This Conrad standing beside her, one foot on the boardwalk, no longer fidgeted. He had a bit more polish than the energetic boy who’d not known which fork to use, who had looked beneath worn cushions for enough change to eat lunch each day, who had rummaged through thrift shops for jeans without stains.

“I had to come out this way for a meeting. Thought I would drop in and see how things are progressing.” He squinted against the sun, shading his eyes with one hand. “Where’s Chase?”

“I sent you a report a few days ago.” She didn’t like being checked up on.

At that, he looked at her, a knowing grin appearing. “That was a few days ago.”

Olivia ripped her gaze from his lean, tanned body clad in cream linen trousers and a crimson shirt that most guys wouldn’t touch but that seemed right on Con. No pinstripe or business blue for this guy. Classy and creative, Conrad Santos was a man everyone wanted a piece of. “She’s out here somewhere, taking a walk.”

“By herself?”

Once Olivia had gotten Chase to the Malibu house, she’d called Conrad to let him know the situation so he was aware Chase had bailed shortly after meeting Olivia. “She’s completed the sobriety portion of the program, and though she’s still not really sharing much with me, we’ve come to an understanding. Mostly, that I will call the police to come haul her away if she pulls any more shenanigans, so she always comes back.”

Con raised his eyebrows. “You’re trusting her?”

“Well, I can’t handcuff her to me. I mean, I could, but showering would get awkward.”

Conrad smiled at that, and she was reminded of the first time she’d met him.

It had been her freshman year of high school when she’d moved to a struggling school her educator parents had been recruited to help turn around. Her father had insisted his children attend the schools in the neighborhood where he’d be working as a principal. Not only that, but they would be selling their comfortable house in Bixby Knolls in Long Beach to move to Gardena, which bled into Compton, a place so different from all she’d known. Her father’s concession to the family’s complaining was to purchase a security system, a handgun, and two beanbags, which seemed to satisfy Marley, who’d cried for three days when she found out she was moving away from her best friend. Olivia hadn’t been nearly as dramatic, or satisfied by something as stupid as beanbags for her room, but neither had she wanted to leave behind the window seat where she cuddled on the plush cushions, read her mother’s stash of Georgette Heyer books, and sketched birds and flowers.

Suffice it to say, regardless of what the children wished, the Hancock family moved, and on a blistering morning in late September, Olivia set her old school uniform aside to squeeze into last year’s jeans and walked begrudgingly through the doors of Elm Park High. She was well aware that it was a school with such poor scoring, high truancy, and increasing student arrests that the state had placed it on a list of proposed closures.