www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Mary, Linda, Karen and David. Family,

      and friends, too. We’re lucky!

      Chapter One

      Liz Mayfield had kicked off her shoes long before lunch, and now, with her bare feet tucked under her butt, she simply ignored the sweat that trickled down her spine. It had to be ninety in the shade. At least ninety-five in her small, lower-level office.

      It was the kind of day for pool parties and frosty drinks in pretty glasses. Not the kind of day for sorting through mail and dealing with confused teenagers.

      But she’d traded one in for the other years ago when she’d left her six-figure income and five weeks of vacation to take the job at Options for Caring Mothers—OCM.

      It had been three years, and there were still people scratching their heads over her choice.

      She picked the top envelope off the stack on the corner of her desk. Her name was scrawled across the plain white front in blue ink. The sender had spelled her last name wrong, mixing up the order of the i and the e. She slid her thumb under the flap, pulled out the single sheet of lined notebook paper and read.

      And her head started to buzz.

      You stupid BITCH. You going to be very sorry if you don’t stop messing in stuff thats not your busines.

      The egg-salad sandwich she’d had for lunch rumbled in her stomach. Still holding the notebook paper with one hand, she cupped her other hand over her mouth. She swallowed hard twice, and once she thought she might have it under control, she unfolded her legs and stretched them far enough that she could slip both feet into her sandals. And for some crazy reason, she felt better once she had shoes on, as if she was more prepared.

      She braced the heels of her hands against the edge of her scratched metal desk and pushed. Her old chair squeaked as it rolled two feet and then came to a jarring stop when a wheel jammed against a big crack in the tile floor.

      Who would have sent her something like that? What did they mean that she was going to be very sorry? And when the heck was her heart going to stop pounding?

      She stood and walked around her desk, making a very deliberate circle. On her third trip around, she worked up enough nerve to look more closely at the envelope. It had a stamp and a postmark from three days earlier but no return address. With just the nail on her pinkie finger, she flipped the envelope over. There was nothing on the back.

      Her mail had been gathering dust for days. She’d had a packed schedule, and it probably would have sat another day if her one o’clock hadn’t canceled. That made her feel marginally better. If nothing had happened yet to make her very sorry, it was probably just some idiot trying to freak her out.

      That, however, didn’t stop her from dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes when she heard a noise outside her small window. On her hands and knees, she peered around the edge of her desk and felt like a fool when she looked through the open ground-level window and saw it was only Mary Thorton arriving for her two-o’clock appointment. She could see the girl’s thin white legs with the terribly annoying skull tattoo just above her right knee.

      Liz got up and brushed her dusty hands off on her denim shorts. The door opened and Mary, her ponytail, freckles and still-thin arms all strangely at odds with her round stomach, walked in. She picked up an OCM brochure that Liz kept on a rack by the door and started fanning herself. “I am never working in a basement when I get older,” she said.

      “I hope you don’t have to,” Liz said, grateful that her voice sounded normal. She sat in her chair and pulled it up to the desk. Using her pinkie again, she flipped the notebook paper over so that the blank side faced up.

      Mary had already taken a seat on one of the two chairs in front of the desk. Pieces of strawberry blond hair clung to her neck, and her mascara was smudged around her pale blue eyes. She slouched in the chair, with her arms resting on her stomach.

      “How do you feel?” Liz asked. The girl looked tired.

      “Fat. And I’m sweating like a pig,” Mary replied.

      Liz, careful not to touch or look at the notebook paper, reached for the open manila folder that she’d pulled from her drawer earlier that morning. She scanned her notes from Mary’s last visit. “How’s your job at the drugstore?”

      “I quit.”

      Mary had taken the job less than three weeks earlier. It had been the last in a string of jobs since becoming Liz’s client four months ago. Most had lasted only a few days or a week at best at the others. The bosses were stupid, the hours were too many or too few, the location too far. The list went on and on—countless reasons not to keep a job.

      “Why, Mary?”

      She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I gave a few friends a little discount on their makeup. Stupid boss made a big deal out of it.”

      “Imagine that. Now what do you plan to do?”

      “I’ve been thinking about killing myself.”

      It was the one thing Mary could have said that made Liz grasp for words. “How would you do it, Mary?” she asked, sounding calmer than she felt.

      “I don’t know. Nothing bloody. Maybe pills. Or I might just walk off the end of Navy Pier. They say drowning is pretty peaceful.”

      No plan. That was good. Was it just shock talk, something destined to get Mary the attention that she seemed to crave?

      “Sometimes it seems like the only answer,” Mary said. She stared at her round stomach. “You know what I mean?”

      Liz did know, better than most. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the open street-level window. Three years ago, it had been a day not all that different from today. Maybe not as hot but there’d been a similar stillness in the air.

      There’d been no breeze to carry the scent of death. Nothing that had prepared her for walking into that house and