EXCERPT

Chapter One

At twelve stories, the Caldwell Court Hotel wasn't even close to being the tallest buiding in San Francisco, but Dylan Prescott still felt like he was standing on top of the world. With a hard hat on his head, the roar of drills and saws in the background, the chill wind coming through the framing for the windows, the distant hum of the traffic below, and a stack of blueprints in his hand, Dylan felt completely in his element. This was his world, this world where numbers added up, where perfect angles met and meshed, where someone's dream came true. He found himself smiling at that errant thought. He'd left little time in his life for dreaming. That had been his best friend, Gary Tanner's department, not his.

Gary -- Dylan took a deep breath as the smile faded from his face and the almost unbearable grief threatened to choke him once again. It had been six months since Gary's tragic death. This hotel was the last building Gary had designed. Dylan still couldn't believe there wouldn't be any more buildings that were designed by Tanner and built by Prescott. They'd made a hell of a team, and now one of them was gone.

It was easer to imagine that Gary was working on the other side of the country, that he would call at any seond and tell some lame joke, or put forth a wild idea for his next building, or ask him what the Giants were thinking when they'd traded their best pitcher to the Yankees. Dylan could almost hear Gary's energetic, laughing voice in his head, especially his familiar parting comment, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do." As if he would. Gary owned the patent on crazy. Dylan usually just went along for the ride.

Although, truthfully, there hadn't been many rides in the last few years. Gary's spare time had gone to his family, and Dylan -- well he had no spare time. He kept himself busy from morning to night, ten hours a day, seven days a week. The last nine years had been like running a marathon in sprint mode. But that's the way he liked it, frantic, intense, no time for idle hands or idle thoughts. And if his latest bid went through, in three months he would tackle the biggest project of his life, the soon-to-be tallest skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. Getting that job would put him at the top of his profession. A voice inside his head questioned what the hell he'd do then, but he ignored it.

"See you in the morning," one of his coworkers called out. Dylan suddenly realized that the buzz of work had come to a grindng halt and his crew was headed for home. Checking his watch, he saw it was past five, and the sun was drifting over the horizon. It was late Sepember and already the days were getting shorter. Soon night would descend, and the lights would come on in the other buildings. It would be a magnificent cityscape, a sight that always made him catch his breath. He just needed a cold beer and a best friend to share it with.

Get over it already, he told himself. Just get over it. But that ruthless order didn't work any better now than it had any other day for the last six months.

His cell phone rang, and Dylan slipped it off his belt, grateful for the distraction. "Tanner," he said briskly.

"You've got a little problem," his secretary, Connie, informed him.

"What's up?"

"Remember all those messages I gave you from Rachel Tanner?"

Dylan slipped his other hand into his pocket, his fingers curling around the pink slips with Rachel's name on them. He'd been avoiding her calls since last Friday, and it was Wednesday now. He kept telling himself he'd call her back, but he never quite got around to it. He didn't know what to say to her. And he couldn't understand the sudden flurry of phone calls from Gary's widow. He'd offered his help at the funeral, but Rachel had turned him down with a polite, "No, thank you, we'll be fine". He'd believed her. Besides that, she had her family, her friends. Now that Gary was gone, they had nothing left in common. Unless this was about the house, the dream house Gary hd wanted him to build for Rachel. It was the only one of Gary's jobs that Dylan had turned down.

"Oh, boss." Connie's voice brought him back to reality. "Are you there?"

"I'll call her back. Just brush her off. Tell her I'm out of town or something."

"But --"

"Tell Rachel whatever you have to. I can't deal with her right now."

"That's too bad," a woman said from behind him. "Because as far as I can see you're not out of town."

Dylan's chest contracted at the sound of her voice, the voice that had haunted his dreams for so many years, the voice he'd tried to forget, just like he'd tried to forget everything else about her. He was her husband's best friend, and she was his best friend's wife. That's all they would ever be to each other. All they ever could be.

He heard Connie saying something, but he simply closed the phone and forced himself to turn around, to face Rachel. She was dressed in black, the way she'd been at the funeral, her long blonde hair hidden by the incongruous hard hat on her head. Her face was pale, her blue eyes dimmed, shadows of fatigue drawing lines around those eyes. Dammit, she was too young to be a widow, not even thirty yet. But then Gary, at thirty-five, was too young to be dead.

"Why didn't you call me back?" Rachel's steady gaze wouldn't let him look away. It had been that way once before a long, long time ago, when she had looked into his eyes and asked him another question he couldn't answer.

"I've been busy. I'm sorry." And he was sorry. Looking at her now, he realized what an ass he'd been to avoid talking to her. She was Gary's wife. She deserved his support, his friendship, anything she needed.

Her fingers played with the strap on her purse, and he saw that her nails had been bitten down to the quick.

"You told me if there was anything I needed..." she said haltingly.

"Yes, of course."

"Don't answer so fast." She took a deep breath. "There's a problem with Gary's life insurance."

"What?" He certainly hadn't been expecting her to say that. "What kind of a problem?"

"They don't want to pay."

"I don't understand."

"I don't either," she said in a voice that shook with emotion.

He tried to make sense of her words. "Didn't Gary pay the premiums?"

"That's not it. They said they think -- Gary ..."

"Gary what?" he asked impatiently.

"They think he drove off that mountain on purpose."

Her words hit him like a solid punch to the gut. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Say that again."

"I can't say it again." She turned away from him and walked toward the edge of the building.

He stared after her in confusion, her words still racing around in his head. They didn't make sense. Gary's car had gone off the side of a mountain road in Lake Tahoe. It had been an accident pure and simple.

"My husband would not have driven himself off of a cliff," Rachel said forcefully, turning back around. "He would not have killed himself. You have to help me Dylan. You have to help me prove that it was an accident. You have to help me prove that everything I believed in, my love, my marriage, wasn't a lie."

Dylan stared at her in shock. She didn't know what she was asking. How could he say yes? Then again -- how could he say no?

Order LOVE WILL FIND A WAY

from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com