She wanted to shout that Michael Ramey had violated the law, that he was guilty of bigamy. That he might not even be Michael Ramey. But she didn’t think it was wise to bring a charge like this before she talked to her lawyer.

Instead, Karen made the mistake of pleading, “But you don’t understand! Livie is vulnerable!”

He frowned. “How do you mean, ma’am?”

“She suffers from asthma! She hasn’t had a severe attack in some time, but that’s because I’m careful! Now she’s out there somewhere with him, and anything could happen!”

She couldn’t manage to keep the note of hysteria out of her voice, couldn’t stop herself from sounding like an overprotective mother whose imagination had run away with her. And, infuriatingly, that’s just how he judged her. He offered soothing reassurances, telling her that her husband would surely keep Livie safe, telling her that she had nothing to worry about. Like Mildred Gustafsson, he recognized no threat.

I should have told him about the bigamy, Karen thought after the officer left. It might have made all the difference. But somehow, at this point, she didn’t really think so. He would have regarded it as a separate issue. And although he would have promised her a police investigation around the accusation, it would have meant a delay. No immediate action where Livie was concerned, which was all that she cared about at this point.

Then who could she turn to, if not the police? There had to be someone prepared to believe this awful fear coiling through her insides was not just the behavior of a paranoid mother. Someone who would help her to recover Livie.

But, of course, there was someone qualified to do just that. Nor was this the first time she had thought about him in connection with her missing daughter. Even before she had called the police, he had crossed her mind. Then she had immediately dismissed him as a possibility. The risk in involving him was too obvious.

And there may be an even greater risk to Livie if you don’t.

Oh, this was absurd! Why was she hesitating when she ought to be thinking of nothing but Livie’s welfare? Devlin Hawke was a solid investigator with a family network behind him. It was all she needed to care about. That and convincing him to help her.

Silencing any lingering resistance, Karen got to her feet and went over to the counter where she had tossed her purse. She found the business card with his cell phone number on it. Lifting the receiver off the wall, she dialed the number. He answered almost immediately, his voice brisk.

“Devlin Hawke.”

She wanted to sound calm and composed when she spoke to him and regretted that, instead, her voice was breathless with emotion. “It’s Karen. You said if I needed you I should call. I need you, Devlin.”

There was a moment of strained silence from him. He had to be in his car somewhere. She could hear the muffled sounds of traffic, and she could sense his reluctance before he responded with a husky, “Where are you?”

“At home.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

And that was all. There was a click. He had hung up without asking for an explanation. It didn’t matter. He was coming, and for the first time since learning Livie was gone, she dared to feel hope.

Far too anxious to just sit and wait, Karen wandered restlessly through the rooms she had planned so carefully with their antiques, comfortable chairs and deep sofas. Rooms she had been proud of, but which suddenly meant nothing.

Livie had left one of her toy animals on a chair in the hall. She leaned over and picked it up, holding it close. It was a kind of connection. When she straightened, she found herself gazing without interest at her collection of Victorian fans mounted on the wall.

She had other collections throughout the house. Far too many of them. Things that had accumulated over the years, many of which were not particularly valuable, or even had sentimental associations, but which she couldn’t bear to let go.

She supposed any amateur psychologist could have told her they were substitutes for what she had lacked growing up. She would have agreed with him, but not because she’d had few possessions in her childhood. It was family she had missed and longed for. There had been none.

Her single mother had died when she was an infant. No father, no relatives. None that anyone had been aware of, anyway. Karen had been raised in a series of foster homes, all of them kind and protective but ultimately leaving her disconnected. It was why she’d always been so determined that Livie should never experience that kind of insecurity.

Did it also partly explain her powerful attraction to Devlin Hawke almost four years ago? It probably did, because she had never stopped envying him his big family. Of course, she hadn’t known about that family when she’d first met him in a Colorado ditch.

One of Dream Makers’s wealthy Minneapolis clients had hired Karen to supervise a redecoration of his vacation home outside of Aspen. Being a native of the Twin Cities, Karen knew all about driving in snowy conditions. But, as she discovered to her dismay, flat terrain in heavy snow is not the same as a mountain road in heavy snow. She’d been on her way to town to meet with a cabinetmaker when she landed her rental car in that ditch.

Devlin, returning from a day of skiing to the little chalet a Denver friend had loaned him for several weeks, had arrived on the scene in his sports utility vehicle to rescue her. Actually, all he had provided was a lift to the nearest garage, but she had been too dazzled by the cleft in his chin and a pair of intriguing blue eyes to define his action as anything but heroic.

Everything after that had been an intoxicating blur. She did remember learning the essentials about him. That he was a private investigator. That he lived in Denver where he had opened the first branch of the Hawke Detective Agency. That he was the eldest son in a family of three boys and two girls.

It was the last that had impressed her. She recalled wondering how he could bear to be so far away from his family back in Chicago. She wouldn’t have been separated from them for anything. But it was understandable. Devlin loved skiing. That would make him want to be near the slopes.

Beyond that, she hadn’t bothered with the details of his life. They had been much too busy exploring other interests in each other. It still staggered her to remember how immediate and all-consuming their passion had been. Being largely inexperienced in that area, she had no yardstick to measure what they shared. But surely it was special, a rapture that was more than just temporary. Almost six weeks later reality took an enormous bite out of Karen’s naive bliss.

They had been on their way to visit a popular coffee bar in Aspen. Passing a flustered young mother on the sidewalk dealing with a pair of howling twins no more than six months old, Devlin had shuddered.

“Look at that,” he muttered. “She’s practically a kid herself, and she’s trapped. Bad enough to deal with one of them in diapers. But two of them at the same time? Never!”

It was in the coffee bar afterwards that she heard everything she wished she’d dragged out of him before his strong arms had raised her out of that snow-filled ditch, and certainly before those blue eyes had impacted hers. But she was hearing it all now. How the ski slopes of Colorado had been an excuse to put distance between himself and his family. How he’d broken up with a woman back in Denver because she’d suddenly started talking about her biological clock ticking.

“But don’t you expect to ever have children of your own one day?” she had asked him, and was stung by his reaction.

“Hell, no. I’m not father material.”

“Even though you come from a big family? Don’t they matter?”

Yeah, sure, he guessed he loved his family, but not when they were always in his face. Not when they were smothering him, thank you.