Derek nodded. “Agreed. So…?” He prodded his father, wanting him to get to the point. “What’s your problem with Gabrielle?”

“She’s setting you up for another fall, that’s what.”

Derek had a feeling he knew where his father was going. To a place he’d been avoiding thinking about since his night with Gabrielle.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with her and now she’ll be living with you. You’ll fall in love with her all over again and it’ll make what you went through with Marlene seem like child’s play in comparison.”

Derek’s head began to pound. “I won’t fall in love with her.” He clenched his hands into tight fists at his sides.

“Good.” Hank turned to face him. “I hope you mean that. You weren’t in love with Holly’s mom, isn’t that right?”

Derek nodded. “She was a good woman, a good friend and a good mother. She deserved better than what I was able to give her because I wasn’t in love with her.”

“And yet?” Hank asked, obviously pushing him to say the words.

“And yet I lost my fortune, my marriage and I nearly lost my daughter,” Derek muttered, hating like hell having to discuss the curse out loud.

Hank wrapped a fatherly arm around his shoulder. “I know it hurts, but ignoring the truth will end up hurting even more.”

Derek breathed in deep. “I won’t fall in love with Gabrielle,” he said to his father, wondering how he’d keep his promise when he feared he’d already broken it.

SHARON PACED THE SMALL bedroom of the house she and Richard had bought together. After Gabrielle had dropped her off, she’d called her fiancé and asked him to meet her after work. They needed to talk.

She’d decided to level with him about what was going on. She only hoped he could handle it.

Expecting him around five-thirty, which was when he usually left work at his law firm, Sharon was surprised to hear his key in the lock late that afternoon.

She met him at the front door.

He stepped inside, and though she started forward to embrace him, he walked past her and placed his briefcase down on the floor.

Uh-oh.

She swallowed hard. “You’re home early.”

He inclined his head. “You said you needed me.”

Yet he remained at a distance, emotionally and physically. And she hadn’t even confided in him yet.

“So how was your conference?” he asked.

She rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms, but the chill remained. “There wasn’t one.”

He turned toward her, his handsome face more a mask of disappointment than confusion. She shivered even more.

“Would you care to explain?” he asked.

“Come. Sit down.” She led the way into the small study they would one day share. They planned on building bookshelves to line the walls, her own little library, his desk and home office.

He sat on the couch while she chose a chair across from him. Elbows resting on his knees, he stared at her, his gaze intense. He didn’t say a word.

She studied him, too. His dark hair, neatly combed, gave him that air of propriety she both loved and feared would be the end of them.

She drew a deep, fortifying breath. “A few days ago, I received an anonymous letter in the mail.” She glanced down at her hands, not surprised to see they were shaking. “And though I’m not sure who sent it, it was clear what was in it.”

He met her gaze. “What was it?” he asked, his voice steady.

He was everything she loved and wanted in her life. But there was obviously more separating them than the story she had to tell. Not knowing what it was scared her beyond belief.

“A picture,” she whispered. “An old photograph. One of those old photographs, if you get my drift.”

“Oh, I get it, all right,” he said, clenching his jaw.

“There was also a note demanding five thousand dollars.”

“That bastard.” He rose from his seat in a burst of sudden, angry energy. “I’m going to kill him.”

She came up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “No, you’re not. Because then I’d lose you to prison instead of just…losing you.” She stepped back, easing away from him.

This time he came up behind her and she felt his body heat close. Reassuring.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

She faced him again. “Because I didn’t get the letter today. I got it a few days ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me.” His disappointment spoke louder than his words.

Nausea rolled through her and she wished she’d listened to Gabrielle’s advice about telling Richard sooner.

She shook her head. “You had so much on your plate between work and the campaign. I thought, I hoped, I could make it go away.”

“How?”

“The note had instructions. A drop point for the money. So I withdrew the cash from the bank and Gabrielle and I went to the Wave.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You two went to meet with your blackmailing ex-con boyfriend alone?”

She winced at the fury in his voice. “Not exactly.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Then what, exactly, Sharon? Spell it out and be clear.”

She knew what she’d say next would only make her keeping him in the dark even worse, but she had no choice. “Gabrielle was thinking more clearly. She knew better than to go there alone, so she told Derek. He showed up before the set meeting time.”

He stared at her in silence. She could almost hear his thoughts. Gabrielle trusted Derek but you couldn’t trust me?

“I trust you,” she assured him. “I just didn’t want to burden you with my problems when you have so many of your own.” God, her words sounded lame.

Why hadn’t she shared this with him earlier? She knew why. She hadn’t wanted to see the disgust in his eyes. Every time she thought about those photographs, about that time, she felt it. She was sure he did, too.

“Burden. Right.” He muttered something else under his breath. “Go on. What else don’t I know?”

“At some point during the night, someone slipped a note in my bag telling me where to leave the money, but I didn’t find it until the next morning. I panicked. I thought for sure they would expose the photo and it would kill your campaign. Gabrielle said Derek called his cousin, who is a police detective in Boston. He told Derek where Tony was living since his release and they spoke to him. He claimed to know nothing about the sudden resurrection of the pictures, but they weren’t sure if they should believe him. I needed to know.”

“What. Did. You. Do?” he asked.

She ran her hands over her eyes, trying to hold it together and not cry. “I stalked him. Sort of. I mean, I stood behind trees and buildings and I watched. He has a wife now. Can a man who has a wife and a child be a blackmailer? I was going to confront him in front of his family, but my car died. I had to call Gabrielle to come get me. We stopped by her place and someone had broken in there, too-” Sharon knew she was rambling, but the stony look on Richard’s face had her in a panic.

She didn’t know what else to do except to keep talking. If she explained, maybe he wouldn’t be angry. Maybe he’d understand and forgive.

She forced herself to look into his eyes and that’s when she realized. “You already know something. That’s why you’ve been acting so strange. What is it you know?”

He gestured to his briefcase in the hall. “I also received a photo and a note.”

The blood in her veins ran cold. Her legs grew weak and she stepped back to the nearest chair, collapsing into it. “Go on.”

“The note said you didn’t pay up the first time so now the burden was on me. But the blackmailer didn’t want money. No, the terms were that I had to drop out of the race or the photo would be made public. Guess what my first reaction was?”

“What?” she whispered.

“To find you. To confide in you. To see if you were okay and to fix this together. That’s when I realized. If you didn’t pay the money the first time, you already knew about the photo. You were being blackmailed. But you hadn’t confided in me.” He turned away from her. “How in the hell do you think that made me feel?”

Sharon pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t you think if I thought I could confide in you, I would have?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to face him head-on. “Just that every time I brought up my past with Tony, you brushed it aside. You said you didn’t want to hear about it.”

“I didn’t want to put you through reliving it,” he said, correcting her. His eyes flashed angry sparks.

She blinked away tears. “That isn’t what you said. You said you didn’t need to hear it. As if it disgusted you. As if I disgusted you.” Her voice broke on the last word.

“Disgusted me?” Suddenly he was in front of her. He tipped her chin up, making her meet his gaze. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You did! Every time you kissed me softly and started to get excited, every time I thought you’d become more aggressive, treat me like you wanted me, you’d back off. Get gentle. And it didn’t feel like you wanted me anymore. Not as much as you should,” she said, her voice rising.

She didn’t recognize the words coming out of her mouth. She didn’t believe she was saying them, yet she was. She was talking from the depths of her soul, admitting things to him she’d never even admitted to herself. Because she was afraid.

Afraid if she said them aloud, she’d lose him.

But, she realized now, she just might have lost him, anyway. So really, maybe she had nothing left to lose.

Nothing and everything, Sharon thought.

DEREK HAD LIVED ALONE for the past couple of years so he wasn’t used to worrying about others. He’d always known Marlene was taking good care of Holly and heaven knows his father took care of himself. But now that he had two women in his life, he thought about them constantly. At least Holly was safe with his father and uncle.

Where the hell was Gabrielle?

He glanced at his wristwatch. “Almost dinnertime,” he muttered. He tried her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail and he left a message.

She said she would drop Sharon off at home and come right over. Thirty minutes from Boston with no traffic, an hour with traffic max. Half an hour tops to drop Sharon off, to walk her inside and chat with her parents. Five minutes to get here.

All told, an hour and forty-five minutes, two hours at the most. Instead three hours had passed since he’d gotten her call and rearranged his and his daughter’s lives in order to keep Gabrielle safe.

So he asked himself again. Where the hell could she be?

IT HAD BEEN OVER AN HOUR since Gabrielle had pulled up to Mary Perkins’s mayoral office, located in an old Victorian mansion on the border of the two neighboring towns. The house was painted a grayish blue with white trim, common in the New England landscape.

Grabbing both her handbag and her laptop for safekeeping, she walked to the front porch. The screen was closed, the main door open.

Taped to the screen was a typed note, not sleek perfect computer ink but old-fashioned typesetting, complete with dropped letters: Back soon. Let yourself inside. M.

Although Mary wasn’t expecting her, Gabrielle did as the note suggested and stepped into the front hall. There was no receptionist waiting behind the messy, paper-strewn desk.

“Hello?” Gabrielle called out in case someone was inside.

Nobody replied.

She walked around, peeking into various meeting rooms, only to find those empty, as well.

At the far end of the only long hall, a set of heavy-looking double doors were shut tight. She didn’t have to read the sign to know what it said-Mayor’s Office.

She bit the inside of her cheek and knocked.

Silence.

She jiggled the handle.

Locked.

Mary Perkins didn’t have a problem leaving the outer office open, but the doors to the inner sanctum were practically vaulted shut. She wouldn’t be surprised if the room was soundproof, she thought wryly.

She couldn’t decide what to do. She could leave and head to Derek’s, but based on the note on the door, someone was due to arrive soon.

Gabrielle exhaled hard and eased herself into a chair in the sitting area in the front of the house. She crossed her legs, leaned back against the old velour couch and picked up a fan, which had been left on a table. She shut her eyes and fanned herself, hoping to ease the heat and humidity that seeped into the old house and into Gabrielle’s pores. Logically she knew waving hot air into her face wasn’t going to help, but it couldn’t possibly hurt.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally heard the creaking of the hinges on the screen door. She rose from her seat without letting go of the fan. At some point she’d become convinced the hot air was somehow cooling her off.