LITMIR.BIZ

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dark cloud that was never far behind her seem to loom directly overhead. She quickened her pace to escape it.

      Depression couldn’t be outrun, she knew, no matter how long or how hard she tried. But she could stay one step ahead of it. As long as the darkness was behind her, and not inside, she would be okay.

      Three hundred and ten days, she reminded herself. She’d worked hard to get her life back, and she’d succeeded. She wouldn’t lose herself again. She wouldn’t lose Todd.

      Cautiously, she let herself think about her husband again. The way his sandy hair fell over his eyes when he laughed. The sense of humor and compassion he’d passed to his son, even though he was gone before Todd ever really knew him. The way he made love to her so slowly, so gently, she thought it might last forever.

      Only, nothing lasted forever. She’d learned that the hard way.

      Tears filled her eyes, but they didn’t spill over. Time diminished the pain his memory caused. Each day she hurt a little less when she thought of Sam.

      Todd was what kept her going now. He was the reason she’d worked so hard these last two years to take her life back from depression.

      Muscles quivering with exertion, she plunged up the last few feet to the top of the bluff and stood with her hands on her hips, blowing hard. Forty feet below her, a winding road cut through the granite rise that made Shillings Bluff. Right on time, the yellow school bus lumbered around the turn.

      Mia started jogging again, slowly, letting the bus catch her. She sped up as it pulled even, feigned a hard run as it overtook her.

      Todd sat in the backseat, as he always did, face plastered against the rear window as he watched her. He waved and encouraged her on. She ran faster, pretending to race the bus, pretending to go all out. It was their game. Their ritual.

      With Todd bouncing in his seat, she lowered her head. Kicked harder. Stole a glance at her son, and his sweet face took her breath away as the bus pulled ahead and around a bend. She—

      Something solid—a hand—thunked between Mia’s shoulder blades. She tried to turn to see who had hit her from behind, but the blow had thrown her off balance. Her sneaker skidded on a patch of ice. Her other toe caught on a rock. She flailed.

      Mia tried to throw herself back onto the path. Away from the granite slope. She failed. She fell.

      And she screamed, but no one heard. Or if they did, they didn’t care.

      Chapter 2

      Crap, crap, crap.

      Ty Hansen cursed all the way to his car, but the sound was lost in the swoosh of the north wind that sailed right through his leather bomber jacket and chilled him to the bone. Snow-laden clouds hung low overhead, ready to dump their payload. Already the first tiny flakes stung his face like icy needles. He shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders against the miserable weather.

      Talk about tap dancing in minefields.

      Why the hell did he have to be the one to draw the Kaiser’s niece as a patient?

      “The Kaiser,” as Karl Serrat was called by the staff when he was out of hearing range, oversaw all the residents in the psychiatric specialty program at the Massachusetts Hospital of Mental Health. They all considered him a taskmaster, but he seemed to ride Ty particularly hard. He also held Ty’s entire future—his completion of the residency program required before taking the exams from the American Board of Medical Specialties to become a licensed psychiatrist—in his twisted grasp.

      The man was just looking for an excuse to kick him out. Karl Serrat had been on Ty’s back since their first meeting.

      With the snow, the drive to Eternal took an hour and a half. Stomping his boots and shrugging out of his jacket at the ER nurses’ station, he asked the large-boned African-American woman behind the desk for the psych consult file and plowed down the hallway, reading the patient history as he walked.

      He tapped twice with his knuckle on the door to evaluation room 5, counted to three to give her a few seconds to pull herself together, then took a deep breath and poked his head in. “Ms. Serrat, may I come in?”

      The hell with Karl Serrat. He had a job to do and it didn’t matter if the woman waiting for him was Serrat’s niece or Mona Lisa. She was a patient, and he would do his best by her, consequences be damned.

      Fixing that thought firmly in his mind, he pasted on a smile and said “Hi, I’m Dr.—”

      The woman who turned to look at him from her place by the window nearly made him forget his own name. It wasn’t her beauty so much that stymied him, though she had that, as her intensity.

      She stood as far away from the door as she could get. If she hadn’t been holding a disposable cup, he was sure her arms would have been folded tightly over her chest, fingers fisted. Her tousled mahogany hair was thrown back over her shoulders and her full mouth pursed slightly. Her eyes, as lush, green and mysterious as a tropical rain forest, glinted with tightly controlled anger.

      Obviously she’d figured out he wasn’t here to give a second opinion on her bumps and bruises. Yet, instead of pouting about a psychological evaluation, or retreating inside herself, there was a challenge in her eyes.

      The woman wasn’t just all good looks. She had moxie.

      “Dr.—?” she asked, hooking one eyebrow.

      “Hansen. Ms. uh—” He cleared his throat. “Serrat.”

      She studied him critically. “My uncle sent you, I assume.”

      “Uh, yeah.” Brilliant. Very eloquent.

      Sighing in resignation, she hopped up on the edge of the examination table. “Well, let’s get this over with. I have a son to get home to.” Her feet dangled off the floor, exposing the delicate bare ankles at the ends of two very long legs.

      “Sure. Uh, yeah.”

      Heaven help him.

      

      Mia had prepared herself to do battle with some pasty-skinned, condescending head-shrinker who had his name sewn over the breast pocket of his lab coat and who spoke through his nasal passages. She was ready, or she thought she was.

      Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined they’d send someone like young Dr. Handsome, here, to check up on her. One look at him, and her game plan fell apart with an audible crash.

      He was tall and tanned and lean, but with enough bulk under his blue denim button-down dress shirt to hint at a fit body. His hair was conservatively cut, but just enough overdue for a trim that the light brown ends curled over his collar. A few flakes of snow still clung in the cowlick over his left temple.

      The cold had left ruddy spots on his cheeks, and the beginnings of a slight shadow darkened his jaw, but not grimly. The stubble, combined with brilliant hazel eyes, a lazy smile that only reached one side of his mouth and the battered leather jacket slung over his shoulder gave him a slightly harried, sleepy, sexy look.

      She wasn’t ready for him at all.

      She wondered if he knew exactly how disarming that lopsided grin of his could be. She wondered whether it was genuine or part of his psychotherapy-babble bag of tricks.

      “Ms. Serrat?” He lifted his eyebrows in question.

      Polite, too, still waiting for her to invite him in. Not a common trait in doctors, in her experience.

      Despite his charm and his manners, she jutted her chin when she nodded, reminding herself he was the man standing between her and Todd. She needed to get home to her son, preferably before school let out for the day. She didn’t want him to know anything about this little incident.

      He shouldered his way through the door and eased across the room, stopping about three feet away and extending his hand. Tricky, he was. Making her go to him. A subtle but effective shifting of power in the room.

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