Tailspin. Cara Summers

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      She’d originally met him through her Aunt Molly. On Saturdays, she’d frequently helped her aunt to clean the St. Francis Center. At the end of her junior year in high school, Father Mike had offered her the job of writing the newsletter for the center. It had been her first official writing job, and she could never thank him enough for the opportunity.

      Working on the newsletter had also given her the opportunity to get to know him, and he was the kindest and most truly holy person she’d ever met. He’d even taken the time to fly east to visit her and her aunt during the first few years she’d been in college. And when her aunt had passed on two years ago, he’d flown in to say the funeral mass.

      As Bianca began to weave her way toward him, she shifted her gaze to the people he was with. That was all it took to set her nerves dancing again. The pretty young woman was a stranger, but in spite of the passage of time, she recognized the two men immediately. Gabe Wilder and Jonah Stone had been Nash’s best friends at the St. Francis Center.

      Gabe wore black. That had been his favorite color in high school, but the shirts hadn’t been silk back then. But Jonah’s clothes also had her taking a second look. He’d been a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of boy, but the suit he was wearing today had been tailored to fit his tall, lanky frame perfectly, and she was pretty sure it boasted a designer label. He definitely wasn’t the rough-edged street kid she remembered.

      As she drew closer, Father Mike held out his arms and she walked right into them.

      “Welcome back,” he murmured. “You must come and visit me soon so we can catch up.”

      “I will,” she promised as he released her. It was at that precise moment she felt the hairs on the back of her neck spring to attention.

      Nash.

      She could feel the heat of his gaze on her skin, and the moment she turned her head, she saw him. He stood next to his grandmother on a balcony overlooking the terrace and pool. Her heart started to pound, her breath caught in her throat. He was tall and blond and just as handsome as the image she’d had in her mind all these years.

      The fact that he was wearing his uniform did nothing at all to lessen the intensity of his effect on her senses. But it wasn’t until she met his eyes that she felt the full impact. Everything inside of her heated as her mind emptied and simply filled with him. Pleasure shot through her, along with the beginnings of that same primitive and urgent desire she’d felt for him all those years ago.

      With it came the impulse to forget every thing else and just go to him. She was not naturally impulsive, but he’d always had that effect on her, making her want to toss the world away and go into freefall just to be with him. He still had the power to make her feel that way. Baffled, she fought hard to keep her feet firmly planted where they were. But she might have lost the battle if he hadn’t chosen that moment to turn to his grandmother.

      Even then, it took all of her concentration to turn her own head and focus as Father Mike said, “You must remember Gabe and Jonah.”

      “Yes.” The word was barely audible and Bianca reminded herself to smile.

      “Welcome back to Denver,” Gabe said.

      Jonah merely nodded.

      In spite of the friendliness of Gabe’s words, cool wariness was what she saw in the eyes of both men. Of course, both of them had been close to Nash when she’d run out on him. Clearly, they hadn’t forgotten. But when Father Mike introduced her to Gabe’s fiancée, Nicola Guthrie, the young woman’s handshake was warm, her smile genuine. “Are you the Bianca Quinn who wrote Cover Up?”

      “I am.”

      “What a delight to meet you. Gabe mentioned he knew you when I starting raving about your book.”

      “Nicola’s a true fan of your investigative technique,” Gabe said.

      “I was going to write you a letter,” Nicola said. “I told my father that we ought to recruit you to work for the FBI.”

      “I’m a researcher and a writer, not a crime fighter,” Bianca said.

      “We could still benefit from your skills.” Nicola turned to Jonah. “You have to read Cover Up. It all takes place in this little town in upstate New York, not far from Cornell University. The last place you’d expect there would be a home invasion and grisly murders. And the police solved it in record time—or they thought they had. One suspect was shot to death by the police, the other tried, convicted and sentenced to jail. The real killer would have gotten away if Bianca hadn’t decided to write about it.”

      Nicola turned back to Bianca. “How did you come to choose that particular story?”

      “Someone brought it to my attention when I attended a conference in the area, and I got a feeling, a hunch, that there was a story there.”

      “I knew you’d make a good agent. Following hunches is essential in good investigative work.”

      Jonah turned to Bianca. “What brings you back to Denver?”

      It didn’t surprise Bianca one bit that Jonah was the one to ask that question. He’d let her know eleven years ago that he hadn’t approved of her relationship with Nash. The rough kid from the streets was territorial when it came to his friends, and he never believed in beating around the bush.

      “I’m working on two projects.”

      “True crime again?” Nicola asked.

      “One of them is.” Though her back was turned, she could sense that Nash and his grandmother were approaching. The tingle of awareness moved through every cell in her body. She wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she kept her eyes on Nicola. “But I’m also here at the request of Mrs. Fortune. She’s commissioned me to write the history of the Fortune family.”

      “Indeed I have,” Maggie said as she and Nash joined the group. “I’ve just been telling Nash, and I think he’s a bit nervous about pulling all the family skeletons out of the closet.”

      Bianca barely had time to turn when Nash took her hands in his and leaned down to touch his lips to her cheek. She felt the imprint of each one of his fingers on hers as if they were a brand. The brush of his mouth on her skin was brief, a simple social contact, but her heart skipped a beat, then raced.

      “Bianca, it’s wonderful to see you again,” he said. “You’re even lovelier than I remembered.”

      He released her in the time it took her to meet his eyes. All she read in his was the warmth one might expect to see in the eyes of an old and dear friend. Nothing that came close to matching the flash of heat his touch had ignited.

      “Good to see you, too,” she managed to say, and wondered that her nose didn’t grow like Pinocchio’s for telling the lie. There was no way that her reaction to seeing Nash Fortune again was good. Even after he’d released her hands, she’d wanted badly to throw her arms around him.

      She wasn’t the girl she’d been at seventeen—so willing and eager to toss caution to the winds. She was no longer Juliet to his Romeo. What was wrong with her? She was an adult, for heaven’s sake.

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