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Renee—Shawna’s vegetarian runaway sister, Raine remembered—would have looked like any other thirteen-year-old girl poised on the threshold of womanhood. Had it not been for the terrified look in her Bambi brown eyes.

“Are we going to jail?” Gwen asked, casting a nervous glance toward Jack. Raine watched her place a hand on her bulging stomach in unconscious protection of her child. “I don’t want to have my baby in jail!”

Her high tone wavered toward hysterical, making Raine hope that the stress of the day—a day that already seemed forty-eight hours long—wouldn’t have the teenager going into labor anytime soon. At least if such an unfortunate event were to happen, having Jack O’Halloran along might prove useful. Weren’t all cops trained to deliver babies?

“Of course you’re not going to have your baby in jail,” Raine assured her, not honestly knowing anything of the kind. If looks were any indication, the child appeared ready to give birth to a ten-pound basketball at any moment. “By the way, when are you due?”

“In two and a half weeks.”

“Oh, well then,” Raine said airily, “you’ve plenty of time. After all, first babies are always late.” She was certain she’d heard that somewhere.

“But he’s already dropped.”

“Mama Ida said that’s normal with a first baby,” Shawna reminded the younger girl. “It’s called lightening, remember?”

“As if,” Gwen scoffed. “I still think that’s a dumb thing to call it, because the baby hasn’t gotten any bit lighter,” she complained. “And I sure won’t mind if he decides to come early, though I don’t want him born in any jail cell.”

“You don’t have any reason to worry about that,” Raine said again. “Because none of you are going to jail.”

“Then where is the sheriff taking us?” Renee asked, speaking up for the first time.

“It’s Lilith who’s in jail. Sheriff O’Halloran was kind enough to offer to drive us to Hurricane Ridge to bail her out.”

“Lilith’s in jail?” Renee’s eyes got even wider.

“I’m afraid so.” Raine sighed. Although she should have grown used to her mother’s antics by now, it wasn’t always easy playing grown-up to Lilith’s adolescent rebellions. “Apparently she got in a little trouble in the park, and—”

“I told her that she’d never get away with it,” Shawna broke in knowingly. “I warned her that the rangers would spot those fires, and as soon as they did, they’d catch her prancing around naked.”

“You knew what she was planning to do?” Raine asked.

“Oh, sure. Like I said, it was part of an old druid ritual. Or Celtic, or something like that. Anyway, she invited me to come with her, but Mama Ida put her foot down.”

“Good for Ida.”

“To tell the truth, Mama Ida didn’t have to object all that hard,” Shawna said with a grin. “Taking off my clothes and dancing around in the woods would be like, totally pathetic. Not that Lilith is pathetic,” she said quickly, as if belatedly realizing she’d just insulted their savior’s mother. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know what you meant. And you certainly showed more sense than Lilith.”

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Jack, who’d remained quiet during the conversation, murmured.

Although she might criticize her mother, Raine was not about to let anyone else. Especially a man who’d broken her taillight. Vowing to make him pay for any extra damage charges Hertz might add onto her credit card, she turned toward him.

“What did you say?”

Before he could answer, he was distracted by a sudden sound that seemed to be coming from his shirt. One that didn’t resemble any beeper she’d ever heard.

“Damn.” He pulled off the road and cut the engine. As Raine watched in amazement, he pulled a small plastic device from his shirt pocket. “Wouldn’t you just know it,” he growled. “The damn thing took a shi—” He glanced back toward the girls. “Needs the litter box cleaned out,” he amended.

“Is that what I think it is?” Raine asked. His hand dwarfed the green plastic egg-shaped gadget.

“It depends on what you think it is. If your guess is a damn electronic cat, you’d be right on the money.”

“I see.” Actually, she didn’t see anything, but Raine was perverse enough to enjoy his obvious discomfort at the situation. “Do you often take your toys to work with you, Sheriff?”

“It’s not mine. It’s my daughter’s.” With a deftness that seemed at odds with such powerful hands, he pressed a button on the front of the toy. “She’s not allowed to have it at school, so I promised her I’d keep the damn thing alive for her.”

“That’s very admirable,” Raine said grudgingly. “Especially since most men would undoubtedly leave any virtual-cat-box emptying to their wives.”

“I probably would, too.” The problem taken care of, at least for now, he jammed the Nano Kitty back into his pocket. “If I had a wife.” He twisted the key in the ignition, bringing the huge engine back to life. “She died.”

“I’m sorry.” Raine was truly sorry his wife had died. She was even sorrier she’d brought it up.

He shrugged as he pulled back onto the road. “It’s been two years. I’ve come to accept it.” His soft, weary sigh was barely audible, but Raine heard it. “Most of the time, anyway. It’s harder on Amy.”

“Amy’s your daughter,” she guessed.

“Yeah.”

Although her mother hadn’t died, Raine knew, more than most, how difficult it was for a girl to grow up without a mother. How it felt to be abandoned by the one person in the world who wasn’t supposed to ever leave you. “How old is she?”

“Six.” This time it was a smile she heard in his voice. “Going on thirty.”

“Ah, one of those children my mother would refer to as an old soul.”

“Or just a kid who’s just had to grow up a little faster than most. Peg got sick when she was still a toddler.”

Raine did some quick mental mathematics. If his daughter was six and he’d been widowed two years, obviously his wife hadn’t died quickly. Sympathy stirred, but suspecting that Jack O’Halloran was a man who preferred to keep his feelings to himself, she allowed the unexpectedly personal conversation to wind down.

As her thoughts drifted back to her reason for being in this truck with him—Lilith in trouble yet again—Raine felt just about as glum as Sheriff O’Halloran looked.

As he drove up the steep and winding road to the Hurricane Ridge ranger station, Jack mentally horsewhipped himself. What the hell had gotten into him? Spouting off about Peg that way?

It was the forced intimacy, he decided. This situation—two people driving through a dark and foggy night, with the rain hitting the roof of the truck—would tend to encourage conversation. Especially after they’d both suffered an exhausting day. It wasn’t anything personal.

That idea had him feeling better for about two minutes. Until he slanted a sideways glance toward his passenger who seemed to have fallen asleep. The flourescent green glow from the dashboard lights illuminated features that, while a bit too strong for conventional beauty, were still damn easy on the eyes. Her nose could have been considered aristocratic were it not for the fact that it tilted up, just a bit, at the end. Her mouth was a tad too stubborn for his taste, but he remembered the way it had softened when she’d asked about Amy and decided it had possibilities.

He watched her lips part to expel a faint, shuddering breath. In sleep, her features softened appealingly. Too appealingly, he considered, forcing his mind to focus on all the unnecessary grief she’d caused him today as she’d wielded the power of the law like a cudgel. No, he decided, more like a dueling foil, flourished with the cool efficiency of those rapiers in the old Errol Flynn flicks that still showed up on late-night cable from time to time.

Efficient she might admittedly be. But cool? Although some might look at her severely tailored suit and cinnamon brown hair and believe that, he’d seen glimpses of another woman. A woman who wasn’t nearly as self-controlled as the lady attorney would like people to believe. The passion surrounding her as she’d stood up for those three girls she didn’t even know, had flared like a newborn sun. After the unsatisfying phone conversations they’d shared before her arrival in Coldwater Cove, Jack had been surprised by the display of white-hot energy. And, dammit, interested.

As he set his jaw and glared out into the dark night, he reminded himself that even if he was in the market for a woman—which he wasn’t—a skinny, mouthy New York lawyer with an attitude the size of Puget Sound and chips the size of Mount Rainier on both shoulders wasn’t his type.

Even as he reminded himself of that, her perfume bloomed in the heat of the car. Unlike the sweet floral scent Peg had favored, this was spicy and complex and caused a disturbing churning deep inside him.

During the last months of Peg’s life, intimacy had been one of hearts and minds rather than of shared bodies. Even in the beginning, before physical lovemaking had become impossibly painful for her, Jack had understood that his wife had needed reassurance that she was still attractive. That he still wanted her. Which, of course he had. But whenever he’d tried to prove that to her, he hadn’t been able to stop from treating her like spun glass, delicate enough to shatter at the slightest touch.

On such occasions he’d pull back, foregoing the earthy passion that characterized their precancer lovemaking. His touch turned more gentle—almost tentative—his kisses gifted rather than plundered, and on more than one occasion when she’d cried out in what he desperately feared might be pain, his body had betrayed him, deflating like a three-day-old balloon.

She had, of course, assured him that she understood, that it didn’t matter. But as he’d lain beside her, feeling like the world’s greatest failure, Jack had known that deep down inside, it did.

After she died, the responsibilities of juggling single fatherhood with the demands of the seventeen thousand residents of Olympic County, who expected him to keep their streets and homes safe, had blotted out all desire for sex.

Until now. When it was returning with a vengeance,

As if sensing his unbidden, unwelcome hunger, Raine opened her eyes just in time to catch him looking at her lips.

Feeling a lot like he had back in junior high, when his mother had caught him sneaking a look at his first
Playboy
centerfold, Jack dragged his gaze back up to hers.

Her eyes were soft, nearly unfocused as they met his, leaving him to wonder if he was imagining the sudden spark of feminine awareness in those gold-hued depths. What would she do, he wondered, if he pulled off the road, yanked her out of that leather bucket seat and plundered her wide, lush lips with his own?

Damn
. He didn’t need this, Jack reminded himself as he pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot. Not now. And definitely not with her.

A
fter instructing all three girls to remain in the truck, Raine braced herself for dealing with her mother. Which, even in the best of times, had never been easy.

“Darling!” Lilith burst into the room in a whirlwind of her usual energy and flung her arms around Raine’s neck. “I knew you’d come rescue your poor abused mother!”

Raine didn’t think her mother looked all that abused. In fact, except for that ugly orange jumpsuit, she looked as stunning as ever. Even more so with the edgy emotion glittering in the midnight blue depths of her eyes. Lilith Lindstrom was a dazzling creature of the moment, a wild child, even at fifty.

“You know I wouldn’t let you spend the night in jail.”

Raine slipped free of this woman who’d given birth to her, this woman whom she’d never understood. Although on some abstract basis, Raine could think of Lilith as her mother, it had been years since she’d thought of her as
mother
. And never, not even in the secret privacy of her own mind, had she ever thought of this radiant, ethereal creature as
mom
.

“You’re such a good girl.” Lilith’s voice was light and sweet and young. Then, as her bright eyes took another, longer look at her eldest daughter, the smile faded and horizontal lines formed in a porcelain-smooth forehead. “Although I’d hoped that living in New York would have taught you a bit more about style. Wherever did you get that unattractive rainwear?”

“You’re not exactly a fashion plate yourself.” Raine’s tone was a great deal drier than the weather. “Shawna told me about the nude dancing. But didn’t you take some clothes with you?”

“Well, of course I did, darling. Surely you don’t think that I’d drive nude on the highway?”

“Quite honestly, Lilith, I never quite know what to expect.”

“Join the club,” the man who’d released Lilith from the cell, muttered.

Cooper Ryan was yet another surprise in a day—and now night—of surprises. Raine knew that a fifty-year-old man certainly wasn’t old, especially these days when the baby boomer generation seemed determined to continue to shatter stereotypes. But she certainly hadn’t been prepared for him to be quite so—well, stunning.

Unlike Jack O’Halloran, whose rugged features appeared to have been harshly hewn from granite with an axe, her mother’s jailer was as classically beautiful as a Renaissance statue. Lines fanning out from riveting blue eyes added character, rather than age, and his dark blond hair was streaked at the temples with silver that somehow added to his patrician appearance. Although she did not consider herself a fanciful woman, Raine had no trouble at all picturing this man strolling down from the heights of Mount Olympus to dabble with the mortals.

No wonder Lilith had fallen in love with this man. The pertinent question, Raine considered, was how on earth she’d walked away.

“Was it absolutely necessary to force my mother to wear prison garb?”

Unfortunately, Cooper Ryan proved to be yet another Coldwater Cove male she couldn’t intimidate. He met her censorious gaze with a level one of his own. “Why don’t you ask your mother that question?”

Raine turned back to Lilith, who was now perched on the corner of the cluttered oak desk, legs crossed, appearing more like an empress granting an audience to a roomful of needy peasants than someone who’d been arrested.

“Well?” she invited.

“It’s quite simple.” As Lilith tossed her head, Raine considered grimly that
nothing
about this woman had ever been simple. “I’m making a statement.”

“I see.” Raine was aware of the sheriff’s faint, annoying chuckle, but refused to look at him.

“I’m a political prisoner. That being the case, I may as well dress the part.”

Oh, good Lord. Would this damn day never end?

“You’re not a political prisoner, Lilith.” Raine bit the words off with exaggerated patience. Another day like this one and she’d have to begin buying antacids by the case. “You were arrested for setting fires outside of a designated campground.”

“It’s Beltane. The fires were necessary. And, as I’ve already explained to Cooper, surely he couldn’t expect me to conduct a nude ceremony in a public campground with unbelievers.” Lilith shot a blistering look toward the Greek god who was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

“I don’t suppose you could have conducted the ceremony with clothes on?”

“Don’t be silly, darling. Clothing inhibits magic. Everyone knows that.”

“Try telling that to David Copperfield.”

“David Copperfield, as talented as he admittedly is, is merely an illusionist.” Lilith lifted her chin. “I’m speaking of real magic, Raine, dear. As ancient as Earth itself.”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to inhibit that.”

Raine momentarily wished that her mother was back in her Greenpeace save-the-dolphins mode. Until she recalled an incident concerning a motorboat and a Japanese tuna-fishing fleet that had nearly caused an international incident.

“But I believe the unofficial report also mentions assault and battery. On a police officer. Not to mention that little charge of resisting arrest.”

“Oh, pooh.” Lilith waved the accusation away as if it were little more than a pesky moth. “The only reason Cooper arrested me was to get back at me for not marrying him.”

“If today’s performance was any example of what you’ve turned out to be, I ought to be on my knees, thanking God that we didn’t get hitched.” From Cooper Ryan’s gritty tone, Raine guessed that Lilith’s barb had hit its mark. “Because we wouldn’t have made it to our first month’s anniversary.”

“You’re undoubtedly right.” Lilith’s answering smile was dazzling. It was also blatantly false. “Since there’s no way I could have possibly lived with an ultraconservative right-wing bully.”

“And there’s no way I would have lived with a witch,” he countered with a flare of heat that nearly took Raine’s breath away. And it hadn’t even been directed at her.

She couldn’t resist slanting a quick glance toward Jack, whose expression told her that for once, they were in agreement. Cooper Ryan and Lilith Lindstrom had left a great deal unsettled between them. Including a surfeit of sexual chemistry that almost had Raine on the verge of an estrogen meltdown herself.

Although there were times, such as now, when she was forced to view her mother as a sexual being, Raine had never liked the feeling.

“I can see you two have a great deal of catching up to do,” Jack said. “If you’d like us to leave you alone—”

“No!” Both Cooper and Lilith spoke as one, at precisely the same time. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then, finally, he gave her a weary go-ahead gesture.

“After the horrid day I’ve suffered, I just want to go home,” Lilith said, trying for an air of martyrdom that fell decidedly short of the mark.

“You’re welcome to her.” Coop addressed his words to Raine. “And if you promise to keep her under control, I’ll drop the charges.”

“You certainly will not, Cooper Ryan,” Lilith spoke up before Raine could answer. She tossed her head with renewed spirit. “I fully intend to see you in court. Where your tyrannical behavior can become public record.”

He shrugged, seeming to decide that further discussion wasn’t worth the effort. “Whatever. I’m sick and tired of arguing.”

“As am I.” She eyed him with what appeared to be honest regret. “I am horribly disappointed at how you turned out, Cooper. Why, you may as well have become a Republican.”

“As it happens, I
am
a Republican.”

“Oh, dear heavens. That’s so tragic. I have half a mind to stage an intervention.”

“If your behavior today was any indication, sweetheart, half a mind might be overstating your qualifications.”

Lilith surprised Raine by laughing at that. Then slid off the desk in a lithe, graceful movement and glided over to where he was still standing in the doorway.

“All the boys in Coldwater Cove used to throw themselves at my feet. And while such groveling was admittedly flattering, absolute adoration can get horrendously boring. But you always were a challenge, Cooper.” She placed her hand against the chest of his khaki uniform shirt. “I’d almost forgotten how stimulating fighting with you can be.”

“Dammit, Lilith—,” he warned.

“Yes, darling?” She went up on her toes and pressed her lips against his grimly set ones.

Although the kiss was brief, if the fevered crimson color rising from his collar was any indication, it packed one helluva punch. Even as accustomed as she was to her mother’s outrageous behavior Raine found herself worrying what Jack O’Halloran might be thinking.

She sneaked another glance his way, instantly realizing her mistake when their eyes met again and a jagged bolt of lightninglike desire shot through her body, all the way to her toes. The only thing that kept her from melting into a puddle right here on the ranger station floor was her impression that the sheriff was every bit as disconcerted as she was by the flare of sexual heat.

The drive home blurred in Raine’s mind. She vaguely remembered leaving the park headquarters with her mother and Jack and, wanting to put a little distance between herself and the sheriff, insisting Lilith sit up front while she took the third back seat for herself.

Lilith grudgingly admitted that Cooper had informed her about the standoff and Ida’s hospitalization and had even checked several times for updates on both conditions.

“That was very considerate of him,” Raine suggested.

Lilith shrugged. “He and Mother always got along. I used to think the only reason she wanted me to marry him was so he could become the son she’d always wanted.”

Raine had no intention of getting into a discussion about her mother’s love life. “Well, whatever the reason, it was still nice.”

Her mother didn’t answer. Silence settled over the interior of the truck. The girls appeared understandably wiped out by their eventful day and even Lilith proved uncharacteristically subdued as they drove back through the rainy, foggy night to Coldwater Cove, stopping once at the Port Angeles McDonald’s for Gwen to use the restroom. Then they were back on the road.

The distance between Raine and Jack precluded conversation. But they didn’t need to talk for her to sense that they were both thinking about that unbidden, stunning moment of awareness.

Unlike her mother, who could still cause grown men to walk into walls, Raine had never been the type of woman to inspire hunger in any man. She’d never wanted to be that type of woman. To her mind, lust involved surrender—of control, willpower, of self. And surrender was simply not in her vocabulary. It never had been, and as far as she was concerned, it never would be.

When she leaned her head against the truck window and closed her eyes, she recalled a dream she’d had sometime during her teens. She and Savannah had been riding in a convertible driven by her mother down a steep, winding mountain road in the rain. The top was down and they were getting soaked. They were speeding around the switchbacks, the car taking on more and more speed, until it was racing downhill out of control.

“Take the wheel, Raine!” her mother, who was now inexplicably in the backseat, called out to her.

“I can’t,” she’d shouted over the squeal of the tires. The convertible was going faster and faster; the rain was falling harder and harder. “I’m not sixteen, yet.”

“Neither am I,” Lilith had shouted back without missing a beat.

Shaking off the memory, Raine sighed. The gray fog formed a seemingly impenetrable wall outside the rain-chilled glass, that had her once more wishing for that sun-drenched beach. The romantic vision she’d experienced in the limo fluttered enticingly back into her mind. Although this time the phantom lover was no anonymous stranger. This time his all too recognizable gray eyes were silvered by the moonlight.

Raine was gazing up at him like a besotted teenager, mesmerized by the lips that were inexorably lowering toward hers, when suddenly she was no longer standing with her lover on a moon-spangled beach, but all alone, knee-deep in quicksand.

No! She squeezed her eyes tight. This was ridiculous! She was not, by nature, an overly imaginative woman. She was an attorney, for heaven’s sake, trained by Socratic method at what was arguably the finest law school in the country. Perhaps even the entire world. Intelligent women who’d spent years studying the strategies of legal thought and argument did not suffer from hallucinations.

As Jack turned off the road onto the long driveway leading up the hill to her grandmother’s house, Raine worried that the stress of the past months may have finally gotten to her. Wondering if this is what a nervous breakdown felt like, she decided she really needed to take that vacation. Three days, she reminded herself. Surely she could stay sane that long.

Since he hadn’t wanted to drag a sleeping Amy out into the rain, Jack had reluctantly agreed to let her spend the night at his mother’s. But only after assuring her that he’d be by first thing in the morning so they could have breakfast together before he drove her to school.

As he entered the kitchen of the ramshackle old farmhouse Peg had begged him to buy before her death, he felt an unexpected surge of anger at his wife. One he hadn’t experienced for months. How dare she desert him? Hadn’t she understood that he didn’t know a damn thing about bringing up a little girl?