Scent of Roses by Kat Martin

tell my husband. Miguel will not understand. He will think I am being childish. That is what he says whenever we disagree.”
    Michael leaned across his desk. “Listen, Maria, you can’t go on like this. You need to talk to your husband. I need to speak to him, as well.”
    Maria shot up from her chair. “No! You think to ask him the same stupid questions you asked me. Well, nothing he says will make any difference. You are wrong about this—both of you. And I am not imagining things.”
    Whirling away, she moved clumsily toward the door.
    â€œMaria!” Elizabeth went after her and Michael let them go. There was nothing more he could do—not until the girl was ready to face her problems and accept his help.
    He could only hope that Elizabeth would be able to make her see reason and she would return. Until then, Maria was destined to suffer her ghosts.
    Â 
    Friday. Another week in L.A. Another hot July day in the valley. Zach usually drove down after work on Friday night. The case he’d been working on, a lawsuit against a company that produced a drug called Themoziamine, took hours of investigation and planning. But the traffic going over the hill into the San Fernando Valley was murder. He’d worked late all week so that today he could take off early.
    The trip had been relatively easy, since he’d gotten on the road at a reasonable time, but it was already hot in San Pico. He swung his brown Jeep Cherokee off Willow Road into the parking lot of the Willow Glen Retirement Home and pulled the car into one of the parking spaces. The asphalt was so hot he could see ripples of heat coming up off the pavement.
    He climbed out of the car, took a breath of the burning air and started toward the front door of the main building, a light brown two-story stucco structure. As he walked along, hot air enveloped him. Damn, he was glad he no longer lived in San Pico.
    He had almost reached the edge of the parking lot when his gaze caught on a late model, pearl-white Acura a few spaces down from his. Liz Conners drove a car like that. He had seen it the day she came out to tour Teen Vision.
    He wondered if the Acura might be Liz’s and picked up his pace, walking faster than he usually did toward the sterile, white-walled room occupied by his father. Seeing the old man lying there staring at the ceiling, or slumped in his wheelchair, always depressed him. But the doctors still held out a small degree of hope that one day he might improve, and either way, Zach wasn’t about to abandon him.
    He pulled open the heavy front door and stepped into the air-conditioning, grateful for the burst of cool air against his face. Since he came out to the home whenever he was in town, the receptionist, a small, dark-haired woman with glasses, recognized him.
    She smiled. “Hi, Zach. Don’t forget to sign in.”
    â€œI won’t. Thanks, Ellie.” He penned his name and the date and started across the well-appointed lobby down the hall, passing a long line of rooms filled with the elderly. The place was very nice, compared to the kind of rest homes he had read about. No more than two occupants to a room, some of them private, like his father’s. After the terrible fall Fletcher Harcourt had suffered, he’d been brought to Willow Glen to recover as soon as he’d been released from the hospital.
    Zach had wanted him to have in-home nursing so that he could live in his own house, but Carson believed he should stay in the nursing home where he could receive more professional care. Since Carson was the eldest, according to provisions in their father’s will, he was named conservator of all of Fletcher Harcourt’s holdings, including the farm and any decisions to do with his health care.
    Zach had argued, but Carson had the final say, and their dad had stayed in the home.
    Just one more thing to dislike about his brother.
    Zach made his way along the hall, glancing into