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outskirts of Genoa. After passing two churches and a basilica, her conscience was kicking into overtime. She should be focused on her father’s condition— checking on him— finding out why the hell someone hadn’t bothered to let her know sooner. How could she be so into talking with someone she barely knew?
    Maybe because he was actually a good listener. They discussed his return to college, her job. Lightweight stuff, and just what she needed to take her mind off what awaited her inside the rehab center.
    By the time they reached the hospital parking lot, she decided not to overanalyze her reaction to the blackjack dealer– math whiz. Her jumbled nerves calmed with Charles Tomas in the seat next to her. She couldn’t remember when she’d simply talked with a man, her defenses always too high for anything more than banter.
    She shut off the car outside the five-hundred-year-old Renaissance Italian villa that had been converted into a posh rehab center. Tuscan columns and Roman arches shone in the floodlights strategically placed along the garden grounds. And the statues… fewer and more subdued than the ones her father favored, but without question, he felt at home here.
    Turning, she faced Charles, the small space in the luxury car suddenly smaller, more intimate. “Thanks for coming along so late. I hope you won’t fall asleep at work to morrow.”
    “No problem. I’m used to working crazy hours across time zones.” He tipped his head to the side, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “Are you ready to go up now?”
    “Youdon’t have to come with me.” She avoided his gaze under the auspices of gathering her purse. “If you want to get something to eat, I can find you when I’m through.”
    “I’ll pick up coffee for both of us and meet you afterward.” He pulled out a sleek new iPhone, a model so slim it looked like a serious upgrade from even hers. “I can keep myself occupied.”
    As he bent to help her, Jolynn raised her head, and they bumped painfully. Chuckling, he pulled away. “Do you think we should alert the paramedics anytime we’re in the same place?”
    His light teasing eased the tension coiled in the pit of her stomach. “Thanks, Charles. I needed a laugh today.”
    “Glad I could help.” He held her eyes with his intense dark stare. “Take as long as you need.”
    Without knocking over a gurney or flattening any nurses bearing trays full of blood samples, they safely entered a private wing of the rehab center, where her father had been recuperating from his heart attack. The smooth sounds of Italian spoken quickly flowed over her ears. Her mother had loved coming here, the reason her father had set up his first international office in this region. Memories of her mom were few, but the sound of her sitting in a beach chair practicing the language with a tutorial tape… She swallowed hard.
    Her gaze swept the empty leather sofas— antique reproductions with carved cherry accents rather than the standard Naugahyde and steel that filled normal hospital settings. Finally her eyes landed on the welcome sight of her father’s friend and longtime head of security sprawled in a carved throne chair watching a television tucked in an antique armoire.
    “Hello,Hebert.” Jolynn savored the soft Cajun pronunciation of the old man’s name,
Ay-bear
.
    Hebert Benoit’s familiar, square face creased into an asymmetrical smile with a chipped front tooth. He ambled to his feet and crunched her into a hug. “Welcome, welcome. ’Bout time you came.”
    “Then perhaps you should have let me know about his heart attack when it happened.”
    “And maybe it shouldna taken that to bring you into the family fold again.”
    Except things weren’t that simple with her family. Even her feelings for this longtime protector of hers were tainted with the possibility of darker duties he must have carried out for her father over the years.
    “Is he awake?”
    “He never sleeps, same as