Rave reviews for Kimberly Cates

The Gazebo

“[A] delightful sequel…Readers will find this

a great book for a winter’s evening in front of the

fire. Kimberly Cates has delivered up a

winner with this one.”

—The Romance Reader’s Connection

Picket Fence

“Forgiveness and acceptance are key elements in this

outstanding new family drama, which offers the deep

insight into the human soul and the touching story

that are hallmarks of a Cates novel.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews (4¹/₂ stars)

“Cates weaves a tantalising and emotional tale

that strums the heartstrings and keeps the reader

spellbound until the joyful, gratifying ending.”

—Booklist

More praise for Kimberly Cates

“One of the brightest stars of the romance genre.”

—New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen

The Perfect Match
Kimberly Cates

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To “Dodo,” Zora Miloradich Alpern, my very own

“fairy godmother.” Thank you for seeing me even

when I felt invisible.

And in loving memory of the dog she gave me:

Humphrey, the juvenile delinquent dachshund

who changed my life.

Dear Reader,

I adore dogs. This is no news to anyone who comes to my house to be greeted by three Cavalier King Charles spaniels (Sir Tristan, Sailor and Huckleberry) and a black Lab (Jake). Nor is it a surprise to people who hear them barking when I’m on the phone. My theory is that the phone emits a high-pitched beep that only dogs and toddlers can hear—especially when your editor is on the line. I have used dogs in numerous books, delighting in their canine personalities, and have rescued more strays than my husband cares to count, determined to find them perfect homes. What most people don’t know is how I started my love affair with all things furry—a juvenile delinquent dachshund my own “fairy godmother” filled my arms with when life suddenly got more complex than anyone could have guessed. I was eight years old and Humphrey was just the magic I needed.

This book is my tribute to families under fire, who face daunting odds with great courage. My loving thanks to parents who do daily battle to make their children walk, to “fairy godmothers” who make little girls’ wishes come true, and of course to the pets who have brightened my world.

Here’s to lint rollers, killer dust bunnies during shedding season and to the healing power of love. Real magic that makes little boys do karate and little girls dance, even when doctors don’t believe they ever will.

Kimberly Cates

CHAPTER ONE

THE TROUBLE WITH fairy godmothers was they never hung around long enough to see how their magic turned out, twenty-seven-year-old Rowena Brown thought, racing up the steps to the Whitewater Sheriff’s office. Now, Cinderella—she’d gotten the lowdown about the coach turning back into a pumpkin come midnight. And in Sleeping Beauty—even the Disney version—Maleficent blabbed to the whole kingdom about the princess’s pricking-her-finger-on-a-spindle clause.

But when great-auntie Maeve MacKinnon from County Meath had predicted Rowena would meet her soul mate in this quaint Illinois town, the ninety-year-old Irishwoman had failed to mention that three weeks after Rowena moved in, her personal bad boy would end up in the slammer for breaking and entering. God knew how much it was going to cost her to bail him out.

Rowena shook wisps of waist-long curls the color of daffodils out of her eyes and hugged her beloved red and gold tapestry bag tight against her in an effort to calm the butterflies rioting in her middle. Her sisters had claimed that Rowena could hide a kindergartener in the purse made out of a salvageable piece of antique Oriental rug she’d gotten at an art fair. Unfortunately at the moment, she was about as likely to find bail money inside the thing as she was a gap-toothed five-year-old.

Every cent Rowena had she’d invested in spiffing up her new shop on Main Street: nailing on a roof that didn’t leak, buying bright chrome cages to line the walls and putting in a “get acquainted” room designed to tempt even the most retiring wallflower to play. But if Clancy had already gotten himself in this much trouble, there was obviously one more accessory she needed to invest in. Stronger locks.

In a swirl of purple peasant skirt and jangling bracelets she shoved open the door to the drab brick building and rushed up to the desk labeled Information. Rowena couldn’t help doing a double-take. The officer/receptionist who presided over the gateway to the room beyond looked disturbingly like one of those guys in the shako hats who guarded the Wicked Witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz.

He seemed as taken aback by Rowena’s appearance as she was with his. She should be used to it by now. But then, ever since she’d set foot in Whitewater, the whole town had been gaping at her as if she’d just dropped in from another planet. Maybe she had. Chicago, with its bustling streets and delicious diversity, seemed a galaxy away.

“I’ve come about Clancy Brown,” Rowena told the receptionist as she tried to shake the image that kept popping into her mind—the pot-bellied deputy chatting it up with one of those creepy flying monkeys.

“Brown, Brown…” the man mumbled to himself as he scanned the register in front of him. “I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s no one here by that name.”

Panic buzzed in Rowena’s veins. “Clancy has to be here! My neighbor said one of your deputies picked him up about an hour ago.”

The deputy grabbed a mug that said Kiss My Bass. “Your neighbor must have been mistaken.”

“That’s impossible. The deputy gave her this card when he hauled Clancy off in his squad car.”

Smith—that was the name on the officer’s plastic name tag—slugged down a gulp of coffee as Rowena dug through her purse in search of the cardboard rectangle she’d plucked from Miss Marigold Pettigrew’s frantically gesticulating hands twenty minutes ago. The sharp corner of the card jammed under Rowena’s thumbnail. Breath hissed between her teeth at the sting, but she dragged the card out, triumphant.

“Here it is,” Rowena said, resisting the temptation to pop her thumb in her mouth to cool the pain. Instead she squinted at the embossed lettering. “Deputy Cash Lawless, Whitewater Sheriff’s Office.”

“Cash? Holy sh—” Smith choked, coffee threatening to spray the papers on his desk. He thumped his chest in an obvious effort to clear his windpipe. He struggled to sober himself, but his eyes were actually watering with the effort it took. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, clearing his throat. “I didn’t realize that Deputy Lawless was the arresting officer in your case. The perpetrator you’re looking for—Mr., um, Brown—is currently awaiting transport to—”

“Death row if Cash has anything to say about it,” a rangy guy with a nose roughly the size of the Sears Tower called out, the room erupting in laughter.

“Death row?” Rowena’s stomach whirled as the Brown family’s hamster had the time her younger sister Ariel bounced Nibbles down the basement stairs in one of those clear plastic balls. “You can’t mean that!”

“Potter, you’re a real comedian.” Smith shot a quelling glare into the cluster of desks and uniformed officers. “Can’t you see the lady is upset? Hey, Cash?” he bellowed, angling his gaze in another direction. “The lady here needs to see you about that burglary you just busted up.” Shuffling, scuffling sounds came from all over the office as everyone craned to see the scene unfolding.

Applause broke out as a man stood up from the desk in the far right corner of the room, his back to Rowena and the chorus of gibes ringing out from his coworkers.

“My hero…”

“…deserves a medal for courage under fire…”

But Rowena barely heard the teasing. The business card fluttered, unheeded, from her numb fingers as she focused on the rear view of the dark-haired man who was the focus of the whole room’s attention. If Deputy Smith had reminded her of an evil castle guard, this Lawless seemed more like a general about to institute a Scorched Earth campaign and enjoy every minute of it.

Stiff shoulders stretched the back of a khaki shirt with sharp creases still ironed into the sleeves as he hung up the phone he was talking on. Dark hair cropped with almost military precision didn’t come close to reaching his collar. His well-tailored pants skimmed an ass a jeans model would envy, muscular legs seeming almost too long to be real. And clean? Her mom could do surgery on that desk of his. Rowena figured there wasn’t a speck of lint or dog hair in the world rash enough to cling to the man’s clothing. Although women would probably stand in line to take them off.

She smoothed one hand down the crinkled fabric of her peasant skirt, reminding herself she’d rumpled it on purpose as Lawless turned around to face her. Every nerve in Rowena’s body flashed an all-points bulletin: Warning—subject armed and dangerous. Do not approach.

The deputy even had warning flares of a sort emblazoned on his broad chest, Rowena gauged, his starched shirtfront splotched with vivid orange and yellow stains.

His features were harder to make out, half obscured as they were by the blue beanbag-shaped thing he clutched to the left side of his face. But she glimpsed a belligerent chin, a hawklike nose and a vein beating a very dangerous rhythm in his right temple.

“Head right on back there, Ms. Brown.” Deputy Smith gestured with his coffee cup. “Deputy Lawless will see you now.”

Rowena thanked him and started toward the far more intimidating man. Her heart raced. Deputy Lawless looked for all the world as if he was itching to shoot the place up. That is, if someone could shoot up a crowded sheriff’s office with only one working eye.

And that was all Deputy Lawless had at the moment, from what Rowena could tell. The thing on his face was an icepack. His other eye, a penetrating whiskey brown, glowered at Rowena as if she’d just ripped off the collection box for the sheriff department’s Widows and Orphans Christmas Fund.

Oh, God, Rowena thought as the man lowered the cold pack. His eye was almost swollen shut. This was not good. Clancy had really ticked this guy off. Was it possible that her Clancy had given him that shiner? No way, Rowena reassured herself quickly. Clancy might be completely out of control, but he would never hurt a flea.

Deputy Lawless crossed to a sink by a coffee station and dumped the icepack, then homed in on Rowena, his face unyielding as stone.

“Deputy Lawless.” She started to offer him her hand, then thought better of it, winding her fingers in the strap of her bag instead. “I’m Rowena Brown. I own the new pet shop in town.”

The deputy’s disapproving gaze swept from the lingerie-inspired camisole clinging to her shoulders by thin spaghetti straps to the scuffed toes of the Frye boots one of her mother’s friends had broken in at a protest march in the seventies. “I know who you are.”

He didn’t say “everybody in town does,” but Rowena could hear what he was thinking. You’re the crazy lady who claims she can read animals’ minds.

Not that she could, exactly. It was more like being a sort of matchmaker. Sensing when a certain person and a certain pet were destined for each other. And once that instinct kicked in, she had no peace until she’d settled them together. Another supposed “gift” from Auntie Maeve, inspired by the old tin-whistle tucked in the desk drawer at the pet shop.

Wouldn’t that be big fun to explain to the stone-faced man standing before her? A smear of red on the left side of his corded throat snagged her gaze. Blood? Her lungs squeezed shut. Better to get down to the crisis at hand.

“There’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” She couldn’t stop staring at his neck, terrified she’d find broken skin.

Aware of the direction of Rowena’s gaze, Lawless swiped one hand against the spot on his neck, then glanced down at his stained fingers. A muscle in his jaw knotted as he grabbed a tissue and scrubbed the color away. Thank God, Rowena thought. His skin was smooth, tanned—far too luscious looking for anybody as tightly wound as he was.

“Miss Marigold ran over to my shop the instant I got back and told me she’d called you,” Rowena continued. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. She’s flighty as a hummingbird trapped in a mason jar.”

Lawless gave the best Medusa impression Rowena had ever seen—the guy should have been able to turn her into stone with a look like that. The last thing Rowena needed was to get this man’s back up any more than it already was.

Rowena’s hand fluttered as if to sweep her too-colorful description of Marigold Pettigrew away. “What I mean to say is that Miss Marigold is very excitable.”

Lawless’s scowl chilled even further. “Most people tend to get a little upset when they hear an intruder bashing around on the first floor of their house. Even in small towns bad things can happen to women who live alone.”

Guilt elbowed Rowena as she imagined her neighbor terrified. “You’re right, of course. I’m so sorry she was upset.”

She was getting frostbite here. Lawless folded his arms over his chest. The stains on his shirt seemed as foreign to him as blacked-out teeth on Cary Grant. It looked to Rowena as if the deputy had tried to scrub out the spots peeking over those tautly muscled arms, but had given up. “By the time I got to Miss Marigold’s place, her shop was in shambles,” he said. “God knows how long it will take her to clean it up.”

Chastened, Rowena swallowed hard. “I’m sure Clancy didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“Clancy?” The deputy’s gaze narrowed. He winced as the bruised skin around his eye tugged. “Who’s Clancy?”

At Lawless’ blank look, Rowena rushed to explain. “My dog. He’s about this high.” She held her hand mid-waist. “Black, with a white patch on his chest.”

Lawless’ lip curled, his voice rough around the edges as if he smoked a pack a day. Funny, he didn’t smell of tobacco. “There’s no Clancy here, Ms. Brown.”

Rowena cocked her head to one side, confused. “But Miss Marigold said that my dog—”

“The dog that broke into the tea shop is named Destroyer.”

Alarm bells jangled Rowena’s nerves. Was it possible this Lawless man knew…She scrambled for a quick feint, settling on wide-eyed innocence. “No, Deputy. You’re mistaken. My Clancy—”

Lawless cut her off. “Destroyer has a rap sheet of prior offenses three pages long. Most of which I had to file, since he has a rotten habit of popping up on my shift like Cujo out of a closet.”

Rats. Rats. Double rats, Rowena thought, struggling to keep her voice calm. “First of all, Cujo was a Saint Bernard and Clancy is a Newfoundland. Second, Stephen King writes fiction, Deputy Lawless. The dog in that novel was no more real than the crazed Chevy he wrote about in Christine.”

“The King book this case reminds me of is Pet Sematary, where animals keep coming back from the dead. Three weeks ago, I delivered this very dog to Animal Control clear across the county and they swore I’d never see him again.”

Outrage flared in Rowena’s chest, drowning caution. “Animal Control?” She sputtered. “Don’t you know how many animals they have to put down?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Deputy Lawless planted his fists on his narrow hips. “They don’t have any choice when an animal is out of control and a danger to others.”

“Clancy’s not a danger to anyone!” Rowena protested. “You’re mixing him up with—with some other dog. It’s a case of mistaken identity.”

The chill in Lawless’ tone snapped. “Lady, I could pick Destroyer out of any lineup you could name,” he growled. “That dog has been a pain in my behind for almost a year. He’s a public nuisance, running at large. And this time he added assaulting an officer to the mix.”

“Assault?” Rowena’s heart hit the floor. “Did he bite you?”

A barely stifled laugh came from somewhere in the room, the other officers enjoying the show. A muscle in the deputy’s jaw jumped in irritation. “He slammed one of Ms. Marigold’s swinging doors into my face.” Color darkened Lawless’ high-set cheekbones. “When I identified myself as law enforcement, the dog lunged through the swinging doors between the kitchen and the tea room and—”

“That was an accident,” Rowena objected, imagining Clancy’s joyful response to a human voice. “He was just trying to greet you.”

“That dog couldn’t have landed that blow any squarer if he’d aimed it!” Lawless challenged, his good eye blazing.

“You were probably in danger of being licked to death!” Rowena scoffed. “He loves people.”

“Yeah. That dog adores me. About as much as I like him.”

“If Clancy caused trouble, I’m the one to blame.” Rowena thumped her chest with her flattened palm.

“If he caused trouble?” Lawless pointed to his injured eye.

Rowena swallowed hard. That was a really impressive shade of purple the deputy had going there. “What I’m trying to say is that Clancy’s behavior is my responsibility.”

“Then you should be damned glad it’s my eye that’s turning black and blue. If that little old lady had been walking into the dining room with those scones she’d just baked you’d have a hell of a lawsuit on your hands.”

“Scones?” Rowena gasped. “Oh, God. That must’ve been what he was after.” When she had researched the Newfie’s history, she’d cried over the report about how badly his first owner had neglected him. Clancy still went a little postal when his dinner was late.

She’d love to get her hands on the monster that had left him to starve. “Deputy Lawless, if you only knew about what Clancy went through before I got him—”

“I’m more worried about what almost happened at that tea shop,” Lawless cut in, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one. “If that dog had bowled Miss Marigold over, he would have shattered her into a million pieces.”

Rowena paled at the image the deputy painted in her mind. Her hand clenched around the strap of the tapestry bag. “But he didn’t.”

“This time,” Lawless asserted grimly. “Now I don’t care how many aliases you and those bleeding heart animal lovers at the shelter give this monster. He’s a menace. And it’s my duty to make damned sure he doesn’t get another chance to break someone’s hip.”

“But you don’t have any legal recourse,” Rowena said with an edge of desperation. “He didn’t bite anybody. Besides, it’s his first offense.”

Lawless rolled his good eye. “And Charles Manson just crashed a few parties. Like I told you, Ms. Brown, Destroyer—”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This is just a case of mistaken identity. The dog in question isn’t this Destroyer maniac you keep running on about. The dog you picked up is my dog, Clancy. He’s had all his shots. All his registration stuff is filed. I’ll pay for whatever damage he did to Miss Marigold’s tea shop.”

“You sure will. You’re legally liable,” Lawless said. “Once you take a look and add up the cost of what Destroyer’s done you’ll probably be begging me to take the dog back to the shelter. Any sane person would.”

“And I’m not sane, is that what you’re implying? Because I think an animal’s life is worth more than—than a bunch of old china teapots?” Rowena craned up on tiptoe, peering around the room in an effort to find her dog. “I’ll buy the woman new ones.”

“She doesn’t want new ones. Some of those had been in Ms. Marigold’s family since the Revolutionary War. If you had seen that poor old woman picking up all those bits of broken china, crying her heart out…”

Rowena fretted her bottom lip at the picture Lawless painted, but a long, mournful howl from somewhere nearby drove back anything but fear for the animal in such danger. She edged around the deputy and tried to make a break toward the sound. But his hand closed around her arm, stopping her in her tracks. Rowena started at the feel of his callused palm against her bare skin, his fingers imbued with a more powerful authority than even the badge pinned on his shirt-pocket gave him.

“I know this is hard,” Deputy Lawless said. “But there are plenty of other dogs in the world who need homes. This one is hopeless.”

Rowena pulled her arm out of his grasp. “Even a dog that really attacks someone gets a second chance! This was a mistake! Just a mistake!” Like the ones you’ve been making lately? her older sister Bryony’s voice nagged in her head. “But then, I suppose you’ve never made one before, have you, Deputy Lawless?”

The man glanced away, something sparking in his eyes. Regret? Bitterness? It was gone before she could tell.

“Ms. Brown, I’ve had a very bad day.” He enunciated so carefully she could almost feel black ice cracking under her feet. “Ten minutes before I got off duty I was called to Miss Marigold’s Tea Shop to investigate a burglary in progress. I entered the premises with my gun drawn, and got a door slammed in my face. By a dog who proceeds to smear my uniform with the colored frosting for three birthday cakes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I have to haul Destroyer—”

“Clancy.”

“Whatever. I had to haul that demon dog back to the station so that I could file a mountain of paperwork which made me late to a very important appointment.”

“An appointment for what? The Cruella de Vil Fan Club?”

The man’s jaw clenched so hard, Rowena bet he could have snapped a bullet in two between his teeth. Keep your smart mouth under control, Rowena, she thought. Pulling the man’s chain more than you already have isn’t going to help. Deputy Lawless looked as if he’d gone terminal when it came to a sense of humor.

Rowena strained up on tiptoe, finally seeing a familiar mountain of black fur in what must be some kind of holding cell. Clancy strained to squeeze his muzzle through the bars in an effort to lick the stout man next door who was obviously sleeping off last night’s bender. Her heart twisted, eyes stung. Even here the Newfie was trying to take care of whoever was within reach.

“Ms. Brown, I’m responsible for protecting the people of Whitewater County,” Deputy Pompous said, as if she were a recalcitrant two-year-old. “I’ve called the shelter and told them Destroyer is coming.”

Her chin bumped up. “Well, you’ll have to call them back. This is my dog Clancy Brown, Deputy Lawless, and I’ll fight you for him in any court you can name to prove it. And what’s more, I’ll win. Microchips don’t lie.”

“Micro what?”

“Take him to any shelter in the country and they’ll wave their magic wand over him and—bingo!—my name will bleep up on their nifty little scanner screen. Any competent veterinarian can verify Clancy’s identity under oath. If you persist in persecuting my dog—”

“Persecuting?” Lawless scoffed.

“—you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time doing that paperwork you hate, preparing for a case you’re going to lose. Is this unfortunate little grudge of yours really worth spending the taxpayers’ money on?”

Rowena could see the deputy’s control slip another notch. Steely eyes held hers for a long moment in a wrestling match of wills. She didn’t like confrontation, but damned if she was going to back down. Lawless blinked first.

“Fine,” he said at last through gritted teeth. “Take the damned dog. That is, if you’ve got enough nerve to take legal—and financial—responsibility for any damage he causes in the future.”

“Absolutely.” Rowena tried not to think about what her mother would have to say about her promise. But Dr. Nadine Brown’s features swam into Rowena’s consciousness, her mother’s brow creased with all too familiar exasperation. What are you thinking? That’s a legally binding document he’s talking about. You don’t even know how you’re going to pay for the tea shop debacle, let alone the next disaster!

But Rowena would have signed a deal with the devil himself to keep animal control from sticking a needle in Clancy’s vein. The moment she had glimpsed his big dark eyes from behind the bars of the cage in “doggie death row” half an hour before he was scheduled to be euthanized, she’d felt a shock down to her toes. A wild, desperate need to swoop him into her arms, save him.

And that would be different from the way you react to any animal in trouble exactly how? Rowena imagined her sister Bryony taunting.

But Clancy was different. There was something special about this dog. Rowena felt it in her bones. A life he needed to live, work he was destined to do, a future he had to have or else…

“Ms. Brown?” Lawless’ voice snapped Rowena back into the sheriff’s office to face yet another disapproving frown. “I’m beginning a new file on the dog. If he ever gets loose again, I’m going to have him legally declared a public nuisance. And from that point on, I’ll take every step the law allows to see that he’s off the streets permanently. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She wondered if he was smart enough to know she meant it as an insult.

Apparently so. His cheeks darkened. “You’ll have to fill out some paperwork before I can release him.” He checked his watch again, an even deeper frustration darkening his face. “Which means I can pretty much kiss my appointment goodbye. They’ll be closed before I—”

“It’s an appointment,” Rowena fired back, her temper flaring. “People reschedule them all the time, Deputy.”

“Is that so?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. This isn’t the end of the world. You aren’t going to jail because of it. Small children aren’t going to die because of it.”

Whoa! Rowena took a step backward at the rage in Lawless’ eyes. What was she doing, poking him with a sharp stick? Clancy didn’t have his get-out-of-jail-free card yet. Did she want Deputy Whiplash to change his mind?

She swallowed the rest of her anger and reached for the firm tone she used to calm hostile animals. “Listen. Obviously we’re not going to agree on this. Just show me where to sign and Clancy and I will get out of your way.”

The deputy sat down at his desk.

“Couldn’t we let Clancy out first before you whip out his release papers? I hate the idea of him behind bars.”

“And I hate the idea of him back on the street. Looks like we’re both going to have to get used to disappointment. When I open that cell, all I want to see is the door hitting him in his backside. Give me any more time and I might just change my mind.”

Rowena opened her mouth, closed it. Could the deputy do that? Keep Clancy here if Lawless decided to turn stubborn about it? She didn’t know the legalities, but she didn’t dare risk it. She sank down on the chair across from him and turned her attention to something she figured couldn’t get her in trouble, digging the leash she’d brought with her out of her bag.

Satisfied with her concession, Lawless retrieved a set of forms from his desk and began to fill them in. After twenty-some minutes, he shoved them across the desk to her. Taking out her favorite pen, she scrawled her name in bright green ink.

“There,” she said, adding a flourish. “As to the damages and such, you know where to find me if you’ve got any questions about—well, anything. My shop is—”

“I know where it is. If there isn’t a law against building a pet shop across the street from an elementary school playground, there should be.”

Rowena compressed her lips. “If you want to change the law you’ll have to take that up with your alderman or councilman or whatever you have here. But it’s only fair to tell you that they were pretty much thrilled when they heard a new business was coming to town.”

“That was before they knew—”

“Knew what?” Rowena dared him to finish the sentence, even though she could have filled in the gist of it herself. Before they knew some big-city nutcase was moving in. But Lawless didn’t rise to the bait, probably heeding some office policy about insulting the locals only when necessary.

“Never mind. Let’s just get this over and done with.” The deputy pushed himself to his feet and started toward the back of the building, nabbing a set of keys on the way. She followed him, straining to get a better view of the holding cell beyond his rigid silhouette.

Her heart leapt as she glimpsed the Newfoundland busily scratching at the wall to the cell next door, a worried look in those big brown eyes, as if Clancy knew something was wrong with the drunk on the other side. There was no way to tell the dog the human’s problems were self-inflicted. Or that, at the moment, she and Clancy had enough trouble of their own. Still, she couldn’t help but be grateful to the deputy—asshole though he was—for releasing her dog in the end.

“You won’t regret this, Deputy Lawless,” she said, itching to throw her arms around the Newfie.

“I already do.”

Rowena swallowed hard. What could she say? “You’ll never see either one of us again.”

“Ms. Brown, I’m just not that lucky. In fact—wait.” He pressed his fingertips to his temples, closed his eyes in a mock trance. “I’m peering into the future…I see…”

“I don’t see into the future,” Rowena cut in. “I just feel—” She stopped, cursing herself for a fool. Why did she even bother to attempt to explain her gift? She’d tried it before. But that was what had started the whispering behind her back, triggered the abrupt silences when she walked into a store or passed someone on Whitewater’s streets.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Rowena said, trying hard not to hurt.

“Let’s try and keep it that way.”

“Deputy Lawless, I promise that Clancy—”

Lawless whipped around to face her, his features grim, the keys jangling in his hand. “Listen, lady, I don’t care how many aliases you give that dog. He’s still the same fence-breaking, tire-chewing, steak-stealing juvenile delinquent he always was.”

“He is not!”

“Destroyer!” the deputy called sharply.

In the holding cell, the Newfoundland wheeled away from the wall and leaped up to plant his plate-sized paws on the bars. Eager canine eyes fastened on Lawless, the dog’s bearlike body quivering in excitement as if to say Here I am! Yeah, that’s me, boss! The Newfie’s tongue lolled out of his cavernous mouth in a goofy grin, his giant tail wagging so hard it could have knocked someone out.

Lawless crossed his arms over his broad chest and pinned Rowena with his pointed glare. “I rest my case.”

CHAPTER TWO

ELVIS WAS PRACTICING his pick-up lines again. Not a good idea, when the after-school crowd was due to burst into the pet shop at any moment. The irascible African Gray parrot’s vocabulary wasn’t exactly G-rated, and the last thing Rowena needed was for a mob of angry parents to storm into Open Arms, ready to burn the local witch at the stake.

If they made up their minds to do it there wouldn’t be any problem finding a public official in Whitewater to light the fire. Deputy Lawless would be happy to donate a whole book of matches to the cause of ridding his town of an unsavory element.

Rowena grimaced. Fortunately for her, even the deputy would have a hard time getting a blaze going today. A miserable cold drizzle had been falling all day, leaving the world beyond her front window soggy and gray. That meant there would be an hour of mopping muddy footprints before she closed up for the night. One could hardly expect kids charging in to see puppies and kittens to stop to wipe their feet.

But while they were leaving all of those damp patches on her floor, she’d just as soon they didn’t pick up any colorful language, courtesy of the store’s most incorrigible rogue. She left off cleaning the gecko aquarium and went to fetch the black drape she used to throw over Elvis’s cage to shut him up temporarily. Not that she had much hope her technique would work any better than her efforts to drive Cash Lawless out of her head.

Time and time again in the three days since she’d left the ill-tempered deputy’s office his chiseled features flashed into focus just when she’d least expected it. Those heavy brows, the arrogant jut of his nose, his mouth drawn into a sneer that almost—almost—negated the sexy shape of his lips. Too bad the man had such rotten things to say to her. Her cheeks heated as she remembered him taunting: Wait…just a minute…I’m peering into the future…

Jerk face.

The name a freckle-faced sixth grader had called his classmate in the shop the day before rose in her mind, the label not particularly eloquent, but describing Lawless to perfection, nonetheless.

He’d made it plain what he thought of her. He’d taken all of ten minutes to form his opinion. Less than that, really. He’d had his mind made up even before he met her. But then her “crimes” against Whitewater’s social order reached even deeper than opening a pet shop across from the school, as far as Lawless was concerned. Like far too many of the people in this small town, he would’ve been happy to deem just being different a crime. And if Rowena was anything, she was different.

Rowena swallowed hard, her fingers tightening in the folds of the cage drape. A familiar awkwardness settled over her, inescapable as the plaster dust when Open Arms was a construction site. Self-doubt crowded her.

What if her move here had been exactly the reckless mistake her mother and sisters had predicted? She’d invested every cent of the legacy her godmother had left her, the money that was supposed to be her nest egg. Knowing that safety net existed had been the only thing that had comforted her mother when Rowena had dropped out of vet school last spring.

She closed her eyes, remembering how the painful scene had ended in the wee hours of the morning, once Nadine Brown had realized there was no budging Rowena from the course she’d chosen.

Gray-faced with exhaustion, bordering on tears the cool and capable Dr. Brown never shed, Rowena’s mother had surrendered.

At least you’ll always have your inheritance to rely on, Nadine had said a week after Maeve’s funeral.

About my inheritance, Mom. While Auntie Maeve was in the hospital, we talked about how I should use it. She said it would help me find my destiny.

Your what?

My destiny. She didn’t dare say “soul mate” as the irrepressible Maeve had. Just listen, Mom. I’ve thought this whole plan out. You and Bryony and Ariel are right. I can’t save every stray I run across. But just think how many I could place if I used that money to work in tandem with a shelter, helping rehabilitate rescue dogs and cats, finding them homes.

And you’re going to support yourself how?

I could design all kinds of stuff—collars and bowls—and, well, sell fun pet supplies for ready cash, and I’d keep the pets I’m working with at the shop all day, so I can match them with owners. I know it’s a little unorthodox, but—

A little? her mother had exclaimed. Rowena, I’m trying to understand this. I really am. But it bewilders me that a young woman as bright and talented as you are would fling away six years of education to open a pet shop anywhere, let alone in a town where you don’t know a soul, hours away from your family. And with pets someone has already rejected? For heaven’s sake, why?

A question impossible to answer in a way her mother could understand.

Because I feel right inside when I’m placing rescue pets, and in vet school I felt wrong…

Rowena should have saved her breath. Article number one in the Brown Family Constitution was “logic above all,” mere instinct far too messy. “Rowena’s Voodoo,” her younger sister Ariel called it. Even now, pushing twenty-five, she still made “woo woo” sound effects to tease.

Rowena tossed the drape over the parrot’s cage in an effort to throw Elvis into a make-believe night, hoping that the wily bird would settle down, fall asleep and be blessedly silent.

Not that she had much hope that her ruse would work. Could you arrest a bird for profanity? Public indecency? Corrupting the innocence of a minor? Maybe she’d ask the good deputy, if she were ever unfortunate enough to run into him again.

Her mind filled with eyes that flashed, dark and angry, when she’d told him missing the appointment was no big deal. Talk about overreacting! And yet, didn’t it stand to reason that anyone who worked in law enforcement was bound to be a control freak? At least on some level. And it seemed that the needle on Lawless’ irritation meter jumped right off the charts where Rowena was concerned.

Guilt itched as she remembered the way he had chewed her out, describing Miss Marigold’s despair over her broken treasures. Rowena’s next-door neighbor had been heartbroken. Rowena had been hosing off some cage trays at the back of the shop the night of Clancy’s Great Scone Raid when she had seen the sixty-year-old woman carrying out a big box of something that clinked as she moved. Before Clancy’s escapade, Rowena might have plopped down the hose and hurried over to help, even if the lady did tend to look bug-eyed with alarm every time Rowena said hello.

But this time, Rowena had just stood rooted to the spot as Miss Marigold hauled her burden to where the garbage would be picked up the next morning. The older woman had been weeping, her nose chafed Rudolph-red, her eyes all swollen behind cat’s-eye glasses she’d probably bought sometime during the 1960s.

Rowena had tried to apologize, her stomach as knotted as her garden hose. But before she could get out more than a few words, Miss Marigold had dropped her box with a horrific crash and fled back into the rear entrance of the tea shop, as if Rowena had set an attack dog snapping at her heels.

Rowena had crossed to where the box lay off-kilter on one side. A china tea spout decorated with a motif of peacock feathers lay in the gravel, a teapot lid with a finial shaped like a cat a few feet beyond. Rowena stooped to pick each up, amazed at the delicate work.

She stared down into the box. Lawless had been right about one thing. Even if she did pay for the damages, it wouldn’t matter. She’d never be able to piece her neighbor’s treasures together again.

She’d lifted Miss Marigold’s box into her arms, holding it for a long time, not knowing exactly what to do with it. But somehow in spite of the wreckage she couldn’t leave the broken china for the garbage man to take. Instead she’d stuck it in her back room.

And what are you going to do, oh brilliant one? Wave your hands and say abracadabra? Cast some magical spell that would make the teapots whole again? Now, that would be a gift she’d be grateful to have at the moment.

The school bell rang in the distance, bringing Rowena back to the moment at hand. A parade of delighted faces, kids jabbering and laughing and cajoling their parents to come into the shop just to take a look. She’d done her best to make Open Arms irresistible, and it seemed where Whitewater’s children were concerned she’d succeeded.

At least with all of them except one.

Rowena turned away from the parrot’s cage and glimpsed an all too familiar small figure scowling into the store’s front window. Yes. Her crabby ghost was back again, hovering under the rainbow-striped awning, a few feet away from the door the kid had never once entered. Mousy brown hair was swept into a ponytail, exposing sharp drawn features. Her brow crinkled in aggravation, the folds of a duckling-yellow slicker gleaming from the rain.

The first time Rowena had seen the nine-or-so-year-old girl she’d assumed that the kid’s disgruntled expression was due to the glare reflecting off the window into the child’s eyes. But today there wasn’t a sunbeam for miles and those eyes behind round silver wire glasses still glared into the shop’s interior as if something about the place frustrated her beyond bearing.

Rowena had tried to imagine what could possibly have displeased the child, but she’d been so busy working the kinks out of the shop’s layout that she’d pushed her questions to the back of her mind. But today, the ghost finally shoved Rowena’s curiosity right over the edge.

In spite of the awning’s shelter, the child was trying to keep an adult-sized purple umbrella over her head while she wrestled with a book the size of a dictionary. That was one serious piece of literature, Rowena thought. Wasn’t that monstrosity of a volume a little much for a fourth grader to handle? Surely her ghost couldn’t be reading something that advanced, even if the kid was one of those pint-sized geniuses that made the newspapers now and then.

All business under the wavering shelter of the umbrella, the girl balanced the volume between the pet shop’s window ledge and her tummy and opened the book to one of about a dozen pages marked with scraps of orange construction paper.

Rowena watched the child study what must be pictures of some kind, then raise those too-solemn eyes to peer intently back into the pet shop interior. Frowning in obvious frustration, the disgruntled little girl plunged on to the next marked page, studying the book again. The poor little thing was going to put herself in traction wrestling with a volume that heavy.

Rowena glanced around her store and, finding it empty for the moment, ducked outside. A gust of wind sprinkled her left side with rain, her orange linen tunic sticking in chill, damp patches to her arm. But the little scowler was so intent on whatever she was reading she didn’t even notice anyone approach. Rowena couldn’t help but be amused by the way the kid screwed her face up in fearsome concentration.

“Hi, there,” Rowena said.

The child jumped as if Rowena had just yelled “boo,” the book starting to tumble from her small hands. Rowena made a quick grab for the volume, nearly throwing her back out in her effort to keep the thing from landing in the rain puddle below.

“Whew, that was close,” Rowena said, eyeing the murky pool that covered the bottom inch or so of the girl’s green sneakers. The poor kid’s feet must be soaked.

Stubbornly silent, the child looked up at Rowena with eyes a woodsy color, somewhere between green and brown. Rowena might have been tempted to laugh out loud if she weren’t sure she’d wound the soggy little soul’s dignity. Instead, she tried to lighten the mood.

“You know, you keep scrunching your face like that, it’s going to freeze that way.”

“Grownups always say that. But I never saw a single person’s face freeze. Even the principal’s and he looks grumpy all the time.”

Smiling to herself at the girl’s cranky response, Rowena glanced down at the volume in her hands. “This is some book you’ve got here. It’s almost as big as you are.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” The five-syllable word came so naturally from the child’s mouth Rowena stared. “If the book was big as me I couldn’t carry it at all.”

“Right,” Rowena said, nonplussed. She tapped the book’s spine. “Still, it looks pretty heavy. Wouldn’t it fit in your backpack?” Rowena nudged the olive drab bag slung over the child’s narrow shoulders. “Most of the kids I see around here have pictures of superheroes or Disney princesses on theirs. Yours looks as if you could climb Mount Everest and not have to worry about it splitting.”

She’d hoped to coax a smile out of the little girl. Instead, the child leveled her with a serious stare.

“I’m too young to climb Mount Everest. People freeze to death up there, you know.”

“It was a joke…well, at least it was supposed to be.”

The child peered at her, silent.

“You want to come in out of the rain?”

The child shook her head. A schoolbus passed by, splashing water in an arc that spattered the backs of Rowena’s jeans. She sighed but tried again.

“My name is Rowena, what’s yours?”

“Charlie.” The little girl waited, as if expecting some comment about that being a boy’s name.

Rowena had been teased on the playground because of her unusual name often enough to catch on. “I like it. Your name, I mean.”

“I wasn’t hurting anything,” Charlie said.

“You’re going to hurt yourself, lugging a book this size around,” Rowena observed. She flipped to the cover and read the title aloud. “MacGonagle’s International Expert’s Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds.” She flipped it open to a page, her own eyes crossing at the complex descriptions. “Whoa! You can read this stuff?”

The girl’s lips pursed. “I’m only in fourth grade you know.”

Okay, so the kid did have that fourth grade look-permanent teeth still too big for her face, marker-stained hands from some art project during the day. But her eyes looked far older than they should. Not to mention the child had been studying the book as if she were a zoologist trying to unlock the mystery of some exotic species.

“Do you like dogs?” Rowena asked.

Charlie nodded. “All three of them.”

“You’ve got three dogs?” Rowena asked in surprise. She wouldn’t have guessed it. The kid didn’t have the look of someone who had a pet waiting at home to lavish her with unconditional love. “What are their names?”

“Tiffany and Sweet Pea and Sugar Cookie. But I don’t have them now,” Charlie said softly. “Mommy didn’t like it when they weren’t puppies anymore. She gave them away when they got big and then she’d get another puppy again. After last time, my daddy said absolutely no more dogs. Not ever.” For the first time, Rowena saw vulnerability in the little girl’s face. Charlie caught her bottom lip between her teeth and blinked hard. “Sugar Cookie liked me best.”

Rowena’s blood boiled. Anyone could make one mistake—get a dog that didn’t work out for some unforeseen reason. But to bring home three different dogs and then dump them each in turn when Mom got tired of them…? It seemed Charlie’s parents were exactly the kind of pet owners who abandoned the pets she was trying to save. Charlie had paid the price, too. The heartbreak was still in her eyes.

“So now that your puppies are gone you just look at pictures?”

“Not usually. It makes me sad. But since you moved in here, well, I just have to. It’s driving me crazy.”

Deputy Lawless’ disgust at the shop’s location flashed into Rowena’s mind. She hadn’t considered it from the perspective of a woebegone little waif like Charlie. Rowena laid the dog book gently into the girl’s arms. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“That my shop drives you crazy.”

“It’s the kids at school that make me crazy. They say you’ve got a bear in here. Even my best friend Hope Stone says so. It’s all my little sister talks about. She says she wants to pet the grizzly bear.” Charlie face crumpled in exasperation. “You can’t pet a grizzly bear! They chew people’s arms off. I saw it on Animal Planet.”

Rowena bit back a smile. “I think I caught that show, too.”

“So that big black thing you’ve got in here just has to be a dog. But I never saw one that big. Maybe you could just tell me what kind he is, because this book is getting real heavy.”

“How about if I show you, instead? Would you like to give Clancy a treat?”

“I don’t know…” Longing filled Charlie’s eyes. She leaned her umbrella against the wall so she could check a watch a scuba diver would envy. She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the street. “Can you show me real fast?”

“You bet. I’ll even mark his picture in your book. That way you can prove to the other kids you were right when you go to school tomorrow.”

That offer clinched the deal. Charlie handed her the book, then took a deep breath. She slipped her hand into Rowena’s as she walked through the door.

Rowena smiled as she led the little girl to the playroom where Clancy was tossing a regulation-size football into the air and trying to catch it. His white teeth flashed, and Rowena felt Charlie’s hand tighten its hold on hers.

“That’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.” Charlie swallowed hard, her eyes wide as sunflowers.

“He’s not even full grown yet. You should have seen the first Newfie I rescued. Huey was 200 pounds in his heyday.”

Charlie slid the straps of her backpack down her arms and set the bag on the floor. She stared at the dog, fascinated. “Did Huey ever bite anybody? By mistake? I mean, my head kind of looks like a football.”

“Your head isn’t nearly pointy enough on top,” Rowena said, ruffling the child’s hair. “Besides, you’re far too pretty to be mistaken for that chewed-up mess of a football.”

Green eyes regarded her solemnly. “I’m not pretty. My best friend Hope says she wants the prettiest kitty in the whole wide world for her birthday. People only want the cute ones.”

“People may think they want the cutest one at first. But sometimes I can change the way someone sees the kitty,” Rowena tried to explain. “Make them see the ‘pretty’ in an animal that no one else can see. That’s what I do. I take in animals that other people think are too broken—in their hearts, you know?—for anybody to take home. Then I find somebody to love them.”

Charlie cocked her head to one side. “Doesn’t anybody love him?” She pointed to Clancy.

As a matter of fact, Rowena thought, there were quite a few people who downright hated the poor dog. But Charlie didn’t need to know about how quickly Clancy’s official Whitewater lynch mob was growing.

“Someday, someone besides me will love him,” Rowena said.

“Only if he’s a real good, right? And he never, ever does anything bad again?”

Rowena chuckled. “I certainly hope that’s not how it works or nobody would ever love me at all! I make mistakes all the time. I bet you do, too.”

“Not anymore,” Charlie said soberly. “Except for coming in here when I’m not supposed to.”

“Ah.” A lightbulb went off in Rowena’s head. “So that’s why you never came into the shop before.” For a moment she considered ushering the child out the door. She didn’t need some parent furious because she’d encouraged Charlie’s disobedience. But Charlie seemed so sad, and Clancy’s specialty was making people smile.

Decision made, Rowena gave Charlie a conspiratorial wink. “If this is supposed to be a secret mission we’d better hurry.”

Rowena opened the gate to the playroom. Clancy bounded toward them. “Sit!” Rowena commanded. Clancy dropped like a rock, looking so virtuous she almost laughed aloud. But in spite of the halo Clancy appeared to have fixed over his head, the dog was scooting toward them, ever so surreptitiously, on his butt.

Rowena dug in her jeans pocket for the heartworm medicine she’d tucked in there earlier. Pulling out the packet, she pushed the cube through the foil on the back side of the plastic blister. She put the cube in the little girl’s hand. “Here you go, Charlie.”

Charlie looked from the little block on her hand to a glass jar filled with bone-shaped cookies. She regarded the cube warily. “How come this treat was all wrapped up like that?”

Rowena grinned at the child’s quick intelligence. “I’ll tell you a secret. That’s really Clancy’s heartworm medicine, so he won’t get sick. But it tastes just like a treat.”

“Sure it does.” Charlie grimaced. She bit her bottom lip, her gaze skittering nervously to Rowena’s. “What if he gets mad that I tricked him?”

“He won’t hurt you. I promise,” Rowena urged. “And just think about the story you’ll have to tell Hope tomorrow. I’ll even snap your picture with my camera.” Rowena picked up her old instamatic from the ledge. “It spits the picture out right away. You can take it with you. Would you like that?”

Charlie nodded. “I could hide it in my secret place. That way Daddy would never know I was bad.”

Rowena had had her own share of misadventures as a child, and while she’d dreaded being caught and the punishment that was sure to follow, she’d always been sure she’d be forgiven. There was something darker, deeper in Charlie’s eyes, as if the child was walking on thin ice and waiting to fall through. Thank heavens Charlie’s fascination with the dog ran greater than her fear.

Charlie looked deep into the dog’s eyes then took a step toward him, the cube clutched in her hand. “I know she told you this is a treat, but it’s not,” Charlie said earnestly. “It’s probably going to taste real yucky, but it’ll be good for you.” She uncurled her fingers. “Just close your eyes and swallow it real quick.”

As if he understood every word, Clancy swept the chew into his mouth with one lick of his pink tongue and gulped it down, surprising a laugh out of the solemn child. Rowena snapped the picture, delighted.

“That tickles, huh?” Rowena asked as the dog wagged his giant-sized tail. “He likes you.”

For the first time, the creases in Charlie’s brow vanished, the tightness in her face softened. “I like him, too.”

“Would you like to brush him while I mark that page in your book?”

Charlie nodded. Rowena took the picture the camera spit out and put it aside to develop. She set down her camera and fished a brush out of a basket filled with various grooming supplies on a ledge beside her.

“What kind of dog is he?” Charlie asked, sinking cross-legged onto the floor and starting to brush the dog with long, gentle strokes.

“He’s a Newfoundland,” Rowena said, retrieving the book and leafing through it. “They’re so strong and brave and such great swimmers that they save people drowning in the water.”

“Like taking lifesaving class at the Y?”

“Yeah. But sometimes they can save people even if nobody ever teaches them to. It’s a natural gift.”

“A New Found Land would be a good thing to have if there was a tidal wave.” Charlie stroked the brush through Clancy’s thick black coat. “My watch works underwater. Just in case.”

“In case there’s a tidal wave?” Rowena asked, astonished. “In Illinois?”

“I’m not stupid. I know you can’t have a tidal wave here. But my daddy said he’d take me and my sister to Disney World sometime. There’s an ocean there. It never hurts to be ready, just in case.”

Rowena’s chest squeezed. This poor little mite wasn’t thinking of meeting Cinderella and seeing the castle or going on the rides when she went to Disney World. She was worried about a tidal wave. What had made Charlie so insecure that she was forever thinking of disaster? Did her parents have any idea how scared she was? And what on earth could calm the little girl’s fears?

Charlie put the brush down and rose up on her knees to see the pictures in the book. A Newfie leapt out of a rescue helicopter into a rough sea. A second shot showed the same dog grabbing a rope with its teeth to haul a life raft full of people to shore. Another image captured a swimmer holding on to a dog’s thick tail while the Newfoundland paddled to safety.

“Could your dog do that?” Charlie asked.

“I’ve been working with Clancy on water rescues. I hope next summer his new owner will take him for even more training.”

“You mean he’s not your dog?”

“Not for keeps. See, I always get this feeling about who a pet should belong to. I don’t feel that when Clancy is with me, so I’m just taking care of him until I find him the right home.”

Charlie’s eyes widened, something sparkling in them for an instant before the little girl put the emotion out.

“Somebody’s going to be so, so lucky,” Charlie whispered, slipping her arms around the dog. “You’d never have to be scared if you had him around.”

The child sounded so sure of it, her voice filled with yearning. Rowena felt Charlie’s small hand close around her heart.

Charlie pressed her cheek against Clancy’s side. She gasped. Shyness evaporated. The dread Rowena had sensed in Charlie’s glances toward the door disappeared. “I can feel his heart beat!” Charlie marveled.

Rowena dropped to her knees beside the pair, her intuition singing. “I’ll tell you a secret, Charlie.” Charlie raised her head to peer into Clancy’s face. Clancy tipped his head to one side, examining the little girl bare inches from his licorice black nose, as entranced with Charlie as Charlie was with him.

Rowena’s heart nearly pounded its way out of her chest, the roaring of instinct inside her so loud she barely heard the bell above the shop door jangle behind her.

“Clancy’s been wishing for someone to love him for a very long time.”

“I’d love him,” Charlie’s so-sad eyes brightened, her pale face almost beautiful.

“I know you would.” Caution struggled to surface in Rowena. Don’t get the child’s hopes up…don’t set her up for disappointment…

But look at her, Rowena reasoned. How sad she looks, how small…what kind of a parent would deny such a woebegone little girl a pet who could make her feel safe? Bring her back to joy? If she were my little girl…

But she’s not, her sister Bryony’s voice chided gently.

Rowena tried to stop the words, but they spilled out in spite of her efforts. “It’s obvious you’re a very responsible girl. Maybe you’re old enough to take care of a dog now.”

Charlie shook her head gravely. “My daddy said no more.”

“Maybe when he said that he didn’t realize what a remarkable young lady you’d grow into. Maybe he didn’t know…” Rowena hesitated.

“Know what?” Charlie asked with such hope in her eyes Rowena couldn’t stop herself.

Rowena shoved back the last vestiges of caution as she cupped the girl’s soft cheek, peered into Charlie’s solemn eyes. So deep she could see the child’s soul.

“Do you know what I think, Charlie?” she asked, more sure of what she was about to say than she’d ever been of anything before. “I think Clancy has been waiting for you his whole life.”

“Really? But how-how do you know?”

“He told me.” Whoa, Rowena, she thought. A little too much honesty there. The kind that tended to get her in trouble.

Doubt warred with a desperate need to believe in the little girl’s eyes. “Dogs don’t talk,” Charlie said at last.

“Not like you and I do. But Clancy told you he likes you, didn’t he? His tail wagged. He licked you. And just look at his eyes. He hasn’t taken them off you for a second.”

“Charlie!” A sharp masculine voice from the shop behind them cut through the magical web of understanding between Rowena, Charlie and the dog. They all three jumped, Charlie with a dismayed squeak, Rowena with an oath as Clancy’s massive head slammed into her nose.

The big dog surged to all fours in front of them, instinctively putting his bearlike body between Charlie and the angry man stalking toward them.

“Daddy!” Charlie exclaimed, leaping to her feet as the thundering footsteps on the tile floor drew nearer.

Half blinded by the dog hair in her eyes, Rowena looped her arm around Charlie’s shoulders, hating how stiff they’d become.

Rowena blinked hard to clear her blurry vision. When she managed to do it, she wished she hadn’t.

Deputy Cash Lawless stormed toward her, another little girl in his arms, fury blazing in his eyes.

CHAPTER THREE

ROWENA TRIED TO REMEMBER how to breathe as her nemesis stalked toward them, six foot two inches of angry male. The child in his arms was swathed from hood to shoes in a purple unicorn raincoat, but Cash Lawless looked as if he’d stepped out of his morning shower fully dressed. His dark hair plastered to his head, the angles of his face even more forbidding gleaming wet.

His jacket, caught back by one of the little girl’s legs, had left the front of his body exposed to the elements. His wet shirt stuck to the rippling muscles of a chest so broad he could probably bench press Rowena’s weight without breaking a sweat.

And at the moment, he looked as if he’d like to toss her out of his way, Hulk style, to get to the little girl trembling in the curve of Rowena’s arm.

Cash Lawless was Charlie’s daddy?

Rowena’s mind reeled as she tried to grasp the undeniable truth. This lost, lonely child who had already won Rowena’s heart belonged to the hard-nosed deputy. The man who had a personal vendetta against the dog Charlie loved.

Rowena’s ill-advised words of moments before played mercilessly in her head. She’d built the child’s hopes up, so sure she could make Charlie’s dream come true.

She’d have a better chance of turning Clancy into a cat.

“Charlotte Rose Lawless,” the deputy snapped, “what do you think you’re doing sneaking off like—”

Rowena could tell the instant he recognized Clancy.

“Charlie, get away from that dog!” Lawless ordered. “It’s dangerous!”

“He is not!” Rowena exclaimed, as the deputy’s long stride ate up the space between himself and his daughter.

“He gave me this black eye!”

Charlie nibbled on her lip, a little doubtful. Obviously the black eye had made an impression.

“It was an accident!” Rowena rushed to explain to the little girl. “Clancy just got overly excited and banged a door into your dad.”

“Charlie, get over here right now,” the deputy roared, flinging open the playroom gate.

“Yeah,” the child in the deputy’s arms piped up. “You are in big trouble, little girl.” The mite thrust her hood back from a face straight out of the fairy book Auntie Maeve had sent Rowena from Ireland.

“Do you have any idea what could have happened to you, running off like that, Charlie?” Lawless demanded.

To give the man credit, he looked plenty shaken up. And Rowena tried to remember that, as a cop, he would have seen plenty of examples of bad things happening to children running wild. He had that if-you’re-not-dead-in-a-ditch-I’m-going-tokill-you-myself-for-scaring-me-spitless parental expression Rowena had seen on her mother’s face a time or two.

Rowena searched for something to say, anything to defuse the situation. “We have to quit meeting like this, Deputy,” she said, fighting a ridiculous urge to fold her arms over her breasts. “I’m happy to say, your eye is looking a whole lot less swollen than last time I saw you.”

“Last time we met, you swore I’d never have to see you again.” He slashed Rowena a filthy look above the yellowish bruise shadowing his eye.

Rowena forced a smile for Charlie’s sake. “Funny how life goes. God’s sense of humor, you know. Tell him your plans and—” She sounded like an idiot, but deflecting Lawless’ anger from Charlie to herself seemed like the only option.

Cash reached for Charlie’s arm, but the child shrank back behind the mountain of Newfoundland, evading his grasp. Clancy shifted to block the deputy’s path even more solidly and made a sound low in his throat.

Rowena gaped, as stunned as if the dog had just launched into a chorus of “Who Let The Dogs Out.” That vein in the deputy’s temple throbbed.

“Is that dog growling at me?” Lawless shot Clancy the Stare Of Death.

Oh, lord! Rowena thought, her nerves knotting. That’s just what she needed. Lawless tallying up even more “incidents” to condemn Clancy as a vicious dog.

“You’re upsetting the poor animal, stomping in here the way you did!” Rowena defended. “He thinks you might hurt Charlie!”

“Hurt my own daughter?” Dark eyes narrowed. “The last thing I need is parenting lessons from that juvenile delinquent of a dog!”

“If you’d just quit yelling—”

“I’m not…” Lawless seemed to start suddenly. His voice dropped to something a shade quieter, but no less emphatic. “Yelling,” he finished, his cheekbones darkening.

“Yes, you were, Daddy,” the child with Christmas tree angel curls corrected. “You got to use your indoor voice unless you’re out for recess. Teacher says.”

“Mac, I…”

Rowena raised a brow. What was it with this guy and names? The five-or-so-year-old who looked as if she should be sleeping under a buttercup was named Mac?

Lawless hesitated for a moment, obviously grappling with his temper. “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” he told Mac. Rowena could see just how much effort it cost him to keep his voice below a roar.

He turned back to Charlie, who was clinging to Clancy’s neck as if she really were afraid. Of her father? Rowena wondered. Or of being dragged away from the dog she already loved? The man didn’t look particularly warm and fuzzy at the moment. No wonder Charlie figured Clancy was a better bet.

Rowena could see Lawless suck in a steadying breath. “Charlie, I thought we agreed this place was off-limits.”

“Deputy Lawless,” Rowena said, trying to catch hold of Clancy’s collar before the dog assaulted the officer a second time. “Charlie just wanted to—”

“Sneak away from the car while I was talking to her sister’s teacher? Cross the busiest street in town without the benefit of a crossing guard? Run off to a place I specifically told her not to go? If Mac hadn’t noticed Charlie’s umbrella by the store window I’d still be looking!”

Okay, Rowena admitted to herself. So it did sound like a pretty daunting rap sheet when he put it that way. “Let me explain,” she said. “See, the problem is that the kids at school were saying I had a bear in here. Charlie’s a smart girl and knew that wasn’t possible. So she got this gigantic book of dog breeds to prove she was right, and…well, I’m the one who asked her into the shop. What harm is there in letting her get a closer look?”

That might have been fine, a voice in her head condemned, but you took the child way past “getting a look” and deep into the realm of impossible dreams.

“You know damned well what harm that could do to a lonely little-” Lawless accused, then cut himself off. But not before she saw a flash of self-recrimination in his eyes.

So Lawless knew Charlie was lonely. But why? The child obviously had a father, a little sister and the dog-dumping mother waiting at home. Or was there a mother in the picture after all? Rowena glanced down at the deputy’s ring finger. No glint of gold or telltale white line marked his skin where the ring would have been. Of course, there were plenty of married men who chose not to wear their wedding rings at all. And as for being lonely even in a crowd, Rowena knew from her own childhood how isolated a child could feel, even in a house full of people.

“Isn’t this exactly the reason you opened your shop across from the playground?” Lawless challenged, gesturing to his daughter. “To prey on children and their parents? Con them into—”

“I’m hardly a criminal for wanting to help children find pets! A pet can be the most important relationship in a child’s life!”

“Funny.” Lawless looked her up and down with a glance so scathing it burned her. “I thought that was the parents’ job.”

“Dogs can teach children things they can never learn any other way! How to take care of a creature smaller than they are—”

“Smaller?” Lawless snorted, pointing at the Newfoundland.

“Well, a living being who depends on them, then. Someone they can take care of, tell their secrets to.”

“Someone who tears up the yard, rips up the house and ends up making a hell of a lot of work for the parents? Kids get tired of pets just as soon as the Christmas shine rubs off. So don’t give me the party line, Ms. Brown. I’m not about to fall for it.”

“But, Daddy, if you’d let me have this puppy I’d do everything,” Charlie pleaded. “He’s been waiting for me his whole life!”

“Charlie—” Cash began.

“It’s true!” Charlie burst out. “Rowena talks to animals, and they tell her who they want to love them and, oh, Daddy—” Awe filled the little girl’s voice. “This dog loves me!”

“What the—?”

The deputy’s eyes widened, his mouth twisting in outrage.

Charlie tightened her arms around Clancy’s neck. The dog licked her face.

Lawless looked from Charlie to Rowena, his fury boiling over. “Oh, no, you don’t, Ms. Brown. You tell her the truth, and I mean now! You aren’t some wacko Doctor Doolittle who talks to animals. And that dog should have been—”

Rowena had to give the deputy some credit. Even angry as he was, he managed to stop himself cold before he told Charlie the dog would have been put down months ago if he’d had his way.

“Daddy, Clancy—”

“The dog’s name isn’t even Clancy.”

“Oh, Lord, not that again.” Rowena groaned.

“Its real name is Destroyer, Charlie. And there’s a good reason for that. He chewed the tires off Jeff Jones’s racing bike. He dug up every flower the Volunteer Garden Brigade planted in the park. He just wrecked up that tea shop where your sister had her last birthday party and broke all of that nice old lady’s china.”

“Not my kitty pot that spit tea out his tail!” Mac gasped.

Even Charlie’s eyes widened at the list of Clancy’s transgressions.

Rowena dove in to explain. “Clancy only did those naughty things because he was lonely and bored and wanted attention,” she assured the girls. “He needed a job to do.”

She turned to Lawless, praying she could somehow make him understand. “Working is in a Newfoundland’s blood, and now he’s finally found his life’s work. His…destiny, if you will.” Heat stole into her cheeks at the danger of exposing so many of her vulnerabilities to a man she knew scorned her. “Look in his eyes, Officer,” she pleaded. “When he looks at Charlie, he…”

How could Rowena even begin to describe what she saw in the dog’s expression? Something new, something wonderful, the budding of the nobility of spirit she’d sensed would grow in Clancy once he began taking care of the human he was meant to love.

Once he found Charlie Lawless.

Rowena tried to put it into words the child’s father would understand, feared it was a hopeless endeavor. “Deputy, do you believe in love at first sight?”

“No,” he snapped back so quickly it startled Rowena. Something hard, bleak, tightened the deputy’s face. Then it turned to blistering scorn so quickly anyone but Rowena would have doubted it had been there at all. “Why is it, Ms. Brown, that I’m dead certain you do? Exactly how many times have you done it?”

“Fallen in love at first sight?” Rowena’s cheeks burned even hotter. “Actually, never.”

In fact, she was beginning to think she never would fall in love at all—at least not with anything that walked on two legs instead of four. How many times had her mother warned her that she was so wrapped up in saving everyone else, she’d end up with no life of her own?

Rowena fought back her own doubts and looked straight in Lawless’ eyes. “Just because I’ve never done it myself, doesn’t mean I don’t know it when I see it.”

“Know what?”

“Love, Deputy,” she said, running her hand down Charlie’s ponytail. “Look at your daughter. Before you came barging in here, her eyes were shining. She was absolutely glowing. So happy—”

The officer’s jaw clenched.

“I may not ever have fallen in love at first sight myself,” Rowena asserted, “but give me a little credit. I know soul mates when I see them. Charlie and Clancy were meant for each other. Take him home and I promise you won’t be sorry.”

“Please, Daddy,” Charlie begged softly.

Lawless ran his hand over his close cropped dark hair. “Charlie, you know what I’m up against! I barely have time to take care of you and your sister, let alone a dog.”

Rowena hoped for some defiance, some fight to flare in the little girl. Instead, any spark in Charlie was snuffed out. Charlie was surrendering. Rowena could see it in the child’s eyes. Anger surged through her. “If you’ve got too many things inked into your precious schedule to give Charlie what she needs, then maybe you’d better reconsider your priorities, Deputy!”

“No!” Charlie exclaimed, looking from Rowena to her father in dismay. “No, it’s okay, Rowena. Daddy’s right.”

“No, he’s not!” Rowena exclaimed, feeling the little girl’s desperate need. Knowing in her bones that Clancy could heal her.

Cash Lawless’ lip curled. “Let’s get this straight once and for all, Dr. Doolittle. The day I take that dog into my home is the day they haul me off to the insane asylum and lock me up. What the hell?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Maybe I should let them. Sometimes a quiet cell might be a relief.”

“No!” Mac cried, suddenly tearful, her clinging arms all but cutting off the deputy’s windpipe. “Daddy, no! Don’t go to the ’sane asylum! You promised you’d never go ’way!”

Lawless flinched as if the girl had slapped him. Even Charlie looked ice-white, stricken, though she didn’t say a word.

“I’m sorry, button,” Lawless soothed, obviously appalled at his children’s distress. He tamped down his anger at Rowena to comfort his little ones instead. He stroked a curl back from his daughter’s cheek with a tenderness that surprised Rowena, confused her. “I’m not going anywhere, Mac. It was just a—a figure of speech. A grownup way of saying no.”

“Well, it’s a really bad way!” Mac plumped out a quivering bottom lip.

“It sure is, if it makes you cry. I won’t do it again.”

“Pinkie swear?” Mac demanded, holding out her tiny finger.

Lawless hooked his long, strong masculine finger with his daughter’s. “Pinkie swear,” he repeated, a sheepish flush spreading up his throat as he slanted a glance at Rowena. She didn’t want to feel touched by his gesture. Didn’t want to like him even a little.

Tears welled up in Charlie’s eyes, rolled down the silent little girl’s cheeks to plop on Clancy’s fur. There was something horrible in the resignation on the child’s face. Rowena fought back tears of her own. The child’s heart was breaking. Rowena could see it.

Lawless held out his other hand to Charlie. “Come on, cupcake. Better get a move on or we’ll be late.”

“Late? Again?” Rowena grumbled. “If being late is more important than taking a little time with your daughter, to—to—”

“To what?”

“To soften this for her. To explain…”

Charlie was losing Clancy once and for all and the little girl knew it.

Fury bubbled up in Rowena. “Is your precious appointment schedule more important than taking time to pay attention to your daughter’s needs?”

The deputy’s jaw hardened, his eyes black ice. “Don’t you dare tell me how to run my family! Look at you. Telling impressionable kids you can talk to animals when anyone with a brain knows that’s a bald-faced lie. If that’s how you get your kicks, lady, there’s nothing I can do about it. But tell your bullshit fairy tales to someone else’s kids. Not mine. Got it, Ms. Brown?”

Rowena stared at him, stunned at the rage in his face, the bitterness, an almost…hopeless edge.

Clancy’s worried gaze flickered between the two grownups. He whined piteously.

“Don’t yell!” Charlie cried. “You’re scaring him!”

Cash fell silent. Rowena’s throat closed, aching for the little girl as Charlie turned back to the Newfoundland, stroked him lovingly.

“Don’t be sad,” Charlie pleaded, giving the Newfie one last hug. Clancy looked up at the little girl, his eyes mournful as if he understood her every word. “Maybe Rowena was wrong,” she tried to reassure him. “Maybe you’ve been waiting your whole life for some other girl to love. Maybe you’ll be so happy you won’t even remember me. Maybe…” Her voice choked. Lawless stepped forward, took her hand.

“We’ve got to go, Charlie.” He drew her gently away. Then he leveled Rowena a glare filled with loathing and blame. “Looks like you and that dog have exactly the same M.O., Ms. Brown, bashing around in places you don’t belong. Maybe next time you’ll think about the damage you could do before you go interfering in a child’s life. Unless you like breaking kids’ hearts as much as Destroyer likes breaking china.”

“I didn’t…I mean I don’t…” Rowena stammered, unable to shake the sick feeling the deputy was right. Why hadn’t she listened to the warning in her head? Why hadn’t she been more careful? Waited until she could be sure Charlie’s father would welcome the dog into his home?

Because she’d been so certain this time. She would have wagered her shop, her last dime, her own life that Charlie Lawless and the Newfoundland were a match made in heaven. But now the little girl looked as if she’d been through hell. What use was this “gift” Auntie Maeve had given Rowena if it could make such a painful mistake?

“How could I have been so wrong?” she murmured to herself as she watched Cash Lawless and his daughters disappear beyond the pet shop door.

The Newfie tugged at his collar, looking up at Rowena as if he were sure she would chase after them. As if she could fix things. Make things right.

But she couldn’t mend the damage she’d done to Charlie Lawless anymore than she could make Miss Marigold’s teapots whole. This must be some kind of record, even for you, Rowena chastened herself grimly. Two mistakes impossible to mend. Two broken hearts in a matter of days.

Maybe more, a voice inside her whispered. She couldn’t help but wonder if Charlie had been the only Lawless she’d hurt moments ago. Had she bruised Cash Lawless’s heart, as well?

Absurd. The man didn’t have a heart if he could turn his back on the love in his daughter’s eyes when she looked at Clancy, her desperate need for everything the dog could bring into her life. The dog would always be there when the little girl needed him, would love her even if she made the mistakes Charlie was so afraid of.

Clancy nudged the door with his big head, bulldozed past Rowena to run after Charlie. But it was too late. Through the shop’s big front window Rowena could see Cash Lawless’s forest-green SUV pull away.

Clancy scratched at the door, whining. Did even the Newfoundland sense that he’d just lost his chance to be the magical dog she’d known from the first he could be?

She thought of Charlie Lawless with her tidal-wave-proof watch and little Mac in her sparkly raincoat with the unicorn on its front. And the deputy, their father, with his blasted appointments and his stubborn loathing of the dog that could bring his daughters such joy.

She wanted to hate him, and yet…he’d seemed so strong, so gentle, when he’d tried to soothe his daughters’ fears. Solid in a way that surprised Rowena.

She hadn’t expected that kind of tenderness. Not from Cash Lawless. Not when he was so angry, so harried, obviously so upset.

You promised you’d never go ’way… Mac’s cry echoed through Rowena, wringing her heart.

So somebody had left the little girls. Their mother? Rowena couldn’t help but wonder. But why? Death? Divorce? No, not divorce.

No woman would leave those beautiful girls by choice. If Miss Marigold was still speaking to Rowena, Rowena could just slip through the gate and ask her. Those bug eyes beneath the lenses of her cat’s eye glasses had a knack for ferreting out top secret information the CIA would envy. The old woman was a more reliable source than the library archives when it came to unearthing town gossip. But Miss Marigold would welcome Attila the Hun and his barbarian hordes into her beloved tea shop before she would Rowena.

Clancy scrabbled at the door and whined again.

So, now what are you going to do? Rowena asked herself. Sit down and cry? What good will that do Charlie and Clancy? You didn’t go into this business to give up. Just think of all the matches you’ve made over time. How many people refused to believe you knew what was best for them where a pet was concerned. What makes this time any different?

Cash Lawless.

There was something about the deputy that unnerved her. Irritated her. Confused her. Made her feel restless inside, the way she did when her intuition hit the ‘on’ switch, hard. But just because the man rattled her nerves was no reason to give up.

“Damned if Cash Lawless is going to make a quitter out of me!” she resolved aloud. “I have to make this happen. For Charlie. For Clancy.” She grimaced wryly. “So I can get some sleep.”

Because she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, now that she’d made that perfect match—it would churn inside her, keep her awake. Until she settled Clancy in that house it would make her half crazy—

Only half crazy? Deputy Lawless mocked in her mind. Lady, you’d rate certifiable in any psych test I can name.

Terrific, Rowena thought. Now I’ve got him talking in my head, as well. As if Bryony and Ariel and Mom and Auntie Maeve weren’t enough.

Don’t be fobbing me off, you cheeky lass, the old Irishwoman’s voice whispered in Rowena’s memory. It’s important work I’ve given you to do. Rowena’s palm tingled with cold, as if she could still feel the imprint of the tin whistle her godmother had pressed into her hand. No one else in the wide world but you can do the task you’ve been given. This pipe, Cuchullain’s own, holds the power to charm all broken creatures’ hearts.

“But what about my heart?” Rowena sank to her knees and hugged Clancy tight, sudden loneliness wrapping around her. She found so many ways for other people to give love. Had put so many pets in other people’s arms. She’d never once found one her gift told her was destined to fill her own.

Temptation nudged her. Maybe Clancy could stay. Be her dog to love and come home to and laugh over.

No. Much as she loved the Newfoundland, he’d never be as happy with her as he would with Charlie. He wouldn’t have a child to tend, to watch over, to guard. Never have the chance to wash away a little girl’s tears with swipes of his big pink tongue.

Clancy was Charlie’s miracle. Charlie’s chance. And somehow Rowena was going to make certain the child and the dog got to realize every bit of the magic she sensed would blossom between them.

No matter what Cash Lawless had to say about it.

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE WAS A PINK concrete poodle in Cash Lawless’s front yard.

Rowena shifted into Park in front of the tombstone gray house at 401 Briarwood Lane and stared out her van window. She blinked hard in disbelief, but the statue was still there.

For an instant Rowena wondered if Charlie was wrong about her mother giving the puppies away. Maybe the deputy had put a hex on the poor things and turned them into lawn ornaments. In fact, maybe the statuary-cluttered yard was the reason Charlie was so scared of making mistakes. One pouf and the poor kid could be condemned to spend eternity like the Asian-inspired turtles balancing shell-crackingly heavy pots on their backs.

Truth was that if someone had constructed one of those games where you matched the house to the person who lived there, this would be the last place Rowena would have connected to Cash Lawless’ picture.

No iron bars across the windows, no dungeons to lock helpless stray dogs in. Okay, so maybe the dungeon thing was an exaggeration, as Charlie would chasten her, but the idea of Cash Lawless in this modernistic nightmare was almost as ridiculous.

No question about it. With all the gorgeous vintage houses and charming cottages in Whitewater, the deputy had chosen the ugliest place of all.

And as for the yard he was so worried about Clancy ruining—Rowena figured the dog would be doing the neighborhood a favor if he dug a hole big enough to dump those creepy sculptures in.

Rowena switched off her engine and sucked in a deep breath. Okay, she told herself in her most reasonable tone, let’s get real here. The deputy’s lack of taste shouldn’t be distracting you this much. It’s not like anyone is forcing you to live in this place. The bottom line is you’re stalling.

She heard Clancy snuffle from the backseat in agreement. Rowena glanced back at the dog, who tossed his beloved football over the back of the seat. It landed in her lap as if to say, “it’s your play, quarterback.” Unfortunately, the whole sports analogy wasn’t a helpful one. It rekindled the memory of when Rowena was a kid and her far more competitive sisters sank to bribery to keep her off their teams.

“That doesn’t mean I’ll screw this up, too,” Rowena reassured Clancy.

After all, she’d argued the dog’s way into the Lawless household a jillion times the past week and a half. Composed and discarded speech after speech in her head, as she worked in the shop or designed artsy new dog bowls or sifted through broken pieces of pottery. She’d hoped she wouldn’t find the kitty teapot Mac Lawless had loved amongst the rubble. But there was no mistaking the deliciously snooty feline face captured on one of the fragments of china.

Unfortunately digging out all the shards of the cat, then trying to superglue them together, proved to be an exercise in frustration. She ended up with the cat’s butt fused to her fingers and could have sworn the blasted critter smirked at her.

She’d mourned Miss Marigold’s teapots more than ever after that. She adored whimsical designs, things to surprise smiles out of people when they least expected it. Like the birdhouse Rowena had hung outside her kitchen window: a cat with a red-checkered napkin tied around his neck, a fork and knife clutched in his paws and his mouth wide open, forming the hole for the bird to go in.

That was the problem with the Lawless house. It had absolutely no sense of humor or wonder, an astonishing fact in light of the concrete poodle. The only thing vaguely human about the place was a straggly marigold at the bottom of the stairs.

Rowena rolled down the van’s back window just enough to give Clancy a bit of fresh air then climbed out of the car. “Wait here, pal,” she said, straightening her clothes. She’d dressed sedately—at least for her. Black slacks, a sunshine yellow jacket she’d bought at an art fair and earrings she’d made herself out of art deco-era buttons. Best to look like a respectable member of society when she told Cash Lawless how to run his life, she thought with a wry smile.

She climbed up the steep flight of stairs and made her way toward a front porch that caught the light in spite of the dismal house paint. The windows and doors were wide open, as if the house was gasping to drink in some of the beautiful September day beyond.

But Rowena hadn’t even reached the door when she heard something that raked her nerves. Sounds coming through the screen. A child sobbing.

“Hurts, Daddy!” Mac Lawless wailed. “You always hurt me!”

“I know.” Cash Lawless’ rough-edged voice answered. “I know it’s tight, honey, but it’ll loosen up if you just—”

The hairs on the back of Rowena’s neck stood on end. What in the world was he doing to the child?

“I hate you when you hurt me!”

“I hate myself.” Lawless said with fierce feeling. “But damn it, Mac, I won’t stop. Got that? I’ll never give up. Never. Now come on, sweetheart! Open your leg and—”

Rowena’s stomach clenched with outrage at the child’s tears, terrified at what might be happening behind the gray walls. Dread overpowered caution. Without stopping to think, she wrenched the screen door open and plunged in. Stripped down to a sleeveless white T-shirt and running shorts, the deputy had the child pinned on the floor, his big hands curved around her ankles…

“Leave her alone,” Rowena cried, lunging to grab him around the neck and pull him off the child. But Lawless’ reflexes were too good. Before she could get a solid grip he dodged to one side, catching her arm, using her own momentum against her. In a heartbeat she was hurtling over him, Mac’s shrieks piercing the air.

Rowena flailed, kicked, terrified she’d crush Mac, but Lawless controlled her flight. One leg snagged something on a side table, the sound of glass shattering in its wake. Rowena caught a glimpse of something glittery, pink just a second before she collided with it.

Cash swore, trying to help her avoid the blow, but it was too late. The object she’d hit careened over from the impact, taking her with it, a horrendous racket making her ears ring. Pain burned under Rowena’s right eye as she struggled to untangle herself from whatever she’d fallen on. But the instant her mind registered the lines and shape of it, her heart slammed to the floor.

It was a wheelchair.

A child-sized, glittery pink wheelchair.

She pressed her hand over her mouth, feeling sick, feeling foolish, feeling like…well…like she was about to be slapped in handcuffs and hauled down to the hoosegow. For breaking and entering. Assaulting an officer. Not to mention vandalizing his property. She stared down at the hideous lamp she’d shattered—well, his really ugly property.

Slowly she shifted her gaze to the little girl she’d been trying to defend. Mac-sized metal braces encircled the child’s tiny legs. Elastic exercise bands and miniature weights scattered the mat rolled out on the taupe carpet. Stuff for physical therapy.

Cash Lawless faced her down like one of her sister Ariel’s bad-cop fantasies, his broad chest heaving, his tanned shoulders sweat-damp, some kind of tattoo smudging his left biceps. He looked disoriented, hunted, his nerves stripped raw as if he’d just gotten up from a torture session on the rack. Maybe he had.

He seemed to shake himself, trying to clear his head. “You.” He pinned her with eyes that were granite-hard beneath spiky black lashes. “What the hell are you doing in my living room?”

For a moment Rowena couldn’t remember the answer to his question herself, let alone form it into a coherent explanation. At least, not with the deputy’s gaze peeling back the layers of her soul that way. She sucked in a deep breath, trying to get a little oxygen to her brain.

“It was Mac…” Rowena stammered. “She was screaming, saying you were hurting her. I could see you bending over her from the door and I…” She faltered, remembering all too well the power in him, the size of him, leaning over the tiny child who seemed completely at his mercy.

Somehow Rowena doubted the deputy would appreciate what her snap judgment of the situation had been. “I, uh…” She shrugged, undoubtedly looking as guilty as she felt. “I thought you…”

His gaze narrowed. “It’s obvious what you thought.”

Obvious and embarrassing. Rowena’s cheeks burned. The man would hate her worse than ever after this. She’d taken Clancy’s chances of being placed in the Lawless household from slim to none in less than twenty seconds.

“What can I say?” Rowena swallowed a lump of defeat. “It’s official. I’m an idiot.”

She glimpsed Mac moving on the exercise mat, pushing herself up to a sitting position and scooting her way over to lean against the wall. At least Mac was able to move her legs, Rowena thought in relief. Still, they looked far too thin, way too frail sticking out from under the ruffle of the glittery purple tutu about the little girl’s middle.

“It’s a very bad thing to hit a policeman!” she accused with a formidable frown. “My daddy’s going to have to ’rest you now. And you’ll get handcuffs on and—Hey, Daddy. That lady’s bleeding.”

“Yes, she is.” Was his voice a little softer, or had Rowena imagined it? The deputy probably came with that whole “if I get quiet be afraid—very afraid” warning Rowena’s mother had.

Rowena’s hand fluttered up to the crest of her cheekbone. It stung, felt a little sticky. Great. She hadn’t just humiliated herself. She’d managed to get cut in the process. She could just imagine trying to explain the mark it would leave behind.

Cash righted the wheelchair. He gathered Mac, tutu and all, in his arms and put her into the seat. There was something heart-wrenching in the big man’s gentleness as he buckled her in, set her feet in their tiny rainbow striped stockings on the footrests.

“Guess I get to stop therapy while you take that lady to jail, huh, Daddy?” Mac chirped.

Cash grabbed the white hand towel he’d looped around his neck, looking as uncomfortable as Rowena felt. “We’ll finish later,” he said. “Head on into your room and watch Dora the Explorer.”

“Watch TV?” If the kid could have danced a jig, she would have. “Before my therapy’s finished?”

“You heard me. Get out of here before I change my mind.”

Completely unfazed by his growl, Mac flashed him a gleeful smirk then wheeled her chair down the hallway. Lawless watched until she vanished into one of the rooms. Silence fell, his utter isolation crushing all the anger out of Rowena.

“I’m…so sorry,” she said.

“Yeah. So am I.”

He turned back to Rowena, but instead of slapping her in cuffs or bellowing at her or any one of a jillion characteristically hostile actions she expected from the deputy she loved to hate, he paced toward her, a bemused expression on his face.

“You’re crazy.” Why didn’t the insult sound nearly as scathing as it should have?

“You should talk to my mother.” She grimaced, then touched her cheek gingerly as her cut stung anew.

Lawless’s eyes narrowed as if he’d just remembered the injury, as well, and he closed the space between them. Frowning in concentration, he grasped Rowena’s chin, tipped her face into the light streaming through the window. With the corner of his towel, he dabbed at the cut.

“Doesn’t look like you need a stitch,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “A butterfly bandage will work just as well.”

“In your expert medical opinion?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. We’re the first responders to accidents. We handle triage until the EMTs get there. Come on back to my bedroom.”

Rowena’s surprise must have shown in her face. She could see the instant he realized what had given her pause.

“I keep the first aid kit on the top shelf in my closet to keep it out of Charlie’s reach,” he explained. “That kid makes boxes of bandages disappear so fast I should’ve taken stock in the company.”

Rowena hated the niggling suspicion he rekindled. Neglected dogs and neglected kids often had the same markers to indicate they were in danger. More injuries than usual were at the top of the clues to look for. “Does Charlie get hurt that often?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

Lawless gave her a long look, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “No. She just has this thing about Band-Aids. She’s always afraid we’re going to run out.”

Rowena remembered Charlie’s big eyes filled with dread as she’d talked about tidal waves. Was there a good reason the girl was busy making disaster plans for their future trip to Florida?

“She seems…very worried for a child her age. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

“You’re right. It’s not.”

She’d hoped for some sort of insight, but she couldn’t exactly blame him for closing up tight. She was a stranger, after all.

“Listen, I should just go,” she suggested. “You’re being a really good sport about this, but you don’t want me here, and after this is little debacle I sure don’t want to be here.”

“You’re not going anywhere until I dress that cut. Move.” He sounded like a drill sergeant, and she doubted he’d hesitate to grab her arm and march her down the hall if she resisted. Instead, she let him herd her down the corridor.

As they passed what must be Mac’s room, the child howled for Cash to adjust the television. Rowena waited for him outside the door, her eyes finding a collage of pictures on the long sweep of wall, family pictures of the girls from babyhood until just a few years ago.

Rowena’s heart ached at the images she saw. Mac dancing in some kind of recital, her fluffy little costume making her look like a plump yellow chick. Charlie and Mac in doll-sized karate outfits. So Mac had been able to walk at one time. What had happened to change that? Rowena wondered. An illness? An accident?

She examined the center shot of the collage—an eight by ten. One of those family holiday pictures Rowena had always dreaded when she and her sisters had gathered at the family brownstone. It pictured the Lawless girls in matching Easter finery on the front steps of the gray house, ribbon-festooned wicker baskets clutched in their white gloved hands. Mac appeared angelic in rose-petal pink while Charlie looked as if the ruffles that made up her collar had developed sharp little teeth that were gnawing into her neck.

Behind the girls, Cash Lawless stood, sexy as hell in a black suit and Kelly-green tie, his crisp white shirt making his tan seem darker, his angular face all the more arrestingly handsome. But in spite of the formal clothes that fit his athletic body to perfection, something primitive glinted in his eyes—as if he were constantly aware danger could be right around the corner, and he’d damned well be ready to meet it.

The exquisitely beautiful woman standing beside him was ice to his fire. Hair blond as Mac’s framed the woman’s face, but she possessed none of the fairy-like charm that surrounded the little girl. Cool, poised and elegant, the woman’s face was reminiscent of a young Sharon Stone, stylish cream pencil skirt and a tailored jacket without a single crease skimming a figure Miss America would envy.

So this movie queen goddess clone was Cash Lawless’s wife.

Rowena didn’t know why the fact should bother her. No doubt it was a holdover from that whole “matching” curse Auntie Maeve had stirred up in her mind so long ago. Making people and animals fit where they belonged.

Obviously Cash Lawless had a strong opinion where Ice Goddess belonged. In his bed, underneath him, fulfilling all those fantasies the woman must have inspired in every other red-blooded man she met.

The kind of hot fantasies Rowena would never inspire. Sighing, she smoothed a hand down her own jacket, realizing the man would be hard-pressed to discern whether she had breasts or not beneath the flowing yellow cloth. Not that she wanted Cash Lawless to notice her breasts, she amended hastily. Or anything else about her except what a perfect pet Clancy would be for his lonely daughter.

Rowena peered again at the woman’s face in the picture, trying to probe beyond the one-dimensional image to the human qualities that ran far deeper. That made the woman a wife, a mother. One who seemed to have disappeared.

Was she the reason Charlie and Mac had seemed so terrified their father would leave them? What had happened to her? To them—the perfect little Stepford family in the Easter picture?

Rowena pulled her gaze away from the image and caught sight of a much smaller photo. It wasn’t one of those perfectly posed varieties. Instead, it looked a bit off-center, a little blurry. Charlie perched high in the forked branches of a tree, bracing a board while her father nailed it to what must be the floor of a tree house.

Rowena scarce recognized the child in the picture as the ghost who’d scowled into her shop window for weeks. Charlie’s eyes sparkled with excitement, her grin so wide and carefree.

Even more amazing was the difference in Cash’s face. Dressed in a faded Police Academy sweatshirt with the sleeves torn out of it, he looked ages younger.

He wasn’t even looking at the camera. His gaze fixed on Charlie’s face as if there was nothing in the world more beautiful to him than his child, or more important to him than this moment he shared with her.

Rowena felt a jab of envy. Making memories, Auntie Maeve had called times like the tree house moment captured on film. Rowena could still remember the spry old woman warning the ever-busy Nadine Brown that such opportunities were fleeting. Once gone, they never came again. Lost in her own wistful memories, Rowena was startled by Cash’s voice when he called out.

“This is taking a little longer than I thought. Head on back. Mine’s the room at the end of the hall.”

Rowena figured she could make a break for it, but if patching her up would make him feel better, she might as well let him. Besides, the man piqued her curiosity more than ever now.

The first two times she’d met him, he’d seemed so hard-edged, almost military in his need to be in control. But today with his disabled daughter, she’d glimpsed cracks in that facade. Saw in the desperation, the determination limning his face along with the sheen of sweat, a sense of isolation that yanked at her heart.

Hurts, Daddy… Mac’s tear-choked voice raked Rowena’s memory. I hate you when you hurt me…

I hate myself.

What must it be like for him? Suffering through Mac’s tears day after day? Realizing that no matter how hard he fought, there were some things beyond his power to control? And that one of them was his daughter’s pain?

Entering the room he’d indicated, she looked around, trying to connect the man to his surroundings. But again, the setting didn’t fit him, his room yawning spaces of emptiness broken up by even more clusters of family pictures that marked places where furniture must have been.

A double-sized box springs and mattress sat on the floor, the bed made up so precisely Rowena could have bounced a quarter off of the simple navy spread. A folding TV tray to one side held a windup alarm clock, yet another ugly lamp and a James Patterson novel splayed pages down somewhere toward the beginning, the one and only thing in the house that actually had a thick layer of dust filming its cover.

After a moment, Cash strode in. “First aid kit’s in the other room.”

She jumped, feeling as if she’d intruded in something painful, something private. “Right. I, uh, was just looking at your pictures. The one of the tree house in the hall is terrific,” she scrambled to explain, trying to break the sudden tension. “I always wanted a tree house when I was a kid. But my mom and dad weren’t big on that kind of stuff. You know, doctors’ schedules, volunteer work, making sure their kids had a jillion after-school activities that would look good on applications to Harvard Medical School.”

What was she doing, telling him stuff like that? Next thing she knew he could ask the six million dollar question—with those family expectations, how did she end up here, in White-water, running a pet shop? Fortunately, he was too distracted by the picture tacked to his wall.

His gaze narrowed and he ran one fingertip over the tree house. “I never finished building it,” he said. “Mac got hurt.”

So Mac’s disability had come from an accident of some kind. Had she fallen out of the tree? Rowena wondered. No wonder he’d quit working on the thing. But it seemed somehow cruel to ask him outright.

“How long has she been in a wheelchair?”

“Two and a half years.”

“Mac’s injuries…what did the doctors say? Are they permanent?”

His eyes blazed. “My little girl will walk again. Got that? She won’t just walk, she’ll dance the way she did when she was three. I won’t let that wheelchair be all she ever knows.”

“No. Of—of course not.” Her chest ached as she remembered Mac in the little ruffled chick outfit, Mac with the purple tutu around her tummy when she’d been doing therapy.

Mac, the little fairy child…everyone knew that fairies had to dance.

“It must have been hard for you…and your wife.” She couldn’t help thinking about the perfect woman in the picture. The deputy’s face went cold.

“Yeah,” he said, scorn dripping from his voice. “It’s been pure hell for Lisa.”

Present tense. So the woman was alive. “Is their mother the reason the girls got so upset in the shop, worried about you leaving them?”

“We’re divorced and they haven’t seen her for months. Is that what you want to know?” he challenged, making her feel like a nosy jerk.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure as hell not. Let’s get that cut taken care of and get you out of here. I’ve got Mac’s therapy to finish.”

Rowena fled into the master bath, its walls stark white, almost painfully clean, nothing on the counter to show a man actually lived here.

She stiffened, startled as Lawless’s big hands closed around her waist, set her up on the bathroom counter as if she weighed no more than a cotton ball. She sensed he must’ve done the same with his daughters countless times. But there was nothing innocent in what Rowena felt in the wake of his touch.

His intensity seared into her, the imprint of his hands still burning as he opened the bathroom closet and stretched up to snag a Gortex bag from the highest shelf.

“Just hand me a bandage,” Rowena said, not sure she wanted him to touch her again. “I’ll get out of here before—” Before you realize you flustered me so badly…

Turned you on, you mean, she forced herself to acknowledge. It’s just a reflex, Rowena. With all that fire, all that passion in him you’re off to save the world again. Cash Lawless might be hard on the outside, but inside, where no one can see, he’s bleeding. And you could never stand for any living creature hurting that way to be alone…

He dampened a corner of his white towel. “This will just take a second.” He cupped her face with his long fingers, dabbed at the cut. Tingles shot down to Rowena’s breasts. The man might not be able to see them with her jacket on, but apparently they sensed him just fine.

He took out some antibiotic lotion, the kid-friendly kind that didn’t sting, and squeezed some onto an Elmo bandage. As he carefully stretched Elmo to hold the cut’s edges together butterfly fashion, his forearm brushed the tip of one nipple. Her breath hissed between her teeth.

“Hurt?” He gave her a concerned glance. She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

Oh, Lord, don’t let him feel how pointy I got…

“Looks like we’ll be even after today,” he said, unexpectedly trailing his fingertip down the side of her face. He had to feel the way her blood suddenly pounded in that tender spot where her jaw met her throat.

“Even?” Rowena squeaked.

“You’ll probably have a shiner come morning.”

A black eye? Rowena thought. That was all he was talking about? At least he didn’t know what that casual touch of his had done to her long-dozing libido. An instant later relief gave way to alarm. Drat. Drat. Double drat. Cash wouldn’t be the only one talking about her eye. Her bruise should be in all its purple glory by the time Wednesday hit.

“Great,” Rowena muttered aloud, pointing to her bandage. “I can’t wait to explain this to my mom when she stops by the shop on Wednesday.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be explaining things to your mom?”

“Heck, no. There’s no statute of limitations when it comes to mom-worry. She’ll be fussing over my scrapes and bruises until I’m eighty.”

“You’re lucky, then.”

She saw Lawless’s mouth tighten and thought of the blond goddess in the picture and his little girls, so afraid of being left by him.

Blast. She’d meant to make a joke. Instead she’d managed to stick her foot in her mouth again.

“Your family lives nearby?” he asked, ironing the emotion out of his face.

“No. Mom’s just swinging by on her way home from a medical conference in Iowa City to check up on me. Perfect timing, as usual.”

He stared at her, and she got that sensation she’d had before, that he was seeing things she’d rather keep hidden. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell the good doctor about your little performance today,” he said.

“My sister Ariel says that fibbing is legal when it comes to soothing mom-worry. Why tell her things that will only get her upset?”

“In this case, she’d have every right to be. Anything could have happened. You charge in here, alone, and try to wrestle me to the floor. I outweigh you by at least fifty pounds. I’m a cop with a temper you know can be dangerous and I’ve made it clear I don’t like you.”

“First impressions are deceiving.”

“Not in my experience.” His gaze skimmed slowly from her wayward curls to her non-existent breasts, then back up to her face as he seemed to consider. “My gut’s almost always right when it comes to getting a bead on someone’s character. A cop’s life depends on it. And on being smart about the risks he takes.”

His eyes darkened for a moment. Rowena wondered if he was thinking of the chances he took every day when he put on that uniform, and about the possibility that his little girls’ worst fears could be realized. Someday he might not come home.

“Is there a single soul on earth who knows where you are right now, Ms. Brown?” he asked.

“Well, um…” Clancy. But she supposed the deputy would say he didn’t count. The dog was smart, but even a Newfoundland couldn’t file a missing persons report.

“I thought not,” the deputy said soberly. “If I had been in the middle of abusing my daughter when you interrupted me what did you think would happen? Did you think I’d just let you sashay out of here and report me?”

“No.” She wasn’t an idiot, after all.

“Didn’t you have some sort of plan?”

“My plan was to stop you.”

“And mine would have been to shut you up, once I knew you’d discovered my secret. The wrong kind of man could have hurt you.” He touched her injured cheek so gently it rocked her to her core. “Could have killed you.”

He was right.

The thought chilled her as his fingers fell away, but she raised her chin, defiant. “What was I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Stand out on the front porch with my cell phone and wait for help to come? I know you think I’m silly or naive or reckless, Deputy, but I’ll be damned if I’d ever stand by and let anybody hurt an innocent little girl like Mac when I’m around!”

His eyes warmed, melting some of the hardness in his face. Revealing bare hints of a far different man buried beneath. “You know what, Ms. Brown? I actually believe you.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But I am.” A perplexed crease carved deep between straight dark brows. “Do you have any idea how many people I see every day who won’t get involved? Something unthinkable happens right in front of their noses, but they turn away, pretend ignorance. Turn up the volume on the TV set so they can’t hear the screams. They’re too busy, too scared or too apathetic to take a risk or even just inconvenience themselves.”

His tone softened, his gaze bound to hers by some fragile thread. Respect? Rowena wondered.

“I’ll tell you this much for certain, Ms. Brown,” he continued. “If either of my girls ever did wander off and run into trouble, I’d hope like hell that you were the one who saw them.”

Rowena swallowed, astonished at just how much his admission meant to her. “Deputy, are you actually saying something nice to me?”

The left corner of his mouth ticked up. “Under the circumstances, maybe you should call me Cash.”

“Okay. Cash.” She fidgeted with a button on her jacket. Bad move. It just reminded her of that whole tingling breast episode. “And what—what are you going to call me?”

“Trouble.” He smiled then. A real barn burner of a smile. For a minute Rowena forgot to breathe. “You know, you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Why did you show up on my doorstep in the first place?”

“Oh, it was nothing much,” Rowena started to hedge, her cheeks burning. Then something in his face made her decide to go for broke. “I just stopped by to convince you to give up your egocentric ways and think about your girls for a change. After all, what’s the big deal about adding a dog to the family?” She grimaced in self-disgust. “I figured maybe I could guilt you into letting Charlie have Clancy.”

“And now?” Something in his eyes reminded her of Charlie, something tender, vulnerable, hurts she ached to heal.

“Now you’ve ruined my whole plan. You’re not a self-absorbed ass. You obviously love your daughters. And maybe—just maybe, mind you—you don’t need me to sweep in here on my broomstick and straighten your priorities out.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Deputy…I mean, Cash…” The name sounded so strange, intimate on her tongue. “I still wish there was some way to…I just can’t help but feel that Charlie needs this dog.”

The words hurt him. She could see his guilt twisting, a sense of inadequacy in this man that stunned her.

“If this was before the accident and Mac wasn’t in a wheelchair…” He raked his hand through his hair. “Hell, I’d let Charlie get a dog. Not one the size of a Shetland pony, mind you. And sure as hell not Destroyer.”

For the first time, Rowena didn’t bother to correct him.

“But you have to see that under the circumstances it’s impossible.” It clearly mattered to him that she see what he saw, understood his reasons. The knowledge humbled Rowena, made her ache to close the distance between them. A distance far greater than this small room. A distance filled with pain she couldn’t heal. Wounds she couldn’t cure. Vulnerabilities he’d never allow anyone to understand.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. It felt so big, so strong beneath her fingers as he looked at her in surprise. Still, he didn’t pull away.

“I don’t believe in impossible,” Rowena confessed, feeling somehow unutterably young.

“Then I envy you.”

She could see from his haunted expression that he really did.

“But Mac walking again…you believe in that.”

“That’s different.” He tugged his hand free, his voice roughening. “She has to walk. If she doesn’t I’ll never forgive myself.” Self-blame twisted Cash’s features, as if there were secrets inside him jagged as broken glass.

“Were you…with her when she got hurt?”

“No. Lisa was driving.”

Driving. So it had been a car accident that injured the little girl. Rowena laid her hand on his arm. “There was nothing you could have done, then. It’s not your fault.”

He wheeled around, banged one fist on the wall. “Don’t tell me what’s my fault and what’s not! You don’t know what happened. Nobody does—” He broke off with an oath as a tense voice sounded from the far end of the hall, running footsteps coming toward them.

“Daddy!”

Charlie. Rowena’s heart sank. The child raced into the room, slammed to a halt, her glasses sliding askew. Charlie gripped her hands together tight as she saw Rowena.

“Oh, Daddy, is it true?”

Rowena felt Cash try to melt the tension in his shoulders, uncurl his fists by force of will. “Is what true, cupcake?”

“Hope says it’s a surprise for me. I didn’t believe her, but she says I must get to keep him. ’Cause why else…” Charlie hesitated, almost as if she didn’t dare put it into words. “But, Daddy, why else would my dog come here?”

Such a wistfulness filled Charlie’s old-soul eyes Rowena wanted to cry.

Rowena saw Cash’s jaw harden in dismay, as if someone had twisted a knife in his chest. She was the one who had put it there.

“Hi, Charlie,” Rowena said softly, sliding down from her perch on the counter.

“My dog. He’s in the car. He—he threw the football right out the window to me.” Charlie nibbled her bottom lip, looking from Cash to Rowena.

“I’m sorry I got you all excited,” Rowena began, knowing the apology could never be enough for the pain she’d caused the little girl or her father. “I just stopped by to…um, apologize to your daddy. It was very wrong of me to get your hopes up the way I did, telling you that Clancy belonged with you. I didn’t understand that…well, that your sister…”

“Oh.” The tentative sparkle of hope vanished. It was as if the sun went behind a cloud. “It’s okay, Rowena. I know. He might knock Mac down, or eat stuff off the kitchen counters or—or run away like my mom did.”

The child was thinking in disasters again. Rowena wondered how long it had been since little Charlie had imagined unicorns and princesses and happy endings all her own.

Rowena hunkered down. She squeezed Charlie’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. For making you sad.”

“Oh, I’m never sad,” Charlie protested, looking at her father in alarm.

“Everybody gets sad, honey,” Rowena said. “I’m sad because what I did hurt you. And your daddy. I never meant to.” She looked up into Cash’s pain-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe you’d better go,” Cash said. He didn’t say “so I can mop up the damage.” He didn’t have to.

She was ready to flee, but as she brushed past him, he caught her wrist for a moment, his hand warm around the fragile skin. She looked up to see his forced smile, his gaze pulling her in. “See you, Trouble.”

Rowena’s eyes stung at the unexpected tenderness in the words. Maybe the most merciful thing she could do from now on was to stay out of Cash Lawless’s way. Because one thing she’d learned for certain by coming to his house.

When it came to trouble, the man had more than enough of his own.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS GOING TO TAKE a hell of a lot of coffee to pry his eyes open this morning, Cash thought as he paced to the counter and grabbed the heart-spattered mug Charlie had painted for him last Father’s Day. But once again, his former partner and current nanny, Vinny Scoglomiglio, didn’t disappoint. The sixty-eight-year-old ex-cop brewed coffee so thick and black and strong Cash was convinced someday some archeologist was going to stumble on a cylinder-shaped object that would be a cup of Vinny-style joe standing on its own, even the mug crumbled away. Yep, after Armageddon, all that would be left were cockroaches, piles of Styrofoam and Vinny’s coffee.

“You look like hell this morning.”

The gravelly voice should have startled him, but he’d grown so used to the old man letting himself into the house at all hours, he didn’t even flinch.

“Right back at you, Mr. Google,” he said, casting a bleary glance over his shoulder. The girls had christened Vinny with that nickname soon after the man had started babysitting them. Cash still wasn’t exactly sure if they’d just massacred the guy’s last name or if the soubriquet came from the fact that Vinny spent every spare moment on the Internet.

Vinny shoved half-glasses up his nose, abandoning his morning crossword puzzle. “I should look like hell. I’m practically dead. Considering all the Jim Beam I drank and the cigars I smoked I expected to be six feet under thirty years ago. What’s your excuse, junior?”

Cash Lawless took a long swallow of coffee, waiting for the bitter brew to do its stuff. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” Lately? More like the past week and a half. Ever since Rowena Brown had walked out the door.

Vinny eyed him like a mother hen with one chick. “Been having those nightmares again?”

Cash’s jaw tightened. He hated the damn things—flashbacks, the counselor the force had sent him to had told him. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances, the woman had soothed. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Except they made him feel like he was caught in a crossfire with his pistol jammed.

“Been a while since one of those sons of bitches laid into you,” Vinny observed, squinting up at him. “Usually happens when your stress ratchets up. Something going on around here that you haven’t told me about? That ex-wife of yours isn’t causing you trouble?”

The very mention of Lisa usually sent a jolt of bitterness and anger through Cash. And yet, it wasn’t his ex-wife’s coolly elegant image that rippled across the surface of his mind today. It was a gypsy of a woman with sunshine hair and blind faith in her eyes, a woman who’d barreled into Cash’s thoughts the way she’d charged into his house, with no thought at all to her personal safety.

Yes, Rowena Brown was trouble, all right. And she’d changed Cash’s understanding of the word forever. Where had she gotten that fire of conviction, the courage that drove her? That fierce belief that she could make things better if she tried?

I don’t believe in impossible…

Cash had to agree it was true. Anyone with half a brain would have known her trip to Cash’s house could only end badly. If she’d actually knocked on the door instead of charging in, he would have verbally lambasted her so harshly for coming near his children again that her ears would still be ringing.

She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have a chance to convince Cash to take Destroyer in.

If that wasn’t evidence Rowena Brown believed in the impossible, then nothing was.

“Hey, there, buddy. I asked you what’s wrong,” Vinny grumbled. “And don’t tell me nothing. I may be old, but I’m not dead yet. I can see something’s eating at you.”

Not a bad description, Cash admitted, though he’d never tell Vinny that. Rowena had been nibbling away at his concentration for days now. He’d remember the heat of her skin beneath his fingertips, the silk of her hair against the backs of his knuckles. The way her pulse had pounded when he’d touched her throat and how she’d gasped when he’d accidentally brushed her breast with his arm. Her gold-tipped lashes had flown wide and in spite of everything—in spite of himself—he’d felt himself hardening beneath the worn cotton of his running shorts.

She’d hardened, too. The tip of her nipple had teased his arm, and she’d looked at him as if he’d burned her. And for a moment, just a moment it was a fire they both wanted to dive into.

He’d almost forgotten how tempting a woman’s skin could be, how tantalizingly different from his own. And for the first time in two years he had ached to sink himself deep into a woman’s wet heat…

Vinny jabbed him with the SpongeBob pencil he was using for his morning crossword, and Cash jumped as if his friend had caught him in the act. Thank God Vinny couldn’t read his mind. “Well? What’s bothering you?”

“It’s a woman.” The confession slipped out before Cash could stop it. Weirdly, just saying it aloud was a relief.

“Thank you, Jesus!” Vinny flung SpongeBob to the table, the big Italian’s face gleaming. “What’d she do? Club you over the head with a baseball bat to get your attention?”

“Actually, she tried to get me in a choke hold. I gave her a black eye.”

Vinny scowled in confusion. “You what?”

“It was an accident,” Cash said, suddenly enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. “But I suppose my reaction was understandable under the circumstances. She was breaking and entering.”

Vinny glanced into his own cup, looking more worried than ever. “My coffee too weak to clear your head this morning, boy? You’re not making any sense.”

“She heard Mac crying through the screen door.” Cash’s amusement vanished in the wake of the memory. “We were working on that new set of exercises her therapist gave us last time.”

“Oh.”

There was no need to say more. Vinny was the only other person besides Cash and Mac’s therapist, Janice Wilson, who knew what torture the sessions could be. It was grim work, strengthening little legs that had been broken, torn and patched back together. Scar tissue clenched the muscle fibers so tight that it was agony to stretch them.

“So what happened then?” Vinny prodded.

“Rowena blindsided me, charging through the door, grabbing me around the neck. A sneak attack on a cop is never a good idea.”

“Not to mention a combat vet. And you’re both.”

There were times Cash would have sold his soul to be in a firefight back in Kuwait instead of on that exercise mat in his own living room. War was hell, but at least he hadn’t been waging it on his own child.

“What the hell was this woman thinking? Breaking into your house that way?”

“Rowena thought I was abusing Mac.”

“Hell, whoever this Rowena is, she was lucky to get off with that black eye! If I’d been here, I’d have wrung her neck for suggesting such a thing. No wonder you’re still seething.”

“That’s the funny thing, Vinny. Once I got the picture, I wasn’t mad. I…liked her.”

“Liked her? This…hey, Rowena-now I remember that name! Isn’t that the same dame you were wanting to ride out of town on a rail a few weeks ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“Vern Hendersen down at the gas station went in her shop—his old lady made him, just to get the scoop after that smash and bash at the tea shop everybody was talking about.”

Just as Cash had figured, the tale of the tea shop had leaked to the public and then some. A story like that was just too damned funny to most cops to keep to themselves.

“Vern says this Rowena person won’t last long around here. In Whitewater, a dog’s a dog. You can get everything you need for one at the Fleet and Farm. Folks around here are too smart to waste their money on those fancy big city gewgaws she’s got in her windows.”

“You’re probably right,” Cash agreed. And yet, now some part of him would be sorry to see her go.

Vinny swore under his breath in frustration. “Hell, when you said you weren’t sleeping because of a woman, I thought maybe some female had stirred you up. Ain’t been using your dick for much besides holding up your underpants for the past two years.”

“For Cripe’s sake, Vinny. I hope you don’t talk like that around my kids!”

“Like what?” Vinny said, looking injured. “Working around here, my mouth’s cleaner than the insides of most people’s washing machines! So this woman—she didn’t flip up your light switch?” The ex-cop looked nosy as an old maid, eager to get some tasty tidbit of gossip.

Cash pretended ignorance. “My what?”

“Never mind.” Vinny heaved a sigh. “If I have to explain, it didn’t happen. No chance you might actually get laid.”

The image that sprang into his mind made a body part far lower than his head throb—Rowena Brown spread out across his bed while he set out to discover exactly what feminine curves lay underneath that loose yellow jacket she’d been wearing. Somehow the fantasy only made stark reality worse.

“Exactly when am I supposed to get laid?” Cash demanded. “In between Dora the Explorer and putting dinner on the table? Or maybe I could squeeze it in between Mac’s therapy and her time in the swimming pool? I could just lock the kids in the bathroom and go at it right here on the kitchen table. Hell, Vinny, even if I did feel like having sex, no woman in her right mind would have me. One look around here and any sane person would run the other way.”

“You can’t be sure about that.” Vinny crossed his arms over his barrel chest and shot Cash an appraising look. “There’s no denying you’re pit bull mean and you’ve got an ugly mug on you, but you never can tell what’ll get a woman’s motor running.”

Cash chuckled, trying not to wince as a pain jabbed behind his left eyeball. He resolutely ignored it. He didn’t have time for a migraine. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.”

“So this woman. She tried to beat you up and then…what?”

“She tried to convince me to let Charlie have a dog.”

“A dog, eh?” Vinny didn’t look nearly as aghast as he should have. He picked up SpongeBob, rolling the pencil between his fingers until it settled between two like the cigars he’d had to give up after his heart attack. “A dog might not be a bad thing, kid. Little Miss Charlotte spends an awful lot of time squirreling herself away in hidey holes. Last Thursday it took me forty-five minutes to find her. She was asleep up in that tree in the backyard.”

“Asleep up there?” Cash exclaimed, visions of trips to the emergency room dancing in his head. “She could have fallen—broken her neck!”

“Not that girl. She lashed herself to a branch with a chunk of rope. Said she read sailors did that sometimes when a killer storm blew up at sea—well, they lashed themselves to a mast instead of a branch, but you get the drift.”

He did. Far too well. And the image of his little girl up in her unfinished tree house alone hurt him.

“She’s too damned quiet for such a little thing, Cash,” Vinny said.

“Her mother abandoned her. Her sister’s in a wheelchair. What do you think she should be doing, Vinny?” Cash fired back. “Turning cartwheels?”

The ice pick jabbed behind his eye again. He went to the kitchen cupboard and reached for the bottle of pills on the top shelf. He shook one into his palm and slammed it back with a gulp of coffee. He knew Vinny had seen the prescription bottle. The older man’s voice softened.

“I’m just saying it might not be such a crazy idea-getting a dog for around here,” Vinny said. “If it would make Charlie happy.”

“The dog Charlie wants is the size of the girls’ playhouse and has the manners of a boatload of Vikings bent on pillage. Exactly where would you suggest we put the dog once I get Mac up on crutches? One fall could tear out the screws that are holding her femur together. And then—”

“Alright! Alright! I get the picture.” Vinny held his hands palms up in surrender. “But wouldn’t there be plenty of time to worry about that if…” He stopped dead midsentence and looked away.

“If what?” Cash challenged.

Vinny met Cash’s gaze with reluctance and very real love. “MacKenzie isn’t up on crutches yet.”

“And maybe she never will be? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Fury blazed in Cash, turning the ice pick to fire.

“Cash, I—”

“If that’s how you feel, maybe you shouldn’t be watching the girls. I can’t afford any negativity around here that Mac might pick up on.”

Hell, Cash thought, he sounded like a first-class jerk. Vinny Scoglomiglio had saved his life in the chaotic weeks after Lisa had bailed on him and the girls. His friend had stepped into the role of nanny like a Mary Poppins in combat boots, taking on the mysterious woman-jobs of hair braiding and Barbie playing and birthday cake baking with Cash’s daughters.

Okay, so the cakes were heavy as rocks, but they were homemade. Cash had almost humiliated himself by breaking down when the kids had surprised him on his birthday with his favorite German chocolate cake. Vinny and the girls had made it from scratch, using the recipe Lisa had left behind.

“I’m sorry. I’m an ungrateful bastard, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never set foot back in this kitchen,” Cash said, voice low. “But I hope you will.”

“And miss the sour look on your face when you take that first drink of my coffee in the morning? No way. Can’t shake me off that easily, boy. There’s a new tuna casserole recipe I clipped out of the Sunday paper I’m dying to try.”

Cash felt the throbbing in his head start to ease. “Glutton for punishment, huh?”

“Stayed married for twenty-six years. Be married still if Dolores hadn’t divorced me. If that’s not proof, what is?”

Cash laughed. “I always wanted to meet Dolores so I could thank her for that. If she hadn’t served you with the papers, you’d never have quit the Chicago force, never have left the city and come here.”

“Fate.” Vinny said succinctly. “You know, I never was much use to my own kids. Working long hours, drinking away whatever was left, trying to drown out the pictures that inner-city hell painted in my head. I’m damned grateful to have a second chance, you know? To be something better to your kids than I was to my own.”

“I was lucky as hell when I drew you as partner.”

“Got stuck with the burned-out alcoholic, you mean.”

“You were off the bottle by then.” Cash remembered Lisa’s reaction to the news when she heard it from one of the other deputies wives—that Cash had drawn the short straw, gotten the screw-up from the big city. They’d fought about it for hours. Truth was, Cash had volunteered to take Vinny on. Something in Vinny’s face had made Cash trust the older man, first with his own life and later with the lives of his daughters.

“Bookmakers wouldn’t have given me very good odds when it came to staying clean. Smart money would’ve been on the chance I’d get you killed.”

“I placed the winning bet. Maybe I used all my luck up on that. What if there’s none left for Mac?” The doubt slipped out. He met Vinny’s eyes.

“Luck will have nothing to do with whether that little girl of yours walks or not. MacKenzie is your daughter, Cash. Stubborn as hell. She’ll come through fine either way, no matter what happens. You’ll see.”

“Mac has to want to walk. But Janice says I can’t—can’t make her…”

Vinny’s smile braced him. “Then Janice doesn’t know you as well as I do, does she?”

Cash wished to hell he could be sure Vinny was right. There had been a time when Cash believed he could conquer anything. No battle was too tough, no challenge too great. He’d been a marine. His body tough and trained. His will invincible.

He’d taken on the Iraqi invaders with an almost suicidal belief in himself, defeat not a possibility in his world.

How odd to think Rowena Brown felt the same thing, especially now, when he’d learned the hard truth about limitations he’d once denied. He envied her that fierce ability to believe. In healing. In hope. In the future.

There were times Cash didn’t believe in anything anymore.

Not even himself.

NIGHT SHIFT STANK.

Cash slugged down the last of his tepid coffee from the Quick Mart and tried to keep his eyelids from caving on him. Not much going on in town—a few fender benders, a disturbing the peace call and a report that half a dozen kids were partying at Mose Dillon’s abandoned boathouse down by the Mississippi.

No booze this time—at least, not where Cash could find it. But they had stockpiled enough illegal fireworks to start a brushfire if a stray spark had fallen on the dry leaves starting to blanket the ground.

Another deputy might have hauled them all in, but Cash and his five brothers had gotten into more than their share of mischief when they’d been that age. So he’d done his best to scare the shit out of them and followed their car to the place they were supposed to be staying overnight. He’d been relieved to see Jimmy Parker’s mom in the window, probably demanding to know where the boys had been. Last party ol’ Jimmy would be hosting for awhile, Cash had figured.

But as the rest of his shift crawled by, Cash’s week’s worth of insomnia started catching up with him until he was bone tired and bored as hell. And one thing he knew from years on the force: anybody—even a deputy—asleep at the wheel was a very bad thing.

Cash turned down Main Street on his patrol, looking over the row of buildings across from the school. The pet shop was still closed. Not that he’d expected Rowena Brown to open the shop for a blue light special on catnip at five in the morning, but from what he’d seen when he’d started his shift, she’d closed up the shop early the night before.

Not that it mattered. It was just that a cop needed to know the natural rhythm of the neighborhoods he patrolled. Yeah. The whole street lay quiet, Rowena’s shop dark and shut up, Miss Marigold’s kitchen window glowing in the corner of the tea shop. From what Cash could tell, the older woman slept as rarely as he did.

His cell buzzed—the ring tone set to the theme from Dragnet by Mr. Google himself, the techno whiz, when Cash hadn’t been watching. Damned if Cash could figure out how to change the ring back.

Frowning, he scooped up the phone and hit the talk button.

“Lawless here.”

“Miss me, candy ass?”

Vinny. The Italian’s jovial voice told Cash it wasn’t an emergency.

“I miss you all right. Like a toothache.”

“You never write, you never call. Yada, yada, yada.”

“What the hell are you calling me for in the middle of the night? I’m working, you know.”

“More like you’re about to fall asleep, and I’m saving your butt again, junior. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to keep you on your toes.” Vinny chuckled. “Quiet night, huh? Been listening to the scanner.”

“Not much happening.”

“Good, because you’re going to have to be ready to party down when you drag your sorry ass in come morning.”

“Party?” Cash echoed. “I didn’t miss a holiday…or a birthday—no. Charlie’s isn’t for months. What’s up?”

“Can’t say for sure. Big secret. The girls are up to something for sure.”

“What girls?” Cash asked tiredly.

“Mac and Charlie. You know. Your pride and joys. The fruits of your loins. Your—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. My girls. But both of them? Doing something together?”

“You got it, dude.” Cash could almost hear Vinny grimace. “Damn. I’ve got to quit watching those Mary Kate and Ashley reruns with Mac.”

“You made them, right? I mean, Mac and Charlie. Play together.”

“I know I’m brilliant, but I can’t take the credit. Charlie came up with this one all on her own—whatever this one is. I’m not quite clear about specifics. She had Mac in the corner whispering away the minute they came in from the bus, then out they go to Mac’s playhouse. Tight as two ticks on a dog all evening. Even begged me to let Mac sleep in her room with her. Figured it couldn’t hurt. Charlie’s got that extra twin bed in there. Hope it’s all right with you.”

“No. I mean, yes. That’s fine.”

“It’s a hell of a lot better than fine. It’s a goddamned miracle if you ask me. Checked on ’em an hour ago and they were sleeping like angels. Charlie even insisted on leaving the window wide open so Mac could see the stars.”

“Did she?” Cash felt a stirring of hope. One of the things Cash had hated most in the past two years was how his girls had grown apart. Charlie played with her sister out of duty now instead of love. Nothing could hide the wall that had grown between the girls or the fact that Charlie would far rather be alone.

“So they’re playing together,” Cash said. “That’s good, right? So what’s worrying you?”

“Nothing. Just wanted to give you the heads up. Had to swear in blood not to set foot in the playhouse or it would ruin the surprise.”

“So why didn’t you sneak out back before you hit the couch and see what they’re up to?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Vinny’s dead seriousness made Cash crack a smile. “That cross your heart, hope to die bit is serious stuff. You want to stick a needle in your eye? No sir, Deputy Lawless. I don’t think so.”

“I see what you mean. But I didn’t swear, so maybe as soon as I get home, I’ll phone in to the Sheriff’s office, have them stake out the playhouse.”

“Might be a good idea.”

He could hear Vinny yawn. The nights Mr. Google stayed over to watch the girls had to be hard on the older man. Stubborn cuss insisted on sacking out on the couch instead of using Cash’s bed. Vinny said the couch kept him from getting too soft.

“Go to sleep, old man.” Cash said with gruff affection. “I’m awake now.”

“Good. I’m heading in to check on them one last time right now. Their father is a real pain, you know.”

Cash heard the hall floorboards creak.

“Hey, Cash?”

“What?”

“It was fun watching the girls today. All that bustling back and forth, bowls and plates of food and such. Don’t be eating any donuts on your way home. Probably have a heck of a tea party out there before they’ll let you go to sleep. The works, you know? Stale bread and grape jelly and a bottle of pickles.”

“I can’t wait.”

“It’ll do your heart good to see them…happy, you know?”

Happy…

That was one emotion that had been in short supply at the Lawless house for quite awhile.

Hell, Cash didn’t care if they’d used up a week’s worth of peanut butter sandwiches and he had to take a handful of Tums to tamp down the heartburn he’d get from eating all those pickles. If he could just see his little girls smile…

The way they had before their whole world had shattered.

The way they had before they’d learned the truth. That their daddy couldn’t protect them from the ugly things out there in the world. That their mommy wouldn’t always be there to tuck them in at night.

Sometimes there really were monsters under the bed.

And even daddies could be afraid.

“Listen, buddy,” Cash said. “I’m going to sign off now.”

Cash heard Charlie’s bedroom door squeak, and put oiling the hinges at the top of his to do list.

“See you when you get home,” Vinny whispered. “Charlie kicked the covers off again. They’re lying in a heap by her—sonofabitch!”

In a heartbeat, the world on the other end of the phone erupted. Vinny roared, a bloodcurdling cry of pain, the girls’ startled screaming buried in the sounds of a horrific crash.

Cash’s belly turned to ice.

“Vinny?” Cash yelled into the phone. “Vinny! Talk to me! What the hell’s going on?”

Vinny didn’t answer.

The cell went dead.

CHAPTER SIX

CASH’S TIRES SQUEALED as he turned down Briarwood Lane, his radio spitting static. He’d tried three times to connect to the house by the land line as he’d sped across town, but the relentless busy signal had ratcheted up his alarm.

“Got a 9-1-1 from your house, Cash,” his radio warned through bursts of static. “Can’t get much out of Charlie—she’s hysterical—some kind of intruder. Cash, Vinny’s down.”

“Shots fired?”

“Not that we can tell. Help’s on the way. Wait for backup.”

“Like hell I will! My kids are in there.”

He swerved into the driveway and slammed on his brakes. He was out of the squad a heartbeat later, sprinting up the stairs to the front door.

He tried the door. Locked tight. Not the point of entry. But hadn’t Vinny said Charlie’s bedroom window was open? Cut the screen, then—bingo—an intruder was in. He keyed the lock, opened the door, making no sound, but the living room was empty. Whatever was going on, the action had moved deeper into the house, where he couldn’t see it.

He clenched his teeth against the sound of Mac’s panicked wails, along with the scream of the sirens in the distance. Sounds he’d heard on instant replay in his worst nightmares. He crushed the instinct to rush to his daughter, knowing surprise was his best weapon.

Cold sweat broke out on Cash’s body as he edged his way toward the hall, his pistol drawn, held at the ready.

The noise was coming from Charlie’s room. He crept toward it, back against the wall. Just outside his goal, he paused, readying himself to wheel into the doorway, draw a bead on whatever lowlife scum was in there.

His trigger finger itched, fury and fear warring in his belly as he counted in his head. One, two…three.

Ten years of instinct and combat training kicked in as he swung around, filling the door.

“Freeze! Police!” He shouted. His pistol barrel swept the room. Glimpses of Charlie, Mac, Vinny flashed past.

Vinny’s leg bent at a gut-churning angle where it should have been straight. Broken, Cash assessed with a combat vet’s skill. Charlie huddled in a ball, her back against the bed. God, no. Had she been hit? Sonofabitch, Cash would kill the rotten bastard.

“Cash!” Vinny’s voice, woozy as hell. “Put that damn pistol away. You’re scaring the kids.”

“The perp—” Cash snarled, everything feral in him wanting blood. “Where is he?”

Was Vinny actually smiling? A sick smile, a weak one. “Under the bed.”

Hell, Vinny was right. The surface of Charlie’s twin bed tilted wildly askew, even the headboard off the floor. It was moving…

Did the jerk have a gun pointed out at the room? Was that why the kid was shrunk up so tight in the corner?

Cash approached the suspect, every sense on alert. “You—scum bag—slide out from under there,” he ordered. He kicked the teetering bed savagely with his boot. “You mess with my kids, I’d as soon shoot you as look at you.”

“No!” Charlie shrilled, diving between Cash and the suspect.

Cash blanched, his daughter suddenly lined up in his pistol sights. He swung his pistol upward, so it was pointing at the ceiling. “Charlotte! Get out of the way!”

“Don’t shoot, Daddy! It’s my fault!” she screeched wildly.

His gaze locked on his daughter, Charlie’s face splotched red and white, soaked with tears, her whole body shaking under her Monkey Shines pajamas.

Mac wailed, scrabbling toward him across the floor, flinging her arms around his leg. “Pick me up, Daddy! Pick me up! Charlie sneaked—”

Sirens blared to a halt in front of the house. Backup, arriving at last.

“Damn it,” Cash ordered the perp again. “Get out from under that bed before I forget I’m a cop!”

The bed shuddered, the intruder still blocked from view by fallen comforters, scattered stuffed animals and Charlie’s quivering form. “Hands where I can see ’em.”

“He can’t put his hands up,” Mac said. “He doesn’t got any.”

The front door slammed open, the rush of footsteps thundering toward them.

“What?” Cash asked.

“The bad guy gots paws.”

“Paws?” Cash echoed, bewildered as his fellow officers stormed in.

“Lawless,” Evander’s voice broke in. “Where’s your perp?”

The mass of covers twisted, a face nosing its way out into the open through the loop of Charlie’s arms.

“Holy shit!” Evander swore as the perp dropped his weapon of choice. A chewed-up football plopped out of his mouth. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Destroyer,” Cash growled. He holstered his gun as the Newfoundland peered up at him with shame-filled eyes.

THERE WAS NO DENYING IT any longer. Clancy was gone.

Rowena sank into her desk chair and buried her face in her hands. She’d searched everywhere, scouring the streets from the moment she’d realized the Newfoundland had somehow escaped her fenced-in yard. She’d been so sure she’d find him—or that his stomach would win out over the adventure of wandering at will and he’d show up at her door, his pink tongue hanging out, his tail wagging and that sorrowful expression he got when he’d done something he knew was wrong. Head drooping, peering up from under his eyelashes as if begging forgiveness.

But two days had passed and hope was running thin.

“Maybe I should call Animal Control,” she thought, then canned the idea of asking them outright. Surely Mindy, the girl Rowena channeled her rescues through, would recognize Clancy even without scanning for his microchip. Mindy would call her, and then…

Then what? Wouldn’t the humane society have to enter in their logs somewhere that Clancy had, once again, darkened their doorstep? And what if they weren’t the people who picked Clancy up? What if a patrol car saw him “running at large” and nabbed him? Cash Lawless had warned Rowena at the Sheriff’s office that first day that if Clancy got one more strike against him, he’d be out.

Rowena swallowed a lump in her throat.

God, why had she taken Clancy with her to the Lawless house? Let the dog see Charlie again? Ever since that day, the Newfoundland hadn’t been himself. He’d carried his mangled football with him everywhere, barely putting it down to eat. An anxiety behavior if Rowena had ever seen one. She’d worked so hard to obliterate those from Clancy’s repertoire. But for some reason, Clancy’s encounter with Charlie had brought the dog’s insecurities flooding back.

Restless, whining, never settling down, Clancy behaved as if he knew as well as Rowena did how wrong things were with the solemn-eyed little girl and felt as if he should fix them.

Surely it wasn’t possible that the dog…what? Rowena brought herself up sharply. Logged on to Map Quest when she wasn’t looking and found Charlie Lawless’s address? Then had Shakespeare the cat boost him up over the fence so he could navigate the streets of Whitewater and knock on Charlie’s door?

Right, Rowena. Get real. There was no way Clancy could find the place, even if he wanted to.

And yet, it was as if the 175-pound dog had just vanished in a puff of smoke.

But she couldn’t spend another day trolling the streets, looking for him. She had a shop full of other animals that needed to be cared for. A business that had to be open if it was going to bring in any money. And, as Rowena often told the pets who clamored for her attention when she needed to be restocking shelves and such—dog biscuits weren’t free.

Rowena crossed to the nearby sink and splashed cold water onto her face. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror and tried to paste on a smile to fool any customer that happened by.

Not that she had been able to fool her mother into thinking everything in Whitewater was going as smoothly as Auntie Maeve had predicted the last time Rowena and Nadine Brown had stopped by the hospital room before the Irishwoman had died.

Rowena winced, remembering her mother’s reaction, one that had only grown fiercer than ever since Rowena had moved to the town where her godmother had predicted her soul mate was waiting for her. Whitewater, Illinois… Maeve had said, pointing to a River Road tourist pamphlet someone had left in a magazine. Rowena, that is where you will find him…

Nadine Brown had blustered her protest the whole way home, and in the months that followed. My God, Rowena, Maeve believes in fairies and the banshee and—and Santa Claus, for all I know! Building your whole future on the ramblings of a senile old woman is insane, no matter how much you love her!

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