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then.”
    Setting the heavy
receiver slowly down in the cradle, Claudia thought for a moment.
    She knew that tone,
could almost picture the way his jaw set when he had his mind made up about
something, the way he clenched his teeth together when he was frustrated. He
sounded like a man who would rather face a herd of angry buffalo than deal with
her in the morning, but who was damn sure going to do it anyway.
    Like a man who was
hell-bent on walking into disaster.
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Claudia opened the
door before Andy decided for certain to raise his hand and knock.
    He had been half
tempted to climb back in his Blazer and retreat to the safety of his hectic
hospital routine. It would have been easy enough to find an excuse, that case
of suspected toxemia that had come in the night before, or the food poisoning
victims. Two entire families afflicted, parents, children, all of them
miserable.
    Join the club.
    “I saw you drive up,”
Claudia said, biting her lip.
    She was a mess. Dressed
in an ill-fitting flannel shirt and canvas gardening pants, she stood in the
door frame with a small but tightly fisted hand perched on one hip, absently
pushing stray blonde strands away from her wide eyes with the other. Her
makeshift ponytail was in danger of spilling free of its elastic, and her
scrubbed face was decorated only by a long charcoal smudge on one cheek.
    A smudge that Andy had
a sudden urge to reach out and gently wipe away. Even as he pushed the thought
down, his fingertips twitched with anticipation at the feel of her creamy skin,
a few freckles already dotting her nose and cheeks as if in preparation for the
summer to come.
    “Can I come in?”
    She hesitated, then
stood aside, the heavy plank door creaking as it swung open.
    “I’d offer you coffee,”
Claudia said, her tone flat and tired. “But I have no idea where Bea keeps the
coffee maker these days, and there’s no electricity anyway, and even if there
was I’m afraid to open the refrigerator, what with the power having been out
for who knows how long...”
    “I took care of that,”
Andy said, slowly surveying the condition of the place. How long had it been
since he’d been here? A few weeks? A month, tops. But things had managed to
slide even further down hill. “It’ll be back on by noon. It’s only been off
since yesterday morning so the fridge shouldn’t be too bad, though we’ll have
to throw a lot of the perishable things out, I suppose.”
    “It wasn’t a power
outage? I don’t understand. You mean Bea had her electricity cut off?”
    The confusion in
Claudia’s eyes slowed him down a bit. So she genuinely had no idea. Andy let
his gaze continue around the room, pausing to take the thick layer of dust
covering the furniture.
    The faint rotten smell
from the kitchen. That, evidently, was where Claudia had spent her morning. The
table, counters and cabinets had been scoured clean, and the floor gleamed from
a fresh coat of wax.
    “She didn’t have it
cut off,” he said, sighing. “At least, not on purpose.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “That’s what I’m here
to talk to you about. Look, why don’t we drive into town, get a cup of coffee—”
    “I’m fine here.” Again
those fists, as Claudia backed up to lean against the back of a sofa, fixing
her gaze somewhere between his chin and his Adam’s apple.
    Determined, she was,
and fiercely protective. And maybe just a little bit more frightened than she
wanted to admit.
    Andy suddenly wanted
to reach out for her, pull her into his arms and hold her, tell her everything
would be all right.
    Not a good idea.
    “Fine.” A shrug. Accommodating,
but professional. “Can we at least sit down?”
    “If you don’t mind the
dust,” Claudia said, edging around the sofa without turning away from him, then
gingerly patting the cushions as though she expected something unpleasant to
spring from their depths. She settled primly in the center of the sofa, and
Andy picked