Full Contact

She grinned at him. “I’ve read your résumé. I’m not worried. But I do think you might want to get your hair cut. And lose the vest.”

“My only transportation is a motorcycle.” He told her what she’d find out soon enough anyway. Who would have believed he would find a Western town without a Harley dealership? Or any other signs of motorcycle ownership? “Leather deflects bugs and is more impervious to wind.”

“And the hair?”

He shrugged. He could have cut it, if he’d wanted to give a false first impression. Jay was who he was. A free spirit. A man who didn’t conform to social pressure. His hair told people that up front.

And it reminded him every single day that his freedom was in personal expression and belief, not in the making of his own laws—either moral or physical.

“It’s taken me eleven years to grow it.” That was all the explanation anyone would get.

Jay noticed the doctor’s firm backside at the tail end of the blue blouse that hung over her jeans as he followed her down the hall to his new space. The room would suit and, once his table arrived tomorrow, he would set up quickly.

He’d only been in town an hour and had already seen two very fine-looking women—a jogger and his new professional sponsor.

Too bad he wasn’t in Shelter Valley to have sex.

JAY SWAM IN THE NUDE. His temporary backyard was completely enclosed by a cement block privacy fence. He had to traverse the entire length of the pool four times to get what he determined to be one lap. Somewhere around forty lengths he lost count.

The cool water sluicing against his skin was like the wind pulling at his hair when he rode full-out. A communion between nature and man—raw life. Something he could trust. Count on.

When his body was tired enough to stay put on the stool awaiting him inside the house at the breakfast bar, he hauled himself out of the deep end and grabbed the jeans he’d left in a pile on the patio.

Zipping the pants with care born of practice, he grabbed a cola from the fridge and glanced at the neatly stacked folders awaiting him. Usually his investigative skills itched to be used. This time, Jay was reluctant to begin.

Finding the man who’d deserted him—who’d walked out only weeks before Jay’s mother’s murder—was on his top ten list of things he most wanted to avoid. Right up there with going back to prison.

Or ever again being out of control of his mental faculties.

His aversion to the task at hand was the only reason he was glad to hear the knock on his front door. The uninvited intrusion delayed having to open those folders.

He wasn’t so sure he hadn’t jumped from the frying pan into the fire when he saw a uniformed lawman standing on the front porch. “Jay Billingsley?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Sheriff Richards.”

Greg Richards, Jay read the official identification the man held out. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“You have a second?”

As many of them as he wanted to have. “Sure.” Jay stepped back, leaving Greg to come in, close the door behind him and follow Jay to the second of the two bar stools at the kitchen counter.

He offered the lawman something to drink, retrieved the bottle of water Richards requested from the fridge. The sheriff perched on the stool, both feet planted on the floor. The man’s hair was dark. Short. Proper.

“I had some complaints about that motorcycle of yours.”

Jay met his gaze head-on, drinking from his can of cola while he did so, his bare feet resting on the silver metal ring along the bottom of his stool. “There a law against motorcycles in Shelter Valley?”

“No. I’ve got one myself,” Richards said, and Jay reminded himself that those who judged prematurely generally ended up making asses of themselves. “But we do have noise restriction laws.”

“No semi engines after six o’clock?” Jay guessed.

“No excessive noise within city limits, period.”

“Who defines excessive?”

“I do.”

Jay nodded. Less than twelve hours in town and he was already being run out. If only the sheriff knew how happy Jay would be to oblige….

“I’ll run my machine on low throttle in city limits.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

The lawman hadn’t opened his bottle of water. And he wasn’t leaving, either.

“There something else?”

“I talked to Martin Wesley. He says you’re renting this place month to month.”

Jay had found Martin’s rental ad on the internet. “That’s right.”

“He says you’re a medical massage therapist working with Shawna Bostwick.”

“That’s right.” And if Jay was a betting man, he’d put money on the fact that Richards had already been in touch with the pretty doctor for confirmation.

“We don’t have a lot of call for that around here. Seems like you’d find more work in a city like Phoenix.”

“Or Miami,” Jay agreed, “which is where I’ve lived a lot of the past ten years.”

“So why here? Why now?” The sheriff’s expression wasn’t unfriendly. But he wasn’t making small talk, either.

“I’ve got some business in the area.” Until he knew what he was going to find, his father was his secret. “Personal business.”

“And when you’ve completed your business? What then?”

Shrugging, Jay took another sip of cola and tried not to get depressed. “Who knows?” He wondered what the hell his life would look like when he was through messing it up.

“Is a life here in Shelter Valley among the choices?”

At least he could put one man out of his misery. “No.”

“You did some time in prison.”

Were there laws against that in Shelter Valley, too?

Jay didn’t respond. There was no point. Richards had access to Jay’s records. The man knew what he knew and he’d make of it what he would.

“Possession with intent to sell.”

Those were the charges. He hadn’t had a hope in hell of proving his innocence. Mostly because he’d been high on cocaine when the cops raided the frat party he’d been attending.

It didn’t help that his so-called friends had all been rich kids with daddies—or more importantly, daddies’ lawyers—who made sure that Jay, the scholarship kid without family, took the fall.

Still, he’d made choices. And he’d deserved to pay for them.

“I hope that it’s just coincidence that you’ve chosen to work in a clinical environment.” The sheriff’s words threw Jay for a second. Until he put it all together. Clinics had drugs, giving him potential access to them.

“I was arrested at a frat party. We were doing cocaine. No one there was making a living off the stuff,” he said. “My professional record is as available to you as is my criminal one, Sheriff. You’re welcome to take a look at that, too. I don’t use drugs, nor have I been caught with any in my possession.”

“I’ve seen your professional résumé. You come highly recommended. In the field of medicinal massage, but also as a private investigator. I’m told you’ve done some impressive work assisting detectives with cold cases.”

“Mostly volunteer.”

“You don’t make a full-time career at anything.”

“I’m not a white picket fence kind of guy.”

“Most people who can’t settle down have something to hide.”

“Criminal types, you mean.”

“You said it. Not me.”

“I did my time. And I learned my lesson. I do not make choices that could send me back to prison. Ever.”

“I’ll bet that makes your mother happy.”

“My mother was killed during a home invasion when I was a baby.”

“Your father then. Grandparents. Siblings. Whoever was hurt when you were sent to prison so young.”

“No one was hurt.” At this rate Jay was going to need another fifty or so laps in the pool to calm down enough to get to work. “My only living relative—the aunt who raised me—passed away during my freshman year of college.”

“You ever been married?”

“No.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“No one serious.” Not that it was any of this man’s damn business.

“Any close friends?”

“Not that I can think of offhand.”

“You have no one at all.”

Jay felt exposed by the shock in the sheriff’s voice. And forced himself to answer the question, too. “No.”

Now the other man knew Jay’s dirtiest secret. He was completely alone in the world. No meaningful relationships. He’d never had anyone with whom he felt close. Had no idea how to be a member of a family unit. Let alone the head of one.

“Any more questions, Sheriff?”

Jay’s voice must have had more of an edge than he’d intended. Leaving the unopened bottle of water on the counter, Sheriff Richards stood and moved toward the front room. Before he reached the door he turned, a look of concern lining his face.

“We aren’t unforgiving folks,” he said, his hands at his sides. “Nor are we unwelcoming. We’re just protective of our way of life out here. It’s why we’re all here, and not in some other place. The people of Shelter Valley have chosen a lifestyle that makes them happy. It’s my job to protect that as well as to protect them.”

And an ex-con with long hair and secrets roaring into town on the back of a Harley didn’t fit.

Jay couldn’t agree more.

“We’re a family here in Shelter Valley. A big, overgrown family sharing a homestead in the desert. We all look after each other’s kids, and after each other. But I guess you wouldn’t understand that.”

No, probably not.

And he sure as hell wasn’t selling his bike or cutting his hair to make them all happy.

At Jay’s continued silence, Richards opened the door. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around,” he said. “Call if you need anything.”

Jay had the oddest feeling that the guy’s offer was sincere.

“Come back anytime,” Jay offered in return. But only after he’d shut the door firmly behind the other man.

THE ROAD WASN’T WELL TRAVELED. Two dirt tracks was the extent of it. Ellen bumped along easily, breathing in the peaceful mountain air through the open window of her green Ford Escape, appreciating that the temperature dropped so drastically in mere minutes as she left behind the hot desert that she also adored.

Each time she made this bimonthly trek she felt torn. Part of her wished that Joe Frasier could open himself up to a move to town, to having more than only her and Sheriff Richards in his life. And part of her understood why Joe clung so voraciously to his mountaintop home. Life made sense out here.

Still, life was meant to be lived, not avoided.

Ellen slowed from the 15 mph she’d been going to climb the steep track to 5 mph as she pulled into the cleared bit of dirt in front of Joe’s rudimentary cabin. He’d cleared the spot for her—had that been almost five years ago?—when Sheriff Richards had first asked Ellen to be his partner in this effort to assist the lonely mountain man who’d helped the sheriff find his father’s killers.

“Joe?” Pulling the thin, short-sleeved button-down over the top of her shorts, Ellen climbed out of the SUV and stood.

Ellen was a trained social worker. Joe needed to be socialized in the worst way.

“Joe?” she called again. She wouldn’t go any farther, take another step, until the fiftysomething bearded man appeared. If this wasn’t a good day, she’d come back.

Joe knew that. He knew he could stay hidden.

He never had before.

They had something in common, Ellen and Joe. A shared awareness of the tragic effects of inexplicable violence against women.

“I’ve got your syllabus and textbooks,” she called. Joe had a thirty-year-old degree in engineering. Once Ellen had discovered that fact, she’d started planting the seeds of him upgrading his courses with the hope that a love of learning would be able to do what five years of visits had not—get him out of the hell he’d thrown himself into after his wife’s death.

She had bags of groceries, too, as always.

“Where’s the sheriff?” Joe’s gruff voice came from somewhere behind the one-room log cabin he had built by hand over thirty years ago.

Ellen and Greg usually made this trek up the mountain together. But not always.

“There was a traffic accident out by the highway.”

“You shouldn’t be here without him.”

“Of course I should be,” she called, completely without fear. “Sheriff Richards knows I’m here. And you need your groceries.”

Besides, Joe would never, ever do anything to hurt Ellen. Ever.

Now if she had been meeting Black Leather, as she’d come to think of the man she’d seen roaring through town the other day, she would have—

She simply wouldn’t have done it. Period.

“Can I come sit by the window?”

He’d built a seat for her there when she’d first started visiting him. Greg would sit in the cruiser and Ellen would counsel with Joe in plain sight but out of hearing range of the sheriff. Then somehow things had changed and Ellen and Joe had been more friends than social worker and hermit.

“Wait.”

She heard a rustle of grass then saw the thin, slightly stooped man, dressed in baggy overalls and a flannel shirt, skirt around the front of the house and inside. He promptly latched the door with the board Ellen knew he used to lock himself in.

“’Kay.” She only heard the word because she’d been waiting for it. Listening.

Leaving the cooler in the back of the Escape, Ellen grabbed the blue book bag she’d purchased at Walmart the same day she’d bought Josh’s and headed to the house.

With her back to the building, she pulled out a folder of papers and rested them on the windowsill.

Joe’s fingers didn’t come close to brushing hers as he gently tugged the folder away from her.

“It’s all there. Dr. Sheffield is glad you’re in her class. And she hopes she gets to meet you before the semester is through.” Classes didn’t officially start for another couple of weeks, but Phyllis had agreed to send along Joe’s work early. Ellen figured her mother’s friend shared her wish that the studies would interest him enough to get him off the mountain and into the classroom.

“If it was anyone else but you, I’d think there was a trick here. Psychology class. Like I need psychological help.”

“You probably do.”

“Not up here, I don’t.” It wasn’t the first time they’d had the conversation.

“I have an ulterior motive, Joe,” Ellen said, as honest with him as always.

Their ability to speak openly was one of the things she valued most about their peculiar relationship. Conversation with Joe was stripped of most social graces. Or pleasantries.

“I hope that you love the class enough that you’ll need to take more of them.” She chose her words deliberately.

Joe grunted. He didn’t believe himself capable of feeling anything as alive as love. “How’s Josh?”

“Lonesome.” Just thinking about her son hurt her heart. “But I think he’s having fun, too.” This was their first time apart for more than a few days.

“How are you?”

“Fine. Busy. Mom and David have had me over for dinner twice this week. And I’ve been going to work in the evenings. I’m helping some of the residents cheer up their rooms. We’re doing collages, mobiles and photo mosaics. I’d like to paint the multipurpose room, too.”

“How many dates have you been on?”

Josh was her usual excuse for not dating.

“None.”

“You’re not fine.”

She sighed. “Mostly I am, Joe. I’m busy at work. I love the center. How could I not? I get to spend my days helping senior citizens enjoy life. And Josh and I have a new house that I love. We even have a pool. And…” She fiddled with the hem on her shirt. “I’m really okay. I’m running every afternoon. I’m going to do a 10K with Randi Foster in November.”

“In Shelter Valley?”

“Of course. Montford is sponsoring it.”

“Is Randi training with you?”

“No. She runs at school.” Randi was the athletic director at Montford—and baby sister to the university president, Will Parsons, Mayor Becca’s husband.

“Who are you training with?”

“No one.”

“You’re running alone.”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t be running alone.”

“I’m careful. I carry pepper spray. And I’m not going to be held hostage to fear.”

“You shouldn’t be running alone.”

He wasn’t going to be convinced. She understood that. And even understood why. But she was still going to run.

Because it was something she had to do for her. Whether Joe understood that or not.

She could so easily end up like him.

“You should be dating.”

“You’ve done fine on your own.”

“It’s different.”

“How?”

“I— My… She was the one.”

“Maybe Aaron was, too.”

“You really think so?”

She had. At one time. Then…time…had changed things. Less than sixty minutes of it had changed everything.

Forever.

And that was something that Joe Frasier understood all too well.

CHAPTER TWO

BEFORE DAWN FRIDAY MORNING, Jay left his motorcyle in the short-term parking lot at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. He caught the shuttle for the off-site car rental place he’d phoned the night before.

Half an hour later he was on I-10, his six-foot frame chafing beneath the seat belt in the Chevy Impala. He’d never driven in Phoenix before, but at that early hour there was little traffic and he’d studied maps. He also had a sense of direction that could get him from one dark hole to the next without a spot of light.

Mostly what he wanted to do was remain inconspicuous. As inconspicuous as a long-haired, broad-shouldered man could be. He’d shed his leather vest and figured his white T-shirt blended in as well as anything might.

He’d signaled his exit and followed his preset route to his destination. The neighborhood, once he got to it, was a nice one. Elegant. Expensive. The best.

He’d expected nothing less.

The gated entry slowed him not at all. Saying he was surprising his sister with a visit, he’d coaxed a garbage guy down the street to give him the service code.

Jay had been investigating those who didn’t want to be found too long to let things like gates stop him.

Not that this particular jaunt had anything to do with him finding someone who didn’t want to be found. No, this time it was him who didn’t want to be seen. Not yet. All in good time.

“HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN Josh hugs you?”

Ellen didn’t want to answer Shawna’s question. She didn’t want to answer any more questions ever again. Period. Questions made her feel like a freak.

And…they helped.

Which was why she was in counseling again.

She took a deep breath and forced herself inside, where the truth she was seeking lay waiting for her. “Sometimes his arms around my neck, his little body close to mine, is like what I imagine heaven to be. Light and free and so good you need to cry. With overwhelming joy. Other times, I feel peaceful.”

There. All true. And as normal as it got.

“And?” Shawna peered at her over the reading glasses she always wore when she had Ellen’s file on her desk in front of her.

Ellen, hands folded across her stomach, met the older woman’s gaze head-on.

She and Shawna had been together, on and off, since before Josh was born.

“And sometimes, most particularly when he comes at me when I’m not expecting it, I have to fight the instinct to tear his hands away.”

And then she quickly added, “But my patients at work hug me all the time and I’m fine with that. I love it.” She was fine. Healthy.

She just wasn’t dating.

And while no one but old Joe Frasier was on her about it, Ellen didn’t want to spend her life alone, raising her son alone, watching him grow and succeed alone.

She didn’t want to sleep alone for the rest of her life.

“How many of them come at you unexpectedly?” How could Shawna’s question come out so quiet when her voice sounded so firm?

“None.”

“Are there times when Josh hugs you, when you are expecting it, that you feel cramped?”

Oh, God. Was she a horrible mother? “Yes,” she barely whispered.

“Hey.” Shawna leaned forward, her blond hair falling over her shoulders to her desk. Ellen focused on the hair. “It’s okay.”

She met Shawna’s gaze and listened intently.

“You’re fine,” Shawna said. “Look at you, Ellen, you live independently. You have a successful career that you love. From what I can tell, everyone in town, young and old, comes to you for assistance because they know they can rely on you. You go out alone all the time.”

Of course she did. She was alive. She lived.

She just didn’t date.

“You’re going to have hard times. We talked about that five years ago. I told you to expect them. And to know that you would get through them.” But…

“And you have gotten through them, haven’t you?” Shawna asked.

Ellen thought to the time when she couldn’t be in a room alone. When she couldn’t leave her mother’s house.

It had taken her two years to walk into Walmart.

She thought of the years when she hadn’t slept through the night—any night.

“Yes,” she finally said.

“You’ll get through this, too, if that’s what you want.”

Because she could do anything she set her mind to. She knew that. Believed it.

And yet…

“Listen, I have a suggestion…” The way Shawna sat back, her words trailing off, got Ellen’s attention. “What?”

Studying her, Shawna remained silent, then glanced at Ellen’s file and seemed to come to some kind of decision. “There’s this new guy in town. He arrived this week. His name’s Jay Billingsley.”

Black Leather. Ellen’s mother and most of the heroines of Shelter Valley—as Ellen secretly called the ladies who officially met for lunch once a month to solve the world’s problems, but who spoke to one another almost every day—had assured Ellen last night that they were going to have him out of town in no time. Not that Ellen had asked for, or needed, the reassurance.

She didn’t doubt the heroines’ prediction for a second—though she was half rooting for the bold man who had the courage to roar through their quiet town without apology.

“I heard he’s a massage therapist.”

Suddenly, considering that Shawna might actually be about to suggest that Ellen use massage as therapy for what ailed her, she decided this Friday-morning visit was unnecessary after all. She was happy not to be dating. Who had time for it?

When she met the right guy…

When she was ready…

“That’s right.” Shawna folded her hands on her desk. “I hired him.”

“Why?”

“He’s a medical massage therapist, and a good one. His reputation is above reproach. He works with elderly people, volunteers his services a lot of the time, and his success stories would keep the Hallmark Channel in business for years.”

“What kind of successes?”

“Patients with broken hips facing being bound to a wheelchair walking again. Stroke victims brushing their teeth, feeding themselves, learning to talk. A cerebral palsy patient taking his first step at seventy-two.”

“I don’t have a muscular disability. Nor am I geriatric.”

“No, but he’s also done quite a bit with trauma patients. Soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and abused women and children.”

“He helps them walk again?” She was defensive. She knew it. She just couldn’t help it. She wasn’t getting undressed for some biker guy. No way. Even if she was half rooting for him.

“No, he helps to retrain their instincts, teaching them to trust sudden physical movement in their space and, eventually, accept touch to their skin. He’s assisted women who couldn’t tolerate any kind of physical contact. Apparently several of them have invited him to their weddings.”

“Abused women. You mean women who were beaten? Like domestic abuse.”

“Yes.”

“What about rape victims? Has he ever had a rape victim for a client?”