Chapter One
It had been a typical, busy week at work, ending with a typical, frantic Friday. All indications pointed to a typical, restful weekend in Oklahoma City’s typical, quiet suburb of Warr Acres.
Until she got home.
Anna Collins pulled into her driveway Friday evening and put the car in park. With the engine still running, she got out and walked slowly to the mailbox on her front porch. She wanted to run, but that would have been unseemly.
Be there, be there.
When she reached into the mailbox, her hand trembled. She fingered the envelopes, then carefully pulled them out. A bill from Oklahoma Gas and Electric. A coupon for ladies’ day at a local muffler shop. A long brown envelope from—
It came. It came.
With a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, Anna hugged the envelope with the return address of the University of Central Oklahoma to her chest and sighed deeply. It came. Finally. Her admission form.
All she had to do now was fill it out, mail it in with her high school transcript and college entrance exam test scores, then wait to hear if she’d been admitted. There should be no problem there. Then she would enroll and start classes.
Finally. Anna Lee Collins was going to college.
Since childhood she had dreamed of going to college. Dreaming wasn’t something Anna Collins normally allowed herself, but this one had been virtually impossible to squelch. It had also been nearly impossible to achieve. She was thirty years old, and just now applying for admission. It had taken her that long to pay off her parents’ debts, straighten out her life, her brother’s life, her own finances.
But she had the money now. It was finally going to happen. Even though she would have to keep working during the day and attend classes at night, she couldn’t be happier. The accounting degree she coveted was within her grasp.
College! I’m going to college!
Still clutching the envelope tightly in one hand, Anna whirled and took two skipping hops before recovering her sense of decorum and walking sedately back to the driveway. She pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the garage door. After all these years, raising the door shouldn’t be so difficult, but it was old, heavy and liked to stick in damp weather. In Oklahoma, it was always damp. She and the door both groaned with the effort it took to raise it. Then Anna groaned again at the sight that greeted her.
Her brother’s motorcycle.
“No,” she said with a quiet moan of despair. Then she uttered a quick prayer for forgiveness. She loved Ben. Really she did. But...but...
But nothing. Just because he’d come home unannounced—again—didn’t mean he’d come home for money. Again. Did it?
If he had come for money, what would she do? She had budgeted herself so tightly for the next few years that she knew she didn’t have a penny to spare. But she had never told Ben no before. Was it fair to start now, with no warning?
Anna chewed on her bottom lip. When she caught herself, she quit. Standing in the garage worrying wasn’t doing any good. She stepped back out onto the driveway and tugged the door down. With his motorcycle parked right in the middle of the one-car garage, there was no room for her eighteen-year-old Chevy.
She shut the car engine off, gathered her keys and purse, and went back to the front door, the precious envelope from U.C.O. still clutched in her hand. She entered the house quietly in case Ben was sleeping. If he’d ridden all night to get home, which was usually the case, he would be sacked out on the couch or his bed, facedown and dead to the world for maybe as long as eighteen hours. Why any sane person would deliberately choose to punish himself that way, she would never understand. He thought it was a lark to drive all night, and he loved nothing more than to sleep all day.
Sure enough, there he was, sprawled facedown on the living room couch, apparently dead to the world. He wore nothing but a pair of ratty, faded jeans, the seat of which was worn white and thin. A white T-shirt lay draped over a duffel bag sitting neatly against the wall. Beside it were a pair of brown leather boots, a small black shaving kit, a screaming yellow helmet and...a guitar? When had he started playing the guitar?
To Anna’s sense of orderliness, the room was a mess. But for Ben, it was actually quite tidy. If he’d been home longer than sixty seconds his belongings were usually strewn from one end of the house to the other. The last time, he’d even had the audacity to stack a pyramid of empty beer cans on her oak-and-glass coffee table sometime during the night while she’d slept.
Oh, the tongue-lashing she’d given him, not only for that, but for having come home drunk the night before and parking his motorcycle in her flower bed.
There had been no repeat of that sort of thing, thank heaven. And now here he was, being neat—for him, at least—with his belongings. It was, by all appearances, a miracle.
She shook her head in wonder and closed the front door behind her softly so as not to wake him. No telling how far away he’d come from this time. Judging by the new lighter streaks in his dark brown hair and the golden tan on his bare back, he may have come from the beach. She just had no idea which one; East Coast, West Coast, or the Gulf. And he’d been working out, too. She didn’t remember his back and arms being quite so muscular the last time he was home.
“Ben?”
Nothing. Not even a groan.
Anna shrugged. She should be used to the way he dropped into her life whenever the mood struck him. Which was when he was broke. He was twenty-four years old. When was he going to settle down, get a job, grow up?
She frowned and headed for her bedroom to change clothes. She prayed he didn’t need money this time. He’d promised, after that last business with dog racing, of all things, that he would stop gambling, never ask her for money again. That had been more than a year ago, and so far, he’d kept his word. Maybe all her hard work would pay off and he wouldn’t end up just like Daddy after all.
Anna tucked her precious envelope in her purse and placed the purse on her dresser.
What would she do if he was here for money? What would she tell him?
After removing her gray linen skirt and jacket and making sure they hung straight on their hangers, she slipped off her tailored, white cotton blouse, her mind worrying over Ben’s arrival. She knew, deep down inside, that he wouldn’t have come unless he wanted something from her. And the only thing he ever wanted from her was money. It hurt, but that was Ben.
She slipped on jeans, a cotton shirt, socks and sneakers, then tiptoed past the living room to the kitchen. By the time she had baked a potato in the microwave and tossed herself a salad, she had managed to put her anxiety over Ben from her mind. She would worry about what he wanted when he told her what he wanted.
As soon as she cleaned up the kitchen, she went to the small desk in the corner of the den and filled out the college admission form. Three times during the process, she had to stop and calm herself so her hand wouldn’t shake with excitement. She didn’t want to take the chance of messing up the form. Not now, when she was finally about to realize her dream.
If her stomach clenched at the thought of the damage Ben could do to her dream, she ignored it. He wasn’t in trouble. Not this time. Surely not this time.
Wondering when he’d developed that cute little snore, she left him sleeping on the couch until the next morning. By then she decided he’d slept long enough. She leaned over him and touched his warm, bare shoulder. “You’ve been sleeping forever. Get up and I’ll fix your breakfast.”
He shifted and groaned and stretched, one of those quivering, all-over body stretches. Even his bare toes hanging off the end of the couch curled and flexed. With his face still buried in the pillow, he muttered in a deep, gravelly voice, “You’re a saint, Mom.”
Mom?
Then he rolled over and gave her a slow, lazy grin. Then slowly he opened his eyes.
It was impossible to determine who was more startled, Anna, or the man on her couch. The man she’d never seen before in her life.
With a scream, she jerked away, fell backward over the coffee table, and landed hard on her rear.
The stranger on the couch jumped up and reached across the coffee table toward her. “Are you all right?”
Seeing him lunge toward her, Anna screamed again and shoved against the coffee table with her feet to push herself out of his reach. The sharp edge of the glass top struck him forcefully in the shins, but she was too terrified to appreciate his grunt of pain.
If she tried for the front door she would have to pass right next to him and he’d be able to grab her. If she tried for the back door she’d be trapped in the garage, as the side door stuck and the big door was slow to open.
All of this was assuming her legs would carry her that far in either direction. Since they felt about as substantial as cooked spaghetti, it seemed doubtful.
That left the phone. She had to get to the phone.
“Don’t touch me,” she warned, her chest heaving, her mind threatening to go blank with fear.
“Okay,” he said breathlessly, grabbing his shins as he fell back onto the couch. “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. “Damn,” he muttered, rubbing both legs. “That hurt.”
She didn’t care if she’d broken both his legs. While he was distracted by his pain she pushed herself to her feet and whirled for the wall phone at the end of the kitchen cabinet. She grabbed up the receiver and pressed the nine—
“You don’t need to do that,” the stranger said in a rush. “My name’s Gavin Marshall.”
She missed, hit the two, and had to disconnect and start over. Learning his name did nothing to reassure her. Nine—one—
“I’m a friend of your brother’s.”
By the time his words registered through the static of fear in her head—Ben? The man had something to do with Ben?—it was too late to stop her finger from pressing the one a second time.
She whipped her head around to stare at the stranger who’d invaded her home. He wasn’t coming after her as she’d feared. He hadn’t even moved from the couch.
With her heart thundering, she stabbed her finger over the switch hook to disconnect the call before the 9-1-1 operator could answer. “How do I know you’re Ben’s friend?”
The man pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and tossed it toward her. It landed at her feet. “I guess if he’s never mentioned me, I can’t prove we’re friends, but that should at least prove my identity.”
Anna’s hands shook as she bent and retrieved the wallet. California driver’s license, half a dozen gold and platinum credit cards and some sort of union card all proclaimed him to be who he said he was, Gavin Marshall, of Santa Monica, California.
She compared the driver’s license picture to the man across the room. It wasn’t fair, she thought, for a man that good-looking to have such a good photo on his license. It looked almost like a studio portrait, the way it showed off those chiseled good looks, his dark, sun-streaked hair, those startlingly blue eyes, a mouth that did funny things to her breathing. He was smiling in the photo. Lord, if he ever smiled at her like that...
What was she thinking? She didn’t care what the man’s smile looked like. “Where is Ben?”
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “But unless he got here before me and has already left, he should be showing up anytime now.”
“You mean, you didn’t come with him?”
“No.”
“No, what?” she snapped, her nerves still frayed despite the lessening of her fear. “No, you didn’t mean that, or no, you didn’t come with him?”
“No, I didn’t come with him.”
“Then what are you doing with his motorcycle? What are you doing in my house? How did you get in?”
“Ben gave me his keys.”
Anna blinked. “Ben never lets anyone drive that motorcycle. Never.”
The man on her couch shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too. But he wanted to drive my car, so he gave me his keys. I’m meeting him here to swap back.”
“Here? You came all the way from California to swap vehicles with Ben?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Well, if that didn’t sound like something Ben would think up—“Hey, buddy, let’s meet halfway across the country and trade rides”—nothing did. And as she thought about it, she realized that the name Gavin did ring a bell in the back of her mind. She couldn’t remember why, exactly, but it seemed to be something Ben had told her that she, for once, had approved of.
This man must truly be a friend of Ben’s. Not one of the creeps he gambled with, but an actual friend.
Relief weakened her knees. Before she could fall to the floor she pulled out a dinette chair and sat. “You scared ten years off my life.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. When I got in I was hot and tired. I just thought I’d rest for a few minutes...” He leaned over and snagged his T-shirt from atop the duffel bag. When he poked his head through the neck hole he looked around the room and frowned. “Hell, surely I didn’t really sleep clear through to Saturday.”
“Surely you did,” she snapped. Now that her fear was abating—after all, she knew this man, more or less—anger and confusion swamped her. She didn’t like being afraid. In fact, she’d never been so terrified in her life as when he’d rolled over and she had realized he wasn’t Ben. It made her angry that he had scared her. It made her whopping mad.
The anger was alien to her—Anna didn’t normally waste her time or energy on emotions—but it was there and undeniable.
“So when Ben wasn’t here,” she said hotly, “you just decided to let yourself into my house while no one was home? That’s...unconscionable.”
At least he had the good grace to look sheepish. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“It was highly presumptuous.”
“Yes, ma’am. And rude, and tacky, and unkind to scare you the way I did. I’m sorry. I got in about noon. I was afraid if I hung around on your front porch too long your neighbors might call the police on me.”
It was almost the truth, Gavin admitted to himself. As much of the truth as he was willing to give her for the time being.
Damn, he really hadn’t meant to scare her half to death. He had to assume her face wasn’t always as pale as milk. He’d scared the color clear out of her cheeks. And she was still shaking. Just a little, but enough to see. He didn’t much like what her fear said about him. He hadn’t come here to terrorize some innocent woman. If she was innocent.
Gavin assumed she was. It would be just like that irresponsible brother of hers to let her take the heat for his shenanigans. In fact, according to what Ben himself had told him more than once, it was just like him.
But she wasn’t totally blameless. She was the one, Gavin knew, who had taught Ben, through always bailing him out of trouble, that he never had to worry about dealing with the consequences of his own actions. His sister would deal with them for him. According to the stories Ben told—with pride rather than the rueful shame he should have felt—Anna Collins had consistently reinforced Ben’s irresponsibility time and time again.
She was Ben’s enabler. Like Aunt Marilyn was for Danny. Like the loved one who always covered up and made excuses for the alcoholic, she had only managed to make matters worse.
Scratch innocent. Anna Collins was definitely culpable.
She met his gaze straight-on despite the remnants of fear that darkened those wide gray eyes. She might be at the root of Gavin’s current problem, but a man had to admire courage in a woman, especially when she was barely half his size.
“You’re right,” she told him. “Seeing a man hanging around my front porch all afternoon would probably have sent several of my neighbors to call the police.”
“Now it looks like I’ll be talking to them anyway.”
“My neighbors?”
“The police.”
“Why?” She blinked like a baby owl.
“You dialed 9-1-1, didn’t you?”
“I hung up before anyone answered.”
Gavin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Once you dial all three numbers, they know who called. They usually send a car anyway just to make sure everything’s all right.”
Terrific, Anna thought with an inward groan. Just what she needed to make her day complete. The police. Her neighbors were going to love that.
It was barely 9:00 a.m. and she was exhausted. Terror, she assumed, did that to a person. Terror, and anger.
Well, she had time for neither. Regardless of the fact that Gavin Marshall had scared the wits out of her, he was Ben’s friend. She remembered that now. He shouldn’t have let himself into her house, but he was here now. The least she could do was show him a little hospitality. Not that she was any good at small talk, but she would give it her best. If, she thought, she could ignore that T-shirt he had pulled on. She remembered enough from Ben’s teen years to recognize that the Grateful Dead was the name of a rock group, but while she knew nothing of their music, she found their name distasteful in the extreme.
But since he’d left home six years ago Ben had not brought any of his new friends home. She wanted the chance to know someone he would choose to call friend.
Brushing her hands together as if dusting them off, she rose from the dining table and pushed her chair back in place. “When did Ben say he would be here?”
Gavin pushed himself from the couch and stood, all six foot plus of him. “If he was coming straight here like I thought, he should have been here by Thursday night or Friday morning. Mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Be my guest. It’s through that door and to the left.” She frowned as she watched his back disappear around the corner into the hall. His wording puzzled her.
“What did you mean,” she asked when he came back a few minutes later, “if he came straight here like you thought? I thought you said this was all arranged. Didn’t he tell you when to meet him?”
Well, here we go, Gavin thought, rubbing the side of his nose. “Not exactly.” He wouldn’t lie to her, but she wasn’t going to like the truth.
Oh, he did love the way she arched that brow. “Not exactly what?” she asked.
“It wasn’t exactly arranged,” he admitted.
She folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes narrowed. “I think you’d better explain what’s going on, Mr. Marshall. Maybe I was a little hasty in hanging up the phone.”
“It’s Gavin, and no, you weren’t hasty. If I can get my car back from Ben, there won’t be any need to involve the police.”
“What?” she shrieked. “What are you saying?”
Gavin could have kicked himself. He shouldn’t have put it quite that way. But he was damn good and mad at Ben Collins. The kid had gone over the line this time and somebody had to put the fear of God into that young man before he ended up in real trouble. Ben reminded him so much of Danny it was scary. Gavin did not want Ben ending up like Danny. If it took tough measures to prevent it—and it looked like that was exactly what it was going to take—then Gavin would just have to be tough.
“I said I came here to swap vehicles with Ben. That much is true. But the original swap—when he, uh, borrowed my car and left me his Harley—was made without my knowledge or consent.”
Anna gripped the back of the chair she’d just vacated. Gavin Marshall might have said borrowed, but what Anna heard in his voice was something else entirely, something she refused to accept. She forced herself to breathe slowly. “Tell me,” she demanded. “Just come out with it and tell me what’s going on.”
Gavin let out a long breath. “Why don’t we sit down?”
“Why don’t you just tell me what it is you’re trying to avoid telling me?”
Gavin felt as if he were about to go tiptoeing through a minefield, but there was no help for it. He didn’t want to chance Ben getting to her with some sob story and her giving her brother the money he needed. This time Ben was going to have to solve his own problems, by damn.
Gavin crossed the room and pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table from where Anna stood. There he paused and waited.
With a reluctant shrug, she finally pulled out her chair and sat again. “All right, I’m sitting.”
Gavin sat and faced her. “First of all, you have to understand that I meant what I said. Ben and I are friends. Good friends.”
With a toss of her head, Anna met his gaze squarely. “I assume there’s a but.”
“Yeah, there’s a but. He went too far this time when he took my car.”
Anna lowered her gaze to the table rather than look him in the eye any longer. “You’ve said borrowed, and you’ve said took.”
“He didn’t ask, Anna,” Gavin said as gently as he could. “He didn’t bother asking if he could take my car. He knows I would have said no.”
She glanced up at him. “A really good friend, huh? And you wouldn’t lend him your car?”
“My ’57 Vette?” His voice rose in protest. “Not only no, but hell no. I wouldn’t let my own mother drive that car. And Ben knows it.”
Anna’s stomach tightened. As little as she knew about cars, even she knew that a ’57 Corvette was considered a classic. Men, as she understood, were touchy about their toys.
Ben, Ben, what have you done?
The thought made her feel so disloyal that shame washed through her. Ben was just young, just a little irresponsible. He wasn’t a bad person. He had a tendency to gamble, but he was more careful these days not to bet money he didn’t have. He promised he’d be more careful. He wouldn’t do anything really bad. He wouldn’t steal a car.
“Ben’s not a thief,” she said, her voice wavering.
Gavin winced. The look of pain and pleading on her face was almost enough to make a stone weep, and Gavin was no stone. But he couldn’t let her get to him. If he softened toward her or Ben on this, it would be Ben who ultimately paid the price.
“He took my keys off my counter when I wasn’t looking and left town. He left a message on my voice mail saying he was on his way to get the money he owes me.”
Anna’s eyes slid closed. Her throat worked up and down on a swallow. “What...” She swallowed again. “What do you want from me? I don’t...have much money.”
“I wouldn’t care if you did. It’s your brother I want.”
“But you can see he’s not here.” There was that pain, that pleading again.
“Not yet. But he’ll come.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because this is where he always comes when he’s in trouble, isn’t it?”
Her eyes widened. “How—What makes you say that?”
“Ben. He talks about you to his friends.”
The lines of pain on her face deepened, her eyes darkened. “He’s not a thief. He’s not.”
She sounded to Gavin as though she were trying to convince herself rather than him. But he didn’t really think Ben Collins was a thief. Ben was younger than any twenty-four-year-old should be. He was irresponsible as hell. And despite having stood on the curb with his mouth hanging open while Ben had taken off in his car, despite Ben still owing him money, Gavin still had trouble believing there was anything malicious or criminal in Ben’s makeup.
No, the car was a prank. Ben was good at pranks. Sometimes too good, and this time Gavin was going to teach the little jerk a lesson before he ended up pulling one of his pranks on the wrong person—or borrowing money from the wrong person—and getting himself into more trouble than he could handle.
“A few months ago he borrowed money from me and failed to pay it back at the promised time. Two days ago he stole my car from my driveway and hasn’t been seen since. What would you call it?”
The woman stared at him like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights. “A misunderstanding?”
“Nice try, but no.”
“A...a prank?”
Ah, so maybe she did know her brother after all. “A damned expensive prank, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t know. You have his motorcycle. They aren’t cheap.”
“You should know. I’ll bet you paid for most of it. But neither’s a ’57 Vette.”
Slowly her expression changed from pain and fear to confusion. “How much could a forty-some-year-old car be worth compared to that motorcycle?”
Gavin knew his mouth had fallen open, but for a minute he didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Then he broke out laughing. “That was a good one,” he managed. “For a minute, you really had me going.”
Her head tilted to one side as her brow furrowed. “Had you going? I don’t understand.”
Gavin chuckled and shook his head. “You can’t get me twice with the same joke. I’m not that big a sucker.”
Her expression changed this time to irritation. “I’m sure I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. But since your disagreement is with my brother, and he is obviously not here, I’ll thank you to clean up this mess you’ve made in my living room and vacate my house.”
It was Gavin’s turn to tilt his head and frown. Mess? He glanced around the living room at the things he’d brought in with him. What mess? He shook his head. “I hate to disappoint you, but I can’t leave until Ben shows up.”
With her chin jutting out, she rose from the chair and aligned it up against the table where it had been. “There’s no reason for you to wait here for him. I’m quite certain they have telephones in Santa Monica.”
“So they do. But your little brother knows he’s up to his irresponsible little neck in trouble this time, and if there’s one thing I know about Ben Collins, it’s that when he’s in trouble, he runs home to big sister. I’m sorry, Anna, but it looks like you’re stuck with me until he gets here.”
“You can’t mean that!”
“I don’t have much choice.”
She gaped, her mouth working like a fish out of water. “You can’t stay in my house.”
“I have to,” he told her. “I promise I won’t be a bit of trouble. You won’t even know I’m around.”
Her eyes widened with what could only be horror as she looked at his gear lined up against the wall. “You’re not serious. This is a joke. I don’t know what kind, but it has to be a joke.”
“If it’s a joke, I wish somebody would tell me the punch line,” he said irritably.
Slowly, with her eyes bulging, she said, one drawn-out word at a time, “Oh...my...word.”
“I’m sorry, Anna, but I have to be here when Ben shows up.”
“You can’t stay here,” she said again.
Okay, he thought, grinding his teeth. He’d tried being reasonable, and she wasn’t going for it. Not that he could blame her, but he wasn’t going to let any of them—her, Ben, nor himself—off easily. It was time to get a little tougher. “Since I outweigh you by at least seventy-five pounds, I don’t think there’s much you can do about it. I’m not leaving until I know where my car is and until I know that I’m getting it back.”
Her spine snapped straight, like the string on a bow that had just fired an arrow. “We’ll just see about that.” She turned and marched toward the phone again.
“You’ve already called the police once.”
“This time I won’t hang up.”
A little tougher wasn’t getting it, Gavin acknowledged. Anna Collins was not the pushover Ben had led him to believe. He was going to have to bluff, and bluff good. “I haven’t filed a stolen car report yet. I don’t think you want me to.”
She whirled on him. “Am I supposed to just agree to this crazy scheme of yours? For all I know, you’re making this whole story up. How do I know you haven’t murdered Ben and stolen his motorcycle? How do I know you haven’t come here to kill me?”
“I’m likely to if you don’t quit calling that bike a motorcycle like it was some ten-horsepower glorified lawn mower. It’s a Harley-Davidson, for cryin’ out loud. A Harley is not just a motorcycle. I’m not here to murder you, or rape you, or anything else dastardly, and I didn’t kill your brother—yet.”
Both of her eyebrows climbed upward. “I’m supposed to take the word of a complete stranger who’s broken into my house?”
“I didn’t break in,” he said with disgust. “I have Ben’s keys.”
Her brows lowered and drew together as she narrowed her eyes. “Yes, you said he left them when he took yours. That sounds very much like a trade to me, rather than grand theft auto.”
“It might have been his idea of a trade, but I never agreed to it. He’s out joyriding in a very expensive car that doesn’t belong to him, and so help me, if he puts so much as a ding in it, I’ll wring his neck.”
“All this?” she shrieked. “Over an old car?”
“A classic ’57 Vette in mint condition is not an old car.”
“Have you sought counseling for this unhealthy attachment you have for wheeled vehicles?”
He wasn’t going to have any teeth left if he didn’t quit grinding them. “Aside from the car itself, there were things in it that I need back.”
She planted her hands on her hips.
Nice hips, he thought.
“What kinds of things?” she demanded.
Irritated that he would notice her hips when she was insulting his intelligence, his mental stability and his Vette, he caught himself grinding his teeth again. “The kinds of things that are none of your business.”
“I beg to differ. You’ve accused my brother of a crime, you’ve barged into my home uninvited—”
“Barging is usually done without an invitation, otherwise it wouldn’t be barging, would it? And I’ve apologized for that a dozen times already.”
“You can go stay in a hotel. I’ll call you if Ben shows up.”
Gavin was shaking his head before she finished. “Anna, I can’t do that. If I’m not right here when he shows up, either you’ll tell him I’m here and he’ll leave, or you’ll give him the money to pay me off. I don’t want you getting him out of trouble this time. He’s past the age when he should be accepting the responsibility for his own actions and not running to you for help all the time.”
Anna opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. It was hard to argue with the truth, no matter how much that truth stung.
Outside at the curb, car doors slammed. She glanced out the sheers on the front window and stiffened. The police.
What was she going to do? Tell them the truth and risk getting Ben in trouble, or go along with this stranger and pretend nothing was wrong?
Her instinct for survival warned her not to take a chance with her own safety. For all she knew, Gavin Marshall could be a serial killer on a cross-country spree.
But another instinct even stronger, the instinct to protect her brother, rose up in her, along with a voice in the back of her head. Both told her that Gavin Marshall was telling the truth, and that he would not harm her.
The man looked determined enough, big enough to do anything. Dare she trust that voice in her head?
Yet there was that faint memory of Ben telling her what a good influence his friend Gavin was, how much he looked up to the man, how much the man was helping him get his act together.
That didn’t sound like a man who’d come here to harm her. Did it?
Before she could decide, two police officers stepped onto her front porch and rang her doorbell.