Lofty words, Shay thought as she hung up the telephone in her office. Suppose everything wasn’t all right? Suppose Mitch wouldn’t even see her?

After loading the Reeses’ hors d’oeuvres into her new van, Shay went back inside her building to find Alice just closing up her yarn shop. “Something is wrong with Mitch,” she told her grandmother bluntly. “I’ve got to go to him as soon as I deliver the Reeses’ order. Hank is going trick-or-treating with his friend Louie at six, but if I’m late…”

Alice looked concerned. “Of course I’ll look after him, my dear. You take all the time you need.”

Shay kissed her grandmother’s lovely crinkled cheek and hurried out to her car. She made the drive to Marvin and Jeannie’s house in record time, and virtually shoved the boxes of carefully prepared cheeseballs and crab puffs and paté-spread crackers into the hands of a maid hired to serve that evening.

Everything within Shay was geared toward reaching Mitch at the soonest possible moment, but some niggling little instinct within argued that she needed a way to get past whatever defenses he might have erected against her. She stopped at her house for a few minutes and then went on to Mitch’s.

Mrs. Carraway answered the doorbell almost before Shay had lowered her finger from the button. If Mitch’s housekeeper was surprised to find a velveteen bee standing on the doorstep, she didn’t show it.

“Upstairs,” she whispered. “In his room.”

Shay made her cumbersome way up the stairs. This was no time to try to hide the fact that she knew the way to Mitch Prescott’s bedroom.

She tapped at the closed door.

“Go away!” Mitch bellowed from within. His voice was thick. Was he drunk?

Shay drew a deep breath and knocked again, harder this time.

There was muffled swearing and then the door swung open. “Dammit, I said—” Mitch’s voice fell away and his haunted eyes took in Shay’s bee suit with disbelief.

“Trick or treat?” she chimed.

“Good God,” Mitch replied, but he stepped back so that Shay could enter the room.

She immediately pulled off the hood with its bobbing antennae and tossed it aside. After that, she struggled out of the rest of the suit, too. Mitch looked a little disappointed when he saw that she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt underneath, but then he turned away from her, his broad shoulders tensed.

“What’s wrong, Mitch?” she asked softly, afraid to touch him and yet drawn toward him at the same time. She stood close behind Mitch and wrapped her arms around his middle. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

He turned in her arms, and she saw hurt in his eyes, terrible, jarring hurt, and disillusionment, too. “You don’t want to know,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes, I do, so start talking.”

Remembering all the times when Mitch had been there for her, Shay took the glass from his hand—he’d clearly had too much to drink—and set it aside. She filled the empty hot tub with warm water and flicked the switch that activated the jets beneath the surface. She took Mitch’s T-shirt off over his head and then removed his shoes and his jeans, too. He was still gaping at her when she began maneuvering him toward the bubbling hot tub.