively overexplaining, overapologizing, overreacting.

      She hadn’t realized that Tigger was essentially being theatrical and never had any intention of massacring Dr. Fairmont’s ducks. Tigger wasn’t a bird dog. He was just a puppy with too much energy, but for a minute she’d forgotten that.

      And she hadn’t, of course, realized how shallow the pond was. She had been too focused on the fact that Spencer wasn’t a strong swimmer. He was just six years old, and if he’d slipped beneath the black-gold water, she might not have been able to find him in time.

      But, though these were good reasons, they weren’t the real reasons, and she knew it. The real reason Spencer had overreacted to the fear of losing Tigger, and the real reason she had been so afraid of losing Spencer, was simply that they had lost too much already.

      They weren’t like other people anymore. Their antennae were always subtly tuned to the disaster frequency. They had seen how swiftly tragedy could strike—even on a sunny summer morning, even in your own home, even while people were making peanut butter sandwiches—and that knowledge had changed them forever.

      But that wasn’t the kind of thing you walked right up to a total stranger and began explaining. “Hello, nice to meet you, sorry about the ducks, but you see my nephew and I have developed this disaster mentality.”

      Impossible. So instead she put her arm around Spencer’s shoulder and guided him toward the bank of the pond. She stroked his hair back from his forehead, and then did the same to her own. Her stitches hurt—she shouldn’t have let them get wet—but she ignored the pain.

      She summoned up all her dignity and looked at Reed Fairmont with her best imitation of a normal smile.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We seem to have made a terrible mess.”

      The man in front of her smiled, too. It was such a warm, sympathetic smile that for a minute Faith thought maybe Reed Fairmont did understand everything. Maybe he knew about how fear seemed to follow them everywhere, even to Firefly Glen, how they heard its whisper in the song of the birds, in the rustle of the wind and the slither of the rain, and even in the kiss of the sunset.

      But that was ridiculous, of course. Reed was a doctor. That smile was probably just part of his reassuring bedside manner.

      “It’s no problem,” he said. “I’m just sorry you must be so uncomfortable.”

      Her next thought was that he was a surprisingly young, attractive man. If anything, even more attractive than the elegant Parker Tremaine. She looked from one man to the other curiously.

      Firefly Glen must have some kind of sex-appeal potion in its water.

      Detective