Necessary Secrets. Barbara Phinney

to study his profile.

      A straight, strong nose centered his even features. Rick had that same handsome profile, but his face hadn’t had the age and life experience to season it, as Jon’s had.

      Good grief, Rick had been so young. For a second she could so clearly picture him, right where Jon now stood, his whole body focused on his task as he drove through the wet snow and mud….

      Moments before they slammed into the landslide that had been deliberately set.

      An hour or so before they’d done the unthinkable. A few hours before he’d died.

      Before she’d gotten him killed, just to satisfy a selfish, ludicrous desire.

      Sylvie swallowed the hard lump in her throat and fought off another stinging round of shameful memories. From the moment they scrambled into the back of the truck, to await the Quick Reaction Force, the truth and the official report diverged widely.

      She would never bridge them, either.

      Jon turned to face her once more. Mercifully, Rick disappeared from her mind as she watched Jon’s eyes moisten and cloud over. “Sylvie, I’m really sorry. I should never have said that crap about high school. You and Rick must have cared for each other. A lot, if you’re carrying his baby. And to watch him die….” His voice faded into a hoarse whisper. “You two were lovers. I’m only the brother.”

      Something clamped hard around her heart. She wanted nothing more than to corral the ache and the shame and all the guilty memories that dogged her every minute. She clenched her jaw, fighting the mix that wouldn’t be corralled.

      Seeing the torment, Jon swore and hauled her into his arms. She went stiff, taken aback by his sudden compassion, but he did not relent. He pulled her tighter still, pressing her head into the side of his neck, as he drove his hands and face into her short, unruly hair.

      She could smell the faded scent of his soap. He’d missed a spot when he’d shaved that morning and it scraped her temple. For one instant Jon Cahill was human, suffering like her. She’d known him for two hours and already unwanted empathy forced her arms to wrap around him.

      She tried her best to comfort him. He tightened his grip on her further, and strangely the embrace eased the aching within her instead.

      “Thank you,” he said into her hair. “Thank you for giving me this chance.”

      For the next few minutes they did nothing but hold each other. Every part of his front touched her. He’d managed to shift his feet to enclose hers, and from his ankles up, his body fed hers with comfort. The whole long, firm length of him.

      She sighed. Too soon to be offering such personal comfort, a part of her warned. He pulled back, only enough to see her face. She lifted her head, expecting to see tears still welling inside of his eyes.

      But the look wasn’t angry or grieving or anything she’d expected. Her heart reacted first, tripping up into a higher gear, as though it knew exactly what the look on his face meant before she even understood it herself.

      His eyes, already dark in color, deepened, heating and stirring embers inside of her that should be left to grow cold. They’d sparked to life once, and look where she now found herself?

      Jon’s gaze dropped to her parted lips, and then back up, slowly roaming her face, as if in search of something.

      Then, with smooth precision, Jon lowered his head. He was going to kiss her. And she wanted to feel those smooth, firm lips on hers.

      Panic burst inside of her. He didn’t want to kiss her. He couldn’t. They shouldn’t. He wasn’t thinking about it. Was he?

      As if arcing across to him, the panic flared in his own eyes. He pushed her away, driving his fingers into his hair, looking around the kitchen at everything except her.

      He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you show me what you want me to do? You can ask this Lawrence guy to show me the bunkhouse later, okay?”

      He’d nearly kissed her! What the hell was he thinking of?

      He wasn’t sure if he even liked her, for Pete’s sake. She was far from the woman he’d mentally pictured Rick would end up with. On the exterior, Sylvie seemed like most single women in positions of authority.

      But there was also a part of her that kept pushing him, provoking him…telling him both openly and subliminally that he would never learn what really happened the night Rick died.

      And still, he’d wanted to kiss her?

      Jon followed Sylvie out the door, the horror of his intentions smacking him like the dry, mountain air.

      At home, he and Rick had never been competitive. He’d been preparing for college when his mother had announced her pregnancy. He’d just turned seventeen when Rick was born, his arrival a joy in the household. Jon had accepted his younger brother from the moment Rick first spat breast milk down the back of his favorite shirt.

      This sudden need to kiss Sylvie wasn’t born of jealousy. He refused to believe that. So what the hell was it born of, then?

      Outside, the sun beat down on them. Squinting at Sylvie, he asked, “Do you have a hat? It’s hot out here. You don’t feel faint, do you?”

      Sylvie stopped at the fence that enclosed the nearest paddock. She spun her heel in the dirt to face him. “Let’s get one thing clear. First up, pregnant women can vomit at the drop of a hat and then feel like heaven for the rest of the day. I know. I’ve had eight weeks of doing just that. And secondly, I’ll let my doctor and my own good sense tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. All right?”

      Good. She’d raised that defensive wall again. He needed that. “I don’t want you to embarrass yourself in your own backyard, that’s all.”

      She returned to her walking. When they reached the small barn closest to the house, she threw open the door and stepped into the dark building. He followed.

      “I’ll give you one thing, Jon. You’re not intimidated by a tough woman, are you?”

      He stepped into the dimness after her. “There won’t be much you can do or say that will faze me, sweetheart, so don’t bother scaring up all your worst military habits to try and oust me. My ex-wife was a social worker in Toronto’s Chinatown. She was every bit as tough as you and I managed to hold my own with her.”

      “Before or after you two divorced?”

      If he’d expected capitulation, he’d have been as big a fool as he’d been during his farce of a marriage. His ex-wife had been pregnant, into her second trimester and he hadn’t even noticed. Had she hidden it that well, or had he just stopped caring?

      Ahead, Sylvie had become a shadow in the dimly lit barn. But he saw enough to notice her hand stray to her still-flat belly.

      He crushed the urge to swear. Loudly. At Sylvie. She had exactly what he wanted. She could give him Rick’s last hours, make that connection—be that connection—to his lost brother. She carried his only living relative and…she was also keeping a secret. He’d worked with enough suspects to know the difference between those who openly admitted they weren’t going to talk, and those with a secret to keep.

      But Sylvie fitted both and it pissed him off.

      Inhaling the smells of hay and animals, he became thankful that she couldn’t make out his features and guess his thoughts, in case she could read him as easily as he read her.

      As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he searched for the words to gloss over the memory of that day his ex-wife announced she was carrying some other social worker’s child. “My ability to hold my own with my wife had no bearing on our marriage or our divorce. We simply grew apart, living separate lives until she announced one day she was moving out. I couldn’t think of a single good reason for her to stay.”

      She studied his face, exactly as he expected her to. “And you’re telling me this because you want to