Not yet ready to concede defeat, she looked away and said softly, “But you have a life. I know you must-or, anyway, you did before we came. Since then-”

He leaned forward suddenly, on the attack, cutting her off, startling her. “What do you know about my life?”

“I told you, I-”

“You checked me out before you hired me.” His smile was sardonic. “And tell me, what did you find out? All about my professional reputation and track record, I’m sure. Social gossip. I’m certain you were able to discover that I am unmarried, and that I make the rounds of various Charleston-area social functions, fulfilling my duties as one of the Low Country’s most reliable escorts. What else? The fact that I serve on the boards of several charitable organizations? That I am known to be law-abiding, upstanding and trustworthy? Those things would be of particular importance to you, I imagine.” He paused and leaned closer to her. “Now, tell me, Mrs. Robey, what do you know about me?”

She flinched away from his nearness, cheeks burning, dry mouthed, and could only mutter, “Obviously-”

He straightened and made a smacking sound with his lips, something else she’d seen him do, she fuzzily recalled, that day in court. “You keep using that word-obviously Now-how can something be obvious if you don’t know a person?”

But she wasn’t in court, Summer reminded herself, grasping at that like a drowning rat hauling itself aboard a floating twig. And she wasn’t a brainless bimbo. And she would not let herself be intimidated again-not even by Riley Grogan. She shook herself mentally and leveled a look at him. “You’re right. I don’t know you. All I know about you is what I’ve seen. What you’ve shown me. I’ve seen the lawyer-” she gave him a small, sardonic smile of her own “-you do that extremely well, thanks for reminding me. I’ve seen your clothes, your car, your home-”

He made an impatient movement that told her she’d landed another blow, however small. He sat back, frowning, though not at her, and after a moment said in a low, gravelly voice, “I had my reasons for acquiring…all that I’ve acquired. At one time I suppose it was important to me. Things change. Priorities change…” And he was silent, gazing at the thinning darkness beyond the windows.

Summer saw the deeper darkness reflected in his eyes and suddenly felt a sadness in him that she didn’t understand. Surely not, she thought. Riley Grogan? But he has everything.

Sorry now that she’d pushed so far and presumed so much, she said haltingly, “I think…people see you the way you want them to see you. Maybe, if I don’t know you it’s because… you really don’t want me to.”

“Oh, that’s not true.” But it was an automatic denial, and after a moment he shifted as if the chair had become uncomfortable to him. “If it is, it’s probably because I don’t-” he cleared his throat loudly “-I don’t quite know how.” And he looked at her, his smile askew. “Maintaining an image can get to be a habit. A hard one to break.” In a sudden change of mood, he clasped his hands together on the tabletop and leaned toward her. “Try me. What would you like to know? Go ahead-ask.”

The intensity of his gaze was like a physical force; bracing herself to meet it seemed to take all her strength. Faintly, she said, “You’d answer me truthfully?”

He nodded. “Or not at all.”

But she found that it was hard to think when he looked at her like that-as if, like Mowgli’s Kaa, his eyes had the power to mesmerize her. In another moment, she feared, he could if he wished take control of her completely…body, soul and mind.

“Your witness,” he prompted softly.

It took a great effort, but she managed to wrench herself away from him both physically and mentally, rise and walk to the windows, where with the safety of distance and her back to him, she cleared her throat and ventured, “Okay…family. Nobody seems to know anything about your family.”

“That’s true. That’s the way I want it.”

She nodded, waited, and when he said nothing more, turned bravely to look at him. “Well? Do you have one?”

“Not really.” He shifted uncomfortably-unaccustomed, she imagined, to being on the receiving end of probing questions-and finally muttered, “My father died when I was…young.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, but was not ready, yet, to let him go. “What about your mother? Is she alive?” He nodded, but his eyes slid away from hers. She persisted, “Do you…see her?”

His eyes were on the mug in his hands. He raised it to his lips and drained the few drops that were left before he said in a carefully neutral tone, “From time to time.”

“Really?” She couldn’t have said why that surprised her, or why speaking of it should so obviously unnerve him. But her heart quickened as she asked, “Any brothers or sisters?”

He lowered the mug and now examined it minutely. His lashes were dark curtains across his eyes. “I had a brother,” he said at last, again in that voice devoid of all expression. “Younger. He died when I was twelve. He was..about six.”

“Oh, God-how awful.” And she thought: Just about Helen’s age. Shame and regret overwhelmed her, squeezed her chest and tightened her throat, so that she whispered through the pain, “I’m so sorry. I mean, I can’t even imagine what it would be like. My sisters and I-we were so close. Even to think of losing them…”

From half a room away, Riley saw her eyes fill with tears, and saw in those tears his own escape. Maintaining control of his natural empathy-his gift, his curse-had been challenge enough to him lately, it was true; but it was a battle he waged on a daily basis and was therefore accustomed to. Watching her, he said quietly, “You miss them.”

She gave a liquid-sounding laugh, like a hiccup. He watched her lips play through a whole symphony of emotions and was as fascinated as he’d been that first day in his office. She said huskily, “Yeah, I do. And the funny thing is, until last year I didn’t even see that much of them I guess-” she shrugged, drew an uneven breath “-I was too busy. There was my job, my clinic, and then I was married and they weren’t, I had kids and they didn’t. But then, after Hal left, and I knew I was going to have to start over, and I thought about where I would go… My parents live in Pensacola Beach, I could have gone there. But when I really thought about it, it was my sister-Mirabella-that I…” her voice broke, surprising her, he thought, and she drew another unsteady breath. “So, I came here. And now-” suddenly her hands were clenched fists and her voice trembled with anger “-I can’t even see her. I can’t even talk to her on the phone. Now, when I need her the most. It makes me so angry. I feel like-” She broke off with a laugh. “You know what it’s like? Remember that day, last winter, when you saw me in court? And the judge threatened to send me to jail? I thought, I can’t possibly go to jail-no way! And now, here I am-if I’m not in jail, I might as well be!”

Unexpectedly stung, he forced a smile. “Oh, come on, is it really that bad?”

“Oh,” she said quickly, empathetic enough herself to realize how her words might be taken and anxious not to give offense, “not that it isn’t a very nice jail. You’ve done everything you could possibly do to make us comfortable-too much.” She came toward him, arms folded tightly across her waist in what seemed to him an unconscious effort to contain treacherous emotions. Instead, because of the tension in her, the effect of that determinedly subdued tone and manner was to make her words all the more poignant. “But-my life has been taken from me. Don’t you understand? I have no freedom to come and go as I please. I can’t go to work, or shopping, or to visit my family or take the kids to McDonald’s. If that’s not prison, what is the definition?”

Her face was stark, strained…the unhappiness in it so distressing to Riley, he finally had to look away. “It’s only temporary,” he muttered. “Until the bad guys are put away. And the FBI, with all its resources-”

“Can’t find one man named Hal Robey!” she broke in, anger and derision thick and hot in her voice. “You know what makes me the maddest? It’s that I’m afraid. All the time. Do you know what it’s like to live every moment of your life in fear?”

He was stunned to hear himself say, “Yes, I do.” And felt with the admission, a curious sense of lightening.

Summer’s eyebrows rose with surprise. “You?” She came back to the table at once and sat, once again close enough to him to touch, as if, he thought, his confession of human frailty made him seem less dangerous to her.

To him, though, the danger seemed incalculable. Shaken by his brush with it, he forced a smile and murmured, “I told you, you don’t know me.”

But, to his relief, she wasn’t listening, focused once again on her own concerns and reassured enough for continued confidences. Gazing at the lightening windows, she said in a musing tone, “Sometimes, you know, I think I’d rather confront the fear. Go out there and face those…those bastards! Like-I don’t know, set myself up as bait for an FBI sting, or something. Anything to get those people caught.”

“But,” Riley reminded her gently, “you have the children to think about.”

“Yes…” He heard her breath escape in a long, slow sigh. “I have the children.” Then for a while she was silent, while her whole being seemed to wilt, and grow pensive and sad. When she spoke again it was in a halting half whisper, and he knew without any doubt that she had never spoken those thoughts aloud to a living soul before.

“Sometimes…it seems like I’ve been in jail all my life-a kind of jail, anyway. Maybe not all my life, but at least since I realized that the man I’d married wasn’t ever going to be a partner, and that it was pretty much going to all be up to me-providing for us, you know, raising my children. I’ve felt…so damn lonely.” The last word came from her with rough edges, like torn burlap. “I’ve felt trapped, you know? I feel like I’ve had no choices. It’s like that story of the little boy with his finger in the hole in the dike. Like I’m all alone and trapped by the whole overwhelming responsibility for survival-everyone’s… my own, my children’s-and that everything I’ve done has been because I had to, for someone else’s sake, never because it was what I wanted to do.”