LITMIR.BIZ

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full of princes and princesses, faithful knights, changelings and evil stepparents. Such a waste of time.”

      The woman sighed. “I thought Anna had given up that silly fantasy until the other day. Good Lord, she even brought up that imaginary Rose creature again. It frightened me so that I had no recourse but to call Dr. Alcott.”

      Logan glanced over to see Alcott pry Anna’s right eye open and shine a flashlight into it. “Why the doctor?” he asked as he turned back to Elise.

      The woman’s lovely features tightened. “I reminded Anna that we’d been totally up-front about the fact that she’d been conceived in a fertility clinic. I again assured her that she was the product of my egg and her father’s sperm, but she just kept insisting she was not our child. Then she threatened to have someone investigate this if we didn’t confirm her suspicions.”

      Elise glanced at her husband. “Considering that Stephen Dahlberg is just looking for a hint of scandal—no matter how absurd or unfounded—we had no choice, really, but to ask for Dr. Alcott’s help. He suggested she be placed under close observation.”

      A cold chill crept up the back of Logan’s neck. “Close observation?”

      “That’s right.” Elise lifted her chin. “Dr. Alcott arranged to take Anna to a very private facility run by a psychiatrist friend of his, where we hoped a discreet professional might get to the root of her problems. But yesterday, when the doctor stopped at the gated entrance, Anna opened the car door, ran down the street and somehow managed to hop onto a city bus just as it pulled away.”

      Elise paused to once more shake her head. When she resumed speaking, the defensive tone was replaced with what sounded like heartfelt regret. “Unfortunately, this just proves how much she needs help. She’s always preferred to run away rather than face her responsibilities.”

      Robert took a step toward the bed, then stopped. “You know,” he said softly, “when Anna announced she had enrolled at UC Berkeley again, I thought she’d at last decided to take control of her life.”

      Silence filled the room for several moments. “I see,” Logan said at last. “And when these questions came up, you simply decided to have Anna…” He paused to search for the word. Unable, and suddenly unwilling, to come up with something politically correct, he finished, “…committed?”

      “There was nothing ‘simple’ about it.” For once the steel in Elise’s voice matched the hardness of her expression. “Things have been difficult enough since Victor died, what with Grace’s mind slipping in and out of reality at the most inopportune times. Grace’s mutterings, however, are easily explained as the onset of senility. But Anna’s rantings are quite another story—perfect fodder for a scandal, which is something Robert can’t afford this close to the primary.”

      She paused, took a deep breath, then reached out to touch Logan’s arm as she went on in a softer tone, “You’re doing a good job, keeping the family holdings and charities running smoothly so that Robert can concentrate on the matter at hand. Victor taught you well. But you don’t have the time to watch over Grace as he did—nor to baby-sit Anna.”

      The honest sympathy in Elise’s eyes touched Logan. His jaw clenched against the pain shooting through his chest at the mention of Victor Benedict. While Robert had been his surrogate father, Robert’s uncle Victor had been Logan’s mentor, schooling him in the ways of finance and the law. He missed the older man’s rock-steady presence, couldn’t help asking himself how Victor would have handled this situation.

      “So, I hope you understand,” Elise went on. “That when Robert and I consulted Dr. Alcott, we felt it best to go along with his suggestion that Anna go to a quiet place where she could…pull herself together.”

      It wasn’t until Elise spoke these last three words that Logan once again found himself biting back words of anger. That little undertone of sarcasm was there again, whispering that Anna wasn’t living up to the picture of Benedict family perfection.

      “Excuse me.” Dr. Alcott’s voice broke the silence following Elise’s last statement. “Anna’s injuries seem minor—some scratches to her palms and perhaps a bruise on her hip. Her vital signs are strong, and while her pupils show no sign of head injury, a CAT scan might be in order. This can be performed at Dr. Shriver’s clinic. Did you want to use the limousine, as before?”

      Robert gazed at his daughter before he nodded and slowly turned to Logan. “Would you mind carrying Anna down and placing her in the back seat?”

      Chapter 3

      After hearing Robert ask Logan to carry her to the waiting car, Rose barely let herself breathe. Despite the instinct urging her to leap from the bed and rush from the room, she forced herself to remain inert, eyes closed, just as she had since the moment she realized it would be impossible to escape Logan’s powerful grip.

      Little did she think this “playing possum” trick would ever be useful when, at the age of twelve, she’d reluctantly taken the self-defense class that her mother enrolled them in. There had been no fancy moves to learn, just basic common-sense kicking and twisting and hitting, all of which she’d tried to use against Logan in her attempt to escape from his hold—and this house.

      Pretending to pass out had been a last-resort move, meant to lure the attacker into complacency until an opportunity to escape arrived. It had never occurred to Rose, as she listened and gathered information, that she would be forced to remain inert while some strange doctor poked her and pried open her eyes, one by one, to examine them from behind a blinding light.

      And for what? She was fairly certain that the clinic the doctor had just referred to was the nut house that this Anna person had been headed for—a place she had no intention of ending up. It appeared that this was just what would happen, however, if she continued to lie there.

      Rose was wondering if the element of surprise would be enough to allow her to escape, should she suddenly jump up and dash past all these people, when she heard Logan reply, “As a matter of fact, I would mind taking her to the car.”

      “Logan.”

      The scandalized protest came from the woman Rose had come to know as Elise. Logan responded evenly.

      “I don’t want to send Anna off to some institution if it’s not necessary. From what I understand, she’s been gone all night. Simple exhaustion might be the reason she passed out. I’d like to let her rest a bit and see if she won’t wake up on her own, then try to find out what’s behind her confusion.”

      “It won’t do any good.” It was Elise again. “I tried reasoning with her, but her rantings only escalated. My daughter needs professional help, not someone to hold her hand and encourage her unreasonable behavior. Or to indulge her, as her father has done.”

      Rose was aware of a long pause before Logan asked in a quiet, steely tone, “When have I ever encouraged Anna to behave in any way that would be detrimental to herself, or to the family?”

      “Never.” This came from the man called Robert. “While I may have occasionally been guilty of ‘indulging’ my daughter, you’ve always been a steadying influence on her. But her behavior the past few days—” he paused to sigh before finishing “—I’m really afraid her mental stability is in danger. You heard her claim that she didn’t know any of us.”

      Another long pause followed this. Rose’s heart began to race as she recalled the less-than-sane way she’d been behaving since first seeing Logan on the deck outside. She wouldn’t blame him at all for giving in to the pressure, and letting her—or rather Anna—be locked up.

      “I want an hour,” Logan said suddenly. “I’d like to see if she won’t regain consciousness, then talk to her here, in surroundings that are familiar to her. Alone.”

      Dr. Alcott’s “I don’t think—” blended with Elise’s “We’ve already agreed that—”

      Robert interrupted them both. “Logan is right.

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