After the pep talk over their chai lattes, Keira had handled last night’s discussion with Stephie’s parents herself, keeping at them until they understood the gravity of the situation. Luke had simply been there as moral support.

Keira had called him in the afternoon, and Stephie was returning home with her parents. “She didn’t even put up a fight, Dad,” she told him.

Christ, he was proud of his daughter, his heart swelling in his chest.

Now all Luke could think about was getting home to Bree. He’d gone to her mother’s house so many nights in a row, it was starting to feel natural.

It was later than usual for him, close to six-thirty, but the driveway was empty as he pulled in. Bree wasn’t home from work yet. She’d had an important meeting, he recalled her saying last night. Perhaps it ran longer than she’d anticipated. He rang the bell.

Mrs. Mason answered wearing an apron over her flower-print dress. “Oh, Luke. Bree said you were with your daughter tonight, and that you wouldn’t be able to come over.”

“She drove back to school this morning.” He didn’t mention the reason for her trip.

“Oh, how nice. Come in. I’m not making anything special for dinner since I thought you wouldn’t be here.”

“You never have to make anything special for me.”

She flapped a hand at him. “I love having a man to cook for.” She wore the smile of a content woman without a care in the world. He didn’t understand her. It was as if sometimes she’d forgotten her husband had existed. She rarely mentioned him. She refused to have a service. She didn’t appear to be grieving in any way. It was pretty damn strange.

Unless she was happy he was gone.

“Whatever you cook is great,” he said, betraying none of his inner thoughts.

“Grilled ham and cheese. I haven’t had one in ages, and I thought I’d treat myself.”

“Sounds good. Especially since I’m inviting myself.” Maybe, over dinner, without Bree, he could finally learn a few things. He didn’t intend to ask any point-blank questions that were better left for a psychiatrist’s office, but maybe he’d find something to help him understand what Bree truly needed.

Mrs. Mason led him into the kitchen as she tutted away at him. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got a standing invitation.”

Everything was out-of-date, flat-cornered Formica countertops, brown appliances, brick-colored linoleum. As if everyone in this house had stopped moving forward, something holding them all captive in the past.

He spoke even as he observed her. “You’ve been baking cookies.” A rack of oatmeal raisin cookies were cooling, and the sink was filled with soap suds, a big bowl, and the tips of two beaters.

“I have to fill all my cookie jars,” she said as she pulled a frying pan from the drawer at the bottom of the stove.

Based on the proliferation of jars on the counter, that would be one hell of a lot of cookies. “They smell good.”

“Dessert,” she said. “Milk and cookies. Now go wash up while I fix the grilled cheese.”

He felt like a small boy as she shooed him away. She was an odd bird, and he was fast coming around to agreeing that Bree had good reason for being worried about her.

In the half bath off the laundry room, there was another cookie jar on the back of the toilet, this one in the shape of Dumbo the elephant. Cookies in the bathroom? Curiouser and curiouser. He took care of business and washed up. Then, with his hand on the doorknob, he realized he couldn’t resist. Retreating the few steps to the toilet, he lifted Dumbo’s tail.

He stopped. Stared. Okay, not possible. The contents looked like . . . ashes. Jesus God.

Luke carefully put the lid back. All right, he did not see that. Bree’s father’s ashes could not be in a cookie jar on the back of the toilet. No way. Maybe it was bath salts. Yeah, bath salts. That looked like ashes.

When he returned to the kitchen, Mrs. Mason was humming as two sandwiches sizzled in the frying pan.

“When’s Bree going to be home?” he asked. “We can wait for her, if you’d like.”

“Oh, she’s going out for dinner up in the city.”

His spine tensed. “What?”

She glanced up at the sharpness of his tone. “In fact, I thought she was with you. But then you showed up.”

“Why didn’t you say something when I first arrived?”

“I thought it would be nice if it was just you and me.” Then she totally contradicted herself. “She’s with girlfriends from work. They wanted to take her out and show her a good time with all this unhappy business lately.”

Unhappy business? This was just plain wrong. And after finding Dumbo in the bathroom, he had to call her on it. “That’s an odd way of putting it. Her father just died. That’s more than unhappy business.”

She flipped the sandwiches in the pan. “I know what everyone thinks. That I should be mourning and sad. But he was sick for a year and a half.” She shrugged. “I do feel a bit of relief. I’m not going to pretend I don’t.” She tamped the bread down with her spatula until cheese oozed out the sides.

In a way, he understood. After a long illness, there had to be some relief that the misery was over. But as he looked at her, his gut shouted that there was more to it, a lot more.

“Do you forgive me, Luke?” Though her hair was white, her eyebrows were still dark, with springy little hairs sticking out. They looked like slashes across her forehead as she raised one brow at him.

He tried to sound comforting. “Everyone deals with death and grief differently.” But he kept seeing Dumbo on the back of the toilet. They were ashes.

“Yes, they do,” Mrs. Mason agreed. “I cried for months after my mother died. I was eighteen. It was before my husband and I were married. She went in for a hysterectomy, and she died on the table. It was all so unexpected. My father never recovered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But with my husband, it was different.”

“Yes. The length of his illness. Watching him go downhill.” But the ashes in the bathroom. That defied the pat explanation. “And Dumbo?”

She laughed, waving her hands, the spatula dripping grease. “Oh, that’s what this is all about. It’s just a little private joke. My husband always said he wanted to be one of my cookies in the jar so I could gobble him all up. I know it seems morbid, but . . .” She shrugged.

“To each his own,” he finished for her. But it felt . . . wrong. She wasn’t stable.

She plopped the grilled sandwiches onto two plates, cut them in half, then carried both to the table in the nook. She’d already poured two glasses of milk.

“Which friends did Bree go to the city with?” The first bite of grilled cheese sat heavy in his stomach, but he ate because right now, he needed to figure out where Bree had gone, and this woman had the answer.

“She didn’t say.” Did that sound cagey?

Bree didn’t have girlfriends. That’s what bothered him. Even if the girls at the office—whom she’d never mentioned as being friends—had taken her out to cheer her up, they wouldn’t have gone all the way to the city. An evening in San Francisco was something you planned for and did on a weekend.

Unless you were going to a club. And if she was, she wasn’t with any girlfriends.

The sandwich congealed in his stomach.

“Is something wrong with the cheese, Luke?”

“No. It’s good,” he said automatically, but he was thinking. Bree wouldn’t do that. She would not go to a sex club without him. Not alone. That was stupid, and she was way past that kind of behavior. Wasn’t she? He reached for his phone, pulling it from his suit jacket pocket. “I’ll just call her and see how she’s doing.”

“That’s a good idea. I’m worried about her. She didn’t wake up easily this morning.”

The phone rang and rang, so at least he knew it was on. But her voicemail answered. He didn’t leave a message; she would see the missed call. “Are you sure she said she was going up to the city?”

“Yes.” But now she sounded uncertain, her forehead creased in extra lines.

“What exactly did she say?” His gut went rigid.

Mrs. Mason put a fingertip to her temple. “I can’t remember her exact words, just something about a club she knew up there.”

Goddammit. His pulse was suddenly racing, and his head began to pound with an ache behind the eyes. “What time did she call?”

“Just before you got here.” She gave him a wide-eyed look.

He no longer believed it was innocent at all. “And you didn’t see fit to tell me then?”

“Like I said, I wanted you and I to get to know each other better. She’ll be home soon, I’m sure.”

“Mrs. Mason, her dad—your husband—just died. She’s emotionally vulnerable right now. She shouldn’t be running up to the city where neither of us can get hold of her.”

Suddenly, the woman smiled. It gave him chills. “You’re right,” she said. “You’d better go find her. I should have thought of that myself.”

Find her? It was just past seven. The club didn’t open until nine. Where the hell would she go in the meantime?

Of course. Home. Her place. To change into something sexy.

When her father died, she’d spun him a tale about going to the club, about the two doms. She’d done it to incite him to action. Is that what she was doing now? She thought he was with his daughter so suddenly she needed to reel him back in?

Goddammit. He didn’t know what the hell she was up to. But he was sure as hell going to find out.

Bree could not face her mother. She could not face the house in which her father had died in the back bedroom. She couldn’t face the window beyond which lay the dollhouse of her youth. Maybe when it was completely dark out back, when she couldn’t see even its shadow. Maybe then she could go back. Late. After her mom was asleep.

So instead, after work she went home. Her own home. She’d called her mom and told her she’d be late, clubbing in San Francisco, she’d said. Isn’t that what normal single women did every once in a while, go up to the city with girlfriends for fun? It sounded normal. Oh God, she so wanted to be normal.

But her condo was cold. Unwelcoming. Of course, she couldn’t call Luke, not with his daughter there. Besides, what was she going to tell him, that she’d freaked out because Marbury yelled at her? It was too humiliating. She found herself in front of the open closet door. Black and crimson lace called to her. A dress with a tight bustier bodice attached to a slim black skirt. She’d never worn it, but in the shop when she’d tried it on—over a year ago—the bustier had pushed up her breasts, the laced front fastenings had tightened around her waist, and she’d suddenly grown the perfect hourglass figure.

She held it against her body and stared at herself in the full-length mirror on the closet door. With black fishnet stockings and four-inch heels, she’d be totally desirable, eminently fuckable.

She put on the dress and admired her reflection. She slipped on the stockings and shoes and became a sexy, seductive lady of the night. Not Bree the boring accountant. Not the wimpy woman who let Marbury terrify her. With those shoes, the woman in the mirror could have walked all over him. And left marks.

As she climbed behind the wheel of her car, a tiny voice told her she was too stupid to live for even considering going to the city by herself. But the woman from the mirror put her phone on vibrate and shoved it into her clutch along with her license, forty bucks, and a tube of lipstick.

Luke was busy. Luke was with his daughter. He had a family, a whole and complete life that didn’t include Bree, and it was only a matter of time before he realized he would never want a woman like her, a slut, around his kids. Hell, why not admit it? She didn’t want to run to Luke. She didn’t want to depend on him because he’d be gone soon, and it would be so much worse the deeper she got with him. For just tonight, she wanted to lick her wounds the old way, cruising a club where no one knew her. And she didn’t care if she was too stupid to live.

The traffic was horrendous, and it took her over an hour and fifteen minutes to get across the Bay Bridge into the city.

Her blood was high, her skin buzzing. Long ago, she used to do this, not often, just a few times when she couldn’t breathe shut up in her apartment. She’d sneak out, like a serial killer whose blood lust had suddenly raged out of control. A couple of different occasions, she’d even met men who looked after her for a few weeks or months.

And really, what bad thing could happen to her tonight that hadn’t already been done long ago?

She rather liked the idea of simply disappearing, her car found a week later with a parking boot on it, and no one would ever know what happened to her. Not that she had a death wish. But sometimes there was a certain relief in making up a story like that.

The garage she and Luke had parked in last time was too far away, so she drove round and round, biting her lip till it hurt. She’d finally found a spot a couple of blocks from the club. She was too early, so she sat in her car with the doors locked and the radio on, tapping her fingers on her thighs until finally the dashboard clock turned over to nine-fifteen. She pulled out once again to circle. After fifteen minutes of that, she found an open meter two doors from the club’s entrance. She’d chewed her lipstick off, but her lips were as red as berries when she checked her makeup in the review mirror.

She was ready. Her blood was humming.

Yet she had the disquieting thought that without Luke, she would never find the relief she needed.