Kristin Hardy - Fortune's Woman / A Fortune Wedding

“Pretty night,” he said, though all he could think about was the lovely woman standing beside him with her face lifted up to the moonlight.

“It is,” she murmured. “I can’t believe I sometimes get so wrapped up in my life that I forget to enjoy it.”

They were quiet for a long time, both lost in their respective thoughts while the sweet scents from Frannie’s garden swirled around them.

“Can I ask you something?” Ross finally asked.

If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he might have missed the slight wariness that crept into her expression. “Sure.”

“How do you know all this stuff? About grieving and discipline and how to help a kid who’s hurting?”

“I’m a trained youth counselor with a master’s degree in social work and child and family development.”

She was silent for a long moment, the only sound in the night the distant hoot of an owl and the wind sighing in the treetops. “Beyond that,” she finally said softly, “I know what it is to be lost and hurting. I’ve been there.”

Her words shivered through him, to the dark and quiet place he didn’t like to acknowledge, that place where he was still ten years old, scared and alone and responsible for his three younger siblings yet again after Cindy ran off with a new boyfriend for a night that turned into another and then another.

He knew lost and hurting. He had been there plenty of times before, but it didn’t make him any better at intuitively sensing what was best for Josh.

He pushed those memories aside. It was much easier to focus on the mystery of Julie Osterman than on the past he preferred to forget.

“What are your secrets?” he asked.

“You mean you haven’t run a background check on me yet, detective?”

He laughed a little at her arch tone. “I didn’t think about it until just this moment. Good idea, though.” He studied her for a long moment in the moonlight, noting the color that had crept along the delicate planes of her cheekbones. “If I did, what would I find?”

“Nothing criminal, I can assure you.”

“I don’t suppose you would have been hired at the Foundation if you had that sort of past.”

“Probably not.”

“Then what?” He paused. “You lost someone close to you, didn’t you?”

She gazed at the moon, sparkling on the swimming pool. “That’s a rather obvious guess, detective.”

“But true.”

Her sigh stirred the air between them.

“Yes. True,” she answered. “It’s a long, sad story that I’m sure would bore you senseless within minutes.”

“I have a pretty high bore quotient. I’ve been known to sit perfectly motionless on stakeouts for hours.”

She glanced at him, then away again. “A simple background check would tell you this in five seconds but I suppose I’ll go ahead and spare you the trouble. I lost my husband seven years ago. I’m a widow, detective.”

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