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counseling you suggested. I was being pigheaded about it.”
    “If you still want to, after I tell you.”
    His hand had caressed her hair like she was some rare and precious artifact. “I will.”
    Pulling back she faced him squarely. She remembered now how his sage-colored eyes were soft and loving. How his mouth gave her an encouraging smile. He wore his hair shorter then, but it complemented his exquisite, angular face.
    She said starkly, “I had an abortion today.”
    It took him a minute. His brow furrowed and his chin angled. With a lawyer’s calm, he whispered, “You were pregnant?”
    She nodded.
    His hands gripped her shoulders. “You didn’t tell me.”
    “After I found out, I tried to talk to you. On several occasions. We just started yelling at each other, and I couldn’t bring this up then.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s true.”
    “Even if it is, you went ahead and killed my baby?”
    “I—” She started weeping then. “I was so angry at you for pushing me. For saying those awful things.”
    “I was pushing you to have another child with me. All the while you were pregnant.”
    She just stared at him. And she’d known, in that instant, things would never be the same again.
    “How far along were you?” he asked.
    “Just a few weeks.”
    “I can’t believe you’re capable of doing something like this.”
    What could she say? A good lawyer went on the defensive. But when you’d already tried and convicted yourself, it was hard to feign innocence. “I was confused. Hurt. But I knew as soon as I did it that it was a mistake not to have talked to you first, worked it out with you before I…”
    He’d gripped her hard enough so that he’d left bruises; she discovered them the next day. “This was not a mistake. This was a crime.”
    “I know it hurts. Please, give me a chance to make it up to you. Maybe…”
    “You can’t make up for this. You committed a heinous act that you can never make up for.”
    “No, Reese, no. It didn’t seem like that at the time. You yourself have argued that. Have fought for women to have the right to choose.”
    “That’s not the same thing. You knew how I felt about this issue for us.”
    “Reese, please…”
    He stepped back then, shrugging her off like a leper. “I will never, ever, forgive you for this.” He’d turned then, and walked out. He’d stayed away for three days. It had been the beginning of the end….

Chapter 4
    TYLER SIPPED HIS coffee as he stared out the window of his clapboard house and watched the wind whip around his small backyard, making the newly budded leaves tremble. In downstate New York, April could be mild or brutal, depending on her whim, and this Sunday morning, she’d chosen not to be kind.
    Just like Kaitlyn. Damn her. She knew he wanted to see her, knew he wanted a call or, better yet, for her to spend the night with him when she returned from seeing her daughter. But she’d done neither. He guessed she went home and crashed. He hoped nothing of significance had happened between her and Bishop. That was something he feared every single time she and her ex had cause to be together.
    “You’re pathetic, Sloan,” he told himself. Why didn’t he just ditch this relationship? He could find a dozen women who would treat him better.
    Hell. Dropping down into a chair at the butcher-block table by the window, he picked up today’s Herald. He was drinking his coffee when he turned to the local section and sputtered the brew all over the paper. He had to wipe off the article to read it. There were headlines: BISHOP AND RENADO HAVE NO COMMENT. Beneath that banner were head shots of Kaitlyn and Reese, retrieved, most likely, from the paper’s files on newsworthy people in Westwood. Then there was text, which didn’t say anything new, just that the New Jersey police were investigating the incident and neither Reese nor Kaitlyn would talk to reporters.
    But it was another picture of them that grated on