Whitney knew she’d locked the front door, but she double-checked anyway. Peering through the small panes of glass, she saw the light upstairs in the main house was still shining. Just knowing the pervert was there creeped her out.
Now the rain had stopped, leaving a somnolent dripping from the eaves. The storm had passed, thunder only a distant rumble, lightning a flicker to the east. A lone coyote howled. Its bleak call struck her as overwhelmingly lonely.
Something about the emptiness of the night disturbed her, which was silly. She wasn’t alone. Granted, the place was a good distance from the next house, but this was suburbia, for God’s sake. She flicked off the porch light, unable to shake the feeling her world was no longer familiar. Or friendly.
She went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. As she brushed her teeth, she thought about Ryan’s call. What could he possibly want? They hadn’t spoken in months. Rather than hire expensive attorneys to split what little they had, she’d agreed to arbitration. She’d allowed him to keep the house with the huge mortgage.
Whitney had taken the Grand Cherokee. Although the SUV wasn’t new, it was paid for, and she needed transportation. They’d had little else except a full service of china and a worthless piece of property that Ryan-who didn’t have a head for business-had insisted they purchase as an investment. The land turned out to have toxic waste in the soil and couldn’t be sold without going through an expensive decontamination process. She’d quitclaimed the land to Ryan along with the house in order to keep Lexi.
And to get Ryan Fordham out of her life forever.
WHITNEY AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING with Da Vinci licking her face and wagging his tail. The spoiled little dog had slept on the bed with her.
“No,” she groaned, looking at the alarm and realizing she’d failed to set it properly. She’d overslept. “You have to go out, don’t you?” At the sound of her voice Lexi popped up from her bed and shook her head. The movement made her ears flap, Lexi’s signal that she had to relieve herself.
“Let’s hit it.” Whitney shrugged into a robe and escorted them to the back door. The small fenced patio and patch of grass were still wet from the rain. When they’d finished, she quickly fed them, showered and threw on some clothes. She did not want to be late to Trish Bowrather’s on the first day.
She walked to the carport attached to the single-car garage that was so crammed full of Miranda’s stuff, there wasn’t room for the SUV. Whitney glanced up at the main house. All the curtains were drawn. If she didn’t know better, she would think no one was home. The jerk must still be asleep.
She loaded the dogs and was backing out when she realized a car had pulled in behind her, blocking her exit. She didn’t know anyone who drove a silver Porsche. It might be Adam Hunter, she thought, then wondered why he would be using the back driveway when a four-car garage was located on the other side of the house. Of course, after last night, there was no telling what that maniac might pull. But a man in a suit stepped out of the sleek sports car.
Ryan.
In a heartbeat, her world shifted and became out of focus. Just the slightest patina of sweat sheened her forehead. She could have blamed it on the bright morning sun and the humidity in the air from the storm, but she knew better. How could he have this effect on her? Hadn’t the pain of his betrayal made her a stronger person?
Lexi immediately stuck her head out the window and barked a happy greeting. Why me? Whitney asked herself as she slid out of the SUV. Whatever Ryan wanted had to be really important for him to drive out to Torrey Pines from San Diego when patients would be waiting in his office at nine.
“You didn’t call me back.” Ryan sounded genuinely shocked, but then, he always was when he didn’t get his way.
“What do you want?”
His mouth quirked into a smile, but she knew him too well. He was merely flashing his chemically whitened teeth. The man could turn on the charm like a searchlight, when it suited him.
Tall and imposing, with surfer blond hair and a golden tan, Dr. Ryan Fordham made women’s hearts pound just by walking into a room. He was a shade shy of pretty, Whitney told herself, something mean curdling inside her. A tide of heartbreak rushed in, sweeping away rational thought.
“There’s a little problem.” He reached into the open window of the Jeep and stroked Lexi’s head. The little turncoat couldn’t wag her tail fast enough.
“What’s the matter?” She battled the urge to tell him to get his hand off her dog. Although Lexi adored Whitney, the retriever had always been very fond of Ryan. Why not? He’d never had a cross word for the dog.
He stopped petting Lexi and turned to Whitney. “I’m joining a new practice. I need to sign a lease for an office building and finance some equipment. The credit check showed your name is still on the house and the property in Temecula.”
“I thought the settlement agreement handled the transfer of title on both places. The judge accepted the documents.”
Ryan studied the tips of his highly buffed shoes. “Apparently the judge was in a hurry and didn’t notice it wasn’t notarized. So it couldn’t be recorded. I have the papers in the car. All you have to do is sign in front of a notary. I’ll take them right to the county recorder’s office to be legally registered.”
Whitney was amazed that Ryan could get any credit. He was up to his ears in debt with a huge mortgage. He also had the lease on the office he’d used before switching from general surgery to the more lucrative field of cosmetic surgery. On top of everything was an astronomical malpractice premium that had to be paid quarterly. He walked over to the Porsche and she added expensive car leases to the list of her ex-husband’s debts. No telling what Ashley-his girlfriend, now wife-was driving.
Ryan returned with a bound sheaf of papers in his hand. He flipped it open in front of her to a page with a red Post-it flagging a space for her signature. “All you have to do is sign here.” He zipped to another page. “And here.” He paged to the end of the document. “And here. But you must do it in front of a notary.”
A warning bell sounded in a distant part of her brain. Why were there so many pages? The original document from the arbitrator had been much smaller, hadn’t it?
“Come with me now,” Ryan continued in his smoothest voice. “There’s a notary at American Title who’ll take care of everything. They open at nine.”
“I can’t today. I’m already running late. Besides, I want an attorney to look over everything before I sign.”
“What?” Ryan slapped the side of the Jeep with the document. “Why let a lawyer pad his bill by reading something you’ve already agreed to? Besides, you don’t have the money for a lawyer.”
Whitney realized she was dealing not with the charming Ryan Fordham but the imperious Ryan Fordham. Once she’d thought this persona was authoritative. Now he merely sounded arrogant. She manufactured a smile and bluffed. “Miranda is marrying Broderick Babcock. He’ll read the papers for nothing.”
That stopped him. Ryan stared at her slack-jawed. Broderick Babcock was a legend in San Diego, in the state. He’d successfully defended several high-profile clients that most people believed were guilty and didn’t have a prayer of avoiding prison.
“Why bother Babcock?” Ryan asked, his voice smooth again. “This isn’t any big deal.”
“I still want him to review the document. But it’ll have to wait. He took Miranda to Fiji for a two-week honeymoon.”
“What?” The word exploded out of Ryan. “Wait two weeks? No fucking way! You come with me right now. We’ll be at American Title when they open.”
He was shouting now, the way he occasionally did when things didn’t go his way. Ryan had a hair-trigger temper that rarely surfaced. Between his charm, good looks and assertive attitude, people usually gave in to him. Whitney always had-but not anymore.