Mackenzie's Promise. Catherine Spencer

      It was fear, not rules, which held him back now, though. Fear that all he could do at this stage was discover she’d left it too late. Fear that, at the end of it all, the only thing she’d be taking back to her sister was a miniature white casket holding a baby’s remains.

      He couldn’t go through that a second time.

      Restlessly he paced the length of the deck and back, then turned for one last glance down at the beach. It lay deserted, not just directly below the house, but as far as the eye could see to either side. Not a living soul marred the two-mile expanse of sand he called his backyard.

      She’d given up. Gone back to wherever she’d come from, or else in search of someone else’s help. He could eat dinner with a clear conscience. Praise the Lord!

      His kitchen faced southeast, with a patio beyond the sliding glass door which caught the morning sun. He kept his barbecue out there, a gas-powered luxury model designed for year-round use regardless of the weather, but especially suited for an evening such as this.

      He’d pulled a steak from the freezer and was in the process of searching the refrigerator for salad fixings when the bronze knocker on his front door struck the solid plank of oak. Not loudly or confidently or imperatively, the way he’d have approached it, but with a timid little pflunk!

      The sixth sense which had served him so long and so well during his years on the force clicked into gear. Muttering a few choice words not fit to be heard in decent company, he strode through the living area to the hall, already resigned to what he knew he’d find waiting outside.

      “Please,” was all she said when he opened the door, and he was lost. Lost in the bruised shade of her eyes, more blue than green in the descending twilight. And lost in that simple entreaty which spoke more poignantly than a flood of more urgent and articulate pleas.

      “I should have realized you couldn’t disappear into thin air quite that fast,” he said, gesturing her inside.

      She was shivering, pale, and just about ready to drop in her tracks. He grasped her upper arm and was shocked at how chilled her skin felt—far more than the cooling outside temperature merited. Shocked, too, by her air of frailty. “When did you last eat?” he inquired sharply.

      She thought about it for a second, then said, “I stopped for coffee this morning.”

      “I’m talking about a square meal.”

      “I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders indifferently. “Last night, I guess.”

      Mac swore again, and propelled her to the leather couch in front of the fireplace. “Sit!” he ordered, and after she responded to the command like a well-trained member of the dog squad, he grabbed the knitted afghan his mother had sent him and flung it around her shoulders.

      She curved herself into its warmth and blinked. She had the longest damned eyelashes he’d ever seen. Indulging in a few more choice obscenities—old police habits died hard—he knelt to put a match to the wood and kindling already laid in the fire grate then, while the flames took hold, returned to the kitchen and heated water to make a mug of his special hot rum toddy.

      “Here,” he said, marching back to the living room some five minutes later. But she was already zonked out. Head cushioned against the arm of the couch, feet tucked under her, she slept like a baby.

      Parking the rum toddy on the edge of the hearth, he piled a couple more logs on the fire, then leaned against the mantel shelf and rolled his eyes in disgust. He’d grown accustomed to his comfort zone, in which he was responsible only for himself; accountable only to himself. Still, he retained just enough humanity to be touched by her troubles.

      A child had gone missing, for God’s sake, and even he—especially he!—knew the burden that cast on a person’s shoulders. And he was afraid. Afraid of his response to a woman so full of need that someone had to step in on her behalf, because she couldn’t do it alone. Afraid because, of all the people she could have turned to, she’d chosen him.

      He’d looked into her eyes and remembered them not for their clarity of color or symmetry of shape, but for the faith he’d seen in them, and for the grief. And he was afraid of failing again.

      “Jeez!” he growled. “Why me? Of all the people living along this stretch of coastline, why the hell did I have to open my door to this particular stray?”

      She stirred. Puffed a little breath between her lips. Sighed. And settled more comfortably into the corner of the couch.

      Sighing himself, he stalked back to the kitchen and yanked open the freezer in search of another steak. No point in deluding himself. She was there for the duration, whether or not he liked it.

      But lest there be any doubt, he liked it not one bit and intended driving the message home to her as soon as she was alert enough to comprehend it—which, given her present comatose state, was unlikely to be anytime soon.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE eerie sense that she was being watched—scrutinized with unblinking intent, in fact—penetrated the mists of sleep and lent an even greater edge of danger to the fitful dreams chasing her.

      Jarring awake, she sat up too suddenly and took a moment to get her bearings. Leather warm and smooth as satin against her bare skin, a soft wool shawl caressing her shoulders, a tingling numbness creeping down her right leg. Her face touched by the heat from a fire whose flames danced in reflection on the wall of windows to her left. A framed painting above the mantelpiece, of majestic evergreens marching up a mountainside. Massive beams supporting a high ceiling. Music—a Chopin nocturne, she guessed—flowing from a sound system housed in an open cabinet made of some dark wood inlaid with ivory.

      And in a tanned face of incomparable male beauty, cool watchful eyes the color of storm clouds, dissecting her, feature by feature.

      He lounged in a chair on the opposite side of the granite hearth, an old-fashioned glass one-third full held negligently in one hand. He’d showered and changed since he admitted her to the house. His hair gleamed thick and black against his skull, and she detected a faint and pleasant whiff of aftershave. He wore a long-sleeved shirt almost the exact shade of his eyes, and black cargo pants.

      Relaxed and casual, one might have been fooled into believing. Except there was nothing relaxed or casual in his unswerving observation, and she knew without a shadow of doubt that, had the need arisen, he’d have uncoiled out of that chair in a stunning blur of speed and power. He was part man, part machine; frighteningly intelligent, and terrifyingly detached.

      “How long have I been asleep?” she asked him, her voice croaking from a throat grown dry and gritty.

      “Close to an hour.”

      “You should have woken me.”

      “Why?”

      “Because…” she said, then, unable to come up with a reason that didn’t sound either affected or downright silly, drifted into silence.

      “I already told you once, ‘because’ isn’t a reason.”

      She wished he’d divert that unnerving stare to some place other than her face. She felt like a butterfly pinned under a microscope. Helpless. At his complete mercy. “I guess I was tired.”

      “I guess you were.” He shifted in the chair, glanced briefly at his glass, took a mouthful of whatever he was drinking, and resumed his inspection of her. “You’d like to tidy up,” he said, not in question but in command. “There’s a washroom to the right of the front door.”

      Normally she’d have resented his tone but it had been hours since she’d been to the toilet and nature was calling with growing insistence. Wincing, she unfolded herself from the couch and slid to her feet, the pins and needles shooting up her right leg rendering it excruciatingly sensitive to the pressure.

      “Cramps,” she offered, feeling some sort of explanation was called for as she took a lurching step forward.