Tailspin. Cara Summers

driven past a parade field and the chapel with its spires reaching into an almost cloudless blue sky. Here and there, she’d spotted tour groups that appeared to be prospective students and their parents touring the campus.

      Nash’s building was a two-story structure with tinted glass windows that bounced back the sun’s rays. She’d just locked her car when she saw General James Winslow exit the building through the double glass doors. He walked straight to a jeep that was waiting for him, and drove off.

      She felt the same ripple of wariness she’d felt the night before when he’d shaken her hand at Maggie Fortune’s birthday. A quick glance at the map her escort had given her indicated that this building did not house the superintendent’s offices.

      Still, he could have a perfectly good reason for visiting here this morning—something that had nothing to do with Nash or with her pending visit. But as she walked through the doors and turned down the corridor, she was confident that she’d made the right decision about at least one thing during the night. She was going to be honest with Nash about her interest in the disappearance of Brian Silko. And she was going to tell him everything about why she’d run away eleven years ago.

      She owed him the truth about taking money from his grandmother even if it jeopardized getting his help with her stories.

      Other than that, she hadn’t decided how she was going to handle the fact that she was still intensely attracted to him. Thinking about him and what she’d felt when he’d touched her again had interfered with her sleep. And there was a part of her—a part that she couldn’t seem to control—that was looking forward to seeing him again.

      It had been years since she’d made wardrobe selections with a man in mind—eleven years, in fact. But she’d changed her clothes three times and her hairstyle twice. All because of Nash.

      She wasn’t a teenager in love and in lust for the first time. She was a grown woman with a goal. She was here to find out what caused Brian Silko to steal that plane and give up everything he’d worked so hard to achieve. And if he was alive, she was going to find him and let him tell his own story.

      There was a good chance Nash could help her achieve her goal. That’s all that she should be thinking about. She spotted his office the moment she took the first right turn in the corridor. Though she couldn’t see him, she caught the flight of the paper airplane as it sailed through the open doorway and cruised to a rough landing a few feet away.

      As she stooped over to pick it up, silly memories came flooding back. He’d taught her how to make them, but his had always sailed farther, and she’d never learned how to make them do a loop before they crashed. Sometimes he’d written her notes on his.

      When she reached the fallen paper, she scooped it up and unfolded it. “Welcome back to Denver.”

      Her pulse pounded, her breath quickened even as something around her heart tightened. He was being kind. How was he going to feel about her when she told him the truth? About everything.

      She glanced up to see that he was standing in the open doorway of his office, smiling at her with that same reckless gleam in his eyes that had caught her attention the first time she’d ever seen him.

      He strode toward her, took her hand and pulled her down the corridor. “We’re going for a ride.”