Hot Blooded (20 page)

“That’s a good question.” Sam shoved her fingers through her hair and thought for a second. “I can’t really tell you the answer as I don’t understand it myself.” She lowered herself into the rocker by the French doors and wrapped the faded afghan her great-grandmother had knitted decades ago around her shoulders. Ty had been kind to her, interested. The least she could do was try and explain. “I was hosting a show like the one I’m doing now, only at a smaller station. I’d only been out of college a while and was separated from my husband, so I was on my own for the first time in my life, and the show was enjoying quite a bit of success. Jeremy, that’s my ex, thought it was going to my head, and tried to make it an issue, like the catalyst for the divorce, but it was more than that. A lot more.

“Anyway, things were going relatively well.” She remembered how each day she would push thoughts of Jeremy and the divorce from her mind, tell herself she hadn’t failed, that the marriage had been destined to fall apart, then drive to the station and bury herself in her work, listen to the callers, try to sort things out for others as she hadn’t been able to for herself.

“One night, this girl calls, says her name is Annie, and that she wants some advice.” Samantha remembered the girl’s hesitancy at first, how embarrassed she’d seemed, how frightened. Pulling the afghan closer around her neck, Sam said, “The girl, Annie, was scared. She’d just found out she was pregnant and couldn’t tell her parents because they would flip—maybe turn her out, that sort of thing. I got the impression that they were very strict and religious, that their
daughter being unwed and in a family way would be socially unacceptable.

“I suggested she talk to a counselor at school or her pastor, someone who might be able to help her and guide her in her decision, someone she trusted.”

“But she didn’t?” he asked, still leaning against the bedpost.

“She couldn’t, I guess. A few nights later she called back. More scared than ever. Her boyfriend wanted her to get an abortion, but she didn’t want one, was adamantly against it for personal as well as religious reasons. I told her not to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, that it was her body and her baby. Of course, as the audience is hearing this, the phone lines are lighting up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Everyone had an opinion. Or advice. I asked her to call back when I wasn’t on the air, that I would give her the names of some counselors and women’s services where she could get one-on-one help.”

Sam let out her breath slowly as she remembered those painful days. “Maybe I wasn’t the best one to be giving out advice at the time,” she admitted, thinking back to that black period in her life. “I’d only been in Houston a few months, and the reason I got the job is that the woman who was hosting the program had quit. I was only supposed to be a temporary fill-in, but audience response was great, even if the pay wasn’t, so they offered me a raise, and I stayed on.”

She rolled her eyes at her own naïveté, pushed back with her toe and began slowly rocking. “Even though we were on the road to divorce anyway, my husband didn’t like it. I was in the limelight for once, not him, and it eroded the marriage all the faster I think. I wasn’t going to give up the job and within weeks—possibly days—he found someone else…or, more likely, he’d been seeing her all along, but that’s another story,” she added, surprised at herself for
confiding so much. “We were talking about Annie Seger. The upshot was that Annie ignored my advice, never called after hours, but phoned in every other night or so. And the audience went crazy. People started phoning in like mad. Everyone from the president of the local chapter of Right to Life and several youth ministers to someone from the local paper. The thing just kept getting bigger and bigger. Mushrooming. I had lawyers calling me with offers of money, couples wanted to adopt Annie’s baby. Young mothers called, women who’d suffered abortions or miscarriages or marrying the wrong guy because they were pregnant and had been forced to get married by their folks. It was a circus. And in the middle of it was a lonely, scared sixteen-year-old.”

Sam shivered, remembered being seated at a windowless booth in the heart of the station, taking the calls, wondering if Annie would phone in again. George Hannah, the owner, had been beside himself with glee at the ratings, and Eleanor, too, had reveled in the increased listenership. “Everyone at the station was thrilled. We were beating out the rival station, and that was what mattered. Ratings were through the roof, by God! And the bottom line looked good.” Sam couldn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice.

But, aside from all the hoopla, Annie had been desperate. And Samantha had failed her. Even after all of these years, Sam still felt the girl’s despair, her fear. Her shame.

“I tried to get through to her, but she couldn’t find the strength to confide in anyone close to her. She had family but seemed terrified of them. Couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to a school counselor or anyone from her parish. She became angry with me, for some reason. As if I were to blame. It was awful. Just…awful.” Sam drew in a long breath and said, “Then, after the seventh or eighth time she’d called in, about three weeks after the initial time she’d contacted me, she was found dead. Overdose and her wrists slit. Her
mother’s prescription for sleeping pills and about half a fifth of vodka along with a pair of bloody gardening shears were nearby. There was a suicide note on her computer. It said something about Annie being ashamed, feeling alone, not having anyone to confide in, not her parents, boyfriend or me.”

Sam remembered seeing the front page of the paper the next day with Annie Seger’s face in black and white. A pretty, privileged girl, captain of the cheerleading squad, an honor student, dead by her own hand.

A girl who had been pregnant.

And alone. Someone who had reached out for help and gotten nothing.

The girl’s high-school picture had made Annie seem more real, more helpless, more tragic to Sam. Annie had been so damned young. Sam had been devastated and the images of the smiling girl in the black-and-white photo of the paper still haunted her. “I quit the job after that. Took some time off and spent it with my dad. Went into private practice in Santa Monica. It was all Eleanor could do to persuade me to get behind the mike again and host another program.” She plucked at the afghan with her fingers. “And now it’s all happening again.”

“So Thursday would have been Annie’s twenty-fifth birthday?”

“I guess.” Sam lifted a shoulder. Felt cold to her bones. Tightened the blanket around her though the temperature in the room was probably over eighty degrees. “I just don’t know why anyone would bring it all up again.”

“Neither do I,” he said, and held her gaze for a second longer than necessary. “Listen, if you hear or see anything that bothers you—anything at all—give me a call.” Pulling a pen from his pocket, he crossed to the nightstand and wrote on the notepad by her phone. “Here’re my numbers—
home and cell. Don’t lose “em.” He tore off the top page, walked to her chair and handed her the information.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, and had to stifle a yawn.

Ty glanced again at the bed with its fluffy duvet, decorative pillows and slatted canopy. “Go to bed, Champ. You’ve had a long day.”

“Very long,” she agreed, thinking it had lasted forever. To her surprise, Ty reached forward, pulled her, afghan and all, out of the chair and drew her into the circle of his arms.

“You will call me,” he said, leaning down so that his forehead touched hers.

All thoughts of sleep vanished. The cozy room with its sloped ceiling seemed to shrink. Become warmer. “If it comes down to that.”

“Even if you just get scared.” With one strong finger he lifted her chin. “Promise.”

“Oh, sure. Scout’s honor,” she agreed, her heart drumming wildly. The scent of old leather mingled with a lingering trace of some aftershave and that pure male scent she hadn’t smelled in a long, long time.

“I’ll hold you to it.” He glanced down at her mouth and in a second she realized he was going to kiss her.

Oh, God.
Her throat went dry, her skin tingled in anticipation. As if he knew exactly what she was feeling, what kind of response he’d already evoked from her, he had the audacity to smile, that irrepressible, cocky, half grin that made her breath stop.

“Good night, Sam,” he said, and he brushed a kiss across her forehead before releasing her. “You keep your doors locked and give me a call if anything bothers you.”

You bother me, she thought, as he released her and walked out the door. Damn it, Ty Wheeler, you bother the hell out of me.
Two hours later Ty flipped through his notes as he sat at the keyboard, the dog at his feet, the windows open to let in the breeze. Ice cubes melting, a drink sat on his desk, nearly forgotten as he flipped through his notes on Annie Seger. He knew the info by heart, yet studied it as if he’d never heard Annie’s name before.

Which was ridiculous, as he was related to her in a roundabout way.

His third cousin. Which was the reason he’d been thrown off the case.

He perused the yellowed newspaper clippings, reading over the facts that he’d memorized long ago:

Too frightened to tell her parents that she was in a family way, she’d sought solace in a local radio psychiatrist, Dr. Samantha Leeds, and couldn’t heed the doctor’s advice. She’d felt she had nowhere to turn, and when the father of her child had told her that he didn’t want to raise a family, she’d gone into her bedroom, turned on her computer, written a note and when sleeping pills and vodka hadn’t done the trick, slit her wrists.

It had been a scandal that had rocked a wealthy section of Houston. Soon, the Dr. Sam show had gone off the air but not because of poor ratings. Contrarily, the popularity of her program had soared to new heights and her fame, or infamy, had skyrocketed.

But Samatha Leeds hadn’t been able to live with herself, or so it seemed. She’d quit the show and the radio station and gone into private practice until the past six months, when the same people who had worked with her in Houston had lured her to New Orleans.

Ty took a sip of his drink. Crushed the ice between his teeth.

He remembered the entire scenario with Annie Seger. He’d
been one of the first to arrive at her house and had witnessed the devastation of not only her, but her entire family.

Annie had been a pretty girl with a few freckles dusting her nose, short reddish hair and blue-green eyes that had sparkled in life.

A waste.

A shame.

Carrying his drink, Ty walked outside to listen to the lapping of the lake against the dock. Sasquatch followed him outside and, nose to the wind, trotted off the verandah to the yard, where he lifted his leg on a stately old live oak.

Crickets chirped and a solitary frog croaked as his dog wandered between the trees and sniffed the ground. Ty glanced at the
Bright Angel,
sails down, gently rocking against her moorings. Somewhere far off a siren wailed plaintively, muted by distance. Far into the horizon the first gray light of dawn was breaking.

Ty thought of Samantha Leeds, only a quarter of a mile away.

A beautiful woman.

An intelligent woman.

A damned fascinating woman.

A woman he imagined he could make love to over and over again. Telling himself he was a fool, he fantasized about what it would be like to take her to bed, to feel her ragged breath as she lay beneath him, or the feel of her skin, soft as silk, against his body.

No doubt about it, she was getting to him.

And he was letting her.

Which was a colossal mistake.

He tossed back his drink and whistled to the old shepherd as he walked into the house.

The last thing, the very last thing he could do was lose his sense of purpose; his objectivity. He’d made a promise
to himself and no one, especially not Annie’s radio-psychologist was going to stop him.

“Why didn’t you help me, Dr. Sam. Why?”
The voice was young and frail and seemed far away, through the patchy fog and dense trees. Samantha followed the sound, her heart pounding, her breath tight as she tried to peer through branches dripping with Spanish moss and blocking her view.

“Annie? Where are you?” she called, and her voice echoed through the woods, reverberating loudly.

“Over here…”

Sam ran, tripping over roots and vines, squinting in the darkness, hearing the sounds of the freeway in the distance over the lonely hoot of an owl. Why had Annie lured her out here, what did she want?

“I can’t find you.”

“Because you’re not looking hard enough.”

“But where…?” She broke through the trees and saw the girl, a beautiful girl with short red hair, big eyes and fear cast in her every feature. She was standing in the middle of a cemetery with headstones and raised coffins, a filigreed iron fence separating her from Samantha. In her arms she held a baby wrapped in tattered swaddling clothes. The baby was crying, wailing horridly, as if in pain.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, walking along the fence, searching for a gate, trying to get closer. “I didn’t know.”

“I called you. I asked for your help. You turned me away.”

“No, I wanted to help you, I did.”

“Liar!”

Sam dragged her fingers along the posts, hurrying faster, trying to gain entrance, but no matter how many corners she turned, how far she ran through the rising mist and shadows, she couldn’t find the gate, couldn’t get close, could
never reach the girl and the baby whose muffled cries tore at Sam’s heart.

“Too late,” Annie said. “You’re too late.”

“No, I can help.”

She saw the girl move then and shake out the blanket. Sam screamed as the folds opened and she expected the baby to be tossed onto the ground, but as the worn blanket unfolded, it was empty, the baby having disappeared.

“Too late,” Annie said again.

“No. I’ll help you, I promise,” she said, breathing hard, feeling as if her feet were cast in concrete.

“Don’t…” a male voice warned.

Ty’s?

John’s?

She whirled but couldn’t see anything in the black woods. “Who are you?” she cried, but no one answered.