CHAPTER FOUR

      “SO LET me get this straight,” Griff said, “you spent an hour—”

      “Hour and twenty minutes.”

      “Pardon me. I stand corrected.” Griff leaned back in his oversized desk chair and propped both pointy-toed cowboy boots on the glass and stainless-steel desk. “You spent slightly less than an hour and a half with this gal, and already you’re feeling...protective.”

      “She reminds me of Sandra.” He shrugged. “So sue me.”

      Not surprisingly, Griff didn’t violate the attorney–client rule, divulging details of his sister’s case, even though he and Logan had been as tight as brothers since high school. Logan had seen Griff through a brutal divorce, and Griff had helped Logan survive the first grueling year after the team dropped him.

      “But she’s a widow?”

      “Yeah....”

      “Then I don’t get it. Your sister divorced her thug of a husband. Do you suspect this Bianca woman was abused, too?”

      “No.” She hadn’t said or done anything to leave that impression. “I can’t explain it,” Logan admitted. “It’s just...” He didn’t dare say It’s just something I feel. Because of the autism connection, and because he was in no mood to fend off his friend’s razzing.

      Griff put his feet on the floor and leaned both forearms on his desk. “Can I tell you how I feel?”

      He sat up straighter. “Suppose I say no.”

      Griff shrugged. “Then I ignore you, as usual.” He aimed a crooked forefinger—the one he’d broken twenty years earlier while playing HORSE in Logan’s driveway—and said, “Read my lips: Mind. Your. Own. Business.”

      Logan winced at the stinging truth of it because he wanted her to be his business.

      “Chances are, the only thing she has in common with Sandra is an autistic kid. But if there are more parallels?” Griff shook his head. “Then you need to back off. Right now. Or you’ll open yourself for a world of hurt. Again.”

      The not-so-subtle reference to Logan’s last disastrous relationship didn’t go unnoticed. Everyone had told him to steer clear of Willow. His parents’ main objection had been the eight-year age gap. She’s a lifetime ahead of you! they’d said. But Griff had been present to witness a few of her outbursts. Despite his friend’s objections—and because he’d been young, stubborn and determined to become her protector—Logan had convinced himself that once they got to know her, they’d love her, too. Griff, included.

      “Took you a year to recover from what that batty broad did to you.”

      “You’d think a guy with a hundred degrees on his wall would know broad isn’t PC.”

      “And you’d think a guy with a hundred Tinseltown starlets listed in his little black book would know better than to get tangled up with another emotional basket case. Besides, the only way Wacky Willow deserves PC is if it stands for Permanent Confinement in the nearest loony bin.”

      They’d been down this road enough times that Logan knew it was futile to argue the “Willow was certifiable” point. “So maybe Bianca has some issues. Who doesn’t? Doesn’t mean she’s crazy.”

      “Or that she was abused.”

      Logan waited for Griff to repeat the warning he’d issued during those early months with Willow: Better steer clear of that one....

      Thankfully, Griff grabbed Logan’s file. “So when are you planning to see this Bianca person again?”

      It had been almost a week since she’d sat across from him, sipping cappuccino and talking about her son, but it might as well have been an hour ago. He remembered thinking how the shaft of early-March sunlight, spilling in from the window behind her, gave a halolike quality to her short blond curls. But then he’d said, “I know a gal who works at Kennedy Krieger, so I know it isn’t easy to get an appointment. If you need help getting in, say the word.” Instead of saying “Drew is fine where he is,” or “We’ll see,” she’d got to her feet, ice-blue eyes scanning his face as she’d thanked him for the coffee and left.

      “Yo. Dude.” Griff snapped his fingers. “Earth to Logan, Earth to Logan....”

      He met Griff’s concerned stare.

      “We have work to do, so how ’bout you nap on your own time.”

      “This is my time,” Logan kidded, “bought and paid for to the tune of one seventy-five an hour.”

      “Consider yourself lucky. If you weren’t a pal, you’d pay double,” Griff shot back. He tossed a wad of paper into the trash can. “So as I was saying when you veered off into Bianca-land, when will you see her again?”

      “Next time I’m on The Morning Show, I guess. Hadn’t really thought about it.”

      “If you say so.”

      The paperback-sized clock on Griff’s desk chimed eleven times. Using the cap of his ballpoint, he tapped Logan’s file. “Back to business. If you’re serious about this autism project, you’ll need a clear-cut mission statement.” Griff leafed through the will. “What did you do, swallow a leprechaun or something? How does one guy get so lucky in life?”

      He’d said pretty much the same thing when Logan had brought him the document naming him sole inheritor of David Richards’s assets. A devout Knights fan, the mega-millionaire had often sought Logan’s help in raising funds for his pet charities, and as had time passed, he’d begun introducing Logan as “the son I never had.” When a team of Hopkins specialists diagnosed Stage 4 esophageal cancer, David—recently divorced from his third wife—sent for Logan. In what turned out to be his last self-deprecating joke, David made Logan promise to distribute his wealth “with my big philanthropic heart in mind.”

      And Logan aimed to do just that.

      “The mission statement doesn’t have to be fancy,” Griff continued. “Just a few short paragraphs describing the purpose of the charity. Who’ll run it. Who’ll benefit. Once I have it, I can write your Articles of Incorporation, file for your tax ID number—all that legal stuff you pay me the big bucks to do on your behalf.” He scribbled something on the inside front cover of the folder, then met Logan’s eyes. “Have you decided if this is to be a