Free My Darling Melissa by Linda Lael Miller

intelligence. His hair was dark, as Daniel’s had been, but he had Katherine’s blue eyes. At the moment he was pacing in front of the bay window overlooking the rose garden. His wife, Banner, a doctor just as he was, and a red-haired, green-eyed beauty who had long since won Katherine’s admiration, watched him serenely from a chair near the fireplace.
    Jeff, Katherine’s second son, was as tall and blue-eyed as Adam, but he had his mother’s fair hair. He was bent over a map he’d rolled out on a nearby table, studying it and occasionally shoving one hand through his hair. His annoyance and frustration were evident in every line of his body. His wife, Fancy, was at home on that chilly spring night, recovering from the recent birth of their fourth child.
    Katherine was secretly worried about Jeff and Fancy; although they tried to put an encouraging face on matters, there was a certain strain between them. Something was very wrong.
    Catching herself up short, Katherine redirected her attention to the matter at hand: Melissa’s disappearance. Although she was, of course, very concerned about her youngest child, she was not nearly as upset as her sons were. Melissa was twenty-two years old, after all, and she’d been to college and traveled in Europe as well as the United States. Although Katherine knew that her daughter could be impulsive—her flight from the church on Saturday had been evidence enough of that—she was also convinced of Melissa’s native good sense.
    The door of the study opened, and Keith came in. Katherine gave her youngest son a fond look. Here was her handsome diplomat, her soft-spoken peacemaker. She’d ceased making comments like that aloud long ago, for Adam and Jeff had invariably looked at her askance and remarked that their little brother had a hell of a right hook for a parson.
    At his entrance there was a brief silence and then an eruption of energy.
    Adam stopped his pacing, and Jeff let the map roll shut, forgotten. Banner sat up a little straighter in her chair and exchanged a beleaguered look with Katherine.
    Keith had called this meeting, and he was taking his sweet time in explaining why. He took off his plain black hat, revealing a head of glossy light brown hair, and then removed his coat and gloves. All the while a smile lurked on his lips.
    “Melissa’s fine,” he finally announced. “Just like I said she would be.” He took a folded piece of yellow paper from his coat. “When I got home this wire was waiting for me.”
    Keith carried the missive across the room and laid it on the surface of Katherine’s desk. She opened it immediately and read aloud, “‘No need to worry about me. I’m no longer a spinster. I’m discovering life. Love, Mrs. Quinn Rafferty (Melissa).’”
    “Mrs.—?” Adam bit out, glaring at Banner as though all of this were somehow his wife’s fault. “Who the hell is Quinn Rafferty?”
    “I’ll tell you who he is,” Jeff boomed out, fairly shaking the light fixtures with the force of his fury. “He lives in Port Riley and runs a piss-ant sawmill!”
    Both Katherine and Banner flinched slightly.
    “And he married my sister!” Jeff raved on. “The bastard—I’ll break his knees! I’ll use his eyeballs for marbles!”
    “Shut up,” Keith said gently. His eyes met with his mother’s for a moment, twinkling. He was enjoying this.
    Personally, Katherine thought that this Rafferty fellow couldn’t be any worse than Ajax, but she kept her opinion to herself.
    Banner got out of her chair. “I think I’ll go over and look in on Fancy,” she said, by way of excusing herself. She gave Jeff a tentative, questioning look as she passed him but went out without another word.
    Adam had snatched up the wire the moment his mother laid it down, scanning it as though he thought she’d made some mistake in reading it the first time. “What else do you know about this Rafferty?” he asked Jeff.
    “I know he’ll soon be walking with his feet