Someone was holding her hand. Whispering her name. Lacey struggled to lift her eyelids, then quickly let them fall shut again. The light in the room was too bright.

“That’s it, Lacey,” a male voice said. “Come on out of it.”

She forced her eyes open and saw Tom, his wiry blond ponytail hanging over his shoulder, his face close to hers, and she thought she must be lying on the floor of the studio she shared with him.

He smiled. “You’re back, sugar,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. She felt his hand on her head, smoothing her hair.

Then she remembered Wolf’s mouth coming at her. She couldn’t see the dog’s face at all; he was one gigantic cavern filled with teeth, and the memory made her wince. She heard a whimper and it took her a few seconds to realize that she was the person producing it.

“Is this…studio?” she whispered to Tom.

“The studio? Oh, no, baby. No.” He smoothed his big rough hand over her temple and onto her hair again. She’d known Tom was her father for more than a decade, but she had never felt his fatherliness more than at that moment, when he was stroking her hair and blinking back tears. “You’re in the hospital, honey,” he said. “That dog gave you a couple of bites.”

It had been more than a couple, she was certain of that. Her body ached and burned. It felt as though someone was twisting a vise around her limbs tight enough to break the skin. “Pain,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I’ll call the nurse.” He started to stand up, but she reached out to grab him, catching the shoulder of his T-shirt in her right hand.

“Don’t go,” she said, frightened. Her head was so foggy. If he left, she was afraid she would slip back into the strange dark world from which she’d just emerged.

“Okay,” he said, sitting down again.

She remembered Mackenzie, remembered the blood on the sand.

“Mackenzie?” she asked. She felt unable to produce more than one or two words at a time.

“You saved her life.” Tom grinned. “Baby, you were so brave. I always knew you were a remarkable kid, but I didn’t know you had that in you. I couldn’t have done it.”

Not even for me? she wanted to ask him, but it was too many words, and she knew the answer, anyway. He would have done it. He would do anything for her.

“There was blood…sand.” She struggled to get the words out, to make her mind and her mouth work together. “Mackenzie.”

“She got a good bite on her leg,” Tom said, “and a few bruises. But she didn’t even have to spend the night in the hospital.”

“Do I?” she asked, and he grinned at her again.

“You’ve already been here a couple of days, sugar,” he said. “We’ve all been taking turns sitting with you—Alec and Olivia and Gina and Clay and Bobby—and I’m the lucky one who gets to be here when you wake up.”

“Couple days?” she asked. How had she lost a couple of days?

“They think you must have hit your head on a corner of the doghouse or something,” Tom said. “Knocked yourself out. Which maybe was for the best, Lacey, so you didn’t have to know what that frigging dog was doing to you.”

That explained the knifelike pain in the back of her head.

“He didn’t kill me,” she said, amazed and a little euphoric.

“He would have if Bobby hadn’t gotten home when he did,” Tom said.

“How many bites…really?” she asked.

Tom looked hesitant, then obviously decided on the truth. “Nine,” he said. “Nine really good ones, and a few less serious.”

“My legs?” Her legs were on fire, and Tom nodded.

“Your legs. Your butt. Your left arm. But your beautiful face is just fine.”

“Put the dog down?” she asked.

“It’s already been done,” Tom said bluntly. “They did an autopsy. The dog had some…I don’t know…some kind of epilepsy or something. Your dad’s kicking himself for not pulling strings to get him that neurological exam sooner. They might have been able to help him, then.”

She shut her eyes at that news. “Poor dog,” she said.

“You know what?” It was clear that Tom wanted to change the subject.

She looked at him, too tired to ask “What?”

“I think Bobby has a thing for you,” he said. “A big thing. He’s practically been living here since they brought you in.”

She tried to smile, but was not sure she succeeded.

“Is it mutual?” Tom asked.

“I’m…” She licked her lips. They were very dry. “I’m fighting it,” she said.

“Why, sugar?”

“Lot of reasons,” she said. She wanted to tell him about Bobby handing a wad of bills to the skinny blonde in the parking lot, but knew she could not possibly string all those words together.

“Hey.” The voice came from somewhere else in the room, and Lacey turned her head to see her father standing in the doorway, a smile on his face.

“Hey, Alec,” Tom said, standing up and taking a few steps away from the bed to make room for the man who was, in all ways but one, her father.

Her father leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I am so glad to see you awake,” he said. “You had all of us pretty shaken up.”

Tom rested his hand on Alec’s shoulder. “I’ll take off now,” he said, and Lacey was quite certain he didn’t want to go, but felt he needed to give her some time alone with her father.

“I’m glad you were here,” her father said to Tom, and the two men shook hands.

“Bye, Tom,” she said, touched by the careful cordiality between the two of them. She knew how hard the last decade had been for them both, how they had each struggled with their own demons, doing their best not to put her in the middle. And she knew that each man’s love for her mother had been pure, even if Annie’s love for them had been tainted by her lies.

Her father didn’t immediately sit down in the chair Tom had vacated. Instead, he lifted the covers from her legs and checked her bandages, then did the same to her left arm. She shut her eyes, not yet ready to see her body.

“You’re going to have some scars, honey, but the docs don’t think you’ll loose any functioning, and that’s great news. You were very lucky. The one bite came too close for comfort to your femoral artery. Speaking of which, how’s the pain?”

“Sucks,” she said, and he smiled.

He touched the bag hanging on the pole next to her bed, studying whatever it said on the label. “I’ll go talk to the nurse and see what she can do for you,” he said.

“Not yet.” She was afraid the drugs would knock her out, and she wasn’t yet ready to slip away again. If she was in pain, at least she knew she was alive.

“Tom said you put Wolf down,” she said.

Alec shook his head, finally sitting down in the chair next to her bed. “I didn’t have to,” he said. “Bobby took care of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tom didn’t tell you?”

She struggled to remember the conversation with Tom, but it was already muddy in her mind. “Tell me what?” she asked.

“Bobby pulled into the Kiss River parking lot while Wolf was attacking you,” her father said. “He ran into the kennel, grabbed the dog by the collar, lifted him up, and threw him against the doghouse. The dog’s neck was broken. He died instantly.”

“Oh, my God.” Lacey covered her mouth with her hand. “I’d be dead if he didn’t get there when he did.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” her father said, “but I admit I’m pretty grateful to him. You’re the local hero, though. You saved Mackenzie’s life, running into the kennel like you did. There’s no doubt about that.”

“It’s the kind of thing Mom would have done, huh,” she said.

He leaned away from the bed, folding his arms across his chest. “Your Mom wasn’t either all good or all evil, Lacey,” he said. “You’ve tried to get rid of her good qualities along with the bad. Ever since the day she died, you’ve scrutinized every move you made to see how it compared to what your mother would have done. First, you tried to be Saint Lacey. Then when you found out about…her indiscretions, you tried to be as unlike her as you could be.”

“I know,” she whispered.

Her father leaned forward, his faded blue eyes filled with love for her. “This is your second chance, Lace,” he said. “Forget about what your mother would or wouldn’t have done in a given situation. All anyone wants from you is to just be Lacey.”