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Terrific
. This was all she needed. Raine briefly closed her eyes, then turned toward the door where he was holding the hand of the most beautiful child she had ever seen. The little girl could have been a princess who’d stepped right out of the pages of a fairy tale book.

Her heart-shaped face was the color of cream tinged with an underlying peach hue, like one of the antique roses in Ida’s backyard garden. Her petal pink mouth formed a perfect cupid’s bow; long, pale, sun-gilded hair the color of a palomino’s tail rippled down her back.

“I’m so glad to see you, Sheriff,” Lilith greeted him with one of her practiced smiles that somehow didn’t cause a single crinkle at the corner of her eyes. “You left the courthouse so quickly yesterday, I didn’t have an opportunity to thank you for your expert testimony in Shawna’s case. Why, I do believe you saved the day for us all.” She glanced over to Raine, who was edging back toward the dressing rooms. “Didn’t he, Raine?”

“It meant a lot to our case,” Raine agreed. Unnerved by the flare of obvious male interest she viewed in his gaze, but realizing that escape now was impossible, she turned her attention toward his daughter. “Hello. I’m Raine. And you must be Amy.”

“That’s right.” Emerald green eyes fringed by a double row of long, curly lashes smiled up at Raine. “How did you know?”

“Your daddy told me about you. When he was taking care of your Nano Kitty.”

“Puffy,” Amy said with a nod of her gilt head. “He’s a lot of fun, but I’d rather have a real one.” She slanted a sly look upward at her father, who laughed.

“Keep trying, kiddo,” he said. “You’ll wear me down one of these days.”

“He’s very stubborn,” Amy confided in Raine.

Six going on thirty, Raine remembered Jack saying. He’d been right. “I’ve discovered that for myself,” she agreed.

“We’re here to buy underpants,” Amy announced. “My old ones are too small. Gramma says I’m shooting up like a beanpole, huh, Daddy?”

“That’s what she said, all right,” Jack agreed.

“Daddy brought some home last week, but they were little-kid ones. They had Barney on them.” She wrinkled her nose in childish displeasure. “But I’m too old for Barney, so we brought them back. To exchange.”

That settled, Amy turned her attention to Shawna. “You look really pretty in that dress. Like when Brandy played Cinderella on TV. Do those earrings hurt?” she asked as she took in the trio of gold hoops adorning each earlobe.

“Nah,” the older girl said.

“I really really want to get my ears pierced. But Daddy says I’m too young.”

“I was just a baby when I got my first holes,” Shawna revealed. “I can’t even remember getting them.”

“Really?” Amy looked up at her father. “Did you hear that, Daddy?”

“I heard. But it doesn’t make any difference because my mind is made up, my feet are set in concrete, and the subject is not even up for discussion until you’re at least twelve.”

“I told you he was stubborn,” Amy said to Raine on a huge, dramatic sigh that had Raine smiling.

“I’ve got a belly-button ring, too,” Shawna announced.

“Really?” Amy’s eyes widened. “Can I see it?”

“Sure.” As Shawna lifted the lacy top, Amy slipped free of her father’s hand and moved closer to investigate.

“Christ,” Jack muttered under his breath as he watched the avid discussion going on a few feet away, “that’s just what I need, to have her wanting to get holes punched into her body. Next she’ll be wanting a tattoo.”

“I doubt that. She’s a stunningly beautiful little girl,” Raine said as the group of girls discussed the pros and cons of body piercing. Even as she told herself that she wasn’t interested in any personal way, she couldn’t help wondering how closely Amy took after her mother. “You’re definitely right about her being mature for her age.”

“I know. It’s bad enough to discover that she’s already outgrowing kid underwear.”

“Perhaps she merely doesn’t appreciate purple dinosaurs,” Raine suggested.

“She made that more than clear.” He dragged his hand through his dark hair. “What I know about raising a daughter could fit on the head of a pin. I think the safest thing to do is to just lock her in a closet until she’s thirty-five.”

Although he looked honestly distressed, Raine laughed at the idea of this teenage Lothario growing up to be the father of a daughter who was bound to attract a new generation of sex-crazed boys. “It appears you’re doing just fine.”

“Thanks. But I’m keeping that closet idea as an option for when she becomes a teenager and wants to start dating.” His gaze intensified a bit as he studied her. Then he reached out, took off the dark-framed glasses she was wearing again today and traced the smudged lines beneath her eyes. “You’re carrying a lot of luggage here, Harvard.”

“I have a lot on my mind.” She plucked the glasses from his hand and shoved them back onto her face. They weren’t much protection from that steady, searching cop stare, but they were better than nothing.

“Now that I’ll believe.”

“Daddy,” Amy called to him. “I’m going to help Shawna pick out some earrings to go with her new dress, okay?”

He glanced back over at the family group again. “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Lilith answered his unspoken question.

“Thanks,” he answered. “Go ahead, Pumpkin,” he said to Amy. “We’re not in that much of a hurry.”

Amy took off, holding Lilith’s hand as she practically skipped across the store to where the jewelry displays had been set up. Jack watched her for a moment, sighed again as envisioning his little girl growing up before his eyes, then turned back to Raine.

“That’s one dynamite dress.”

“I was just trying it on. Lilith insisted. In her own way,” Raine said dryly, “my mother can be every bit as stubborn as Ida. If you don’t stand up to her, you’ll suddenly find yourself being run over by a velvet bulldozer.”

“I’ve always gotten a kick out of Lilith. But I can understand how she could become a bit tiring on a day to day basis,” he allowed. “Sounds as if the two of you are having problems.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“When I walked in this place, the tension between you was downright palpable.”

“Only to someone who’s looking,” she pointed out.

“True enough.”

“It’s my fault,” she admitted on a sigh. “Both of us had trouble sleeping last night, so we ended up outside talking. Naturally we started discussing both of the court appearances, and one thing led to another, and well”—she shrugged her shoulders, her face as miserable as he’d seen it—“I was overly harsh and said some things I shouldn’t have.”

Obviously a man comfortable with touching, he rubbed at the lines etching their way into her forehead. “Things you didn’t mean?”

“No.” She briefly closed her eyes, allowing herself to enjoy the soothing touch. “They were true. But also hurtful.”

“Mothers and daughters argue. Even grown daughters.”

She opened her eyes again. “Lilith and I have never argued before.” She didn’t add that she’d always been too afraid to rock an already leaky boat.

He lifted a brow. “Never?”

“Never.”

“Well, if that’s really the case, it sounds as if this tiff was long overdue. Did it ever occur to you to just lay your cards on the table and tell your mother how you felt?”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“Absolutely. I’m not into playing games. Partly because they’re a waste of time and partly because I’m not very good at them.”

“Neither am I,” Raine found herself admitting. “One of the reasons I’ve never spoken up before is because there really isn’t any point. Accusing Lilith of being Lilith is a lot like scolding a butterfly for being flighty.”

“Nevertheless, you can’t deny that the situation has you tense.” His thumbs skimmed a path from her temples, down her face, to her jaw. “Too tense.” He brushed a light caress in the silky hollow between lips and chin.

Raine backed away. “You really shouldn’t touch me like that.”

“I like touching you.”

“Doris and Dottie Anderson just happen to be the biggest gossips in Coldwater Cove,” she reminded him. “If you keep it up, it’ll be all over town by nightfall that we’re lovers.”

“Would that be so bad?”

“That it would be all over town?”

“No.” Because she was finding his touch impossibly alluring, Raine was relieved when he dipped his hands into his pockets. “That we were lovers.”

She felt the color flood into her cheeks. “You shouldn’t be talking to me like that, either.

“You started it.” When she lifted a brow, he said, “When you put on that dress.”

“I certainly didn’t put it on for you.”

“Perhaps not. But you’d make me the most grateful man in Coldwater Cove if you’d go ahead and buy it.”

It was at that moment that Raine belatedly recognized the dress Lilith had challenged her to try on. It was the one in her tropical hallucination. The very same one she was wearing on that moon-spangled beach when a man—this man—kissed her. Heaven help her, the unbidden romantic fantasies had been unsettling enough before they’d somehow become intertwined with her real life.

“I don’t want this,” she complained.

“What makes you think I do?”

“
You’re
the one who keeps looking at me that way. Talking to me that way.” She drew in a ragged breath that had the silk pulling against her breasts and caused heat to flash in his eyes. “Touching me.”

“I can’t help it. I like looking at you, Harvard. I like talking with you. I especially like touching you. In fact, since you brought it up, I suppose this is where I warn you that I’d like to do a whole lot more of it.”

She held out a hand like a traffic cop. “You’re hitting on me again.”

“Absolutely.”

Electricity was arcing around them once again. Raine felt as if a thunderstorm was hovering on the horizon, about to hit with a vengeance at any moment, while they were standing at ground zero. Her nerves strung nearly to the breaking point, she nearly wept with relief when a small bundle of gold hair and tanned arms and legs came hurtling into Jack, shattering the expectant, intimate mood.

“D
addy!” Amy said, “I just had the most wonderful, scintillating idea.

She’d always been a talkative child, constantly picking up new words like other kids might pick up pretty sea shells on the beach, which gave her a vocabulary beyond her age.
Scintillating
seemed to be her new word this week, gleaned from the remake of
The Parent Trap
they’d watched on video the other night.

“Did you, now?” Jack scooped her into his arms.

“Yes. I was telling everybody about the farm, and Renee said she’s never seen a Christmas tree growing out in the woods, so I invited them to our planting party. That’s okay, right?”

“I think it sounds like a dandy idea. The more hands the better.”

“Planting party?” Raine asked.

“Every spring we plant new trees to make up for the ones we harvested the previous Christmas season. Peg started inviting friends and family and Amy and I’ve continued the tradition.”

“It’s bunches and bunches of fun,” Amy said. “Isn’t it, Daddy?”

“Bunches,” Jack agreed with a smile for his daughter.

“That’s why Mommy wanted the farm in the first place,” Amy divulged with childish candor. “So whenever we felt bad because she died, Daddy and I could watch the new trees grow and think about the future. Instead of the sad times.”

“I see.” Raine risked a glance at Jack, who gave her a chagrined kids-what-can-you-do-with-them? look in return. “That’s a lovely idea.”

“Trees take a very long time to grow,” Amy said matter-of-factly. “Daddy says I’ll be a big kid, in high school even, before we can cut the ones we planted last year.” Her expression revealed that to her six-year-old mind, that waiting time may as well be forever.

“That should be fun, though,” Raine said. “You can invite all your teenage friends to the party.”

Amy chewed on her thumbnail as she considered that suggestion. “Big kids like parties. I saw that on an
After School Special
at Gramma’s. So, I guess it’ll be fun, too.”

“Bunches and bunches.” Raine smiled.

“That’s a pretty dress,” Amy said suddenly.

“Thank you.”

“You’re pretty, too. Are you married?”

Raine exchanged another brief look with Jack. “No.”

“Neither is my daddy, anymore.”

Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose at that heavy-handed announcement. His mother and cousin weren’t the only ones who thought he should be moving on with his life. His daughter had, in the past few months, become relentless in her campaign for a new mother.

If she’d had her way, he’d be married to her teacher, or Kelli Cheney, a pretty blond nurse in the doctor’s office, or Marilyn Foster, a single mom who tended bar at the Log Cabin nights and picked up much-needed extra cash working mornings and afternoons as the school crossing guard.

“Lilith said Dr. Lindstrom wouldn’t mind if Shawna, Renee, and Gwen came,” Amy was saying when Jack dragged his mind back to the potentially hazardous conversation. He was tempted to remind her that she shouldn’t call adults by their first names, then realized he didn’t know which last name Lilith was going by these days.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Raine said with another warm smile. “I’m also positive they’d love it.”

“Oh, they would. But you have to come along, too.”

“Me?” Her smile deflated like a hot-air balloon that had just sprung a leak.

“As the court ordered, darling,” Lilith, who’d joined them, reminded Raine pointedly. “I’m sure, if she were asked, Judge Babs would insist that you accompany the girls on any outing. To make certain they don’t get into any more trouble.”

Jack was enjoying the way Amy and Lilith had essentially boxed Raine into a corner. “A little physical work outside in the fresh air will probably be good for the girls,” he pointed out. “Gwen should probably take it easy, though.”

“Definitely.” Raine’s mind was scrambling for a way out.

“Then you’ll come?” If his daughter’s wide eyes had been brown rather than green, she would have looked like a cocker spaniel, begging its owner to come out and play. Jack had had that look aimed at him enough times to know how difficult it was to resist.

Raine shrugged, as if knowing when she was licked. “Okay. I’ll come.”

“Oh, goodie!” Amy clapped her hands. “Hey everybody,” she called out as Jack lowered her back to the floor. “Raine says you can all come to our planting party.”

She ran back to the girls, followed by Lilith, who had obviously decided that her work was done.

“Well.” Raine breathed out a frustrated breath. “Obviously subtlety is not my mother’s strong point.”

Jack laughed at that, finding himself actually looking forward to the weekend. “Nor my daughter’s. I’m sorry if Amy embarrassed you. If it’s any consolation, it isn’t exactly personal. She’s been on a campaign to get her old man married for months.” He gave her his best grin, the one he hadn’t tried out for nearly two years. “I guess she’s getting tired of my spaghetti.”

Raine smiled at that, as he’d intended her to.

Damn, the woman was downright gorgeous when she smiled. She had him feeling things he hadn’t for a very long time. Thinking things that he probably shouldn’t.

“It’ll be fun.” Because he couldn’t be this close to her without touching, Jack skimmed his fingertips up her face. “Put some sun in that city pallor.” When she batted at his hand, he caught hold of hers and linked their fingers together.

“You really have to stop this touching, Sheriff,” she insisted, returning to that cool-as-frost courtroom voice that instead of annoying or intimidating him, only made Jack want to kiss the breath out of her.

“Now that you’re on my daughter’s candidate list, you may as well drop the
sheriff
and call me Jack,” he reminded her mildly. “I’m just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“If they fit. They do.” He touched palm to palm, ignoring the fact that his hand dwarfed her smaller, whiter ones. “I thought they might.” His smile was slow, arrogant, and designed to seduce.

“That’s definitely hitting.” She tugged her hand free, spun around on her heel and made a beeline toward the dressing rooms. Jack watched the sexy sway of her hips beneath that flowered silk and resisted, just barely, the urge to tackle her.

“Hey, Harvard,” he called.

“What now?” She turned half toward him, her fists planted on her hips in a way that pulled the material even tighter.

Amused, and more interested than he should be, Jack grinned. “The party’s informal—old jeans and T-shirts. But buy the dress anyway. It’s definitely you.”

“It’s definitely you,” Raine mimicked later. After finally finishing their shopping, they’d had lunch at the Timberline Café, and were now headed back to the house. “The nerve of some people.”

“Did you say something, darling?” Lilith asked with a feigned innocence that Raine didn’t buy for a minute.

“Nothing that can be repeated in front of children,” she answered through gritted teeth.

“You’re angry at me again.”

“Angry? Why should I be angry?” Raine asked with a calm she was a very long way from feeling.

“I have no idea. But you definitely seem upset about something.”

“How about the way you practically threw me at Jack O’Halloran?”

“I didn’t do any such thing.”

Raine shot her an accusatory glare. “Didn’t you?”

“Not at all,” Lilith lied blithely. “However, to be perfectly honest, darling, I think the tree-planting outing could do you a world of good. Living in the city has you looking much too pale.”

“I wish people would quit saying I look pale, because I’m not. I’m merely fair skinned.” Raine frowned as she remembered Jack O’Halloran’s cocky grin. It had been slow, arrogant, and undeniably charming. “As for that that dress…”

“It’s stunning,” Lilith filled in when Raine’s voice dropped off.

“It’s not my style,” Raine insisted yet again.

“Of course not, dear,” Lilith agreed.

Neither one of them mentioned that the dress in question was currently covered in a green-and-white-striped plastic bag, hanging on a hook behind the driver’s seat,

“Now, a chat about”—Peg wiggled her nose—“boys.”

Jack was sitting with Amy, watching one of the tapes. Peg’s hair had begun to grow in when she’d taped this one; he remembered how surprised and pleased she’d been when she’d discovered that the debilitating chemo that had almost killed her had left her with curls.

“One of these days,” Peg was saying, “if you haven’t already, you’re going to meet a boy you really like. Probably at school, which is where I met your father, although we were older than you. If you’re lucky, he’ll like you, too.

“Now the problem is,” she said, leaning back in the wing chair and steepling her slender fingers, “boys aren’t as mature as we girls. They get nervous when they realize that they’re starting to like us. Most of the time that has them acting a little goofy.” She turned and seemed to be grinning at someone offscreen. Jack knew that someone had been himself. “Okay, a lot goofy.”

“Put it on pause, Daddy,” Amy said suddenly. Jack did as instructed, freezing his wife’s image onto the screen.

“What’s the matter, Pumpkin?”

“Is that true? Do boys act goofy? Did you?”

“Absolutely.” Jack smiled at the memory that was so clear it could have been yesterday. “I offered to carry your mother’s library books back to her dorm.”

“But you were so busy staring at her, thinking how pretty she was, that you tripped over a sprinkler head and dropped them in the fountain. And they got all wet.” Amy had heard this story before.

“Soaking wet. They ballooned up to about ten times their original size.”

“Then you paid the library fine so Mommy wouldn’t have to.”

“It was my fault.” He’d gotten a second job busing tables at a sorority to pay the bill for the ruined books. “It was only right that I take responsibility.”

“Then you fell in love. And got married. And adopted me.”

“That’s exactly how it happened,” he agreed. “Except you forgot the part about how we loved you to pieces.”

“I know that…. Okay.” Amy nodded, satisfied. “You can start it again, Daddy.”

It was not the first time they’d watched this particular tape. In fact, it had become such a favorite over the past month, that Jack figured he could probably say the words right along with Peg. As his wife went on to talk about boys chasing girls on the school ground, and how, in the third grade, Jimmy Hazlett had washed her face in the snow, and then, that same day, had given her a lace-trimmed valentine with a puffy red satin heart, Jack’s mind wandered, as it had been doing far too often these past three days, to Raine Cantrell.

There’s no future in this, pal
; a nagging voice in the back of his mind pointed out what he’d already decided.

Having given the matter a great deal of thought, he’d come to the conclusion that the kind of men the lady usually went out with were undoubtedly sophisticated, cultured guys who’d take her to the ballet and the opera. Guys who could whisper sweet nothings in at least one foreign language. Guys who, if not at the pinnacle of their profession, would at least be on the fast track up to that lofty peak.

She’s city, you’re country. You arrest the bad guys and put them in jail; she gets them out. She’s French champagne, you’re whatever beer’s on sale. It would never work out
.

On that point, both Jack and his internal voice agreed. But he wasn’t interested in forever. He’d gone into his marriage with Peg with that goal, only to discover that real life wasn’t anything like the fairy tales Amy loved to have him read at bedtime.

In fairy tales, the beautiful princess never got ovarian cancer; the princess’s hair stayed long and shiny and strong enough for the prince to climb up, and when she did die, or go to sleep for a hundred years, she could always be awakened by the prince’s kiss and they both lived happily ever after. Whenever the princess’s life was threatened, the prince would come charging in on a white steed, armor gleaming in the sun, and save the day.

Which just went to show what a flop he was as a knight in shining armor, Jack thought grimly.

The following day, while Amy was at school, Jack called in to dispatch that he was turning his radio off for the rest of the afternoon. Then he drove out of town, up into the mountains.

The meadow was ablaze in wildflowers, just as it had been when he’d first made love to Peg on a blue-and-black plaid blanket beneath a buttery spring sun. As it had been, years later, when he’d scattered the ashes of the woman he’d thought he was going to grow old with in this very same spot.

He sat on a flat rock which offered a breath-stealing view of green forests and water. Clouds formed overhead, blocking out the sun.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted out loud. “Ever since you”—he couldn’t say the word
died
, not in this place that held so many bittersweet memories—“went away,” he said instead, “I’ve been so busy trying to stay sane and take care of our daughter and fill Dad’s shoes, that I haven’t had any time to even think about a woman.”