The ground under him heaved, he fell into darkness and in the years that followed he did all he could to protect Kayla. Then Emma came into his life, bringing the light he needed. Her eyes were tinged with sadness, but they also held hope. He loved her for her spirit. They’d bonded on another level for not only had she read each of his books, she’d understood and embraced what he had attempted to achieve. Emma had reached him, brought him back to life.

Ben’s love for Emma was deepened by the way she had helped him heal after losing Brooke. In some way he couldn’t quite articulate, being with Emma mended him. She possessed a warmth, a goodness that had eased his guilt, just a little, over Brooke’s death—made him feel that it wasn’t all his fault. Emma had helped him come to terms with the fact he was a good man and needed to move forward and that’s why he loved her.

Still, Ben could not ignore Kayla’s difficulty accepting Emma. It worried him. Of course he felt Kayla’s pain. It broke his heart to see his daughter suffering because he wanted more than anything to help her heal. It tore him up because on one level, he understood Kayla’s reasoning for being so resistant to allowing Emma into their lives.

The way he saw it, Kayla’s prolonged grieving for her mother had evolved into a subconscious resentment of Emma as an unacceptable replacement for her mother. And Kayla’s resentment had manifested itself in many ways, including her troubling behavior and her attempts to cast Emma as a mysterious outsider, a threat to Kayla’s bond with him, by saying things like: “Do we really know her, Dad?”

Admittedly, Ben was a little apprehensive when he first started dating Emma, but that was different. In his work he’d encountered so many disreputable people. As he became well-known he’d met questionable types who’d approached him with questionable intentions, schemers and people with ulterior motives. Emma had never given Ben a reason not to trust her.

Still, he exercised caution.

Early in their relationship, when he started getting serious about her, he had his sources conduct some discreet checking into her background after gleaning a few personal details from her. They looked into her previous jobs, her certification as a school counselor, addresses, her financial situation, if she’d been previously married, widowed, divorced; she hadn’t. Ben was satisfied, happy, that everything checked out and looked good.

Now his phone rang.

It was Roz Rose, his agent, and Adam Kane, his editor, calling from New York. He put them on speaker and they passed quickly through a few minutes of small talk before shifting to business.

“What did you think of the list we sent you?” Roz asked.

“It’s fine. I know those cases and I didn’t see anything there.”