Kathleen O'Brien - The One Safe Place

To his surprise when he strolled onto the porch around ten o’clock, she was standing out there.

She didn’t hear him at first. It probably would have been wiser to turn around and leave her alone. But he wasn’t feeling wise. All evening he’d been feeling edgy, unable to settle in. He felt irrationally as if his life was on the verge of becoming completely different, though he had no idea how.

Maybe it was just the weird feeling of having other people in the house. No one but him had slept here since Melissa died.

He was careful to make enough noise to be sure she’d hear him. Given what she’d been through lately, the last thing he wanted was to startle her.

She turned around. “Hi,” she said, smiling.

“Hi,” he responded casually, but his senses were suddenly reeling. She smelled of soap and some kind of perfume that made him think of pink flowers and springtime. Her hair fell to mid-arm, curving against the tender spot where he’d earlier noticed a large white bandage. The bandage had been a brutal reminder that she wasn’t here for a social visit. She wasn’t even here to be his housekeeper.

She was a wounded, frightened woman. A refugee seeking asylum.

He felt a sudden flash of anger. How could anyone be trying to hurt someone so beautiful?

Dear Reader,

Once, when he was little, my son told me he was tired of all this fuss about rainbows. They weren’t anything special, he said. They were, in fact, kind of stupid.

I have to admit even I was shocked. He might as well have said he didn’t admire Mozart, or daffodils, or God. What kind of man could grow from a boy who didn’t like rainbows?

But as I watched him turn into a wonderful young man, full of kindness and imagination, I finally understood. That little boy hadn’t been insensitive. He had merely been young—and very lucky. He knew nothing of struggle or fear or loss. He had no need for symbols of hope. He didn’t need reassurance that, after pain, joy would rise again.

Most of us know those things all too well. And we are grateful for the rainbow’s reminder that life’s storms, however violent, are temporary—and that sometimes, in the most unlikely of places, beauty and love can suddenly reappear.

Faith Constable, the heroine of The One Safe Place, is caught in one of those storms. When she flees to Firefly Glen, she is seeking only safety. She never dreams of finding happiness and love.

But then she meets Reed Fairmont. Reed is a man who can heal anything…sick puppies, surly lizards, damaged kids and even terrified heroines. Anything, that is, except his own broken heart. For that, he’ll need an unexpected rainbow. For that, he’ll need Faith.

I hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it. And the next time your life gets a little too stormy, don’t forget to look up. There might be a rainbow waiting for you, too!

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

P.S. I love to hear from readers! Please write me at P.O. Box 947633, Maitland, FL 32794-7633 or at KOBrien@aol.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FAITH CONSTABLE had never realized that getting shot with a .22 caliber rifle would make a person so damn angry.

But as she lay in the emergency room of St. Luke’s having her arm stitched up by a doctor who appeared to be a teenager, a bubbling fury was by far the strongest emotion she felt.

Stronger than fear, which actually might have been more logical. Stronger even than grief, which had colored her world dead black for the past four terrible weeks.

In a way, angry felt better. A frightened, grieving woman walked through life with her head down, incapable of action. But an angry woman was a force to be reckoned with.

As Detective James Bentley was about to find out.

“I said no, and I meant it,” Faith said. “I am not running away, and that’s final. I’m going to stay here and help you catch him.”

Detective Bentley had come to know Faith pretty well over the past month—intense emotion was a great social accelerator. He sat down in the guest chair, obviously recognizing that this might take a little longer than he’d expected.

“I think,” he said firmly, “you’d better leave the catching part to us.”

“I’ve been leaving it to you. Doug Lambert killed my sister more than four weeks ago, and he’s still out there.”

She had her back to the policeman, but she could imagine his face. He was fifty, lined and craggy and tough as nails. But his sad eyes were kind. The day she discovered Grace’s body, he’d held Faith like a daughter while she cried.

“We’re looking for him, Faith. We’ll find him. But it won’t help us if you get killed, too.”

Faith swallowed, shutting her eyes as the pimple-faced doctor dug another stitch into her torn flesh.

Killed. The word no longer seemed preposterous, alien, abstract. That was one more thing Doug Lambert had done to her life. He had introduced the reality of death—violent, wrongful death—and now it walked beside her always.

Just five hours ago, she had decided to go out jogging, hoping that the crisp late-September New York City morning would clear her head, maybe even lift her spirits. But she had, even then, been aware of the possibility of death. Any world that held Doug Lambert was a treacherous place.

And then out of nowhere, a noise. A sharp pain.

Death.

The bullet had skimmed across her upper arm, leaving a burning red path. Six inches to the right, and it would have hit her heart.

She remembered her breath misting in the chilly air as she cried out. And if the other joggers hadn’t stopped and gathered around, he could have pulled the trigger again, aiming a little more carefully this time.

Dead.

But wouldn’t that perhaps have been some dreadful kind of justice? After all, it should have been Faith who got killed in the first place. Doug Lambert hadn’t ever intended to murder Grace. In a fit of passion, coming up on her from behind, he had mistaken her for Faith.

Detective Bentley knew that as well as Faith did. But neither of them wanted to say it.

Faith tried not even to think it. If she started thinking about Grace right now, about how she had looked, lying there on her kitchen floor, her neck broken—then this hot, empowering anger might disappear in another flood of grief and guilt.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t let him chase me into a hole like a frightened mouse. What if you never do catch him? Am I going to live in that hole for the rest of my life?”

“We’ll catch him,” he repeated doggedly. “If it really is Doug Lambert, we’ll get him. And if it’s someone else, we’ll get him, too.”

“It’s Doug, damn it. It has to be. A millionaire who has been stalking me for months suddenly vanishes the day after my sister’s murder, and you think it’s a coincidence?”

“It might be. It’s my job to consider all the possibilities. I’ve told you that a thousand times, Faith.”

She felt her anger rising even higher. She was breathing fast, and the air tasted horribly of hospital, a bitter concoction of alcohol and sickness. She sensed her anger was irrational, maybe even artificially induced by shock and fear, and yet she was so filled with its roiling power that she could hardly lie still for the doctor to go on working.