Good Intentions (38 page)

Nicholas raced into the room, his overnight bag banging against his side. “I’m ready.”

“Where’s your sister?”

“Getting her toothbrush. I already have mine.”

“Good for you.”

Megan walked slowly into the room, as if she were afraid it was filled with dangerous land mines. And maybe it was. “I’m all packed.”

Gary got to his feet. “Great. Then we’re ready to go.”

“What are you going to do, Mom?” Megan asked, as if she were afraid to leave Lynn alone, sensing that her eagerness to spend the weekend with her father was somehow a betrayal of her mother.

“I’ll be fine,” Lynn told her.

“But what are you going to do?”

“I’m sure your mother has plans,” Gary said.

“You want to come with us?” Nicholas persisted.

“No, sweetheart,” Lynn said gently. “This is your weekend with your father. You go and have a good time. Don’t worry about me.” She hugged her children close before releasing them, then watched them run down the front walk to Gary’s car.

“I’ll have them back tomorrow night around eight o’clock. Is that all right with you?”

“Fine. Drive carefully.”

He nodded, a sad smile creeping onto his face. “Have a good weekend.”

“You too.”

“Come on, Daddy,” Nicholas shouted from the car.

Lynn stood in the doorway to her house. If today was really the first day of the rest of her life, she thought, what was she going to do with it? The security of her old
job was gone; she didn’t have a husband; she didn’t even have anything in the house for lunch. What the hell, she shrugged, feeling better than she had in years. Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

Lynn pulled her car into the driveway of Marc Cameron’s apartment building. “Could you buzz Marc Cameron for me, please?” she asked the young doorman, who smiled at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Marc Cameron,” Lynn repeated. “He’s in apartment 403.”

“No Cameron in apartment 403,” the doorman, who was obviously new, said, checking his list of tenants.

“He’s renting from the regular tenant.”

The doorman, who was tall and slim and sandy-haired and not more than twenty, flipped through the pages of his register slowly. “Oh yeah, here it is. He’s subletting from Joel Sanders. Apartment 403. You’re right.”

“Can you buzz him for me, please.”

“Sure thing.” His hand lifted languorously to buzz the apartment. Nobody answered. “You want me to phone him?” Lynn nodded quickly, hoping to spur him on, but his fingers pressed the buttons of the telephone as if he had arthritis. Lynn fought the urge to wrest the phone from his hands. Could he possibly be any slower? “No one home,” came the lazy drawl after at least half a dozen rings. Lynn thanked him, about to leave. “Is he a tall guy, reddish-blond hair, beard?”

“Yes.”

The doorman nodded, pleased to have put a face to the name. “He went out a couple of hours ago.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Didn’t say nothin’,” the doorman told her. “You want to leave a message?”

Lynn thought for several seconds, deciding it would take too long. “No. No message.”

She got back in her car and turned it toward the beach. It was just as well Marc hadn’t been home. His absence had saved her from making a complete fool of herself. What did she want to get involved with someone like Marc Cameron for anyway? A soon-to-be-divorced writer with two sons and an ailing father. Just because he made her laugh? Because he challenged her, dared her to be things she hadn’t been in years? Because he was caring and intelligent and just looking at him filled her with joy? What kind of reasons were those? Where was the security in loving a man just because he made her feel good?

She stopped the car. What was the matter with feeling good! Since when was security a substitute for love?

She executed an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the crowded street, the cars around her erupting in angry horn blasts. Instantly she knew where to find Marc. Hadn’t he invited her along?

She drove north on Dixie, then west on Lake Drive, hoping Marc would still be there by the time she arrived. The streets were filled with Saturday-afternoon traffic, signaling that the summer was almost at an end. Soon “the season” would be upon them. The “snowbirds” would flock down, followed in predictable holiday bursts by the “snowflakes,” fleeing the colder climes. Traffic would be impossible. The beaches would be filled to overflowing and she would hear the usual grumbles from dissatisfied couples as she passed them at the water’s edge, complaining about the lack of sunshine,
the undependability of the Florida weather, the amount of tar that regularly marred the miles of sand. She laughed. They should come down in the summer, she thought. Summer in Delray Beach. There was nothing quite like it.

She passed Military Trail, looking for the cutoff to the road leading to Halcyon Days. Marc had said he’d be visiting his father. He’d invited her along. Yes, but that was then, and a lot could happen in five days. A lot
had
happened.

Gary had said he and Suzette had decided to cool things for awhile. It was possible that Suzette had called Marc and begged his forgiveness, pleaded for him to come back. Would he? Would she burst into Marc’s father’s room only to find Suzette at his side?

She recognized the car before she saw the driver. The baby blue Lincoln convertible turned off the private road onto Lake Drive and into the traffic going east, the opposite direction. The white top of the car was in place and Lynn watched from a distance of half a block as the driver fiddled with the buttons, the top of the car suddenly lifting and pulling back, folding in on itself like a giant accordion. The driver of the car, license plate PEACHES, smiled broadly, his teeth flashing from behind his beard, his hands tapping out the tune his radio was blasting into the early afternoon sunshine. He looked casually at the cars headed in the opposite direction, his eyes not fixing on any of them, his mind obviously focused on something only he could see.

Lynn’s car inched slowly forward. What was she going to do? She couldn’t make another U-turn in the middle of all this traffic. She could open her window and scream,
hope he’d hear her above the noise of his radio. Look at me, she willed, as their cars drew closer together. Look at me. I’m over here.

Marc lifted his hands into the air and stretched, closing his eyes.

“No, damn it, open them,” Lynn said out loud. “I’m over here.”

He rolled his head back, then slowly lifted it up again, turning lazily, without thought, in her direction.

“I’m over here,” she said again, as his eyes came to rest on hers.

The car behind her honked loudly. She looked ahead. The cars were moving. She was being urged, none too gently, to follow.

In one smooth, continuing flow, Lynn threw her car into park, pulled the key from the lock, and opened her car door. The cars behind her honked furiously. “What’s going on?” somebody yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”

She watched Marc’s smile grow wide as she approached his car, until it filled his entire face. He reached over quickly and pushed open the door on the passenger side of the blue Lincoln. Savoring the moment, Lynn slowly slid into the seat beside him and closed her eyes.

Losing Julia has become a constant in Cindy Carver’s life. The first time Julia disappeared, she was five years old and vanished at the playground. That inspired motherly paranoia. The second was when, at age fourteen, Julia decided to move in with her father. That broke Cindy’s heart. But when twenty-one-year-old Julia disappears without a trace after a promising audition with one of Hollywood’s most powerful and influential directors, Cindy begins a frantic search. Secrets are revealed, lives are forever altered, and Cindy is forced to acknowledge the disturbing truth about the young woman she realizes she never really knew….

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ISBN: 978-0-7704-2920-1

Family therapist Kate Sinclair, healer of lost souls, perfect wife and mother, has suddenly become trapped in a nightmare of her own. One of her teenage daughters has just discovered sex, lies and rebellion. Her ex-boyfriend has returned to threaten her marriage. And her once-peaceful hometown is being awakened by chilling headlines: Another woman is missing. Kate can sense the darkness gathering around her, can see the mistakes, the missteps, the missing pieces.

Enter Colin Friendly—a man on trial for abducting and killing thirteen women—the handsome, “misunderstood” sociopath Kate’s troubled sister plans to marry. Colin can’t wait to meet Kate and the girls. And one night when they are home alone, ready for bed….

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ISBN: 978-0-7704-2966-9

Jane Whittaker finds herself on a downtown street, her pockets stuffed with a large number of crisp $100 bills, the front of her dress soaked with blood. She has no idea of her identity.

After a terrifying night of hiding, Jane ends up in hospital. There, while undergoing a battery of medical tests, she is recognized by one of the nurses. Soon her husband comes to claim her. He is every woman’s dream: popular, respected, wealthy, a tall, blond doctor. He takes Jane home and vows to cure her with loving care and modern medicine.

But Jane doesn’t get any better. The medication seems to be turing her into a zombie, and she begins to feel that her private nurse is holding her a virtual prisoner in her own home, isolating her from friends who might help her recover. Can Jane remember her past in time … in time to stop whatever it is that is happening to her, whatever made her lose her memory in the first place, whatever is trying to destroy her and her family? …

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ISBN: 978-0-7704-2985-0

Amanda Travis is a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old criminal attorney who wins just about every case for her less than admirable clientele. She races through her glamorous life, her only concerns being herself, a good bottle of red, and her pristine Palm Beach condo. Her estranged mother, dead father, two ex-husbands, and countless one-night stands have since lagged far, far behind.

But when ex #1 won’t stop calling, Amanda finally gives in and learns that her mother has shot a man in the lobby of Toronto’s Four Seasons hotel. Despite her best arguments, Amanda knows she must return to her hometown to face her demons and uncover the truth about the dark, strange power her mother seems to hold over everyone. Her childhood nickname, Puppet, echoing in her ears, Amanda must finally confront the past and learn to stand on her own.

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ISBN: 978-0-7704-2958-4