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Prologue

Denver, Colorado

Soft, white snowflakes fell fro of the ravesite 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 al tornosis, he’d reached out to the top oncologists in the state for help, cut back on his job as chief traueon at Denver Health and prayed for a miracle

All to no avail

The murues went unheard and unseen as Mitchell shivered against the bleak future now lying ahead of him He would turn forty-one this su forward to the future, he now dreaded the months and years that stretched out ahead of hiht years, she had been the perfect wife and submissive of his dreained sharing his life for the long haul Her death shattered the dreahtmare he was desperate to escape from

“Mitchell, let’s go People will be stopping by the house” His ripped his arm and looked up at him orry etched on her lined face

Patting her hand, he nodded and turned to take his sister’s elbow “I’et you and Tracy out of the cold” He feared there would be no escaping the cold for hi 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 hon His chest constricted as he took one last look at the flower beds she’d planted and tended with such le her ass, sending hirin over her shoulder when he would pull into the driveway The tall hedges in front of the porch offered enough privacy for hi 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 ti the move to Montana and the new, much less strenuous position of fas 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 theone these past five years, he’d hesitated to move away from his mother, but she’d been the one to insist the loudest for hie

“It’s a one-day drive,” Louise had said at Sunday dinner last h to put all of us up for a week and we’ll be on your doorstep more than you’ll want”

Mitchell hadn’t prayedAbbie 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 hi mistake