Confession Read Free

her spare time flipping through photos of town royalty in the society pages.
    She’d recognized his name instantly, however, and not only because she was treating his half brother, Dante. The Jericho family had a sprawling ranch outside town and an interest in a number of local businesses. But most of their wealth, she’d heard, came from oil. The Jerichos, at least the legitimate ones, had money. Barrels and barrels of it.
    Luke’s name was on the lips of every unattached female in town—­from the clerk at the local Shop and Save to the debutant docent at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum:
    Single.
    Handsome.
    Criminally rich.
    Luke Jericho, they whispered.
    When she’d turned to find him watching her, his heated gaze had caused her very bones to sizzle. Luke had stood formidably tall, dressed in an Armani suit that couldn’t hide his rancher’s physique. The gallery lights seemed to spin his straw-­colored hair into gold and ignite blue fire in his eyes. She could still feel his gaze raking over her in that casual way, as if he didn’t wish to conceal his appetites. It was easy to see how some women might come undone in his presence. She eased closer to the fan.
    â€œDr. Clancy.”
    That low male voice gave her a fizzy, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, like she’d just downed an Alka-­Seltzer on top of the flu. When you’re all alone in a room, and someone else speaks, it’s just plain creepy.
    Icy tendrils of fear wrapped themselves around her chest, squeezing until it hurt her heart to go on beating. The cold certainty that things were not as they should be made the backs of her knees quiver. Then recognition kicked in, and her breath released in a whoosh. It had only taken a millisecond to recognize the voice, but at a time when someone dubbed the Santa Fe Saint was on a killing spree, that was one millisecond too long.
    It’s only Dante.
    She pasted on a neutral expression and turned to face him. How’d he gotten in? The entrance was locked; she was certain of it.
    â€œDid I frighten you?”
    She inclined her head toward the front door to her office, which was indeed locked, and said, “Next time, Dante, I’d prefer you use the main entrance . . . and knock.”
    â€œI came in the back.”
    That much was obvious now that she’d regained her wits. “That’s my private entrance. It’s not intended for use by patients.” Stupid of her to leave it unlocked, but it was midday, and she hadn’t expected an ambush.
    To buy another moment to compose herself, she went to her bookcase and inspected its contents. Toward the middle, Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis leaned haphazardly in the direction of its opponent, Skinner’s Behavior Therapy . A paperback version of A Systems Approach to Family Therapy had fallen flat, not quite bridging the gap between the warring classics.
    Dante crossed the distance between them, finishing directly in front of her, invading her personal space. “Quite right. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
    She caught a blast of breath, pungent and wrong—­a Listerine candle floating in a jar of whiskey. In self-­defense, she took a step back before looking up at her patient’s face. Dante possessed his brother’s intimidating height, but unlike Luke, his hair was jet-­black, and his coal-­colored eyes were so dark it was hard to distinguish the pupil from the iris. Despite Dante’s dark complexion and the roughness of his features—­he had a previously broken nose and a shiny pink scar that gashed across his cheekbone into his upper lip—­there was a distinct family resemblance between the Jericho brothers. Luke was the fair-­haired son to Dante’s black sheep, and even their respective phenotypes fit the cliché.
    Dante took a step forward.
    She took another deep step back, bumping her rear end against