Page 88 of Winter Vows

“He has a cell phone. No broker can live without one. They might miss the big deal,” she said sarcastically. “But it didn’t sound like that. It was just...” She shrugged. “I’m sorry. It was just a regular call from some everyday phone. They could have been anywhere.”

He turned her to face him, kept his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay. You’ll listen differently next time. Pay less attention to what’s said and more to the background.”

“But you told me to ask questions,” she retorted with mounting frustration. “How can I ask questions and listen to the background all at once? God, I can’t do this. I’m no good at it.”

“You’re not supposed to be good at it. No one should ever have to be good at it,” Dylan said heatedly. “But you’ll do the best you can.”

She gazed up at him, feeling that unfamiliar wave of helplessness roll over her again. “I hate this,” she said vehemently. “I’m his mother. I should have been able to protect him. I’m a doctor. I make other people’s kids well and I can’t even keep my own safe.”

“You’re a doctor and a mother, not God,” Dylan reminded her with surprising gentleness. “Nobody expects perfection.”

“I do,” she said. “My whole life has been about getting it right. My parents were overachievers, who expected me to excel, and I did. Full scholarship to the University of Miami med school. Straight A’s. Top of my class. I had my pick of internships and residencies. Kelsey Donnelly James was one of the best and brightest,” she said with self-derision. “What does it matter when my son is snatched right out from under my nose?”

Dylan’s grasp of her shoulders tightened just enough to snap her out of her bout with self-pity. “Did you teach him not to go anywhere with strangers?”

“Of course.”

“So if some stranger had come up to him in your backyard, what would he have done?”

“Screamed for me. Run to the house. That’s what I always told him, make a lot of noise and never, ever go with somebody he didn’t know.”

“Right. So you prepared him for that threat.” She nodded, beginning to see his point.

“You didn’t think you needed to tell him not to go with his own father, did you?”

“No,” she conceded, exhaling a tiny sigh. But she should have. Wasn’t Paul the bigger threat, maybe not more dangerous than a stranger, but certainly the most likely candidate to come after Bobby? In the back of her mind wasn’t that precisely why she had insisted on sole custody, why she had moved so far from Miami? She said none of that to Dylan.

“Bobby had no idea that going with his dad was wrong,” Dylan consoled her. “This is about Paul violating a court order, not anything you did or didn’t do to protect your son.”

“Still, if I’d been watching more closely, Paul couldn’t have gotten to him.”

“You plan on never working at the clinic again?” She regarded him indignantly. “Of course not.”

“You going to take Bobby inside and lock the doors and windows until he’s old enough for college?”

“No,” she said, even though the idea was so preposterous that it didn’t even deserve a response.

“Kelsey, there are risks, especially in the world we live in today. Los Pinõs is a great little community. It probably has fewer crimes than most places. You can prevent a lot of bad things, you can prepare for some, but just when you think you have every angle covered, something unexpected can come along. Unless you want to stop living, you can’t protect Bobby from every single one of them.” His gaze locked on hers and he spoke with added emphasis. “You did not do anything wrong. I can’t say that strongly enough.”

She wanted to believe that, almost did because Dylan said it so forcefully, but until her dying day she knew there would always be a nagging doubt that she could have done something more.

What, though? Would she really have warned Bobby about his dad, turned a little boy against his own father? Would she have gone that far? A more vindictive woman certainly would have, maybe even one with a stronger sense of self-preservation. She’d believed the court-approved custody agreement and distance were enough. Paul had desperately wanted her silence, because anything else would have destroyed his career. He’d wanted that agreement as badly as she had. So she’d trusted him to honor it. And for reasons that definitely escaped her now, she hadn’t wanted to take away Bobby’s good memories of his dad. She’d wanted those to be salvaged for some future date when Paul got his act together and could be trusted to be with his son again.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said wearily. “He’s gone. I just have to concentrate on getting him back.”

“Exactly. Let’s stay focused on that.” He studied her intently. “Just a couple more questions about the call, okay?”

She started to protest that it was a waste of time, then stopped. “Fine. Anything.”

“What was the first thing you asked Paul?”

“About what Bobby was eating. He said junk food.”

Dylan nodded. “Nothing specific, though?”

“No, just junk food.”

“And then?”

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