.

gone with her to her room and helped her take her shirt off. She lay on her stomach in her bed while he iced her bruises and put antibiotic ointment on her welts. They hadn’t talked while he helped her. But when she was finally comfortable enough to sleep, Wesley had told her his decision. He couldn’t stop her from working, but if she ever went back to Søren again, ever let him hurt her again, Wesley was gone. It was like asking her to close her eyes and never open them again, but for Wesley, she’d agreed.

      Nora drove home and put her regular clothes back on and decided that once and for all she was cutting off all contact with Søren. She knew it would be hard considering that they ran in the same circle but she would find a way. She would never talk to him again. Not after he’d tricked her into seeing him.

      Nora paused in her bedroom and took slow, deep breaths. She checked the clock—6:36. Wesley should have been home from the library half an hour ago. She went to his bedroom—no backpack, no keys. She called his cell phone and no one picked up. She waited another half hour thinking he was just pissed at her for answering her hotline. But she knew Wesley—he wasn’t the vindictive type. She called his cell phone again. No answer. By seven-thirty she was scared. By eight-thirty she was terrified. At nine she gave up and called the only person besides Wesley she trusted completely.

      The phone rang only once.

      “Søren, I need your help,” she said as soon as he answered. The fear clutched at her throat like a claw. “I can’t find my Wesley.”

      8

      At nine-thirty Zach still remained in his office reading through Nora’s rewritten chapters. Going with third person had opened the book up. The prose was more atmospheric in third person. He needed to talk to her about the end of chapter three, however. She was sliding into self-reflection when what she needed was a strong plot element.

      He picked up his phone and dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.

      “Nora, it’s Zach.”

      “Dammit, Zach. I can’t talk right now. I’m busy.” She sounded angry for some reason. Angry and out of breath.

      Busy and breathless…he knew immediately what she was busy doing.

      “You’re on my time now, Nora. I don’t care what you’re doing. The book is more important.”

      “Fuck the book.”

      “Nora, I went out on a limb to work with you. If you think—”

      “You don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

      Zach sat back in his chair. What had happened to the Nora he’d shared cocoa with just a few days ago? She’d been so passionate about her book then, so interested in all of his ideas.

      “I’m thinking you obviously don’t have your priorities in order.”

      He heard Nora take a hard breath.

      “Then fuck you, too, Zach.” She hung up.

      Zach set his phone down and stared at it. He expected to feel furious but instead his heart dropped. Apart from J.P. and Mary, Zach hadn’t felt any connection with anyone since coming to New York. Then he’d met Nora and as exasperating as she was, she was also funny, beautiful and made him feel alive again. And she had been the first person who’d seemed to care about him. Now she’d yanked away from him, away from the book. He knew they wouldn’t and couldn’t ever be lovers. But he’d thought they might be able to forge something like a friendship while they worked together. What the hell had happened?

      The phone rang again and Zach answered it immediately, hoping to hear Nora on the other end. Instead the chief managing ditor of Royal West in L.A. started speaking. Zach had only spoken to her once or twice after he’d been offered her job once she retired. Now she was telling him he could come out sooner if he liked since she’d heard he didn’t have much to hold him in New York. She wouldn’t mind sharing her office for a couple of weeks while he got acclimated. Might ease the transition for the staff. Still reeling from his fight with Nora, Zach promised her he’d think about it.

      After all, he agreed, there really wasn’t anything keeping him in New York.

      He hung up the phone again and pulled on his coat. Glancing down, he saw Nora’s manuscript sitting on his desk. He picked it up and tossed it into the recycling bin.

      “Fuck you, too, Nora.”

      * * *

      Nora paced the hallways of her house with her private cell phone in her hand and her hotline phone in her pocket. Wesley didn’t have her hotline number but she knew either Kingsley or Søren would call her back soon. Søren had connections at every hospital within eighty miles, and Kingsley had half the judges, attorneys and police chiefs in the tristate area in his back pocket. Between the two of them, one of them should be able to find Wesley.

      She’d gone into his room and dug through his desk trying to find any of his friends’ phone numbers. But they were all programmed into his cell phone and his cell phone was with him, wherever he was. She tore through his closet, his dirty clothes hamper, and found nothing to help her hunt him down.

      Nora sat on the edge of his bed and opened his nightstand. She knew Wesley would be less than thrilled she was digging through his things. He’d probably get quite the shock if he saw what she kept in her nightstand. But she didn’t find anything helpful or incriminating—ChapStick and a spare set of keys to his car. Under the file of his medical stuff she found a small photo album. Pulling it out she smiled through tears when she flipped it open and found it full of pictures from last summer.

      Leafing through the pages of photos she remembered…

      At first she’d been suspicious when Wesley had woken her up early on a Saturday morning in May and told her to get up and put on jeans and boots. He’d driven that day in his beat-up yellow VW bug, and they’d listened to weird music the whole way there. “Who is this?” she’d asked. “Wilco.” “Who’s this?” “The Decembrists.” Finally he’d demanded to know what the last album she bought was. She thought for a good five minutes before remembering—Ill Communication, the Beastie Boys, 1994. Wesley would have been a toddler and she’d been fifteen or sixteen years old.

      After a long drive they’d arrived at a farm—a horse farm. Wesley had told her that he’d grown up around horses. From what he’d said it sounded as if his father worked as a horse trainer and his mother did the books at a horse farm in Central Kentucky. But that was the first day she’d actually seen Wesley around the big animals. For someone as blessed by Mother Nature as he was in the looks department, he often seemed nervous and unsure of himself. But the second they hit the stables he became a different person. Walking right up to them, he slapped their sides with sure hands. For a good forty-five minutes he took a turn on three or four different horses, saddling them, and riding them around the paddock.

      “Being a little picky, aren’t you, kid?” she’d asked him. “Just get a horse for yourself and let’s go.”

      “I’m not picking one for me.” He dismounted nimbly from a large Appaloosa. “I can ride anything. I’m trying to find one for you. You need something tame since you’re a rookie.”

      “I’ll take anything but a gelding,” she’d told him.

      “What’s wrong with geldings?”

      “We won’t have anything to talk about.”

      Wesley had laughed then, open and easy, and for a moment she saw the man he would become in ten or twenty years—strong and kind, growing a little more handsome and a little less innocent with every year that passed. She envied the woman he’d end up with. Lucky lady indeed. Finally, after the fourth horse, he’d found her a young buckskin mare named Speakeasy.

      “She’s smart and submissive—perfect for a first-timer.”