“I don’t mind.” Though Rachel had bargained for not having to return to work. At least she’d gotten something out of it.

The San Jose airport was only twenty minutes from DKG, especially at freeway speed. Erin remembered the days when Highway 880 was gridlocked at almost any time of day, not just commute hours, but you could see the recession’s hit in lighter traffic on the roads and rental signs in building after building lining the freeway.

“You seem to be settling in well at the job,” she said, making polite conversation. She’d lost some of her interpersonal skills in the last year. While never an extrovert like Dominic, she used to at least be able to keep up her end of meaningless chitchat without excruciating minute-long silences. A minute could be a very long time.

“Oh, it’s going great,” Rachel said brightly, as if she had to force it. She’d been stilted since the episode over the itinerary. “It’ll be nice to get home a little early and cook dinner,” she added. “Sometimes I’m rushing so much that I end up making something out of a box or picking up fast food. I hate giving the boys fast food all the time.”

Erin closed her eyes two seconds longer than necessary. “Yes,” she agreed, “kids eat too much fast food these days.” She admired that Rachel had been a stay-at-home mom until her divorce. Erin herself could never have given over her independence to a man, not even Dominic, but she remembered the effort it took to provide nutritious meals. Now . . . well, now she didn’t plan anything until she got home and saw what hadn’t gone bad in the fridge. Or they got takeout. Usually takeout, come to think of it.

She never thought to ask how Dominic felt about that. Another weed of guilt sprouted in the backyard of her mind.

“The boys are good about helping to get stuff ready.” Rachel flipped her visor down against the sun’s sudden glare on the windshield.

The rain had stopped for the first time in a week. Since Dominic had gotten Erin to agree to the trip, every day had been cloudy and rainy, some days a drizzle, others a downpour. She’d hardly noticed; it shocked her more when the sun came out, as if the gloom suited her better. She should have used the weather as an excuse not to travel. She hadn’t. She’d made no excuses whatsoever. If she got it over with, showed Dominic how miserable she was, he wouldn’t ask again. Yet there was the niggling guilt that she’d forced him to beg for attention.

Standing in his lab, her fingers had tingled as if they’d fallen asleep, and her anger vanished. They didn’t talk about it, but she knew Dominic had just as many hard memories. She was so me-me-me, she ignored him. In her defense, Dominic seemed so much more . . . even-keeled. She’d always been the moody one, even before. He’d wanted to do grief counseling. She didn’t know why. He hadn’t needed it. He’d come to terms with everything after the first few months.

The silence in the car was suddenly expectant. God, she’d totally missed what Rachel had said. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing important.”

Damn. It probably was. But there she’d gone being me-me-me again. “I really like that sweater you’re wearing.” Totally inane, but on the fly, she couldn’t come up with anything else. God, her social skills sucked. She should have driven herself to the airport and left the car in the long-term lot.

Rachel plucked at the fake fur collar of her cardigan. Black, short, the sweater was made of a wool that looked both soft and warm. “This?” She laughed. “I bought it at the thrift store for a dollar. It was a deal.”

Erin stopped the gape before her mouth actually dropped open. “It’s nice.” It was, honestly, but she wouldn’t be caught buying at secondhand places. As a kid, secondhand was all she wore, either from her sisters or cousins, or they were Salvation Army issue. After she and Dominic moved to California and made a bit of money, she’d never stepped foot in another thrift store. Not that she begrudged other people who did. Rachel was a single mother on a tight budget. The difference was that Erin would never have admitted where she got the sweater.

“Thanks.” Rachel accepted the compliment without a blink, attesting to the fact that she couldn’t have grown up poor.

They fell into silence, cars winging by Rachel’s minivan on either side as she stuck to the speed limit. Erin once again searched for something to say.

Rachel pursed her lips, gaze straight ahead on the road. “Yvonne told me not to say anything, but I need to.” Erin’s stomach rolled as Rachel quickly glanced at her before going on. “I’m feeling uncomfortable with this hanging between us.”

What? Erin couldn’t manage the word. She didn’t want to hear. Yet she knew.

“I’m so sorry about your little boy.” Rachel shook her head slowly, back and forth, her eyes on the road.

Erin’s insides hollowed out, nothing but a vast empty space left inside her. “That’s okay.” She felt as if someone else said the words.

“I had to say it, mother to mother, not employee to boss.”

Erin’s throat hurt. “Thank you.” She wasn’t thankful at all. For a moment, part of her hated the other woman. Rachel had two boys to rush home to. Erin would have sold her soul to be rushing home to make her son’s dinner.

But her emotions weren’t fair to Rachel. Face on, the woman was pretty in an ordinary way, but from the side, she suddenly seemed so much stronger. She probably only saw the ordinary, straight-forward view of herself, not the strength in her profile. You never saw yourself the way other people did. Erin didn’t want to know how others saw her. Yvonne had warned Rachel not to say anything. Because she didn’t think Erin was strong enough?

“I won’t say anything else about it,” Rachel added as if more was necessary. “I just wanted you to know how I felt.”

No one ever talked about Jay at DKG. She and Dominic didn’t talk about him. If she said anything, all her feelings might come spilling out, her guilt, her fear, her insanity.

A man from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had come. A month after. To interview them about what happened. The CDC documented all these kinds of “events.” He’d said it was extremely rare, and she’d wanted to scream at him. If it was so rare, then why her child? Why, God, why? She’d said nothing, though. Dominic had answered the questions: where Jay had been, the school trip. How Dominic should have been there that day, but they’d had a difficult product release, and he’d opted to let Jay go on the day trip with the teachers and other parent chaperones. He’d taken his blame. Dominic had always taken his blame. They went on to how the doctors figured Jay had gotten the amoeba. Horse playing in the hot springs. A cannonball. Water up his nose carrying the tiny microscopic things that . . . She couldn’t even think about what those things had done to him. Almost the first words out of the CDC man’s mouth were that it wasn’t their fault, nothing they could have done. Nothing. But he didn’t know what she’d said to Jay, what she’d done. No one knew. Especially not Dominic.

Erin bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Otherwise, she might have screamed. “Thank you. You’re very caring. I appreciate your concern.”

Rachel reached over to pat her knee. It felt . . . odd, like an out of body of experience, not her knee at all. Erin knew the only way she could go on was to keep pretending that everything was okay, nothing had gone wrong, her life hadn’t fallen apart a year ago.

God, she needed something, anything to stop the freight train of memories and guilt bearing down on her. She needed Dominic. Needed a shot of hot sex that would make everything go away. It was easier to push aside the black thoughts in the dark, where there was nothing but the physical. Sometimes the need felt almost like an addiction, have another shot of Jack Daniels to make you forget, pop another of those pills. Or have hot, quick, mind-numbing sex. In the dark, she didn’t think about Jay; she simply acted, reaching for Dominic, driving out every other thought. She needed that fix now. How was she supposed to make it through the whole plane trip by herself? Last night alone in their bed had been bad enough, but Rachel’s words had pushed her to the wall.

Rachel pulled into the roundabout at the airport. Erin hadn’t even been aware of exiting the freeway.

She blew out a breath. “Thanks a lot,” she said, forcing a semblance of normalcy into her voice as she gathered her purse and laptop case. She’d brought her MP3 player as well, equipped with a couple of mysteries she’d downloaded from the library. She could plug in and tune out. That would work. She could do this. She’d be fine. Nothing was different than it had been half an hour ago.

Goddammit. He’d thought getting her out of the Bay Area might help. It hadn’t. After the long flight, she was probably pissed he’d goaded her into the trip. He tried engaging her anyway. “How was the flight?” He was pretty sure he’d already asked. He couldn’t remember if she’d answered.

“Fine.” Monosyllabic.

Fuck. Dominic breathed deeply. The Florida air was sultry, the December weather unseasonably warm even for Orlando. He’d worn short sleeves. Erin arrived in jeans and a jacket she’d removed to reveal a tight, long-sleeved white T-shirt that scooped low on her cleavage and seemed to make her red gold hair a richer shade. Back in the airport, he’d intercepted many a male glance Erin hadn’t noticed.

Fine. He’d try again. “Were you able to sleep on the plane?”

“No.”

The street was noisy with cars and people, vacationers in summer wear still strolling the sidewalks despite the late hour. Garish neon lights reflected on the water to one side, high-rise hotels like behemoths against the night sky on the other, the ubiquitous palm trees lining the road.

“I downloaded a mystery from the library,” she said.

He glanced over. She wasn’t looking at him, but gazing out at the darkened shoreline instead. All he could think was that at least it was more than one syllable. A whole sentence. “Great.”

“It helped pass the hours.”

He couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten out her MP3. Never one to sit down and read, she’d listen to a book while doing chores, making dinner. Always multitasking, that was Erin. But she hadn’t taken out the player in ages.

He capitalized on her sudden talkativeness. “You can hang out on the beach tomorrow and listen to a book if you want.”

“I’ll come with you to the show. See you in action.”

She was talking, but she still wasn’t looking at him. He watched her a few seconds too long and almost ran a red light. A young guy in the crosswalk, neon light playing colors across his shaved scalp, shook his fist.

“That sounds great,” he said once the light had changed and they were moving again. It would be better if he knew what she meant by in action. Good or bad? He wanted action, but not in the exhibit hall. Might as well lay out his plans now and get the fight over with. “I got us a party invitation for tomorrow night. It’s out in Windermere.” Windermere was a posh burb on the Butler Chain of Lakes about twenty minutes outside Orlando.

“Isn’t that where Tiger Woods lives?”

“I don’t remember.” But it wasn’t unlikely. The area was home to a lot of celebrities. “There’s the Crown Royal.” He pointed, the hotel a block ahead, lights blazing across a semicircular drive, fountain, rock garden, and palm trees.

She turned in her seat, hooking a leg beneath her, and braced a hand on the dashboard to look up at the facade through the windshield. “Nice.” A pulse fluttered at her throat, and he noticed again her odd intensity, foot bobbing on the floorboard as if nervous tension vibrated through her.

He passed the entrance and took the next drive heading into the underground parking garage. Circling once and finding nothing, he took the ramp down another level. Erin stretched, shoved her hands through her hair and fluffed it. Her nipples beaded beneath the thin T-shirt material.

Dominic suddenly felt parched. The tires squealed on the concrete despite the fact that he wasn’t going more than five miles an hour. Spying a spot just past the end of the last row and flush up against the wall, he wheeled in.

She was on him the moment he shut off the engine, fingers at his belt.

“Do me,” she whispered, her breath minty from a freshening strip she’d popped in her mouth.

His cock was hard before she even got to the button on his jeans. “Here?” Late, the lighting unexceptional, the back window of the rental car darkened with some film against the heat, they may or may not be seen. But he’d sure as hell hear the squeal of tires announcing another car’s arrival.

“Here,” she insisted, tugging on his zipper. Her lips were close but not touching, her skin flushed with heat, her eyes bright with something close to fever.

“We could get thrown out of the hotel or arrested.” He didn’t stop her as she shoved her hand in his jeans, found his cock, molded her palm to it.

“Do you care?” She squeezed.

“Christ.” He felt his eyes roll back. “No, I don’t care.”

“Then fuck me, Dominic.” She hadn’t said his name in a year’s worth of post-midnight sex.

In that moment, he was hers completely.