Prologue
Denver, Colorado
Soft, white snowflakes fell from the gray sky onto the dark clothing of the mourners slowly dispersing from the gravesite. Doctor Mitchell Hoffstetter gazed with grief-stricken, unseeing eyes at the flower-covered coffin. He thought he’d been prepared for his beloved wife’s passing after the chemotherapy treatments had failed to wipe out her cancer these past six months. Last week, he’d stood by Abbie’s hospice bed and watched her shudder through her last, painful breath, the peace that settled over her stricken face almost beautiful to see after months of ravaging torment. Following her diagnosis, he’d reached out to the top oncologists in the state for help, cut back on his job as chief trauma surgeon at Denver Health and prayed for a miracle.
All to no avail.
The murmured condolences and sympathetic eyes of friends and colleagues went unheard and unseen as Mitchell shivered against the bleak future now lying ahead of him. He would turn forty-one this summer and yet, instead of hitting his prime looking forward to the future, he now dreaded the months and years that stretched out ahead of him without his cherished wife. For eight years, she had been the perfect wife and submissive of his dreams, the only woman he’d ever vowed fidelity to or imagined sharing his life for the long haul. Her death shattered the dream and left a nightmare he was desperate to escape from.
“Mitchell, let’s go. People will be stopping by the house.” His mother, Louise, gripped his arm and looked up at him with worry etched on her lined face.
Patting her hand, he nodded and turned to take his sister’s elbow. “I’m ready. Let’s get you and Tracy out of the cold.” He feared there would be no escaping the cold for him for a long time, if ever.
Eighteen months later
The July sun beat down on Mitchell’s shoulders as he loaded the last of his suitcases in his Tahoe and closed the back hatch. The For-Sale sign in the front yard of the two-story home he’d shared with Abbie was now topped with a Sold sign. His chest constricted as he took one last look at the flower beds she’d planted and tended with such meticulous care. He recalled the way she would kneel and wiggle her ass, sending him a taunting grin over her shoulder when he would pull into the driveway. The tall hedges in front of the porch offered enough privacy for him to shock her one time and deliver the bare butt spanking she’d been itching for right then and there. She’d loved the exhibitionism and risk as much as the pain-induced pleasure he’d heaped upon her soft, lily-white buttocks.
Sliding behind the wheel, he pulled away for the last time, praying the move to Montana and the new, much less strenuous position of family physician in the smaller town of Willow Springs would offer the change he needed to cope better with his loss. His mother and sister, as well as Tracy’s husband and two boys, all encouraged him to accept the position when he found the ad and showed it to them. With his father gone these past five years, he’d hesitated to move away from his mother, but she’d been the one to insist the loudest for him to make the change.
“It’s a one-day drive,” Louise had said at Sunday dinner last month. “Just be sure to get a place big enough to put all of us up for a week and we’ll be on your doorstep more than you’ll want.”
Mitchell hadn’t prayed much since burying Abbie and his happiness, but as he drove away from the home they had shared, the position he’d worked hard to attain and the city he’d lived in his whole life, he found himself sending up a silent entreaty he wasn’t making a big mistake.
Chapter 1
Tears blinded Lillian Gillespie’s vision as she stumbled out the door of the special care facility. The cold slap of February wind that hit her added to the chill that had invaded her body as she’d watched her cherished twin sister take her last breath. The nursing staff who had cared for Liana for the last month as she lay in a coma meant well with their embraces and whispered condolences of ‘it’s for the best’, but right now, Lillian couldn’t see it that way.
She let the tears fall as she slid behind the wheel of her car, slammed the door and huddled in misery, wondering what she would do without Liana in her life. They’d shared the special bond of twins for thirty-four years, stood side by side when they’d buried first their father and then their mother a scant year later, and they’d watched men come and go without regret as long as they had each other.
And now Lillian was alone.
Rubbing her forehead, she tried to gather her thoughts and run through what needed to be done. Once Liana had stabilized following a ruptured brain aneurysm six weeks ago and was moved from the hospital to the long-term care facility with a poor prognosis of ever recovering or even coming out of the coma, the staff had convinced Lillian to make funeral arrangements. At first, she’d fought the very idea, clinging to the small thread of hope the trickle of blood still reaching her sister’s brain offered, but now she was glad the hospital counselor had talked her into it. It was one less burden to weigh her down now.
Pulling out of the lot, she automatically drove toward Brad’s house, her thinking still muddled by heartbreak. She was halfway to his upscale neighborhood in Salt Lake City when the change in her circumstances hit her with a quick flash of clarity. I’m free of that son-of-a-bitch. That startling acknowledgement forced her to pull into a strip mall lot as a cold, burning anger replaced her emotional numbness, giving her the inner shakes. I’m free, but God, sis, I never wanted to get away from him at your expense. No, she couldn’t look at it that way. It was Lillian’s fault for ignoring the warning signs of the renowned neurosurgeon’s possessiveness for too long before breaking off their affair. Maybe, if she hadn’t been so immersed in her art, preparing for the Naples National Art Show, she would have ended the relationship much sooner. Liana had often berated her for losing focus of everything and everyone around her when she lost herself in her painting, and Lillian had finally paid the price for her artistic absorption.
But no more. Liana’s death rendered Dr. Brad McCabe’s threats useless and severed the hold he had over her. As much as her passing pained Lillian, she couldn’t prevent a ripple of relief as she got back on the road. To say Brad had taken their split badly was an understatement, but she could never have imagined just how obsessed he’d become with her until Liana was sent to the long-term care facility.
Lillian gritted her teeth as she turned onto the street of million-dollar homes and pulled into the drive of Brad’s two-story, one-acre estate. No one would ever believe the skilled doctor, one of the most sought-after bachelors in the city was a manipulative, sadistic bastard. She still couldn’t believe she’d fallen for his solicitous support when he’d found out about Liana’s condition a month after they’d broken up. During the two weeks doctors, including Brad, were working to give her sister every chance at recovery, he never brought up their relationship even though he’d sworn to get her back. He’d offered encouragement, a shoulder to lean on and a comforting embrace when the medical team announced there was nothing else they could do.
God, what a gullible fool she’d been. But never again. His threats could no longer force her to suffer a painful arm or wrist twist when she argued with him; she wouldn’t have to try and dodge a fist to her abdomen or a kidney if she refused to sleep with him, and wouldn’t have to suffer his touch or fake an orgasm under his thrusting body just to save herself a day or two of pain again.