Sunday, July 25. 3:27 p.m. Khandallah, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

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Easy to fall for you.

The words seemed to echo through her like voices bouncing off the walls of a cavern deep underground. Easy to fall. What was that supposed to mean exactly? Ana kicked a small chunk of broken concrete with her toe, watching it skitter across the sidewalk and plunk into the gutter. Easy to fall as in fall into bed with you fall? Or fall as in euphemism for fall in love with you fall?

She flicked a glance at Daniel’s three-quarter profile. The blood that smudged his cheek was gone, although the collar of his shirt had a few russet spots staining it. His long limbs moved easily as though he wasn’t carrying a pack on his shoulders or sporting bumps and bruises from the day’s activities.

When she looked at him something inside her flexed with an aching pain. She didn’t recognize it from the list of emotions she carefully allowed herself to feel. The feelings he stirred up in her refused to settle down and dissolve into a logical explanation, one that she could pinpoint and label as having experienced before. To complicate all that, he’d thrown the ‘fall’ comment into the mix. The falling into bed definition was less mine-ridden. Safer.

Exploring the idea of acting on their sexual attraction sent a hot, tightening flush through her belly and reminded her that refusing to deal with her growing emotional attraction to the man was an illusory safety mechanism at best.

They continued to walk briskly, trying to make up for wasted time at the park. After explaining the situation to a harried police officer who perfunctorily jotted down their details, reassuring the concerned neighbors who’d come to their rescue, and declining medical treatment for Daniel’s nose, which had stopped bleeding soon after it started, it was well into the afternoon. As soon as the attention had shifted to the three remaining thugs, she and Daniel had quietly gathered their gear and slipped out of the park.

Daniel finally broke the silence, which she was thankful for, as all polite topics of small talk had evaporated from her head.

“Aside from your insubordination earlier,” he said, “that was a helluva fine shot you made with the can back there.”

There was no anger left in his voice and the tension that’d been wiring her spine tighter and tighter loosened.

“It was a helluva lucky shot,” she admitted. “I was aiming for his back.”

He shook his head, a half smile, half grimace on his mouth. “You were lucky. The meathead was big enough to snap you in two.”

They passed two children poking sticks into a crack that had split the lawn in front of their house. One had a wriggling pink earthworm draped over the end of it. A woman sat on the porch, her knees tucked close to her body, keeping an eye on them. Next to her a toddler banged his plastic sipper cup on the railing and demanded juice at the top of his lungs. Alyssa had a cup like the little boy’s. Ana picked up the pace. God, she wanted nothing more than to smother her daughter’s face in kisses and bring her cup after cup of juice if that was what she wanted.

Ana pulled her gaze away from the woman and her children. All the insulted anger that’d ignited her system earlier had deserted her. She didn’t want to fight with Daniel. How could she explain the complexity of her emotions watching him pitted against two men who would’ve likely beaten him badly—maybe even killed him—if he hadn’t had the skills to defend himself?

To explain would be to delve into that dark period of her life when, late at night, two grim-faced officers had arrived on her doorstep. She’d known who to blame when the officer had escorted her into her living room and proceeded to destroy her safe little world.

The blame wasn’t just with the man arrested after plunging a knife three times into Neil—twice in the chest, once in the kidneys. Nor was it just the perpetrator’s drunk girlfriend who had verbally abused the woman beside Ana’s husband, who Neil—a man who couldn’t keep his mouth shut in an argument, ever—rose off his bar stool to defend. Not even Neil himself, who may or may not have been having an affair with the woman he stood up for and who witnesses said seemed to know Ana’s husband well.

No, the blame for that fateful Friday night when Neil was out at a bar and she was at home weeping over her bulging third-trimester stomach lay squarely on her own shoulders.

And seeing Daniel bloodied and fighting momentarily sent her into a tailspin.

They crossed another street, her calves protesting as the road climbed steadily uphill.

“Didn’t you trust me to keep you safe?”

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I didn’t think you could handle any situation. I just wasn’t going to run away flapping my hands and screaming like some helpless airhead.”

The dimples in his cheek winked once before a frown took their place. “Riiiight. The sound you were making while you took off, then?”

“Battle cry.”

“I see.”

They stopped at the crest of the hill and Ana’s breath hitched, the hill’s gradient not the only thing causing her to gasp for air. Daniel looked at her as if he could see every thought, every doubt, every desire as it swam through her mind. Could he guess she trusted him with her life, her personal safety, maybe even her body, but not her heart?

A muscle twitched in his jaw. No sign of the dimples now. “I understand you wanted to help, but you shouldn’t have come back once that skinny guy hit the ground.”

Promises she made to herself about remaining calm flew away like thistledown.

“Your catchphrase is ‘Leave no man behind,’ isn’t it?” She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. “I wasn’t going to abandon you to those overgrown bullies. I’ve made tougher men than them cry like little girls in the courtroom.”

Daniel tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and watched her for a moment longer. Then he reached across the distance again and peeled one of her hands away from her body, cradling it in his. “Why did you leave criminal law?”

The abrupt subject change made her blink up at him like a moron while she scrambled for the words to answer. “A defense lawyer sees the gray murky areas in situations. It’s your job to convince a judge or jury that there is reasonable doubt by muddying the water so nothing is black or white.”

They started to walk again, but he didn’t drop her hand and she couldn’t make herself pull away.

“When Neil was killed, I experienced being a victim for the first time. I won’t bore you with details of the trial and listening to another lawyer do my job, but by the end of it I couldn’t see the gray anymore. Just black. Endless black. I lost my taste for the courtroom and I was fortunate that Joel offered me a job not long after Alyssa was born.”

“Regrets?”

She squeezed his hand. “No. Corporate law might not have the flashiness of criminal law but I get to spend more time with Theo and Alyssa, and they’re the most important things in my life.”

“How did Theo cope with what happened to his dad?”

“He was devastated. Neil was his stepdad, though, you know?”

“Yeah, Nadia told me.”

“Neil was the only dad Theo ever knew.”

“And Theo’s biological father?”

Ana slipped her hand from his grasp and shifted the straps on her backpack to a more comfortable position. On the few occasions when Maggie had twisted her arm to go on a blind date with some accountant or sales rep she’d commandeered for her poor, single friend, Ana had a series of trip-wire questions she booby-trapped their dinner conversation with. It was cruel and unnecessary punishment really. She hadn’t intended to be involved with any of them long term, whether they answered her sticky questions satisfactorily or not.

Being the mother of a teenager and a toddler was often enough to put off most interested men, and if that didn’t deter them, discussing her emotional baggage usually had them looking for the nearest exit with glazed eyes.

“I threw him out of my apartment a few weeks before I discovered I was pregnant. I’d gone to work even though I felt nauseous, but by lunchtime my boss ordered me to go home. I stumbled in the door clutching a bottle of antacid and caught him in bed with my best friend. How’s that for a cliché? I was twenty-two and naively thought he loved me. Add in a dose of pregnancy hormones and that’s my excuse.”

“You don’t need to excuse yourself for some idiot’s behavior.”

“The saying ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ is apt in my situation. I’m a slow learner.”

“You took him back?”

She laughed bitterly. “Hell no. He dumped my friend soon after that morning of being thrown out in a howling Wellington southerly with all his gear. Two weeks later—and one week after I told him I was pregnant—he was headed off backpacking around Asia. I never heard another word from him.”

“Who hurt you the second time?”

“I hurt myself.” A fine mist of rain drizzled over them. Ana zipped up her jacket and pulled the hood over her hair, which she could already feel frizzing in the foggy air. The conversation had taken a far too abrupt turn into personal areas—her personal areas—and as sympathetic as Daniel seemed, she didn’t want his pity. Already she had revealed far more about herself than she was comfortable sharing. “I should’ve never agreed to marry Neil. I could never be the woman he wanted me to be.”

“What sort of woman was that?”

“The kind who blindly trusts a man.”

“You couldn’t trust the man you married?” His tone was soft, but she heard the incredulousness behind it.

Her forehead creased. “I did trust him at first. We were colleagues, then friends, and with his persistence it became more. I could see that Theo loved him, and I thought Neil being so sturdy and dependable was a foundation solid enough to build a marriage on. I thought he was trustworthy.”

“Did he prove otherwise?”

She thought about the times she’d caught him talking on the phone with what she surmised was a guilty expression. The two occasions she’d checked his text messages while he was in the shower, only to find nothing out of the ordinary. The late hours a couple of times of week, the unfocused expression in his eyes when talking to her, the way he would roll to the far side of their bed, pretending to fall asleep when she knew damn well he was still awake. But nothing concrete. Nothing she could latch onto as proof.

If she was honest, their relationship had soured long before she became aware of those other things. That was the key really. She hadn’t been aware of what was going on with Neil, as she had effectively shut part of herself away from him, never letting him near. If she had loved him passionately, instead of with caring affection, maybe she would’ve noticed emotional withdrawal earlier.

“No. There was no proof otherwise, only my suspicions.” She tugged her hood tighter around her face. “If he hadn’t died we probably would’ve been divorced within a year.”

Taking two strides forward, he invaded her space. He tilted her chin up so she was forced to meet his gaze. “Were you in love with your husband? Really fallen-on-your-ass in love with him? Did you give him everything you are, with no holding back?”