LITMIR.BIZ

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looks, sheer force of personality and well-muscled physique. He’d looked so strong, so capable, that Samantha had found herself repressing a ridiculous desire to lean her head on his shoulder and tell him all her troubles.

      When she’d realized how he affected her, she’d almost turned on her heel and walked away. Instead, for Jeffrey’s sake, she’d forced herself to offer him her hand.

      Since there was no way she could talk to her mother about this, Samantha decided that a change of subject was in order. “When do you leave on your cruise?” she asked.

      “A week from tomorrow.”

      Because Lawrence Miller had been killed on Thanksgiving Day, Maxine always took a cruise over the holiday—the exception being the preceding year because it had been too soon after James’s death. Getting away was her mother’s way of dealing with her loss.

      “You really don’t mind me going?” Maxine asked.

      “Why should I mind?”

      Her mother shrugged. “I’m not sure I should be leaving you alone just now.”

      “I’m not alone, Mom,” Samantha said gently. “I have Jeffrey. We’ll be just fine.”

      She was stretching the truth somewhat. Things wouldn’t be truly fine until Jeffrey was himself again. But the last thing Samantha wanted was for her mother to worry about the two of them while she was on her cruise.

      “If you say so.” The doubt in Maxine’s voice made her ambivalence clear.

      “I say so.”

      “If only your sisters didn’t live so far away.”

      Bridget, Samantha’s oldest sister, was a financial analyst on Wall Street. Colleen, the middle child, was an electrical engineer and lived in Los Angeles. Both were so wrapped up in their careers that they rarely made it back home.

      “It’s a sign of the times,” Samantha said.

      “A sad sign, if you ask me,” her mother replied.

      Silence reigned while Maxine followed Samantha out to the kitchen. Against her will, Samantha’s thoughts returned to Carlo Garibaldi and her reaction to him. Her mother had grieved for nineteen years now for the man she had lost. To the best of Samantha’s knowledge, in all that time Maxine had never looked at another man.

      Samantha had looked long and hard at Carlo Garibaldi. What did that make her?

      Her unwelcome awareness of him wasn’t important, she told herself. She certainly wasn’t going to act on it. All that mattered was that Jeffrey get well again.

      Pairing Jeffrey with Carlo Garibaldi was a last-ditch effort to break down the walls he had erected between himself and the rest of the world. With all her heart and soul, Samantha prayed it would work. Because, while she herself didn’t know how to reach her son, she was certain of one thing. If someone didn’t get through to Jeffrey soon, she stood a good chance of losing him altogether.

      Chapter 2

      Hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, Carlo slowly walked the twelve blocks separating his home from the Underwood residence. Overhead, the sky was covered by a blanket of gray clouds that did or did not, depending upon which meteorologist one favored, hold the promise of the first snow of the season.

      When he reached the foot of the cement path leading up to 221 Lincoln Drive, he came to a reluctant halt. At first glance, the house where Samantha Underwood lived with her son looked a lot like his own: older—probably built in the early twenties—constructed of brick, square in shape and two-and-a-half stories tall. It was only when Carlo peered closer that he glimpsed the subtle signs of neglect; signs all pointing to the absence of the man who had been in charge of its upkeep.

      Leaves from an old oak tree carpeted the yard. The forest-green paint on the shutters flanking the front windows had begun to flake. A jagged crack marred one of the windows of the detached two-car garage.

      Carlo shivered when an icy wind stung his cheeks and snuck its way into the folds of his jacket. Once again, he pondered the wisdom of the decision that had led him here. He’d half decided to walk back home when Samantha opened her front door and stared out at him.

      She wore a pair of brown corduroy pants and a matching cotton sweater with a deep V neck that drew his gaze to the long, slender column of her throat. Her straight blond hair had been combed back off her forehead to fall freely to her shoulders.

      At the sight of her lovely face, Carlo’s breath clogged in his throat. She was like the sunlight to a man who had been trapped in a dark cave for far too long. Try as he might, he couldn’t look away.

      Damn. The awareness was still there. If anything, it had intensified. He’d hoped—prayed, actually—that it had just been a fluke, the result of a desperate man latching onto the sight of a beautiful woman standing on his doorstep. Especially now that he knew the impossibility of there ever being anything between them.

      But it wasn’t a fluke. The way she made him feel inside wasn’t fading. Which meant he had to ignore it.

      “Are you going to come in?” she called.

      Since the choice of beating a hasty retreat had been taken away from him, Carlo moved up the walkway and climbed the steps of her front porch.

      “Sorry I’m late.”

      That she looked happy to see him made his breathing grow even more erratic. Actually, maybe relieved was a better description, an impression she confirmed with her next words.

      “For a minute, I thought you weren’t coming.”

      “For a minute, I almost didn’t,” he answered honestly.

      Hand still on the brass knob of her front door, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Having second thoughts?”

      “And third and fourth and fifth. Aren’t you?”

      “No,” she replied, without a hint of hesitation.

      The way she stood firm in her conviction that he was the one person who could help her son illustrated how deceptive appearances could be. To look at her, a man might mistakenly believe that Samantha Underwood was as delicate as blown glass. But, though she looked slight and insubstantial, the woman had an inner strength that transcended her seeming fragility. Something told Carlo she was as fiercely and stubbornly independent as his sister. But then, she would have had to be, to survive the past year.

      Unfortunately, her strength made her all the more attractive to him. He never had been drawn to women who clung tighter than the rose vines that climbed the trellis in his front yard every summer.

      “So you’re having second thoughts,” she commented.

      About more than just his promise to help her son. “Yes.”

      “Why? Don’t you like children?”

      “I like them well enough. It’s the responsibility that’s getting to me.”

      She seemed to mull his words over. “From everything I’ve heard about you, you’re a man who thrives on responsibility. You wouldn’t be chief of police otherwise.”

      A year ago, that had been more than true. He’d once been a man who’d prided himself on his ability to look out for others. The operative word being once.

      “That may be so,” he said, “but while I’m responsible for directing the actions of the people under my charge, I always leave their mental welfare to others. I’m no mental health expert, Mrs. Underwood. I’ve never pretended to be.”

      She seemed to relax. “He’s just a little boy, Chief Garibaldi. A lost little boy who needs a man’s guidance. That’s all. How about we leave his mental health to his grief counselor?”

      Put that way, the task didn’t seem so daunting. “Carlo,” he said.

      She

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