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fail her. And after that there was another mirror to mount outside the living room window, a trick of light to detect motion along the outside wall.
    “You want me to leave, don’t you?”
    “Wh-why would you say that?”
    For such a hard-looking man, Jake’s eyes momentarily softened. When they traced her, they felt like the brush of a freshly cleaned sheet across goose-bumped skin.
    “I-I’m not that comfortable with strangers,” she explained.
    “You don’t say?”
    Jake watched her for a prolonged moment, and then his smile fell. Under that weighty silence she was aware of the rain battering the eastside windows. The noise had an ebb and flow to it with each surge of wind. She felt cold to the bone in this house, but up until that phone call, she thought she was safe here.
    “Okay, Megan. I’ll go.”
    Good.
    Jake stooped to fasten the sodden laces of his boots. Big hands. Powerful hands. As he stood, her eyes swept up to take in the dark intensity of Jake Grogan. The power was there in the steely set of his jaw and the dip of his dark brow—features that intimidated. She was intimidated. Yet when he flashed that dimple, all bets were off.
     
    He reached the door, but the hand on the knob hesitated.
    “Look.” His voice was husky. “If you should find anything—anything that might shed light on Estelle’s daughter—” He turned and frowned. “What was her name?”
    Megan swallowed. “Excuse me?”
    “What was Estelle’s daughter’s name? I don’t even know my moth—” he swallowed, “—her name.”
    “Ummm—Gabrielle.”
    “Gabrielle,” Jake whispered. “That’s pretty, don’t you think?”
    Megan nodded, speechless.
    Jake reached into the pocket of his jacket and extracted a card. “Anyway, if you should ever come across anything—” his voice dropped off, “—could you call me?”
    He didn’t wait for her response. He opened the door, eyed the sky warily and then squared his shoulders and started down the steps.
    “Wait!”
    My God, what was she thinking?
    Megan watched Jake pause at the foot of the steps. He turned around and looked up at her. Stoic in the downpour, he waited. With rain dripping onto his black eyelashes, he blinked away the assault.
    Something about Jake tempted her with haunting images of pleasure she would never be privy to. Whoever Jake Grogan was—whether he was innocent or a foe, Megan knew that she would not let him cross that bridge in this weather.
    She had the gun.
    She would be safe.
    He waited for her to pronounce sentence.
    “Come inside,” she whispered.
    The steady stream of rain made it impossible for her voice to carry, but he must have read her lips.
    For every step he climbed, Jake held her eyes. He reached the top and loomed a head above her, looking down with dark force. Paralyzed by that compelling whirlpool of colors, allMegan could do now was pray she made the right decision.

Chapter Three
    Possibly more wet and miserable than he had ever been in his life, Jake measured the woman beside him. Her slim frame quaked like someone had stuck a jackhammer in the very ground she stood on. She drew the bottom of her sleeves over her fingers and then wrapped her arms around herself.
    “Come into the kitchen.” Megan managed a semblance of a smile. “At least there I can mop up the mess.”
    Now see, he thought, that wasn’t so bad. She was trying to joke and ease up the tension. But as he followed her down the hall, he could tell how rigid Megan’s shoulders were beneath the thick knit material.
    The kitchen was a remarkably cheerful oasis in this bleak, Victorian dwelling. The hall was depressing, with mottled wallpaper and faded burgundy brocade carpet, but the kitchen bore fresh yellow paint and bright floral accents. Fat pillows and potted ferns filled a box bay window, and distracted from the fact that the glass was matted with rain. The tiled floor was white and glossy, with a sunflower rug thrown beneath a butcher-block table.