Dr. MacAllister put the idea in her head months ago, and she’d finally gotten up the courage to do it. She’d taken one of her father’s old diaries and by painting and gluing and journaling had created a scrapbook of her life to this point. The good doctor told her she’d never move forward if she couldn’t put the unhappy memories behind her, and his suggestion to take the miserable pieces of her past and turn them into something beautiful was nothing short of genius.

Of course, he hadn’t been talking about altered books; that was her idea. He’d suggested she take something that hurt her during her childhood, find the good in it, and focus on building on that. While others in the class had begun with clean, blank pages and lovely satin-bound albums, she’d begun with her father’s diary, an old leather-bound book with his scribbled longhand and used it as her starting place.

“If you’re going to change your life, you must begin where you are and build from that place,” Dr. MacAllister had said.

While others began with clean sheets of lovely patterned paper, she’d begun with an ugly and ink-stained journal. The result was nothing short of amazing. With just a few inkpads, some photos and a marker, tonight she’d begun to transform her past into something beautiful.

Adrianna rounded the corner leading toward her father’s old house. The wiper blades sluiced back and forth creating a hypnotizing staccato mirroring her beating heart. Yes, she would overcome her past, and tonight she’d taken the first step on the path leading to her new life.

Three police cars with rolling red and blue lights sat parked along the street near the house. She pressed the brake with the toe of her shoe and searched up and down the dark lane. What was going on here?

As she inched closer to the house, she could see four policemen and a crowd of her neighbors dressed in robes and other bedtime attire lining the driveway. Her front door stood open.

She parked her Chevy Cavalier thirty or so yards away from the unwanted assembly and climbed out of the car. Keeping to the shadows, she made her way closer to the house.

A slow, creeping hand of fear clutched her neck, and she gave her shoulders a quick shake. What had happened? Where was Beverly? Adrianna peered into the semi-darkness searching the crowd for a sign of her best friend and roommate. At least there were no fire trucks, so it wasn’t a fire, she thought. But the sight of three police cars parked along the quiet, suburban street didn’t serve to calm the fear boiling up inside her chest.

“There she is!” Mrs. Gallows shouted from her vantage point on Adrianna’s front lawn.

“Shit,” Adrianna mumbled as she stopped mid-stride. A flash of the last time police cars and neighbors had lined this street filled her mind, and she sucked in a long breath. She thought of the diary in her front seat, and the weight of her past lay once again on her shoulders.

“Miss Clarke.” A uniformed officer walked toward her. The urge to turn and run overwhelmed her, but she forced herself to straighten and look into his eyes.

“Yes, I’m Adrianna Clarke. What’s happened, officer?”

“You’ve had a break-in,” the man said, flipping open a notepad and pulling a pen from his shirt pocket. “A neighbor phoned it in. Where were you this evening?”

Adrianna knew the drill so well. Answer questions with more questions. The night the police had interrogated her she’d been only nineteen years old, but even ten years could not blur the memory of that night.

“Where were you during the robbery?”

“Did your father tell you what he was doing?”

“Did you help him plan it?”

Adrianna cleared her throat and adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder.

“I left my house about five-thirty to go to my weekly scrapbooking club meeting.”

“Scrapbooking club?” the officer asked, turning her favorite hobby into a question and accusation in two words.

“Yes, scrapbooking club.” She’d cried during the interrogation that night, but that had not stopped the barrage of accusing questions and disdainful stares. They’d been intent on linking her to her father’s crime. But she’d learned some things ten years ago, and she’d learned them well: don’t trust the police. Tell them no more than they ask. Don’t tell even the smallest lie. Don’t cry.

“Where is my roommate?” Adrianna asked.

“I’ll need the names of the others at this scrapbooking club meeting,” he said, jotting down notes in his book.

Adrianna stepped around the officer and headed toward her house.

“Hey, wait a minute.”  The man grabbed her upper arm.

Adrianna froze and turned slowly toward him. “Take your hand off me.”

He released her arm. “I have more questions.”

“Then you can follow me.” Adrianna turned away again and walked toward the milling throng of nosy neighbors and law enforcement.

The officer continued asking questions, but Adrianna ignored him. She’d never said she would answer any more, and he could ask them until he turned blue for all she cared. She had to find out what had happened here before she said something she shouldn’t.

Keeping her head held high and avoiding everyone’s gaze, she strode to the front door of her father’s house. In her living room stood two more officers and a gentleman in a suit with his back turned to her.

Beverly walked into the living room from the kitchen. A wave of relief washed over Adrianna at the sight of her friend carrying a tray of coffee mugs.

“Addy!” Beverly pushed the tray toward one of the men and ran over to her. Pulling Adrianna into a tight hug with arms that wrapped all the way around her small frame, Beverly pressed her cheek against the top of Adrianna’s head.

Beverly grabbed her friend’s upper arms and looked down at her. “Girl, are you okay? I was so scared.”

Adrianna nodded and looked up into her roommate’s eyes. Beverly towered over her and had since their grade school days. “What happened here, Bev?”

Bev wrapped her arm around Adrianna’s shoulders and turned her away from the men in her living room. “Somebody broke into the place while I was gone. I just got back about a half hour ago. That nosy Gallows woman phoned it in. She says she saw somebody run out the front door, get into a van and drive off like a bat out of hell.”

Adrianna tried to turn back around to see the men, but her friend’s arm held her in place. Adrianna glanced into her friend’s eyes. “What? Is there more?”

“Uh yeah, there is.” Beverly’s eyes were full of the sympathy she’d always shown for her. Adrianna noted another emotion in her eyes this time, however.

“Well? What is it?”

“Hello Addy.”

The deep voice echoed from the living room and moved over her like a hot breeze. A voice she hadn’t heard in over four years but could never forget.

“Yeah,” Beverly said as she shook her head. “Parker’s here.”

The urge to run took over and except for Beverly’s iron like grip holding her in place, she would have. No, she told herself. She was through running away. She’d taken the first step in creating a new life for herself; nothing would drag her back to the past now.

Not even Parker Noel.

She forced a smile she hoped looked calm at her friend and nodded. Beverly’s eyebrows rose, but she released her grip. Adrianna turned.

“Hello Parker.”

Parker took a long look at the woman in front of him. She hadn’t changed that much, even in four years. Her long, blonde hair still hung down her back; her lips were still full and awe-inspiring. Only now, instead of being pliant and appealing, they were turned into a hard frown. He schooled his own features and forced himself to concentrate on doing his job.

“Where were you tonight, Miss Clarke?”

The look she gave him left no question in his mind as to her thoughts: wherever she’d been, it was none of his business. Well, she had another think coming.

He turned to the other officers in the room. “Give us a moment alone.”

The men turned to leave the room.

“Wait!” Adrianna walked toward Bud, who stood gaping at her. Bud hadn’t seen too many great-looking women in his day, obviously, or he would have kept his mouth closed while he stared.

“I don’t want to be left alone with him.”

The words cut into his gut like a razor. Parker shoved his hands into his pockets and clenched his fists.

“Well, too bad,” he said. “Gentlemen?”

Bud moved around Adrianna without another word and as the others filed out Parker stared at her pursed lips. He’d seen her angry before; he’d seen her exultant. Never had he seen her defiant.

If it weren’t so inconvenient, he’d have to admit he liked it. If she’d had that kind of defiance four years ago, she wouldn’t have left his bed in the middle of the night never to return.

“Adrianna.” The name caught in his throat, but he forced himself to go on. “Someone broke in looking for something. Did they find it?”

“How should I know?” Adrianna’s eyes never strayed from his. “I just got here.”

This was not the same tender, restless woman he’d known. She’d acquired an edge, and he’d better start dealing with her that way.

“Well, look around and see if anything is missing.”

“I did look.” She took a step closer to him. “I see my television and stereo. I don’t have anything else somebody would want. Did it ever occur to you that whoever broke in here realized I have a lot of crap and just left?”

“No, it didn’t.” Parker stared her down. “More likely, they were looking for the money.”

Only then did her gaze waver. “There is no money to find here.”

“So, you’re saying there’s money to find somewhere else?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you really think I’d be living in this house if I had two nickels to rub together?”

Parker spoke low through his clenched teeth. “I don’t know what you’d do. I never thought you’d leave. What do I know about what you’d do?”

Beverly stepped over to them and placed her arm around her roommate once more. “Well, I did look around, and I can’t find anything missing. I can vouch for one thing: we haven’t got anything anyone would want.”

He pulled his gaze from Adrianna’s face and forced himself to focus on her roommate. From his earlier questioning, he’d discovered Beverly Carson was single and had been living here since Addy left town a year ago. She’d caught him up on where Addy’d been all this time and how she’d ended up returning to her father’s house. While he’d listened to the story, he’d taken inventory of Addy’s friend. Beverly was his height, gorgeous and built like a brick house. Unfortunately, that wasn’t doing it for him. The woman he wanted stood a foot away physically, but miles away in every other respect. And also unfortunately, she wanted nothing to do with him.

“You might not have anything, but I don’t think it was something of yours they were looking for, Miss Carson. Would you give us a moment? I’d like to talk to Adrianna alone, please?”

Beverly looked at Addy who continued to stare at him, a look of vengeful irritation in her eyes. What she had to be pissed about he didn’t know—he was the one with every right to be irate.

“Go ahead, Bev,” Adrianna said. “This won’t take long.”

That’s what she thought. If he started right now and said everything he had to say to her, she could be here for a few hours. As Beverly turned and left the room, he decided that he’d keep to the one burning question that had eaten a hole in his stomach over the last twelve months.

“Why’d you leave, Addy?”

Her features didn’t soften, but her eyes mirrored his own inner confusion and hurt. “Parker, I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“Well I do.” He forced himself to keep his voice low, but the menacing sound of his words echoed through the chaotic remains of the room. “We make love; I ask you to marry me. We go to sleep, and you disappear! What was that about? You could have been dead for all I knew.”

“I sent you a letter.” Adrianna’s eyes widened, and for the first time since she’d walked in, she looked like her old self again—a little unsure, vulnerable, and magnificently beautiful.

Four years spent waiting for her, searching for her and hating her disappeared in that instant. Parker took a step closer, his whole body aching to take her into his arms and carry her away from here, out of this house of bad childhood memories and back into his bed. Nothing that happened mattered now. She was back, and she was his, whether she knew it or not.

He pressed down his desire and forced himself to focus. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out the well-folded envelope and held it up.

She stared at the wad in his hand then looked up once more. “You got it.”

He nodded. “And it’s crap. All of it.”

Her eyes glistened as a small smile tinged her lips. “You carry it around with you?”

He took her hand and put the envelope into it, closing her fingers around it. “I wanted to have it with me when I finally found you. You remember what you said? How I’d be ‘better off without you’?” He squeezed her hand and shook his head. “Crap.”

The smile that had touched her lips widened. “You always were hardheaded.”

He took another step, closing the gap between them. Her perfumed hair filled his senses. “And I always loved kissing you, Addy. If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to do it again.”

She shook her head. “Parker, no. I can’t do this.”

“Hey Noel, you about done in here?”

Parker tore his gaze away from hers to see his partner, Zane Michael, enter the room. His raised eyebrows posed the real question he’d left unasked. What is going on in here?

He looked back into Addy’s eyes. “Am I done? Far from it.”

It wasn’t a threat; it was a promise.

                    ***

“He knows you’re back; you can’t run away from this again. What are you going to do?”

Addy sighed as Beverly handed the bowl of popcorn to her. The room around them remained in complete disarray, and they’d spent the better part of the last hour after Parker had gone sitting on the sofa arguing.

“I’m not going to do anything. It was probably a random break-in. There is no reason I would run into Parker again. It’s not like I have daily meetings with the cops.” She stuffed another of the air-popped kernels into her mouth.

“Oh, right. And you think he’s going to stay away now. He’s completely satisfied that you’re still alive and on the planet, and now he’ll go on his merry way.”

“Sarcasm like that will give you wrinkles,” Addy said, using a piece of popcorn to point at her. “That’s not going to help you in the catalog modeling business.”

“Lying isn’t too good for the face either.” Bev rose from the sofa and stretched.

Addy watched her friend’s perfect body move like a ballerina in the center of the chaos. She wasn’t going to grace that comment with a response. She had bigger problems. Whoever had come here and torn the place apart obviously wasn’t interested in electronics or jewelry or any of the other typical things a burglar took.

After parking her car in the garage, she’d walked through the house, marveling at how big a mess the person had managed to make in such a short time. She’d only been gone a little over three hours, yet they’d hit every room, pulled books off shelves, taken sheets off the beds and moved the mattresses, shifted furniture and rugs. Whatever they’d come for, they’d spared no time ripping her house to shreds hunting for it.

She sighed deeply. She couldn’t face cleaning the mess up tonight. Addy looked to the place on the wall she’d hung a clock a year ago then at her friend. “The bastards took the clock? What time is it?”

“It’s after eleven,” Beverly said. “They didn’t take it; it’s on the floor in that pile of crap over there. I couldn’t find a thing missing. Why do you think somebody broke in here?”

“I have no idea,” Addy said, stretching her arms over her head. She set the popcorn bowl on the floor. “Maybe it was one of your old boyfriends come to mess with you.”

“My boyfriends don’t leave mad,” Bev said. “Unlike yours. Maybe it was Parker.” Beverly’s laugh echoed through the room.

“I’m sure it was,” Addy said.

Beverly walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Ooo-there it is—sarcasm and lying. You’re really going to look like hell tomorrow.  Unlike Parker, by the way, who looks even better than he did four years ago.  Yum.”

Adrianna did not comment on her friend’s observation aloud, but had to admit to herself that Bev was right. Parker looked fantastic, even if he was pissed at her.

And he’d kept her letter, all this time. Carried it around with him, for crying out loud. The thought made her smile. She knew she’d done the right thing leaving him when she did. If she’d married him when he’d asked her, she would never have found a way through all the pain of her past. She’d simply have ignored it for a while longer, focusing instead on how much she loved him. He’d never cared about her past, her family’s past or any other thing—all he’d wanted was a future with her.

But the dreams had continued, and the night she’d awakened in his bed screaming, she’d known that Dr. MacAllister was right. He’d told her that the sooner she dealt with these feelings and the pain, the sooner she’d be able to build a life for herself. And until she did deal with them, she’d be painting herself into a corner where she’d stay, trapped and screaming.

She owed it to Parker to come to him whole, and she hadn’t been whole. She’d been a pile of broken pieces held together by the weakest of adhesives—fear. She’d left that night to find a new life, put herself back together in order to move on. Coming back home had been the first step, although she’d not been able to live in this house alone.

Beverly had agreed to stay with her for a few months, until she was ready to make it on her own. She didn’t need Beverly’s money so much as her emotional support and her sense of humor. Beverly, unlike her, felt no fear, had no second thoughts, and lived in comfort of the knowledge that she was always right. It was a nice compliment to her own feelings—which were completely opposite in every way.

“What are you thinking about?” Beverly squeezed her shoulder as she sat down beside her on the sofa.

Addy smiled at her friend and shook her head. “What you’ll look like in an apron tomorrow cleaning up this mess.”

“Girl,” Bev said, shoving her backward. “I’m your muse, your support system, the mirror to your soul. Not your maid. You need to hire some people to come in here and clean this crap up.”

Addy laughed. “You make sitting in the middle of a burglary not so bad, you know that?”

Beverly flipped her hair back with one smooth stroke of the back of her hand. “Yes, I do have that effect, don’t I?”

Addy shook her head again then looked past her friend at the mess. “The question is, what are we doing tonight about all this? Have you seen the bedrooms? I’m not making those beds. And this couch is not big enough for both of us.”

“I’m thinking hotel tonight,” Bev said. “You come with me. We call somebody in the morning to clean this up, and while they are working, we go shopping or something. Oh, shoot, I have that photo thing tomorrow at noon. Well, you can come with me to that. By the time we’re done, the house will be back in order.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Addy said. “You know, I never did hear anyone say how whoever it was got in here. I didn’t see any broken windows or anything.”

“Parker said there were no signs of forced entry. Now, I’m not exactly sure what that means except that maybe you left the door unlocked again,” Bev said, shaking her head. “You’ve got to stop doing that. Your forgetfulness is going to get us killed one of these days, you know. Why can’t you be one of those obsessive compulsive nuts who locks and unlocks the door like fifty times?”

“That’s not the kind of nut I am,” Addy said. “I’m the kind of nut that needs psychotherapy to even care about locked doors.”

“I’m a little surprised at you,” Bev said as she rose from the sofa.

Addy looked up the long distance to her friend’s face. “Surprised how?”

“Well.” Beverly held her hand out and pulled Adrianna up from the sofa and dragged her toward the bedroom. “Somebody breaks in and rips the place a new asshole. Your ex shows up after four years, obviously pissed and still in love with you. We could be in danger right now, and you. You are absolutely calm. What gives?”

“Maybe it’s the Prozac,” Addy said as they entered the bedroom. Still in love with her? She didn’t see that. Pissed as hell, yes. In love, no.

Beverly turned to face her. “You didn’t tell me you were taking antidepressants.”

“I’m not,” Addy said. She climbed around the mattress and pulled her suitcase out from under the bed. She laid the small suitcase on the box springs and flipped it open. “But Dr. MacAllister thinks I should be. He says I’m a little ‘high strung.’ I don’t think that’s a medical term, do you? High strung?”

Beverly laughed. “Let me get a couple of things and throw them in there with your stuff.”

Beverly left the room, and Addy took a pair of underwear out of the open bureau drawer. Somebody had dug through her underwear. She tossed a yellow pair into the suitcase and stared at it. Whoever came into her house touched that pair of underwear. The thought made her skin crawl; maybe she should go without underwear or just wash out the pair she was wearing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said aloud to the empty room.

“What did you say?” Beverly shouted from the other room.

“I said I might sleep all day and skip this little modeling gig of yours,” Addy shouted back.

Beverly entered the room carrying an armload of items. She tossed them into Addy’s bag. “You are not sleeping all day. You’ve been through that stage, remember? You’re not going back.”

Addy tried to arrange Bev’s pile of clothes and makeup into the bag. “All this stuff isn’t going to fit in here.”

“Well, take some of your stuff out, then,” Beverly said. “That pair of underwear is taking up too much room. And doesn’t color coordinate with anything you’re wearing.”

Beverly closed the lid on the suitcase and sat down on it, clicking both clasps closed. “There we go; no problem.” She picked up the suitcase and turned to the door. “Let’s go.”

Addy shook her head and followed her friend back down the hallway. “Think we should pack some food, too? I think the refrigerator might fit in there if you sit on that suitcase again.”

Beverly stopped in the middle of the room, and Addy bumped into her back.

“Hey. What?”

The sound of her voice echoed in her ears as she glanced around her friend and saw why she’d stopped.

A man wearing black pants, a black shirt, and a black ski mask stood at the front door. He held a black gun pointed at them.

Addy’s heart hammered in her chest. She searched deep for that inner calm Dr. MacAllister told her to mine as the opportunity arose.

“Oh no,” Bev said. “Your friend is back.”

         “And color coordinated,” Addy whispered.