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  Following the music to its source, Sutherland led the way into the center of the house. From the looks of it, no one under twenty was anywhere around. The path to the media-entertainment room, from which the music was emanating, was littered with teenage couples, engaged either in kissing or communing with a separate deity in the form of white powder lightly dusted over small surfaces.

  Elisha saw the veins in Sutherland’s neck become prominent. He said things, most likely to himself, that she had no way of hearing. What she managed to lip-read would have been censored by all but the freest of thinkers.

  As he passed, Sutherland knocked over any and all flat surfaces containing even a trace of white powder. Angry young men struggled to their feet, enraged, only to melt back once they looked Sutherland in the eye and saw their own demise mirrored there.

  Elisha covered her mouth as she saw a girl sitting in an armchair, very obviously nodding out, a stupid smile on her face. “Oh, God, this is worse than I thought.”

  Sutherland heard her, his sharp eyes resting on her face for a moment as he turned to look at her. “Not worse than I thought.”

  It was why he’d come. Why he’d offered to locate her niece. Because he’d seen this happen more than once, to good people. He hated waste of any kind, most of all the waste of a life that had potential.

  And then they saw Andrea sitting on the floor before a coffee table. There was a young man sitting beside her who could have very easily posed as the poster boy for upstanding, clean suburban living.

  Elisha wanted to punch him out the moment she saw the white substance before them on the glass table.

  His arm around her in an intimate, coaxing fashion, the thin, blond young man with the preppy look was making his pitch to Andrea.

  “C’mon, Andie, there’s nothing to it. You don’t want to be left out.” His body seemed to be sealed against Andrea’s as if they were drawn with the same brushstroke, his details not quite ending before hers began. “You know you want to. It’ll make you feel like you can fly.”

  Elisha was close enough to hear. Close enough to read lips. Close enough to become enraged. Before Sutherland could say anything, Elisha pushed forward, grabbing Andrea by the arm and pulling her away from the table and any temptation she might have been entertaining.

  “You’re going to fly in about two seconds if you don’t back away from her,” Elisha shouted at the young man.

  Sutherland looked at her, admiration mingling with surprise in his eyes. It was obvious by his expression that he hadn’t thought her capable of standing up to undesirable types. Even undesirables in expensive designer clothes.

  Scrambling to his feet, the young man’s perfect features contorted into an angry mask at the intrusion into his privacy. Especially since the woman grabbing up his entertainment for the evening had also swept her hand through his lines of cocaine, scattering the powder into the fabric of the sofa.

  Sutherland placed one hand against the teenager’s chest. Fear entered the latter’s eyes when he looked at who had formed the barrier holding him in place.

  “I’d listen to the lady if I were you,” Sutherland advised in a low, powerful voice.

  “Aunt Elisha.” Relief, surprise and embarrassment throbbed in Andrea’s voice. “What are you doing here?” she cried.

  Behind her, Alex, the teenager who’d been so intent on leading her into her virgin journey into the world of drugs, couldn’t make himself scarce enough. He was already backing away by the time she glanced in his direction.

  “Looking for you,” Elisha answered. She felt torn between throwing her arms around the girl in a fierce hug and grabbing her by the shoulders to shake her. “You were supposed to watch Beth.”

  Despite her obvious relief at having the decision before her taken out of her hands, Andrea raised her chin defiantly. “Something came up.”

  Sutherland gave Alex a withering look. “It better not have.” His eyes pinned Alex to the opposite wall. The teenager raised his hands in surrender.

  “Hey, I hardly know her,” Alex protested.

  “Good,” Elisha retorted. “Keep it that way.” Her hand still firmly around Andrea’s arm, she hustled the girl out of the room.

  They garnered looks from the other people at the party as they made their way to the front door. Elisha could see that her niece had begun to seethe.

  Once outside, she wrenched her arm free of Elisha’s grasp. “How could you?”

  “How could you?” Elisha fired back, opening the passenger side of Sutherland’s vehicle and pushing Andrea inside. She was quick to get into her own seat and then twisted around to look at her niece. “I trusted you. You had a responsibility and you neglected it.”

  “You make it sound as if I abandoned Beth to the wolves.” Fuming, she put her seat belt on. “I asked Mrs. Nguyen to come stay with her.”

  “You should have discussed it with me first,” Elisha reminded her. “You didn’t ask my permission to go to the party. Not that I would have let you,” she interjected before Andrea could point out the obvious. “Not without parental supervision.”

  “You’re not my mother,” Andrea shot back. “Or my father.”

  Elisha strove for patience. Why did this have to be an argument? Why couldn’t Andrea just see how worthless those people back at the house were? Why couldn’t she see what a mistake she would have made, listening to that preppy? God only knew what that little bastard would have done to Andrea once she was high.

  “No,” Elisha said evenly, trying her best not to lose her temper, “I’m your guardian and, like it or not, we’re going to have to find a way to make this work.”

  Frustrated, Andrea turned her ire on Sutherland. Or tried to. “Who’s the muscle you brought with you?”

  He looked up into the rearview mirror, his eyes capturing Andrea’s. “Ryan Sutherland.”

  “How did you find me, anyway?” she demanded angrily.

  “My ‘muscle’ tracked you down. Mr. Sutherland is a former Navy SEAL—” she glanced at his profile “—among other things.”

  “Terrific,” Andrea fumed, crossing her arms before her.

  Yes, Elisha thought, actually, it is.

  CHAPTER 33

  As she roamed around the kitchen, trying to get things in motion that would ultimately yield a decent cup of coffee and kick-start her morning, Elisha felt drained. Her brain and body were operating in slow motion, a result of a night that had had very little sleep in it.

  Last night, after Sutherland had left her and Andrea at their door and Anne Nguyen had gone home, she’d tried her level best to get through to her niece. Had tried to make the girl see that she only had her best interests at heart. Contrary to what Andrea had accused her of, she was not out to totally “humiliate her forever.”

  Putting herself into Andrea’s shoes as best she could, Elisha tried to make her understand that she wasn’t just looking at the evening but at the bigger picture. A picture that had Andrea turning out to be a decent human being.

  For the most part, negotiations had been loud, at one point waking up Beth who then had to be ushered back into bed. Eventually, she and her older niece had reached a tentative truce, with Andrea admitting that she really hadn’t wanted to try any drugs, but hadn’t had the nerve to say no because she didn’t want to look like a dork. At that point, Elisha could have cried with relief.

  She knew that by no means were things going to be smooth sailing from here on in. If anything, all this pointed to the fact that she needed to be more alert. But at least Andrea had no actual desire to experiment with drugs. That was a step in the right direction.

  The coffeemaker began to sputter, announcing loudly that it was going about its business. For a moment, Elisha just stood and stared at the dark object, not really seeing it at all.

  How the hell did parents do it? she wondered, completely mystified. How did they go about the job of parenting? How was she expected to do it? How could she possibly manage to raise not just one but two c
hildren and safely bring them to adulthood? Especially since there’d been no training period for her. She’d been thrown headfirst, with lead weights fastened to her ankles, into the deep end of the pool and told to swim like crazy. At least most parents started out with a tiny human being and slowly got accustomed to broadening their lives to include more than just themselves.

  Impatient, Elisha removed the coffeepot and emptied the black liquid into her mug. There wasn’t much. She shoved the pot back on the hot plate. The sputtering resumed.

  Decisions that involved whether to feed the baby strained peas or carrots were a lot easier than trying to figure out how to make that “baby” understand that snorting cocaine wasn’t “harmless recreational fun” the way that little bastard Alex had probably said.

  With a huge sigh, Elisha lowered herself into a chair in the breakfast nook. The late-autumn sun was making everything outside appear a great deal brighter than she felt at the moment. Her hold on what Sutherland had referred to as her “terminal optimism” was slipping.

  She planned to call Alex Taylor’s parents to let them know what went on at their house when they weren’t there. That wasn’t going to make her or Andrea very popular, but it had to be done. Elisha sat there, the mug of hot coffee cradled between her hands, staring out the window and wondering how the hell her life had gone spiraling out of control like this. More important, what was she going to do to regain her grasp on the reins?

  As she stared, contemplating the overwhelming situation, a movement in the garden caught her eye. Focusing, she looked harder. And then shook her head in wonder.

  She must have been really sleepy, Elisha upbraided herself, not to have noticed that Beth was outside. When had the little girl slipped out the door? Her niece was still wearing her pajamas, but she had her sneakers and parka jacket on, as well. And she was on her knees, digging in the sleeping earth with a hand trowel.

  Looking for buried treasure? Playing a game? Beth was an indoor child, preferring video games and reading to outdoor activities. What was up?

  Only one way to find out, Elisha decided.

  She took one more long sip of coffee to warm her, then went to get her coat. This needed looking into. She was fairly certain that while most children liked to play in the dirt, they usually did it when the dirt wasn’t close to freezing. Doing her best to appear nonchalant, Elisha strolled over to where Beth was digging. The little girl glanced in her direction, nodded a greeting and continued to remove dirt from the ground as best as she could.

  Elisha squatted beside her. In a voice she hoped sounded sufficiently upbeat, she asked, “What are you doing?”

  Beth paused only for a moment as she lifted her eyes to her aunt’s face. “I’m burying a feather.”

  Did kids do this kind of thing? Was this part of pretend or something serious? Should she be concerned? Tons of questions, she thought, no answers. “Why, honey?”

  “I’m trying to grow a bird,” was Beth’s simple answer. “A special bird.”

  Her first inclination was to laugh. The idea was really darling and childlike. But she had a feeling that Beth would take it the wrong way if she laughed. Elisha caught her lower lip between her teeth to still the sound within.

  “Why do you want to grow a bird?”

  She was about to offer to go to the pet store and buy her any bird she wanted, when Beth repeated, “A special bird.”

  “All right, why do you want to grow a special bird?”

  Tucking the feather in the hole she’d dug, Beth pushed the dirt back on top of it and patted it into place. Done, she sat back on her heels and looked at her aunt. “So it can fly to heaven and tell Daddy that I miss him. That I want him to come back.”

  Elisha could almost feel her heart twisting in her chest. She took the little girl into her arms, holding her close as she caressed her hair. “Oh, honey, so do I.”

  That afternoon, after a great deal of soul-searching and conscience-wrestling, Elisha made a decision. It wasn’t one that she was overly thrilled with, but it was one that she knew she needed to make. She’d given her word, now she needed to do things in order to keep her word.

  Walking into the den where Henry had given her the awful news about his condition a lifetime ago, Elisha shut the door behind her. Despite the fact that it was Saturday, there was no point in putting off calling Rocky. He had to be told as soon as possible so that he could make his own arrangements.

  She called him at home. Though she usually welcomed his conversation, she cut through it this time like a surgeon wielding a scalpel. “Rocky, I want a leave of absence.”

  There was silence on the other end. As if the mild snowstorm that had accosted the city had frozen his phone lines, as well. And then he asked in a voice that was higher than normal, “You want what?”

  “A leave of absence.”

  There was another pause. “For how long?”

  How long did it take to make sure two kids would turn out all right? “I don’t know.” She moved around the room restlessly, the cordless receiver against her ear. “A month, two, six.”

  “Lise, I can’t—”

  “I know, you can’t hold my position open for that long. I understand. I don’t expect you to. You have a publishing house to run. But I can’t just leave these girls like this right now.”

  “Like what?” he cried. “I’m not sending you to Tibet. You wouldn’t be leaving them. You’d be coming home to them every night—”

  “They need more than that.” Although she had no idea at this point if she could give it to them. If she was even capable of giving it to them. But she knew she had to do something.

  “We have a day-care center on the premises.”

  “They’re not babies, Rocky.”

  “Then don’t treat them like babies,” he insisted. She could picture him running his thin hand along his forehead, massaging it because a migraine was forming. When he spoke, his voice was a little calmer, although the underlying desperation was still there. “Didn’t you just hire Mrs. Doubtfire?”

  “Mrs. Wentworth,” she corrected. Sutherland had gotten back to her quicker than she’d imagined. Samantha Wentworth was worth her weight in gold. She’d hired the woman just before she’d had her “makeover” from Andrea. But gold or not, Samantha was a nanny and the girls needed something more than a well-paid stranger, no matter how kindly, tending to them. They needed someone who loved them even when they weren’t lovable. Especially when they weren’t lovable. “She’s still going to stay on, but the girls need more.”

  “I need more,” Rocky responded, a note of pleading in his voice.

  Don’t do this to me, Rocky. The last thing I need is more guilt.

  “You have more. You have an entire staff of people to help you. Andrea and Beth don’t.” Blowing out a breath, Elisha tried again. “Rocky, I can’t just walk away and go back to my comfortable little world, much as I want to, when all this is going on.”

  He clearly didn’t follow her. “All what? I thought you had everything all straightened out.”

  It took her a second to realize what he was talking about. “I got the legal things all straightened out. The trust funds, transferring the deed to the house. Deciding what to do with my apartment in the city.” She’d opted to keep that, at least for the time being. It made her feel as if she was bridging her old life with her new. “But there’s so much more.”

  “Like what?” he cried.

  “Andrea’s tottering on the brink of being drawn into a world that has horrible consequences to it. She went to a party last night without telling me and there were drugs and alcohol. Rocky, she’s fifteen. And Beth, Beth is planting feathers in the ground and hoping they’ll turn into birds so they can fly up to where her father is.”

  “The kid needs counseling.”

  “The kid needs me. They both do.”

  The sigh she heard on the other end of the line was one of resignation. “And what about you, Lise? What do you need?”

 
; I need to work, but I can’t right now. “I need to keep my word to Henry.”

  “I know you, Andrea. Some women are born to be hausfraus. They take utter joy in making gourmet meals out of two peas and a carrot, but that’s not you. You’re a career woman, a dynamo. Now, maybe you can find a way to combine home and career and make it work, but I guarantee you, if all you have to look forward to is bargain shopping at the local grocery store and sewing costumes out of peacock feathers for some school play, you’ll go out of your mind inside of a month. Less maybe.”

  He was right and she knew it, but she had no choice in the matter. Not if she wanted to help the girls. “I don’t know what else to do, Rocky. If I go back when things are like this, and somewhere down the line I lose one or both of the girls, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Elisha sighed, hating being put in this position. She wanted her old life back. She’d spent a long time getting to where she was. Long hours of dedication had been involved. But in the end, what she had to show for it were books. Books that didn’t even bear her name on them. The decision she’d made was for the best. Because it involved not someone else’s books but Henry’s daughters. Two human beings.

  Two human beings who only had her to turn to.

  “Can’t I change your mind?” Rocky asked.

  “I need you to be a friend right now, Rocky.”

  She heard him sigh again. “I hate it when you use that tone with me. Oh, all right,” he surrendered. “I’ll tell your authors they’re being reassigned to someone else—temporarily,” he emphasized. “And I’ll see what I can do about holding a spot open for you.” He tried one last time, playing his trump card. “You realize that means Carole Chambers will take over in your absence.”

  If you’re watching, Henry, I hope you appreciate this.

  “Yes, I realize,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  Rocky obviously knew when to accept defeat.

  CHAPTER 34