Rica stiffened. “I know that’s not true.”

“I don’t, not directly. I’ve had some dealings with an associate of his.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No. It isn’t.” Carter’s smoothed her hands over Rica’s shoulders. “I swear, it’s not what you think.”

Rica turned and studied Carter’s face. “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Rica smoothed her hand over Carter’s chest. “It’s probably good if we don’t see each other for a while.”

The arousal that had been churning in Carter’s stomach tightened into a heavy ball of disappointment. “Why?”

“Because then when we do see each other again, maybe instead of talking, we can just have sex and get it out of our systems.”

“I like talking.” Carter kissed her. “But I like this too. I’ll call you when I get to Boston…”

“No. I don’t want to talk to you when you’re there. Doing whatever it is that you don’t do for my family.” Rica took a step back, breaking contact with Carter completely. “I’ll see you when you get back here. Where it’s just us.”

“It might be a few weeks.”

“I know.”

Carter watched helplessly as Rica packed up the remains of their meal and started toward the boat. She quickly rolled up the blanket and towels and followed. She was shivering now too. She found the jacket she’d left under one of the seats and handed it to Rica. “Here. You’re going to freeze.”

“Thanks.” Rica pulled on Carter’s jacket and wrapped her arms around her knees. She watched Carter push the boat off the sand and jump adroitly in. She rested her cheek against her knee and studied the woman who was still so much a stranger, but who seemed with each passing hour to be more and more a part of her world. And that’s what she hadn’t wanted to happen.

From the time she had been old enough to understand what it was her father did, she had carefully separated herself from all that entailed. As she’d gotten older, it had become even harder to do. She’d come to recognize that every family gathering was always more than that. Men took her father aside for whispered conversations in the midst of a wedding party, birthday gifts were bestowed like tithes, and guests subtly vied for the coveted seats at the tables closest to her father’s. There was always an undercurrent of unrest and danger.

She wanted none of it, and she had distanced herself as much as she could considering her father’s agenda for her. Now she found herself almost totally alone.

Until Carter. Carter threatened to draw her right back into the very arena she’d fought so hard to leave behind. She couldn’t let that happen. Time was what she needed. Time to close the doors Carter had opened.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hi, good morning. Hello, how are you?” Tory greeted the patients already gathered in her waiting room as she hurried toward her office.

“You have a nice holiday now, Dr. King,” one elderly gentleman called.

Memorial Day weekend. The start of the busiest time of the year. Oh yes, it will be wonderful.

“Thank you. You, too, Mr. Durkee.” Tory gave Randy a harried smile. “Everything okay?”

“Dr. Burgoyne is here,” Randy said. “I sent her back.”

“Thanks,” Tory said, checking her watch. For once, she wasn’t late. “Give me fifteen.”

“You got it.”

When she reached her office, Tory found her new associate perusing the photographs of Tory during her Olympic rowing days. Reese had done the same thing, the morning they’d met, but the similarity ended there. Bonita was a petite African American woman of thirty, with almond skin and warm brown eyes. “Good morning. Have you been waiting long?”

Bonita Burgoyne turned with a smile. “No, not really. I was early. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a small town where it just takes a few minutes to get from one place to another.” She laughed. “I’m still on big-city time. In Rhode Island I had an hour commute and needed to get ready two hours early for anything.”

“Did you get settled in?” Tory dropped her briefcase on her desk and gestured to the chair in front of it. She sat down and glanced automatically at the framed photograph on the right-hand corner of her desk. Reese was right, she looked gorgeous in her desert camouflage BDUs. For just a second, Tory forgot what she was doing and thought back instead to their last phone call, which had been almost a week before. The connection hadn’t been great, but it was clear enough for her to hear that Reese was tired, and more than that, troubled. Troubled by the things, Tory imagined, that she had seen or perhaps done. Things that she hadn’t told Tory, and might never tell her. Unconsciously, she reached out and ran her fingers along the edge of the silver frame.

“How long has she been gone?” Bonita asked quietly.

Tory looked up with a start, then shook her head ruefully. “I’m sorry. Just about a month.” Actually, thirty-one days, five hours, and seven minutes.

“I saw the picture on your desk when I was looking at the ones up on the wall. I don’t mean to pry, but I’ve got a cousin there, too. I can relate.”

“It’s all right,” Tory said. “I hope we’ll be friends as well as colleagues.” She added quickly, “But you’re not required to share anything that you don’t want to.”

Bonita laughed. “I don’t have any deep dark secrets. As I told you during the interview, I don’t like the pace of city living and I don’t like the kind of medicine I’m being forced to practice with all the restrictions and bureaucracy in a big hospital. I want a quiet life, and I want to practice medicine that matters.”

Tory noticed that Bonita neatly managed to avoid mentioning what she wanted in her personal life. Tory knew she was single. She didn’t know if her new associate was a lesbian. Indeed, she knew very little about Bonita beyond her professional credentials, which were exemplary, and the fact that she was easy to talk to and seemed to have a calm, centered personality. Just what Tory needed in a medical partner.

“That’s pretty much what you’ll get here,” Tory said. “Peace and predictability.” She looked at the photo of Reese standing outside a tent in the desert. She could feel the heat on her skin just looking at it. “Most of the time.”

“How’s she doing? Does she say?”

“She’s a Marine,” Tory said with a small smile.

“Ah. One of my sisters and two of my brothers are cops, just like our father.” Bonita shook her head. “And they never talk about how hard it can be, either.”

“How did you escape the call, then?” Tory wondered at the trace of bitterness in Bonita’s voice.

“Never even heard a whisper. I had enough of the tough-guy attitude growing up. It’s the last thing I wanted in my life once I became an adult.”

“I think I can understand that. But we don’t choose who we fall in love with. And I wouldn’t change anything about Reese.”

“Good for you,” Bonita said sincerely.

“Yes. I know.”

Carter snagged a drink from a passing tuxedoed waiter and moved off to one side of the stone patio into the shade of a huge flowering dogwood. At seven p.m., under the golden glow of the setting sun, the expansive gardens behind Alfonse Pareto’s home were a riot of color and fragrance. Their beauty, however, was eclipsed by that of the woman Carter watched as she sipped her 1995 Krug. She hadn’t seen Rica in three weeks, and while she hadn’t thought it was possible to forget how striking she was, she had been wrong.

Rica wore a white two-piece evening dress…a sleek sleeveless silk top subtly styled like a bustier and a floor length fishtail skirt…with heels that brought her close to Carter’s height. Her hair was pulled back from her face and held with a comb at the base of her neck. She looked exotic and untouchable. Every time she gazed in Carter’s direction, her eyes passed over Carter’s face as if they were strangers. Each time it happened, Carter felt the affront as if she’d been slapped. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer.

Against her better judgment, she eased her way through the crowd and waited until Rica had stopped speaking to yet another of the men Carter recognized as Pareto’s captains. Then she closed the final gap between them.

“Ms. Grechi,” Carter said quietly, her eyes sweeping the crowd, relieved when she saw that no one was paying any particular attention to them. It wasn’t the smartest move for her to approach Rica in full view of people who might take notice, but she couldn’t help herself. Up close she could see that the top of Rica’s ensemble laced in the back, leaving her skin tantalizingly displayed beneath the thin silk strands. Carter’s fingertips tingled with the need to caress the small bare patches of skin.

“Carter,” Rica said.

When it seemed that Rica might not say anything else, Carter murmured, “You look amazing tonight.”

Rica slanted Carter a glance, then fingered the sleeve of Carter’s plain, black, tab-collared shirt while she slowly perused the belted trousers. “You’re probably the only woman in my father’s entire acquaintance who could manage to show up wearing this and not cause a stir. Prada?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I like the look.”

“I’m glad.” Carter sipped her champagne. “I called you when I was out on the Cape.” She’d only been able to get away once for more than a day in the last few weeks, and although she could easily have made the short trip out to the Cape with a smaller window of time than that, she was afraid she might be called back when she was there. She hadn’t wanted to rouse Rica’s suspicions by making another abrupt departure, so she had forced herself to stay away. But the longer she had gone without seeing Rica, the harder it had been to sleep. The harder it had been to concentrate. The harder it had been to do anything except think about Rica and how much she wanted to see her again. “I left a message.”