One look and Ripley felt bedraggled, awkward, and ravenous.

“Want breakfast?” Nell asked cheerfully.

“Well, maybe. No.” She sucked it in. “I really want to get a run in first. Ah . . . I guess I should’ve called last night to let you know I wouldn’t be home.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Mac called.”

“I just didn’t think . . .” In the act of reaching into the fridge for a bottle of water, she froze. “Mac called?”

“Yes. He thought we might worry.”

“He thought,” Ripley repeated. Which made her, what? An inconsiderate idiot. “What did he say?”

“That the two of you were having hot monkey sex and not to worry.” She glanced up from her muffins, dimples flashing as she laughed uproariously at the horrified shock on Ripley’s face. “He just said you were with him. I inferred the hot monkey sex.”

“Aren’t you a laugh riot in the morning?” Ripley countered and twisted the top off the water bottle. “I didn’t know he’d called you. I should have done it.”

“It doesn’t matter. Did you . . . have a good time?”

“I’m walking in at, what, seven forty-five in the morning. You should be able to infer something from that.”

“I would, except you seem a little cranky.”

“I’m not cranky.” Scowling, Ripley glugged down water. “Okay, it just seems to me that he could have told me he was going to call you, or suggested I call you, but either way that would’ve been assuming I intended to stay the night, which I didn’t, but which he obviously decided I was going to, which is pretty pushy if you ask me because it wasn’t as if he actually asked me to stay in the first damn place.”

Nell waited a beat. “Huh?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I just said. God.” Irritated with herself, she ran the cold bottle over her forehead. “I’m just weirded out over stuff.”

“Over him?”

“Yes. I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve got all these feelings piling up and I’m not ready for them. I need to run.”

“I’ve done a lot of running myself,” Nell said quietly.

“I mean on the beach.” At Nell’s sympathetic nod, Ripley sighed. “Okay, I get you, but it’s too early for metaphors.”

“Then let me ask one straight question. Are you happy with him?”

“Yeah.” Ripley’s stomach tied itself into slippery knots. “Yeah, I am.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to just go with that for a while, and see what happens next.”

“Maybe I would. Maybe I could. But I’ve figured out that he’s always one step ahead of me. Sneaky bastard.” She gave up, sat. “I think I’m in love with him.”

“Oh, Ripley.” Nell leaned down, took Ripley’s face in her hands. “So do I.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“I know.”

Ripley hissed out a breath. “How do you know so damn much?”

“I’ve been where you are, and not so long ago. It’s scary and exciting, and it just changes everything.”

“I liked things the way they were. Don’t tell Zack,” she said, then immediately regretted it. “What am I saying? Of course you’ll tell Zack. It’s like a rule. Just maybe give it a few days first. I may get over this.”

“Okay.” Nell walked over to transfer baking trays.

“It could be I’ve just got the hots for him and it’s messing me up.”

“I suppose.”

“And if last night’s any indication, we’ll probably burn each other out in a couple of weeks, max.”

“It happens.”

Ripley tapped her fingers on the table. “If you’re just going to stand over there and humor the fool, I’m changing. I’m going for my run.”

Nell set the muffins on the rack to cool, totally content with herself as Ripley stormed out. “Go ahead and run,” she said softly. “Bet he catches you.”

Twelve

Considering that he was criminally insane, Evan Remington had his good days. He could, depending on what pictures were wheeling through his mind, be fairly lucid, even momentarily charming. There were moments, according to one of the nurses Harding interviewed, when you could see the sly intellect that had made him a topHollywood power broker.

Other times, he just sat, and drooled.

To Harding he had become a fascination that was edging toward an obsession. Remington was a man in his prime, by all accounts a brilliant operator of the entertainment machine, one who had come from wealth and privilege. And yet he’d been brought to nothing. By a woman. The woman was also a fascination. A quiet, biddable little mouse, if you accepted the opinion of many who’d known her during her marriage. A courageous survivor who had escaped a nightmare, if you went with the popular feminist take.

Harding wasn’t convinced that she was either. But he was willing to consider she was something more. There were so many angles there. Beauty and the beast, destroyed by love, the monster behind the mask.

Already he had mountains of notes, reams of tape, photographs, copies of police and medical reports. He also had the beginnings of a rough first draft of the book he was certain would make him very rich and very famous.

What he didn’t have, as yet, were solid personal interviews with the key players. He was willing to invest a lot of time and effort into acquiring them. While he followed Nell’s trail across the country, forming impressions, gathering data, he flew back to visit Remington regularly. And each time he did, he was fueled with more purpose, more ambition, and an underlying anger that baffled him. The anger would fade, but it came back stronger every time. Most of the travel was dumped on his expense account, and though he shot off stories to the magazine, he was well aware that there would come a day of reckoning. He was already dipping into his personal funds, couldn’t seem to stop himself.

Whereas once he had been proud of his magazine work, had enjoyed, even thrived on, the pace and demands of it, he now found himself resenting every hour he had to spend fulfilling his professional obligations.

The Remington/Todd story was like a fever burning in him.

On Valentine’s Day—and he would always find that wonderfully ironic—he made his first real connection with Evan Remington.