The traffic light strung across Americana connecting Ann Morrison and Katherine Albertson parks turned green as Clare blew through. She hadn’t been to her mother’s house in more than two months. Not since the morning Joyce Wingate had told a room full of her Junior League friends that Clare wrote romance novels, just to spite her. Clare had always known how her mother felt about her writing, but Joyce had always ignored her career, pretending instead that she wrote “women’s fiction”-right up until the day Clare had been featured in the Idaho Statesman and the Wingates’ dirty secret was out of the closet and splashed across the Life section. Clare Wingate, writing under the pen name Alicia Grey, graduate of Boise State University and Bennington, wrote historical romance novels. Not only did she write them, she was successful and didn’t have any plans to stop.

Since the time Clare had been old enough to put words together, she’d made up stories. Stories about an imaginary dog named Chip or the witch she’d always believed lived in her neighbor’s attic. It hadn’t been long before Clare’s naturally romantic nature and her love of writing melded and Chip found a poodle girlfriend, Suzie, and the witch in the neighbor’s attic got married to a warlock that looked a lot like Billy Idol in his White Wedding video.

Four years ago her first historical romance novels had been published, and her mother had yet to recover from the shock and embarrassment. Until the Statesman article, Joyce had been able to pretend that Clare’s career choice was a passing phase, and that once she got over her fascination with “trash,” she’d write “real books.”

Literature worthy of the Wingate library.

In the cup holder between the seats of her car, Clare’s cell phone rang. She picked it up, saw it was her friend Maddie, and set it back down. She knew her friend was probably worried, but she didn’t feel like talking. All three of her best friends were the very best women to have around, and she’d talk to them later, just not right now.

She didn’t know how much Maddie knew about the prior evening, but Maddie wrote true crime and would probably put some kind of psychotic killer spin on it whatever it was. Adele was just as well-meaning. She wrote fantasy and had a tendency to cheer people up by relating bizarre stories from her personal life, and Clare didn’t feel like being cheered up at the moment. Then there was Lucy, who had just gotten married. The rights to Lucy’s latest mystery novel had recently been optioned by a major studio. And Clare knew that the last thing Lucy needed was to have her own problems steal an ounce of her happiness.

She turned onto Crescent Rim Drive and continued past houses that overlooked the parks and the city below. The closer she drove toward her home, which she’d shared with Lonny, the more her stomach twisted. As she pulled her car into the driveway of the light blue and white Victorian she’d lived in for five years, her eyes stung with the painful emotion she could no longer hold back.

Even though she knew it was over with Lonny, she loved him. For the second time that morning déjà vu tightened the back of her skull and settled in the top of her chest.

Once again she’d fallen in love with the wrong man.

Once again she’d given her heart to a man who could not love her as much as she loved him. And like those other times in the past, she’d turned to a stranger when it all fell apart. Although she supposed that technically Sebastian wasn’t a stranger, it didn’t matter. In fact, it made what she’d done worse.

Once again she’d turned self-destructive and ended up disgusted with herself.

Two

Sebastian Vaughan pulled his white T-shirt over his head and tucked the bottom into his jeans. So much for doing a good deed, he thought as he picked up his BlackBerry from the couch. He glanced at the face and saw that he had seven e-mails and two missed calls. He slid it into the back pocket of his Levi’s, figuring he’d get to those later.

He should have known better than to help Clare Wingate. The last time he’d helped her, he ended up royally screwed.

Sebastian moved to the nightstand, grabbed his Seiko, and looked down at the black face with its compass and mile marker dials and features. He had yet to set the stainless steel watch to reflect the time zone change, and he pulled out the crown. As he moved the hands forward one hour, he thought back to the last time he’d seen Clare. She must have been ten or so, and had followed him to a pond not far from the carriage house where his father lived. He’d had a net to catch frogs and tadpoles, and she stood on the bank beneath a huge cotton tree while he waded in and got busy.

“I know how babies are made,” she’d announced, looking down at him through thick glasses magnifying her light blue eyes. As always, her dark hair had been pulled into tight braids at the back of her head. “The dad kisses the mom and a baby gets into her stomach.”

He had already lived through two stepfathers, as well as his mother’s boyfriends, and he knew exactly how babies got made. “Who told you that?”

“My mother.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he’d informed her, then proceeded to fill Clare in on what he knew. He told her in technical terms how the sperm and the egg got together in the woman’s body.

Behind her glasses, Clare’s big eyes had filled with horror. “That’s not true!”

“Yeah. It is.” Then he’d added his own observations. “Sex is loud and men and women do it a lot.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. They do it all the time. Even when they don’t want babies.”

“Why?”

He’d shrugged and netted a few tadpoles. “I guess it must feel good.”

“Gross!”

The year before, he’d thought it sounded pretty gross too. But since turning twelve the month before, he’d started to think differently about sex. More curious than disgusted.

He recalled that when Mrs. Wingate had found out about his sex talk with Clare, shit had hit the fan. He’d been packed up and sent back to Washington early. His mother was so angered by his treatment, she refused to send him to Idaho anymore. From then on, his father had been forced to visit him in whichever city they happened to be living. But things between his mother and father deteriorated into full-blown rancor, and there were years in his life when his father had been absent. Large holes where he hadn’t seen Leo at all.

These days, if he had to characterize his relationship with the old man, he would have said it was mostly nonexistent. There had been a time in his life when he’d blamed Clare for that situation.

Sebastian snapped the watch on his wrist and looked around for his wallet. He saw it on the floor and bent to retrieve it. He should have left Clare on a bar stool last night, he told himself. She’d been sitting three stools down, and if he hadn’t overheard her tell the bartender her name, he wouldn’t have recognized her. As a kid, he’d always thought she looked like a cartoon, with big eyes and mouth. Last night she hadn’t been wearing big thick glasses, but once he looked into those light blue eyes, seen those full lips and all that dark hair, he realized it was her. The light and dark coloring that had been contrary and a little freaky in a child, had turned her into a stunning woman. The lips that had been too full on a child now made him wonder what she’d learned to do with that mouth as an adult. She’d grown into a beautiful woman, but the second he’d recognized her, he should have left her all weepy and sad and some other sucker’s problem. Screw it. He didn’t need the headache.

“Just once, you try and do the right thing…” he muttered as he shoved his wallet into his back pocket. He’d walked her up to her hotel room to make sure she made it, and she invited him in. He’d stayed while she bawled some more, and when she passed out, he tucked her in bed. Like a freakin’ saint, he thought. And then he’d made a tactical error.

It was around one-thirty in the morning, and as he’d pulled the sheet over Clare, he realized he’d knocked back a few too many Dos Equis and tequila chasers from her minibar. Instead of risking a night in a Boise jail, he decided he’d stick around and watch some tube while he sobered up. In the past, he had shared a cave with guerrilla leaders and an Abrams tank stuffed with Marines. He’d chased endless stories and been chased across the Arizona desert by pissed-off polygamists. He could handle one passed-out, fully clothed, smelling-like-gin, drunk girl. No problem. None at all.

He’d kicked off his shoes, propped up some pillows, and reached for the remote. These days, he hardly slept, and he’d been wide-awake when she got up and began to wrestle with her dress. Watching her was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the Golden Girls marathon on television, and he’d enjoyed the show as she stripped down to nothing but a pink thong and beige birth control patch. Who would have thought the girl with the thick glasses and terminally tight braids would have grown up to look so good in a stripper thong?

He moved across the room and sat on the couch. His shoes rested on the floor, and he shoved his feet inside without untying the laces. The last time he recalled looking at the clock, it had been five-fifteen. He must have fallen asleep somewhere during the Golden Girls fourth season and woken a few hours later with Clare’s little bare ass against his button fly, her back pressed to his chest, and his hand on her bare breast like they were lovers.

He’d woken up painfully hard and ready to go. But had he violated her? Taken advantage of her? Hell, no! She had a great body and a mouth just made for sin, but he hadn’t laid a hand on her. Well, except for her breast, but that wasn’t his fault. He’d been asleep and having erotic dreams. But once he woke up, he hadn’t touched her. Instead he’d jumped in the shower and let the cold water cool him down. And what did it get him? He was accused of having sex with her anyway. Oh, he could have screwed her every which way till Sunday. But he hadn’t. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He never had been; not even if the woman was begging for it. He preferred his women coherent, and it pissed him off that she accused him of taking advantage of her. He’d purposely let her think it too. He could have set her straight, but flat-out lied just to make her feel worse. And he didn’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.