After his foot healed, it was back to pushing his broom and wringing out his mop in the E.R. Putting up with the assholes and losers who thought it was a good job, patronizing doctors and nurses and administrators who told him what a contribution the cleaning crews made. Listening to them all talk about a hard day’s work for a hard day’s pay and how the hospital couldn’t run without it being clean. His co-workers bought lottery tickets and followed the Red Sox and took their kids to school, exchanged recipes and fifty-cents-off coupons and thought they had a life.

Robert had a goddamn 156 IQ. He knew he should be running the place. His nitwit co-workers didn’t see that. They teased him about his name. Dancer and Prancer, Comet and Vixen…

He didn’t tell them his zero of a mother had made it up. He’d never known his father. She probably hadn’t, either. But leave it to her to name her one and only son after a reindeer. She’d died when he was eleven. Good riddance. Stupid people annoyed him.

He’d thought Antonia Winter had recognized his brilliance, his potential. He’d seen in her a kindred soul. A soul mate. A woman who understood him.

Fat chance.

He walked up the street, trying to control his breathing. No! He couldn’t talk like that. Maybe he still did have a chance.

“Maybe.”

She was so damn beautiful, with her auburn hair and blue eyes, that straight nose and small, slim body. Brainy-looking but also physical.

His type.

“No.” He shook his head, aware of people passing him on the street, looking at him like he was some loser who talked to himself. But he had important issues on his mind. “No, she’s not my type.”

His type wouldn’t have betrayed him.

The bitch doctor had. As a physician, as the woman he loved. On every level. Broke his damn heart. He was smart—he wasn’t bad looking. Sandy-haired. Fit. He’d taken up running on her account, before the foot thing.

The balmy late summer temperatures had brought out the crowds. Robert figured the bitch doctor and the wannabe senator would be at dinner for a couple hours, anyway.

Well, what the hell. He knew where she lived.

And he had a key.

CHAPTER 2

Hank Callahan had exactly one hour between the lunch at the Cambridge homeless shelter he’d just left and his upcoming three o’clock meeting with local small business owners—enough time, surely, to drag information out of Antonia Winter’s little sister.

If not, he’d just have to come back.

Antonia had gone missing on him, and he intended to find out what was going on.