Copper Lake Confidential - By Marilyn Pappano Page 0,33

if Mark would actually find the contract there to review it. She was keeping her papers on the island. She’d never kept her papers in his office, what few she had. She wouldn’t have put it there. Couldn’t have.

And yet there it was. Had it moved under its own power?

Do you believe in ghosts? she’d asked Stephen earlier. Because they say this place is haunted. And I believe it.

She really did believe Fair Winds was haunted. But not her own home. She wasn’t living with ghosts. It just wasn’t possible.

But her putting it there? Forgetting it? Sinking into the darkness again?

Dear God, that was entirely too possible.

After drying her mouth, she left the bathroom and made a circuit of the house, checking every door, every window, every item that came into sight. Could someone have gained access to the house? Had this been moved? Had that been touched?

The answer, she was forced to admit when she sank down on her bed after checking the entire place, was no. Access was secure. Nothing else was out of place. The only thing that had been moved was the contract, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Call the police? Oh, yeah, they’d take her seriously.

Tell Brent? He’d be on the phone with her psychiatrist as soon as he hung up.

Call Stephen? The little voice tempted and tantalized her. He was only a quarter of a mile away. He might think she was odd, but he liked her anyway. He didn’t know anything about her past, her problems, her time in the psych facility.

Her fingers reached automatically for the cell in her pocket, but before she could dial, she pushed it away. She liked Stephen, too, and she wasn’t calling him when he had to work tomorrow to tell him that she’d found the contract in a place she didn’t remember being. She wouldn’t give him reason to think she was any less stable than he already did.

Hugging herself tightly, she lay down on the bed, still trembling, too afraid to close her eyes, and held on.

* * *

The writing went extraordinarily well Thursday. Not having to go into the vet clinic helped. Thinking about Macy every other sentence didn’t, until he finally managed to block her in a dark corner and concentrate on the other women in his life.

When he’d reached his daily goal and run out of words, Stephen took Scooter for a walk to Holigan Creek, then made it a quick shower. Now he stood in his boxers in front of his small closet while the dog lounged on the bed. “Not much to choose from, is there?”

Jeans and T-shirts, with shorts on the shelf above. Also, pushed into the very back, was a rarely worn suit, light gray, and a white dress shirt. He would have to wear that this weekend. And that was it on options.

When was the last time he’d cared how he looked? Probably the day he married Sloan, when her mother had forced him into a rented tux. His wife-to-be couldn’t have cared less, but after paying for vet school, her mother had been determined to have the wedding of her dreams.

Too bad her dreams hadn’t extended to the marriage.

“Last night I wore khaki, so tonight I guess I’ll go with khaki.” He pulled a black T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts from the closet and yanked them on, gave his hair its usual finger comb, then put on his glasses. A spray of cologne, and he was ready to go—more than an hour early. But Macy had said come over when he was finished working, so he was taking her at her word. If she was busy with dinner, he could help. If she was still sorting and packing, he could help with that, too. Or he could just sit out of the way and watch her.

He was easy.

He and Scooter strolled the quarter mile to her house, burning time but still early. He kind of hoped his hair would dry on the way, but the humidity was so high that when he combed it one last time on the way up Macy’s driveway, it was still damp. Oh, well. It wasn’t as if this was a date, and even if it was, she wouldn’t expect him polished and dressed up. She’d spent enough time with him to know better.

When she answered the door, her dress was sleeveless, her feet were bare and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. With