Family at Stake

The Mac Edwards Rachel knew would have become a great father. He would have loved and supported his child. He would have kept her safe from harm. He wouldn’t have become the man portrayed in the Child Services case file before her.

With shaking hands that betrayed her lack of emotional detachment, Rachel dived deeper into the case file.

Amanda is an angry young girl, and it is my opinion that there is probably some underlying abuse between Mr. Edwards and his daughter. In light of this and Amanda’s growing criminal record, she needs to be removed from the home.

Rachel had to read the words five times before they sank in. There was no way her former best friend could be abusing his daughter!

Rachel knew she should not take this case. It was a conflict of interest if there ever was one. What she should have done was march up to her boss and say, “I know this guy. Loved him, actually. I definitely broke his heart. So I shouldn’t be their social worker.”

She should have done that.

But she didn’t.

Dear Reader,

I am so thrilled about my Harlequin Superromance debut, Family at Stake! Superromance novels started my love affair with romance, so I am tickled to be a part of such an enduring facet of romance fiction. I actually had a box of Harlequin Superromance novels under my bed at a very early age (I am sure most of you did, too). And many of those books—having been packed up and moved dozens of times over the years—are still on my keeper shelf at home. The things we do for good books!

With Family at Stake I tried my own twist on some of my favorite romantic themes—reunited lovers, at-risk children, single fathers, betrayal and, of course, forgiveness. Mac is easily my favorite hero to date—I love a man who struggles to keep his world together even as it unravels around him. And cracking Rachel’s icy protective shell was one of the most challenging conflicts I’ve tried to solve. Even as I tried to change her—or compromise with her character—she wouldn’t let me.

I hope you enjoy my take on Harlequin Superromance books. Please feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think at www.molly-okeefe.com.

Happy reading!

Molly O’Keefe

Family at Stake

Molly O’Keefe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe grew up in a small town outside Chicago. How she ended up in Toronto, Canada, she’s not quite sure. She sold her first romance to Harlequin at age twenty-five and hasn’t looked back! She lives in Toronto with her husband, son, cat and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

For Mick and his Old Man—I love you.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PROLOGUE

May 20, 1992

“GOODBYE, NEW SPRINGS!” Rachel Filmore ripped off her purple nylon graduation gown and tossed it up in the air. It unfurled in the breeze and drifted into the rock quarry like a shadow against the twilight sky.

“Goodbye, Mom!” She ripped off the cap, ignoring the pull of the bobby pins that tore at her curly hair and flung that into the air, too.

“And last but not least, goodbye, Dad, may you rot in hell.” She dug her fake high school diploma—which said her real diploma would be mailed to her—out of her backpack and sent it sailing into the abyss at her feet.

It had been handed to her a few hours ago at the graduation ceremony.

“Your name is on that,” Rachel’s best friend, Mac Edwards, pointed out with a laugh. “Someone might find it.”

“Like anyone is going to care.” She looked over the edge, but in the darkness she couldn’t see the bottom of the quarry, much less her graduation gown spread out among the rocks. “Maybe they’ll think I jumped,” she muttered, feeling the gravitational pull of all that space between her and the bottom. Sometimes when she stood really still on the ledge like this it seemed like the ground reached up for her.

“They’ll think I jumped just to get out of this dumb town. I swear, Mac. New Springs is like a noose around our necks.”

“That’s not funny,” Mac murmured, and Rachel turned to face him. He sat on the hard-packed earth, his own graduation gown in a heap beside him. He still wore the cap, though. He had tilted it at what he called a “rakish angle.” He was always trying to be like Humphrey Bogart or some other old actor. Mac said they had class. Rachel didn’t know one way or another; she never stayed awake during those boring old movies.

But Mac looked cute with his hat like that.

Something weird was going on with Mac these days. Weirder than normal. His face was changing. He suddenly had cheekbones and a jawline and his eyes…well. Rachel found herself unable to look too long into those eyes.

He seemed older, like a man.

His body had changed last year. Almost overnight, it’d gotten bigger. Where he’d been skinny he’d developed muscle. He must have grown five inches in the span of two months.

The coaches had tried to get him to go out for the football and basketball teams. He didn’t do it, but she knew he was flattered that they’d asked. She also knew that Margaret McCormick had been coming to his locker between classes, tossing her hair around and bending over to pick things up from the floor in front of him. Rachel had caught him looking at Margaret’s butt.

Margaret had joined the Science Club and had even asked him to tutor her, since everyone knew that he was a science genius. He’d helped Margaret one night, but Mac wouldn’t tell Rachel what had happened. He said they’d just studied, but he’d blushed when he said it.

Maybe that was what was weird, Rachel thought as she studied her friend. Mac is a little mysterious.

Her belly did that long slow roll it’d been doing whenever Mac was around. That was weird, too. She had known Mac since freshman year and now she was hot for her best friend. Seriously hot—as in “let’s make out and get naked” hot. She didn’t know what to do about it, except of course ignore it, which she had been trying for a few months now, and that just made her more crazy.

She wanted to do whatever he and Margaret had done.

But she didn’t know how to get from best friend to naked all in one night. And one night was all they had left.

“You gonna toss your gown in, too?” she asked, sitting next to him. She flipped her skirt up over her knees and thought about grabbing her sweatshirt from the bag, but it was still hot out and the tank top she wore was fine.

“Nah.” He reclined against the smooth, round rock at their backs. “Thought I’d burn it. Someone said you can get high off the fumes.”

She chuckled and leaned back with him. She brushed his shoulder with hers—totally on purpose—and her breath caught at the zing that raced along her skin.

Touch me. Touch me. Touch me.

If she opened her mouth, she was sure those words would come pouring out like sand.

“Look what your brother gave me today” Mac dug into his own bag and pulled out a small piece of wood.

Her vision blurred with hot tears.

She wished she could pretend there was no Jesse, no little brother she was being forced to leave behind. Maybe then it wouldn’t feel as if she was drowning all the time.

She picked up the piece of avocado wood that Jesse had whittled into a four-inch-high tree with branches and roots using his twenty-year-old Swiss Army knife.

She ran her thumb along the ridges and the veins in the leaves and felt her heart breaking.

“It’s amazing,” Mac whispered. “I mean, the kid is eleven. What eleven-year-old can do that?”

Rachel shrugged and handed it back to him. “He’s something,” she whispered.

“Rachel—” Mac’s tone was soft and sympathetic, and the hand that cupped her shoulder burned her to the bone. An ugly mix of emotions inside of her—a seething, poisonous combination—tried to leak out.

Don’t ruin this night. It’s my last night. Don’t cry. Don’t, Rachel. She pressed down all the impotent anger and raging sadness and turned a bright smile to her old friend.

“Hey, I brought something.” She remembered what she had pilfered from the back of the fridge. Since she was leaving tomorrow she didn’t need to worry about her father finding out and losing his mind. She rummaged in her backpack. “It’s probably warm by now,” she muttered, and pulled out the bottle of champagne she’d wrapped in towels to keep cool. “Ta-da!”

“Wow, champagne,” Mac nodded. “Awesome. Since we’re not having graduation parties—”

“Who needs crappy cake when you can have lukewarm champagne, huh?” she asked. She knew just how sad this was, which was why they had to joke about it. All of their classmates were having parties with volleyball nets set up in the backyard and coolers of pop and beer. But Rachel’s and Mac’s parents just couldn’t get it together to put a special dinner on the table to celebrate their kids’ achievements.

“Mom always says it’s supposed to be for a special occasion, but the dumb bottle’s been sitting in the back of the fridge forever.” There’s no such thing as a special occasion at my house, she thought, and fumbled with the top of the bottle. “How am I supposed to open this dumb thing?”

“Let me have that,” Mac said, and tore off the foil. He stuck his thumbs under the cork, and his arm, pressed against hers, flexed, the veins that had suddenly appeared in his forearms strained against his skin. Rachel swallowed hard, swamped with new painful feelings.

“How do you know how to do this?” she asked. Maybe he and Margaret had champagne.

“Cary Grant,” he muttered, preoccupied with the bottle.

The cork popped and the spray shot all over their feet. Rachel screamed and jerked her sandals out of the way. Mac took a giant swig, catching most of the foam.

“Perfect,” he said, and wiped his mouth. His eyes were sparkly and filled with fun and they made her drunk enough. She didn’t need champagne. He handed her the bottle and Rachel took it, all too aware that she was pressing the glass that had been on his mouth against her lips.

The champagne fizzed, sweet and cool down her throat. It was perfect.

“So?” He bent his knees and slung his long arms around them. He looked up at the stars and she knew he was searching out the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. He always looked for those first. Gotta get my bearings, he’d say.

Rachel took another gulp of the fizzy booze.

“Tomorrow, huh?”

“Yeah.” She handed him the bottle.

“I can still give you a ride. San Luis Obispo isn’t that far.”

“Right, like The Jerk is going to give you the car.”

“Screw him,” he muttered, kicking at a rock that shot off the ledge. Rachel heard it clatter to the bottom. He took a long pull from the champagne bottle. She filled her lungs with as much air as possible and promised this would be the last time she tried.

“Come with me,” she said in a rush.

“Rach—”

“You’ve got awesome grades—”

“And zero money.” He rolled his head against the rock. “We’ve talked about this like a dozen times.”

“I’m going early so I can get a job. You can get a job, too. We can bag groceries, or work with a landscaper. You’d like that. Working with the…” She trailed off. She knew begging wasn’t doing any good. She had gotten the scholarship and he hadn’t even applied. Even bagging groceries wouldn’t make enough to cover books.

And Mac wasn’t going to leave his mom, not while she was married to The Jerk.

Rachel nodded and took another swig of the champagne before handing it back to him. What am I going to do without you? she thought, staring up at the sky. The world suddenly loomed too large without Mac beside her. All the spaces inside of her that she thought would be filled with excitement and hope and joy about college were vacant. Empty. All she felt was an anguished longing for her best friend and a sickening wish that things were different.

“It would be stupid to ask you to stay, huh?” he whispered, and her eyes flew to his in surprise. “I mean you—”

“I can’t, Mac,” she breathed, wondering what brought this on. “He kicked me out. He said after I graduated he—”

“He didn’t want to see you,” Mac finished, nodding. “I know.” He drank some more from the bottle. She watched the shifting muscles in his throat as he swallowed. They were about three-quarters through the champagne and he’d had most of it.

Must be why he’s saying such crazy things, she thought. Stay? What would I do?

“We can get married,” he said, and, for a moment, Rachel thought she was dreaming. “That way you could stay.” He looked at her, his blond hair gleaming white in the moonlight. His face was so handsome to her, so full and real and tight with a want that her body answered.

Heady, reckless desire bloomed in her.

“Married?” she breathed, unsure of what she thought or felt past the solid thumping of her heart.

Mac put down the bottle and turned toward her, and Rachel was caught by the expression on his face. That was why she couldn’t stand to meet his eyes these days, because everything he felt about her was right there.

“I…ah…I love you.” He swallowed hard. “I mean, you are my best—”

Rachel didn’t know why she did it. To stop him from saying such things, or to stop herself from answering with promises that she might not be able to keep. She didn’t know but she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

She closed her eyes tight and listened to him gasp.

Please, please, please. She didn’t know what she was asking for, but there was some nameless ache in her that had to be met. I need you. I’ve always needed you. What will I do without you?

“Rachel, what are you going to do?” He pulled away from her and the cold air between them felt like a knife against her skin. “I can’t do this if you’re just going to leave….”

“I’ll stay,” she lied, knowing she couldn’t, but she couldn’t let him walk away from her right now.

“Rach—” His smile was beautiful and it killed her. She kissed him and closed her eyes.

His tongue touched her closed mouth and his arms came around her, brushing the bare skin of her arms and her shoulders. His fingers found the sensitive nape of her neck and she moaned.

Mac’s tongue licked slowly into her mouth as they carefully leaned back on the ground.

She was seventeen and Mac was going to be the first boy she ever had sex with. Tonight. Her shirt came off and his hand cupped her breast, and that was a first, too. He peeled off his T-shirt. He was lean and beautiful and her fingers touched him, traced the muscles of his chest, his stomach. It was all new.

This didn’t change what would happen tomorrow. But tonight, in the moonlight, held tightly against Mac’s body, she was able to pretend it didn’t matter.

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

OH, BOY, RACHEL FILMORE thought as she paused in the doorway and watched her friend Olivia Hernandez work herself right into a mental health crisis, it’s like watching a train wreck.

“Hello?” She knocked on the door as quietly as she could, but Olivia still jumped out of her seat.

“Stop doing that,” Olivia breathed, clutching the ruffled neck of her pink T-shirt.

“It’s knocking, sweetheart, and it’s polite.” Rachel smiled and leaned against the door frame of her boss’s office.

“Give me five more minutes,” Olivia said, then swiveled toward her computer screen.

“You said that twenty minutes ago,” Rachel reminded her.

“I know, I know, but I’m right in the middle—”

“Code red,” Rachel interrupted, and Olivia’s head snapped up.

“Realmente?” Olivia looked around at the towering stacks of files as if they had just appeared. “Code red?”

“Yep.”

Olivia knew better than to fight code red. Or at least Rachel hoped she did. In six years of working together, code red—their personal cue that one of them was close to burnout—was one thing that they never argued over.

“Your husband called and asked me to make sure his real wife came home, not the ghost he’s been living with for two weeks.” Rachel lifted an eyebrow, daring Olivia to deny that she’d been working like a woman possessed.

Olivia blew a black curl off her forehead. “It’s just been so crazy with Frank leaving.”

“I know, but you’re not doing any good working like this.” Rachel was sympathetic and had been helping as much as possible, but frankly she would rather eat the files than look at any more of them right now.

“Did Nick really call you or are you just making that up so I’ll go have lunch with you?” Olivia narrowed her eyes.

“He called three times.”

“You think you could have told me sooner?”

“You think I haven’t tried?”

“You’re right.” Olivia grabbed a plastic bag from the bottom drawer of her government-regulation metal desk. “I’ve been working too much.” She fished around for her shoes and finally stood, pulling down the hem of her T-shirt. “Let’s go have some lunch.”

Rachel swallowed a sigh of relief. Olivia could be stubborn, and the workload had been making her already fiery temper even hotter these days.

“But I am going to take a few of these.” Olivia grabbed the top five files from the stack on the corner of her desk and Rachel wasn’t all that surprised.

Rachel had one from her own stack under her arm as well.

Every day was a constant struggle to avoid code red.

“Just so long as you actually see daylight,” Rachel said. Rachel looked down at the stack Olivia had grabbed and her heart beat hard. The top folder had been flagged with an interoffice red arrow, indicating the child needed to be removed from the home.

What is Olivia trying to do? she wondered. Olivia, after a month of debating back and forth, had decided to take the promotion into administration that Frank Monroe’s retirement had created and leave behind the stress of fieldwork. Of the cases Olivia had already split up there had been no red arrows, and Rachel wondered if Olivia was going to try to take that family on as well as her increased administrative duties.

Not if I can help it. Those red arrows meant about forty percent more work and Liv had a family.

Rachel had an ex-boyfriend and a fish.

Rachel actually liked the red-arrow cases. Not their existence, of course. But they were a challenge to her, a call to arms. She felt as though she was really doing her job—catching bad guys and helping kids—when she took one on.

Olivia gave Rachel a hard hug. “Thanks, Rach,” she whispered into her hair.

“You’d do it for me.” Rachel hugged her friend back and followed Olivia through the maze of stuffy and small public offices toward the exit and sunshine.

They settled down onto their usual bench in one of the many manicured courtyards of the county government building compound.

Rachel rolled her shoulders and let the perfumed California sunshine melt away her tension. She hovered at about a code yellow these days. Frank’s sudden and disorganized departure had been tough on everyone in the office.

Olivia turned sideways on their bench and licked the residual yogurt from the aluminum cover she’d peeled off. “How are you handling the new cases?”

Rachel kicked off her black slides and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I am surviving,” she said honestly. “I mean, it’s a slog. Frank really got sloppy toward the end. He screwed up some names between files and he’s gotten a lot of dates wrong, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

Olivia laughed, but it, too, sounded stressed. “I wish I could say the same. I feel like I am being chased by a million loose ends. I can’t even remember why I wanted Frank’s job.”

“Ten years in the field, you were ready to burn out, Liv.”

“Still, at least it was simpler. This management thing is making me crazy.”

Rachel forced her eyes not to roll. They’d discussed the pros and cons of this move to death, but she could hit the highlight reel.

“You were breaking the Golden Rule.”

“What Golden Rule?”

“Mine.”

“Rachel Filmore has a Golden Rule? This should be good,” Olivia hooted. “Is it never, ever pay full price for anything? Oh wait, never, ever talk about family or, God forbid, marriage—”

“The Golden Rule states,” Rachel interrupted, “thou shalt not become too involved.” She waved her fork with a little flair. “And you, my dear friend, were getting too involved all over the place.”

“Ha! Like I’ve never caught you crying under your desk. You’ve had your fair share of code red moments.”

She’d had two. In six years. Not a bad average. “You’re totally exaggerating.” Rachel would never in this lifetime cry at work, or in front of anyone, for that matter. Any crying she did was by herself. Alone. In a dark room. She was that kind of crier. “And you are missing the important part. Too. Don’t get too wrapped up in the cases.”

It’s not that she didn’t care, or cared less than Olivia, it’s that she had learned to care the smart way. The way that did good rather than made you crazy. Rachel cared with her head and tried very hard to keep her heart out of it.

It was the only way to stay sane.

“In the six years I’ve been here—”

“You’re still a child, a baby.” Olivia had celebrated her ten-year anniversary with the Department of Child and Family Services last month, which seemed to give her license to expunge Rachel’s years of service.

“The best thing Frank Monroe ever taught me is that a little detachment goes a long way in this business.”

“Well, maybe that explains the mistakes in the cases.”

“It explains how he was able to stay in the job for twenty-five years.”

Olivia scrutinized Rachel as if she was something between glass plates and under a microscope, and she grew uncomfortable. “You know, you might be one of the best counselors we’ve got,” Olivia said. “You’re smart, you’re quick. You work hard.”

Rachel was taken aback for a moment by the praise. “Thanks, Olivia.”

“But you’ve still got a lot to learn.” Olivia scooped another heap of pink yogurt into her mouth and winked.

I should have known there would be a catch.

“You got big plans for the weekend?” Rachel asked, quickly changing the subject, before Olivia launched into a monologue about all the things Rachel still had to learn.

“Everyone is coming to my house on Sunday.”

“What’s Sunday?” Rachel asked, a forkful of lettuce halfway to her mouth.

“Mother’s Day.”

Rachel stiffened as a cold chill slid along her spine.

“Rach?”

Rachel watched the sparrows at their feet, rooting for food in the green grass, instead of looking at the concern and pity that were no doubt on her friend’s face.

“Are you going to see your mom?”

“Nope.”

“But it’s Mother’s Day.”

“So you said.” Rachel fought to swallow another bite of salad and whatever emotion was stuck in her throat. Anger? Guilt? Indifference? Probably indifference, she decided. It was all the feeling she had left for her mother. “It’s just another day, Olivia. Just another day.”

“Not to your mom, who would probably give her right arm to hear from you. Come on, Rachel, she’s forty minutes away.”