Clare looked into the mirror above the dresser, at the dark circles beneath her eyes. Hollow. Empty. Like Lonny’s sock drawer. Like her life. Everything was gone. She’d lost so much in the past two days. Her fiancé and her dog. Her belief in soul mates and her mother’s two carat diamond earring.

She’d noticed the missing earring shortly after arriving home that morning. It would take some doing, but she could find a matching diamond to replace the one she’d lost. Finding something to replace the emptiness wasn’t going to be as easy.

Despite her exhaustion, an urge to run out and fill the void forced her to her feet. A mental list of all the things she needed flew through her head. She needed a winter coat. It was August, but if she didn’t hurry, the wool coat she’d seen on bebe.com would be sold out. And she needed the new Coach bag she’d had her eye on at Macy’s. In black to match the bebe coat. Or red…or both. Since she’d be at Macy’s, she’d pick up some Estée Lauder mascara and Benefits Browzing for her brows. She was running low on both.

On the way to the mall she’d stop at Wendy’s and order a biggie fry with extra powdered salt. She’d get a gooey cinnamon roll from Mrs. Powell’s, then swing into See’s for a pound of toffee and…

Clare sat back down on the bed and resisted her urge to fill the emptiness with things. Food. Clothes. Men. If she was truly through being the queen of denial, she had to look at her life and admit that stuffing her face, filling her closet, and reaching for a man had never helped fill the terrifying hole in her chest. Not in the long run, and in the end she was left with a few pounds that forced her into the gym, clothes that went out of style, and an empty sock drawer.

Perhaps she needed a psychiatrist. Someone objective to look inside her head and tell her what was wrong with her and how to fix her life.

Maybe all she needed was a long vacation. She most definitely needed a time out from junk food, credit cards, and men. She thought of Sebastian and the white towel wrapped around his hips. She needed a long break from anything with testosterone.

She was physically tired and emotionally bruised, and if she were honest with herself, still a little hung over. She raised a hand to her aching head and took a vow to stay away from alcohol and men, at least until she figured out her life. Until she had a moment of clarity. The ta-da moment when everything made sense again.

Clare stood and wrapped her arms around the bedpost and the swag of Belgian lace. Her heart and pride were in shreds, but those were all things from which she would recover.

There was something else. Something she had to take care of first thing in the morning. Something potentially serious.

Something that scared her more than an uncertain future with no shopping sprees and salty fries. And that was no future at all.

Vashion Elliot, Duke of Rathstone, stood with his hands behind his back as he lowered his gaze from the blue feather in Miss Winters’ bonnet to her serious green eyes.

Clare’s fingers hovered over the keys as she glanced at the time displayed at the bottom right of her computer monitor.

Miss Winters was pretty enough, despite the stubborn tilt of her chin. Pretty he could do without. The last pretty female in his life had displayed an excess of passion, in and out of bed, that he would not soon forget. Of course, that female had been his former mistress. Not a buttoned-up, prim and proper governess.

“I was lately in the employment of Lord and Lady Pomfrey. Governess to their three sons.”

Her pelisse swallowed her slight frame and she looked as if a strong wind might carry her off. He wondered if she were stronger than she appeared. As stubborn as her chin implied. If he decided to hire her, she’d have to be. The fact that she stood in his study showed a certain strength and determination of character that he usually found lacking in the opposite sex.

“Yes. Yes.” He waved an impatient hand over her letters of recommendation before him on his desk. “Since you are here, I assume you read my advertisement.”

“Yes.”

He came around his desk and pulled at the cuffs of his brown frock coat. He knew that he was considered tall and unfashionably built from many long hours of physical labor spent both on his estates in Devon and on his ship, the Louisa. “Then you are aware that if an occasion arises that requires travel, I expect to take my daughter with me.” He wasn’t certain, but he thought he detected a spark in those serious eyes looking back, as if the thought of travel excited her.

“Yes, your grace.”

Clare wrote several more pages before she paused in her writing of The Dangerous Duke, the third book in her governess series. At nine A.M. she reached for the telephone. She’d lain awake most of the night, dreading this call. The thing she dreaded most, more than packing up the few reminders of Lonny, was calling Dr. Linden’s office.

She punched the seven numbers, and when the receptionist picked up, she said, “I need to make an appointment, please.”

“Are you a patient of Dr. Linden?”

“Yes. My name is Clare Wingate.”

“Do you need to see the doctor, or do you need an appointment with Dana, the nurse practitioner?”

She wasn’t sure. She’d never done this before. She opened her mouth to just spit it out. To just say it. Her throat got dry and she swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“I see that you had your yearly exam in April. Do you suspect that you’re pregnant?”

“No…no. I…I recently found something out. I caught my…well, I discovered my boyfriend…I mean my former boyfriend has been unfaithful.” She took a deep breath and placed her free hand on her throat. Beneath her fingers her pulse pounded. This was crazy. Why was she having such a hard time? “So…I need to be tested for…you know. HIV.” Nervous laugher escaped her dry throat. “I mean, I don’t think it’s likely, but I have to know for sure. He said he cheated just the one time and used protection, but can you really trust a cheater?” Good lord. She’d gone from stammering to rambling. “As soon as possible, please.”

“Let me look.” From the other end of the line several taps on a keyboard, and then, “We’ll get you in as soon as possible. I have a cancellation with Dana on Thursday. Is four-thirty okay?”

Thursday. Three days. It was an eternity. “That’s fine.” Silence filled the line, and Clare forced herself to ask, “How long will it take?”

“The test? Not long. You’ll have the results before you leave the office.”

When she hung up the phone, she leaned back in her chair and stared straight ahead at her computer screen. She’d told the receptionist the truth. She really didn’t believe Lonny had exposed her to anything, but she was an adult and had to know for sure one way or the other. Her fiancé had been unfaithful, and if she’d caught him in the closet with a woman, she would have made the call too. Cheating was cheating. And despite what Sebastian had said, the fact that she didn’t have male “equipment” didn’t make it easier.

Her forehead felt tight and she raised her hands and massaged her temples. It wasn’t even ten A.M. and she had a massive headache. Her life was a mess and it was all Lonny’s fault. She had to get tested for something that could take her life, and she wasn’t the one who’d messed around. She was monogamous. Always. She didn’t hop into bed with…

Sebastian.

Her hands fell to her lap. She had to tell Sebastian. The thought made her throbbing temples just about burst. She didn’t know if they’d used a condom, and she had to tell him.

Or not. More than likely the test would be negative. She should wait to say anything until she found out the results herself. She probably wouldn’t have to tell him at all. What were the chances he’d have sex with someone else between now and Thursday? A vison of him dropping his towel entered her head.

Very likely, she concluded, and reached for a bottle of aspirin she kept in her desk drawer.

Four

My recorder beside my yellow legal pad, I look across the table at the man I know only as Smith. Around me locals chat and laugh, but it all feels forced as they keep a watchful eye on me and Smith. If I didn’t know better, if the language around me was peppered with Arabic and scented with cumin, I would think I was in Baghdad sitting across from a fanatic named Mohammed. The inner beast shines just as bright in deep brown eyes as blue. Both men…

Sebastian reread what he’d written and scrubbed his face with his hands. What he’d written wasn’t so much bad as it wasn’t right. He returned his hands to the keyboard of his laptop and with a few strokes deleted what he’d written.

He stood and sent the kitchen chair sliding across the hardwood floor. He didn’t understand it. He had his notes, an outline in his head, and a good workable nut graf. All he had to do was sit down and write a decent lead. “Fuck!” Something that felt a lot like fear bit the back of his throat and chewed its way down to his stomach. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“Is there a problem?”

He took a deep breath and let it out as he turned and looked at his father standing just inside the back doorway. “No. No problem.” Not any that he’d admit out loud, anyway. He’d get the lead paragraph. He would. He’d just never faced this kind of problem before, but he’d work it out. He moved to the refrigerator, reached inside and pulled out a carton of orange juice. He would have preferred a beer, but it wasn’t even noon. The day he started drinking in the morning was the day he knew he had to truly worry about himself.