Originally published as WINTER MEETING (1985)

SILENT ENCOUNTER

A twilit hush had settled over the cemetery, and the sighing of the wind in the trees and the hiss of falling snow combined to enclose two strangers in a still world.

Leda Bradshaw was visiting the grave of her beloved father. Kyle Reardon was paying his last respects to a man everyone believed he had wronged.

Leda knew Reardon was accused of destroying both her father's business and his life. She knew the townspeople scorned him as an outcast. She knew he was the one man she should avoid at all costs. But one glimpse of the pain and determination in his bleak gray eyes told her he was also the one man she could never turn away from.