Karen Rose - Have You Seen Her?

He pulled his car from his subdivision onto the main highway. Be honest, Thatcher. She makes your mouth water . He frowned in the darkness. Be really honest, Thatcher. You want to jump that woman's bones . He shuddered, able to imagine it all too well.

It was just that it had been such a long time. A very, very long time. Maybe he just needed to get it out of his system. A little honest sex, with no expectations for a long-term commitment. No promises made, no regrets when he walked away. Because he would walk away.

He'd almost made himself believe casual sex with Jenna Marshall was a feasible solution to his problems when he remembered the way her eyes softened in compassion over his son, then again over saving a puppy about to be put to sleep. A woman like that was not a candidate for a no-strings sexual relationship. She was just not that kind of woman.

Steven sighed. No more than he was that kind of man.

That's why it had been such a very, very long time since he'd been with a woman.

That's why it would continue to be a very, very long time.

Frustrated and alone, he turned his thoughts to the subject of Samantha Eggleston. Her parents would want an update. Hoping Kent was still in the lab, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

Friday, September 30, 11:00 P.M.

"So they lost."

Victor Lutz looked over his mostly empty glass with a sneer. His wife stood in the doorway of his study, dressed for bed in the same nightgown she'd worn every night of their miserable marriage. It wasn't really the same nightgown, but one of ten identical gowns that hung in her closet, magically replicating themselves year after year. It had to be magic. No one in their right mind would buy such an ugly garment on purpose, much less ten of them year after year.

After year after year after year.

On top of being hopelessly stupid, Nora Lutz had absolutely no sense of style. Unlike Rudy's teacher. Not that Miss Marshall had style either, but with a body like that he'd be willing to turn a blind eye to the prim suit. Unfortunately on top of having a great body, she also had guts.

Victor hated women with guts. Guts, brains-they only served to distract women from their sole purpose on this earth. Sex and servitude. In that order. He glared at Nora over his glass. She was a failure on both counts.

"Of course they lost." Idiot . "Rudy sat on the bench the entire goddamn game." He tossed back the last swallow of vodka, stood, and crossed the Aubusson carpet to pour himself another.

Nora pursed her lips, sending deep lines radiating from the corners of her mouth. "I thought you were going to straighten that out with the principal before the game started. Daddy isn't going to be happy about this. He had to pull some strings to get that scout to come watch Rudy."

He hated that mistress-of-the-household tone. She'd learned it from Daddy , the rich sonofabitch.

He tossed back half the glass. The rich sonofabitch whose money bought the Aubusson carpet under Victor's feet, the roof over his head, the business that paid his salary. He eyed the clear liquid in the now half-empty glass. Whose money bought the hundred-dollar-a-bottle vodka that helped Victor drown out the reality of being married to the rich sono-fabitch's tired, ugly, whiny daughter.

Thank God for mistresses and whores, was all he could say. Of course, not out loud. Daddy wouldn't like that. Thank God Daddy didn't really know everything.

Nora crossed her arms over her scrawny bosom and leaned back against the wall with an air of superiority that she liked to remind him was born, not bought. The rich dark hair that had been her only notable attribute would once have blended into the black walnut wood that paneled his office. But she'd started to gray and never lifted a finger to halt the change. She, like Daddy , was a dried-up old prune. "I thought as much," she said curtly. "Big man going to tell the stupid principal how to run his school." She shook her head. "You are so full of hot air, Victor. You make me ill."

"That makes two of us," he muttered into his glass.

"Excuse me?"

Victor looked up and focused his eyes on hers, saying nothing until she paled. There was more than one way to deal with Nora when she got too nasty for her own good. He rarely had to carry through on his threats. She usually backed down before he had to rouse himself into enough of a rage to raise his hand to her. Although the satisfaction at seeing her cowed and silenced was always well worth the effort. After the first time, years ago, he'd waited for Daddy to send a couple of thugs to put him in perpetual traction, but the thugs never came. Not that time, nor the times after. Victor guessed there were some things even Nora didn't tell Daddy. He cleared his throat.

"I said, that makes two of us. I did visit the school today for your information. I might have gotten your son reinstated this afternoon if he hadn't been such a fucking idiot."

Nora frowned. "What do you mean?" she asked, her tone now significantly less belligerent.

"I mean, your idiot son pushed the wrong teacher. He handed in a test on which he'd written only his, name. That and the smirk on his face are making his teacher dig in her heels. I gave the principal a week to fix this."

"And if he doesn't? What then?"

"Then we pull Daddy's funding of Blackman's new stadium."

Nora smoothed her hair away from her face, one of her many nervous gestures. He knew every last one. Every last one drove him nuts. "Not everyone is motivated by money, Victor."

Victor drained his glass. Not motivated by money. Hah . Only a person who'd grown up wanting nothing could actually believe that. "Of course they are. They just don't always know it."

Friday, September 30, I1:55 P.M.

The church's old door handle was cool under Steven's sweating hand. They didn't make handles like this anymore. Doors either, Steven thought, feeling the cool night air on his hot face. Both were vintage 1923, as was the rest of the church. He'd lost track of how long he'd been standing there, telling himself to either go in or go home.

Hours of paperwork hadn't cleared his mind, just served to stave off the worry gnawing at his gut for just a few more hours. He'd left his office and driven around aimlessly, not really surprised when he stopped in the parking lot of the old parish.

His old parish. He'd grown up here, served as an altar boy, been confirmed. Taken his first communion and planned to study the priesthood himself. His grip on the door handle tightened. Then his life had taken a sharp turn after a single night of… What would he call it, looking back now? Certainly not passion. They'd been seventeen in the back of his father's Olds. Passion it certainly was not. Experimentation? It was that. Folly? In many ways it was that as well. Melissa had turned out to be the greatest folly of his life. Brad, on the other hand… He could never call creating his oldest son a folly, no matter how troubled Brad was at the moment.

Conceiving Brad that night in the back of his father's Olds made him change his life path. Gone were plans for the priesthood, which had broken his mother's heart until she'd held her first grandson in her arms. Steven had gone to college, become a cop. He and Melissa had two more beautiful sons. They'd been a happy family for a time. Melissa may have even been happy… for a time.

And look at me now , he thought. Successful career. Disastrous marriage. Unhappy children. A lonely widower. Lonely and… scared.

No, he was terrified. For years after Melissa died he'd held his family together. But now his family was unraveling and he had no clue what to do about it. The idle promise to confess the lie he'd told Helen pricked at him all night, bringing back a host of memories about this place, about the peace he'd always felt here. He tried to remember how long it had been. It hadn't been a watershed moment, but a gradual thing. Week after week he sat in the pew, feeling the priest's eyes on him, his priest's disapproval of what he'd done. Knowing just as clearly there was not one iota he'd change. The cycle of guilt continued until he'd started finding all the reasons he couldn't go to Mass. Then he just stopped going altogether.