“And I thought you were a straight shooter,” she said aloud to her own watery image. “Aren’t you the one who never backs down? What the hell happened to you?”

She let her hands fall to her flat belly.

A baby…a life that right now was growing inside her.

And her husband didn’t even know she was pregnant. Didn’t want to know.

“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath. “Good riddance.” She pulled a comb through her hair, wrapped a towel around her body, then opened the door and nearly tripped over the dog. Hairy S had camped out in the hall in front of the bathroom. “Not smart,” she said to the dog and petted his furry head. “But don’t worry about it; there’s a lot of stupidity going around in this house these days. A lot. You’re not the Lone Ranger.”

Hairy thumped his tail against the floor, then followed her to the bedroom, where she dressed and tried not to think about the fact that her husband was nearly a continent away, chasing demons who had haunted him for twelve long years.

The flight was uneventful.

Once, after dozing, Bentz thought he smelled gardenias. He took a long look around the cabin of the 727, eyeing all the passengers, half expecting Jennifer to be calmly seated near the window, reading a book. She would, of course, upon feeling his gaze upon her, look up and smile with that sexy little grin that had always gotten to him. Without saying a word she would tell him that she knew he’d follow her.

It didn’t happen.

No one on the plane remotely resembled his first wife…ex-wife he reminded himself. Ex. They had been divorced, though living together, at the time of her death. But those arrangements had been about to end. Because she hadn’t been able to give up her lover.

The plane touched down at LAX with a soft bump as the back wheels hit the tarmac, then even less of a jar as the wheel under the nose of the plane found the pavement. As the 727 taxied to the gate, most of the passengers were already turning on cell phones, unbuckling their seat belts, and shifting the luggage at their feet. After spending the entire trip with her nose in a book, the woman in the seat next to Bentz swung a purse the size of Guatemala onto her lap and scrounged for her cell frantically. Touchdown propelled her into frenzied mode and she hastily dug through her huge purse. Bentz barely avoided being knocked over by the bag as he pulled his computer from beneath the seat in front of him and she located her phone and clicked it on, immediately making a call.

He couldn’t help but overhear her conversation, a one-sided affair in which she was trashing her ex’s latest girlfriend.

Fortunately, the plane emptied fairly quickly.