Something about Lauren bothered Zach, set him on edge.

She was undeniably attractive. But the polished look about her screamed high maintenance. Pretty to look at, cold to hold.

Still, there’d been no mistaking the heat that jolted through him when he’d met her clear blue eyes or breathed in her fresh scent. Her skin had felt like soft, warm satin, and before he’d pulled back from their handshake, he could have sworn she was trembling. That she’d flinched.

He was accustomed to the reaction. Which was why it had been longer than he cared to remember since he’d held a woman. Why he devoted hours to rebuilding the old fighter plane that was as battered and scarred as he was.

He’d finally found a degree of contentment living in this wildly beautiful, isolate place.

And now Lauren Edwards was threatening that fragile peace….

Dear Reader,

International bestselling author Diana Palmer needs no introduction. Widely known for her sensual and emotional storytelling, and with more than forty million copies of her books in print, she is one of the genre’s most treasured authors. And this month, Special Edition is proud to bring you the exciting conclusion to her SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE series. The Last Mercenary is the thrilling tale of a mercenary hero risking it all for love. Between the covers is the passion and adventure you’ve come to expect from Diana Palmer!

Speaking of passion and adventure, don’t miss To Catch a Thief by Sherryl Woods in which trouble—in the form of attorney Rafe O’Donnell—follows Gina Petrillo home for her high school reunion and sparks fly…. Things are hotter than the Hatfields and McCoys in Laurie Paige’s When I Dream of You—when heat turns to passion between two families that have been feuding for three generations!

Is a heroine’s love strong enough to heal a hero scarred inside and out? Find out in Another Man’s Children by Christine Flynn. And when an interior designer pretends to be a millionaire’s lover, will Her Secret Affair lead to a public proposal? Don’t miss An Abundance of Babies by Marie Ferrarella—in which double the babies and double the love could be just what an estranged couple needs to bring them back together.

This is the last month to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest, so be sure to look inside for details. And as always, enjoy these fantastic stories celebrating life, love and family.

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Another Man’s Children
Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Lauren Edwards stood in the living room of her brother’s rambling log cabin, feeling completely out of place in her panty hose and business suit, and scanned the list her mother had left her.

She didn’t know if she should simply be concerned, or go straight for panic.

For the next week, she would be responsible for her niece and nephew while Sam, her brother, was at work. She adored Jenny and Jason. And she wanted very much to help her brother. She just hadn’t been around the toddlers that much. She hadn’t been around many children at all, for that matter, which was why she’d asked her mom to leave a checklist.

Dubiously eyeing item number two, “Keep out of reach anything that can be stuffed into a facial orifice,” she had to admit she hadn’t considered that their daily routine and the list of dos and don’ts would take up three full sheets of a legal-size pad.

Drawing a breath that brought the scent of burning pine from the stone fireplace behind her, she reached for the handle of her travel bag so she could change into something more comfortable. She was sure it was only because she was still in the process of shifting mental gears that the task ahead of her suddenly seemed so daunting. Only hours ago, she’d been in a meeting in Seattle trying to maintain polite professionalism when what she’d really wanted to do was grin like an idiot because she’d finally made the shortlist for a store of her own.

It was hardly a sure thing, and managing a Brenman’s department store wasn’t going to save a rain forest or cure the common cold, but she’d worked desperately for this promotion. For the past two years, she’d sacrificed evenings, weekends and her social life to prove that she could handle the responsibility—which was why now had not been a good time to tell Andrew Nye, her boss, that she needed to take time off. Andy, who happened to be in line for promotion to the new store Brenman’s was opening himself, lived, ate and breathed retailing. Anyone under him who expected to get anywhere in the company had to regard it as their sole reason for existence, too.

That was undoubtedly the other reason she was feeling less than certain at the moment. Abandoning ship an hour after being told she was in the running hardly made her look like a team player to those monitoring her performance. She could only hope that Andy would be up front with the rest of upper management and make it clear that she’d made arrangements last week to be gone, should anyone ask for her. A person couldn’t schedule family emergencies the way she could a vacation. And her family was in the middle of a crisis that had struck like the proverbial bolt from the blue.

Sam, her older, and only, sibling, had lost his wife in a car accident two weeks ago. It still seemed impossible to comprehend that Tina was gone. But there was no getting past the numbing fact that she was, and that she’d left behind a son, a daughter and a grieving husband. Until yesterday, Lauren and Sam’s mom had been taking care of the children, but Beth Edwards had a job of her own she’d had to return to. Since there was no one on Tina’s side who could help, it was now Lauren’s turn.

That was why she’d spent the last seventy-two hours doing a week’s worth of work before promising Andy and her floor managers that she would be available by telephone day or night and driving in the miserable January drizzle to the dock in Anacortes. From there, she and her car had taken the ferry to Harbor Island, Washington, two hours and a world away from nearly everything she knew as civilization, then driven the five miles from the charming seaport village of Harbor Cove to her brother’s secluded home on one of the island’s isolated inlets.

Her brother had once told her he couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else, which proved just how different they were. They were both city-born and bred. But Sam had apparently inherited the genes of their pioneer ancestors, while her genetic makeup allowed complete adaptation to freeways and cell phones. Different or not, she loved Sam. He’d been her protector when they were growing up, her friend when they’d grown older, and the source of endless encouragement when her own world had fallen apart two years ago. Now, Sam was hurting in ways she could only imagine, and she would do whatever she could to make things easier for him.

Resolved to do her best for his sake, she dropped the list onto the coffee table. Unbuttoning her jacket, she headed for the hall, dragging her wheeled bag behind her. Three steps later, she turned around and picked the pad up again. She was a firm believer in lists and schedules and those sheets were the Holy Grail as far as she was concerned. She needed to keep them intact. That meant keeping them beyond the reach of little hands.

She’d set her instructions on the fireplace mantel beneath the huge wreath of colorful dried pods and flowers and had grabbed her travel bag once more when a heavy knock sounded on the front door.

With a faint frown for the timing, her hand fell from where she’d reached to pull the clip from the tight twist at the back of her head. The only thing her mother had asked of her was that she coax her brother into moving back to Seattle. The only thing her brother had specifically asked her to do was find him a permanent housekeeper and nanny. She thought it might help him if he were closer to family, too, but her coaxing could come later. Since she knew Sam would need more than the week she would be there to tie up his affairs on Harbor, she had placed an ad in the local paper and scheduled interviews days ago.

The first of the two ladies who’d responded wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another ten minutes. But Shenandoah Adams was obviously early.

Rebuttoning the jacket of her tailored black suit and smoothing the few strands of wheat-colored hair that had escaped their confines, Lauren hurried to the door before another knock could wake the baby.

The metal latch clinked as she pushed it in, cold air rushing inside as she pulled open the heavy door. The damp chill raised goose bumps on her skin, sent them racing down her back—and seemed to freeze her welcoming smile in place.

The person blocking her view of majestic fir trees and the sheltered inlet was definitely not the middle-aged, part-time yoga instructor and nanny she was expecting. As her glance moved up a row of buttons on a blue, plaid, flannel shirt, she found herself faced with six feet of obscenely attractive, dark-haired male in denim and a down vest.

His rich sable hair swept back from lean, chiseled features and covered the back of his collar. His cheekbones were high, his mouth firm and he looked more guarded than uncertain when the dark slashes of his eyebrows merged over eyes the same silver gray as the stormy sky.

“You’re Sam’s sister?”

His voice was low, deep, disturbing. The sound of it rumbled through her like the ominous approach of distant thunder as he swept an assessing glance from the sleek style of her hair to the tailored fit of the suit she never would have been able to afford if she’d had to pay retail.

She hadn’t a clue who this man was. But there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he had just mentally stripped her right down to her beige lace bra.

“I am,” she returned, unconsciously crossing her arms. Her brother was big and dark-haired and definitely the outdoor type. She was short, fair and definitely…not. Given those comparisons, she could understand why this man, big and looking like an outdoor type himself, might question the relationship.

Yet it wasn’t confusion or surprise she sensed in him. It seemed more like displeasure.

“And you’re…?” she cautiously prompted.

“Zach McKendrick.”

The sound of his name was as hard as he looked in the moments before his eyes narrowed on her protective stance. He seemed to realize he’d put her on the defensive. Suddenly looking as if that hadn’t been his intention, he forced the edge from his tone. “Sam said you were trading places with your mom for a while.”

“Zach….”

“Sam’s business partner.”

She knew that. The name anyway.

“Look,” he said, his brow tightening again as he glanced at his watch. “I’m in kind of a hurry. Is he here?”

“He went into town about ten minutes ago. To pick up Jason from preschool,” she explained, trying to be helpful. Impatience fairly leaked from his pores, but he was her brother’s partner, a man she knew to be his friend. “Do you want me to have him call you when he gets back?”

“I can’t wait for that. I need a manifest he took.” A muscle in his jaw twitched as his glance slid over her shoulder. “It’s probably in his den.”

There was no denying the tension filling his lean, powerful body as he waited for her to invite him in. It radiated from him in waves, restive, chafing, yet ruthlessly restrained.

Feeling his tension knot her stomach, totally disconcerted by the effect, she stepped back, as much to escape the unnerving sensation as to grant him entrance.

“Thanks,” he muttered and walked right past her.

Her brother’s living room was a large open space with overstuffed leather furniture, rustic pine end tables, braided rugs and a wall of male-fantasy-quality electronics that her sister-in-law had softened by blending the elements with knickknacks and books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Zach’s powerful strides had already carried him past the big-screen TV when she closed the heavy door. By the time she turned around to ask him what a manifest looked like so she could get it for him, he was heading into the hall.

Her first thought was to ask what he thought he was doing. Her second was that this was her brother’s house and, since Zach was his partner, she was hardly in a position to stop the man from going wherever he wanted to go. Especially since he seemed to know exactly where he was headed.

“Don’t wake the baby!” she hurriedly called to the back of his navy-blue vest.

Without breaking stride, he lifted one hand in acknowledgment and disappeared through the first doorway on his left.

Feeling steamrolled, Lauren stared into the empty space.

If anyone were to ask her what she thought of Zach McKendrick, she would be hard-pressed to come up with anything positive, much less anything complimentary. Considering that Sam and Tina had both spoken of him as if he were the salt of the earth, she couldn’t help but wonder what they saw that she was so obviously missing.

Blowing an uneasy breath, she turned from the empty hall. She didn’t really know much about the people in her brother’s life. Their worlds were both so busy and so different. But she remembered Sam and Tina mentioning Zach during holidays at their parents’ home, which were the only times the family had all been together in the last several years. Holidays at Mom and Dad’s were mandatory and nothing short of the Second Coming was considered excuse enough to miss them.

The exception was New Year. They didn’t usually spend that day together. Yet, they had the last one. And, then, there had been no celebration. They had all spent the dawn of the new year in Tacoma, because that was where Sam, Tina and the kids had been visiting her father when Tina had been killed by a speeding driver the day before New Year’s Eve. Because Tacoma had been her hometown, and because her mother was buried there, that was where Sam had insisted the services be held.

Lauren hadn’t seen Zach there, though. She remembered that her brother had talked to him several times on the phone, but his friend hadn’t attended the funeral. She would have remembered seeing him. No woman with a pulse would forget eyes like that.

The thoughts caught her smoothing the folded afghan draped over the arm of the butterscotch leather sofa. Ceasing her restless motions, she crossed her arms to keep from fidgeting. She didn’t want to wonder what had kept Zach away, especially when he could have flown himself in and out of town in a matter of hours. She didn’t want to think about how the bottom had been ripped out of Sam’s world. She especially didn’t want to consider how empty the house must feel to her brother without his wife’s vivacious laugh and bright, cheerleader smile. She just wanted to help.

At the moment, however, all she could do was wait for the man she could hear rummaging around her brother’s desk.

He was an ex-military test pilot. She had no idea why she remembered that just then, but the detail had impressed the heck out of their father when Sam had told him several years ago that he and Zach were going into business together. According to Sam, who rarely spoke in superlatives, Zach had retired from the military and was now the hands-down best bush pilot in the entire Northwest.

The man can set a float plane down in a puddle, her brother had claimed, and take off in winds strong enough to knot a plane’s wings.

Since Sam was a bush pilot himself, a job that had prematurely grayed their mother and probably his wife, that was undoubtedly high praise.

She had also heard that he was divorced. That, she’d learned from Tina because her sister-in-law had once mentioned how often Zach showed up for meals at their house. It had been Tina, too, who had mentioned that the man was like a brother to Sam, which, Lauren supposed, accounted for his familiarity with the house and his lack of hesitation entering it.

“It’s not in there.”

Lauren whirled around from where she stood by the sofa. It didn’t seem possible that a man his size could move so quietly, but she hadn’t heard a single board squeak when he’d walked back up the hall.

With his hands jammed on his lean hips, his wide brow furrowed, he scanned the toy-cluttered surfaces in the room. “Have you seen it?” he asked, not bothering to look at her before turning away to check the credenza behind him. “What I’m looking for is in a file. Manila. Eight-by-ten. There’s a green label on it that says To Be Shipped.”

“I haven’t seen anything like that. Why is this so important?” she asked, leaning down to check through the stack of newspapers, magazines and children’s books on the coffee table. She was more than willing to help. The sooner he found what he was looking for, the sooner he would leave.

“Because we have a pilot who can’t take off without it. We’re losing money every hour that plane sits on the ground.”

His hurried search of the credenza proved fruitless. Though he didn’t swear, he looked as if he were about to when he turned to the kitchen to check the table and counters in there.

“I can’t figure out why he even took it with him,” he muttered, stepping through the doorway. “The man isn’t paying attention to anything he’s doing anymore.”

Lauren’s spine snapped straight. He was talking to himself. Not her. But she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “I would imagine that if Sam is preoccupied it’s because he just lost his wife.”

The sound of movement in the kitchen came to an abrupt halt. In the sudden quiet, she heard nothing but the rattle of a loose vent as the furnace kicked on and the methodical tick of the antique grandfather clock guarding the wall beside the front door. Her heart bumped to that heavy rhythm as Zach’s imposing frame filled the kitchen doorway.

He stood like a dark sentinel, unmoving, ready to challenge. “There is no one more aware of that than I am,” he informed her tightly. “And his preoccupation is only getting worse, which isn’t helping any of us right now.”

“Isn’t it us who should be helping him?”

The quicksilver gray of his eyes turned chill. “I’m doing what I can,” he informed her, his tone heavy with restraint. “I’ve covered for him as much as I can. But I’m not in a position to cut him any more slack.” His voice dropped like a rock in a well. “Until he gets himself together, I’m going to have to ground him.”

Lauren stared in disbelief when he left her standing there to resume his search of the kitchen. She knew that the only things holding Sam together right now were his children and his job. Sam loved to fly. He lived for it. It was all he’d wanted to do since he was five years old. She didn’t understand his obsession at all, but she didn’t have to understand it to know how much of an escape it could offer. No one knew better than she did how pain could be anesthetized by the demands of work. And she was unable to imagine how her brother would cope if his arrogant, insensitive, stone-for-a-heart partner denied him the lifeline his work provided.

The heavy ache in her chest was for her brother as she headed through the kitchen doorway. The pressure behind it was caused purely by the man who’d just managed to push every protective button she possessed.

“I was under the impression you were his friend.”

He stood with his back to her at the white-tiled counter bisecting the high-beamed room. Beyond the counter, the small family room was occupied by an old pot-bellied stove, a round oak dining table, a high chair and a playpen. The side with the modern electric range was bright with hanging copper pots, yellow curtains and Jason’s artwork papering the fridge.

All she really noticed when Zach turned was that he had the nerve to look insulted.

“I am his friend.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

His eyebrow hitched. “Do you want to explain that?”

“If you were a friend,” she told him, more than ready to comply, “you’d be more concerned with how difficult things are for Sam right now than with how his preoccupation is affecting business. You’d be trying to make things easier. Not take away all he has left.” She understood corporate concerns. She also understood that things happened to people and that temporary adjustments had to be made for their circumstances. Even Andy, who often acted as if compassion were spelled with four letters, grasped that concept. Mostly, she understood that a friend did what he could to help. Not hurt. “You might not care about anything but planes and profits, but Tina was everything to my brother.”

Something dangerous washed over Zach’s carved features as he took a step closer to where she’d stopped near the middle of the polished pine floor. He took two more, forcing her to either tip her head back to see his face or retreat.

Every instinct in her body screamed for her to back up. Years of having to claw to stay in place allowed her to hold her ground.

“How do you know what I care about?” His voice was deceptively calm, dangerously so. “How could you possibly have any idea how I feel about anything? We’ve never even talked to each other before.”

The line of his jaw was as sharp as a blade, the cut of his mouth blatantly sensual. She was aware of the heat and tension radiating from his body, the fresh air in his clothes, and the scent of something spicy and decidedly male clinging to his skin. Mostly, she was conscious of the bold male confidence that had allowed him to step uninvited into her space.

Everything about him seemed to taunt, unnerve or disturb her, but she was too concerned about his heartless attitude toward her brother to worry about how easily he overrode the air of calm control she managed to present to the rest of the world.

Her voice low in deference to the child sleeping three doors down the hall, she purposefully ignored the trip-hammer beat of her pulse. “I don’t need to have talked to you before to know what…or who…you care about. I believe you just made it obvious.”

“The only thing obvious is that one of us has no idea what’s going on here.”

“And that would be you.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

In response, Lauren felt her stomach knot. She couldn’t believe she was challenging this stranger. He was ex-military, a jet jockey—a test pilot, she reminded herself, thinking his old occupation spoke volumes about the sort of man he was. He had actually strapped himself into what amounted to an untried, controlled explosion and blasted himself through the atmosphere at speeds that broke barriers she couldn’t begin to fathom. A man like that would have to be utterly confident, disciplined, fearless.

Totally insane, too, in her admittedly unadventurous estimation.

He would also have to believe that he would always come out on top.

That thought threatened to have her add a couple of inches to the charged space separating them. Confrontation wasn’t her style at all. If anything, she was known among the people who worked under her for her coolness under fire, her fairness, her tact. But she didn’t get a chance to wonder at how swiftly this man had stripped her sense of diplomacy. She didn’t have the opportunity to see if he would attempt to defend himself, either—not that she could imagine any possible, plausible reason for him being such a jerk. The soft knock on the front door had her spinning on her heel to answer it.

Zach was right behind her, his footfall unhurried, deliberate. The hair on her neck prickled with the feel of his eyes boring into the back of her head.

She had no idea how badly she was shaking until she reached for the hammered iron latch—and felt Zach’s hand close over her fingers.

The hard wall of his chest brushed her shoulder. With his broad palm covering the back of her hand, his heat searing a path up her arm, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he could feel her trembling.

“I have my reasons for grounding your brother,” he growled, his breath fluttering the fine hair at the top of her head. “And you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.”

Moving her hand, he reached for the latch himself.

“I’ll wait for your brother outside.”

She had taken a step back the moment he’d let her go. As she took another, desperate for the distance, her glance darted up and caught on the silvery and striated scar that covered the entire side of his neck.

The disfiguring injury hadn’t been noticeable to her at all when he’d faced her. From the side, it was impossible to miss. The pale, slick-looking skin ran from under his jaw to below the buttoned collar of his shirt and behind the length of his thick dark hair.

The thought that only chemicals or fire could cause scarring so severe had her wincing when he pulled open the door. Catching her expression, his own went as cool as the air that rushed inside before he sidestepped the startled woman backing up so he could pass.

The muffled “Hi” he offered the lady sounded impossibly civil.

“Hi, yourself,” the waiflike woman replied to his retreating back. Pushing off the hood of her beautifully woven turquoise cape, she watched him take the stairs from the log-railed porch in two strides and jog through the rain to the black truck parked by her pea-green Volkswagen bus.

The nerves in Lauren’s stomach were quivering as she forced her attention from the man who still had her caller staring after him.

“Ms. Adams?”

The woman turned with an inquisitive smile. Her long straight hair was parted in the middle, six inches of gray at the roots and dishwater-blond at the ends. A peace symbol, which Lauren assumed to be an antique, hung around her neck.

“It’s Shenandoah. Like the river,” she explained, her smile fading to skepticism as she eyed Lauren’s suit and heels.

The unexpected had just collided with the unforeseen. Taking a stabilizing breath, Lauren smiled politely and asked her to come in.

From behind the wheel of his truck, Zach watched Sam’s sister give him a cautious glance before she ushered the aging flower child inside. She looked as wary of him as Tina had of the bear he and Sam had found foraging in her garden last summer. Sam’s wife had never much cared for the local wildlife.

It was as obvious as the rain beating on his windshield that Sam’s sister felt pretty much the same about him.

They were even. He wasn’t crazy about her, either.

Blowing a breath, he dragged his hand over his face and sank back in the seat. He couldn’t believe how frustrated he felt. Or how he’d just acted with Sam’s little sister. The frustration he could deal with. Lauren Edwards was another matter entirely. With a schedule that was falling further behind by the hour and more worried than he was used to being about the partner he couldn’t count on for much of anything right now, he had no patience at all for her judgmental attitude.

Or her presence.

He knew Sam’s family wanted him to move back to Seattle. His mother had mentioned it a half a dozen times while she’d been there. Sam had said his mom had even asked if he wanted her to pack some of his things and take them back with her. His sister, Sam had also told him, had offered to find him a place in the city if he didn’t feel like looking himself.

Zach knew Sam understood his family’s concerns about him. But Sam had also confided that he had no idea what he wanted to do, and that the last thing he did want right now was to have to make a major decision. Any decision for that matter. Just getting out of bed in the morning was hard enough.

Zach was infinitely familiar with the numb, almost paralyzed state the mind slipped into to protect itself from feeling too much. He also knew that his friend would have to deal with his family and the changes that were taking place in his life whether he liked the idea or not.

Sam’s sister’s insistence to the contrary, he truly was trying to help her brother. In the meantime, he was having to deal with the ripple effects of Tina’s death himself. That loss affected nearly everything he’d managed to build over the past five years.

With the grim determination that had always served him well, he reminded himself that change was inevitable—and that the Fates hadn’t broken him yet.

It did seem, though, that they wanted to give it another shot. It was entirely possible that his friend could move for the sake of his children. If he did, Zach would lose his business partner.

More disturbing than that, he would lose the closest thing he had here to family.

The thoughts did nothing to ease the tension crawling through him. He needed to move, to pace, but he had no desire to get out of the truck and get drenched. Instead, he worked at a knot in his shoulder and checked the rearview mirror for signs of Sam.

Seeing nothing but the silver drizzle that turned the forest of spruce, hemlock and pine a hazy shade of blue, he glanced toward the rambling log cabin with its wraparound porch and winter-bare window boxes.

There was something more bothering him. Something about Sam’s little sister that added a different sort of frustration to those he was already dealing with.

She had been judgmental. And she clearly hadn’t a clue why her brother’s behavior demanded that he be relieved of certain responsibilities. But those weren’t the only things about her that set him on edge.

She was undeniably attractive. Beautiful, he conceded, recalling the cameo-like delicacy of her face. There was also a polished look about her that screamed high-maintenance. Pretty to look at. Cold to hold. Still, there’d been no mistaking the heat that had jolted through him when he’d met her clear blue eyes, or when he breathed in the fresh, springlike scent clinging to her sun-shot hair. Her skin had felt like satin to him, soft, warm, and before he’d pulled back his hand, he could have sworn she was trembling.

He’d also caught the way she’d flinched when she’d noticed his neck.

He was accustomed to the reaction by now, though some people were less obvious about it than others. What was visible, though, was nothing compared to what wasn’t—which was one of the reasons it had been longer than he cared to remember since he’d held a woman, and why he devoted more hours than he could count to running along the windswept beach below his house, and to rebuilding an old fighter plane that was as battered and scarred as he was.

He dealt with his frustrations as best he could and didn’t look for anything more than he already had. He didn’t want anything in his life that would change the status quo. He’d finally found a degree of contentment living and working in this wildly beautiful place, and that fragile peace was already feeling threatened enough.

The deep-throated hum of a Chevy Suburban had him jerking around in his seat.

Jamming down all of his frustrations for the sake of his friend, he plastered on as affable a smile as he could manage and climbed out into the rain.

Chapter Two

Zach knew that Sam didn’t usually pick up Jason from preschool. At three o’clock in the afternoon, he was usually either on a flight or tackling his end of running the business. Since business was slower in the winter when they didn’t have the summer tourists and adventurers to transport, Sam taking off early to get his son hadn’t been a problem. Not for Zach. But as he watched his partner climb from his red Suburban and acknowledge him with the lethargic lift of his hand, he couldn’t help thinking that everything his friend did now must in some way remind him of the person who was no longer around.

As much as he hated to give Sam’s sister credit for anything just then, he had to admit that she was right. Tina had been everything to Sam. She had driven him nuts with her forgetfulness at times and she’d never been crazy about living in “a nature preserve,” as she’d called Harbor, but they had cared enough about each other to overlook whatever differences they’d had.

The fact that Tina had been willing to put up with Zach dragging her husband off for fishing trips and hanging around for her meat loaf and to play with the kids had made Zach think she was pretty special himself. He’d had the feeling he was special to her, too, in a decidedly brother-sister sort of way. He wasn’t the sort of man who expressed his feelings well with words. Never had been. Never would be. But he was pretty sure she’d known he would have done anything in the world for her and the brawny pilot who’d just opened the back passenger door of his vehicle and ducked his head inside. Jason was back there, strapped in his car seat and no doubt as impatient as he always was to get out now that the vehicle had stopped.

By the time Zach reached the open door himself, the man in the heavy blue parka was backing up with the three-year-old perched high in his arms to keep the kid’s feet out of the mud. A miniature camouflage backpack dangled by a strap from one big fist. In the other, he had a handful of crayon drawings.

Giving his son a little bounce to adjust his weight, Sam glanced toward Zach. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to work on your plane.”

“I’m looking for the manifest file.” Reaching forward, Zach shoved the door closed for him, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the cold winter air. The sharp report was immediately followed by the crunch of gravel beneath their feet as they headed for the shelter of the porch. “I need the one for the flight to Orcas this afternoon. The shipment of pottery T. J. Walker is shipping to the gallery,” he prompted, eyeing the little boy who’d twisted sideways to see him. “Chuck’s ready to take off, but you’ve got it.”

From beneath the lopsided hood of his red parka, the impish Jason gave Zach a smile. The blond little boy with the deep dimple in his cheek held up his hand, palm out.

Zach smiled back. The kid had the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Next to the boy’s little sister, anyway. And maybe their aunt.

“Hey, buddy,” he murmured, mentally frowning at his last thought as he greeted the child with their usual high-five.

“Hey, buddy,” Jason echoed, grinning.

The crunch of gravel gave way to the heavy thud of their boots on steps and porch planks. Beneath the ledge of his dark eyebrows, Sam’s normally keen eyes narrowed in confusion as he halted by the door and wiped his feet. “Why would I have it?”

A two-day growth of beard shadowed Sam’s rough-hewn features. His short dark hair looked as if it had been combed by the wind and there was a faintly pink quality to the whites of his eyes that could have passed for the effect of a bad cold or a three-day binge—except Zach knew his friend only indulged in an occasional beer, and that the dull, listless look had been there for days.

Zach figured it was probably from lack of rest.

Or from tears.

The thought made him shift uncomfortably as he jerked his glance to Jason. “I don’t know why you’d have it,” he replied, giving the kid a playful punch in the shoulder. Now wasn’t the time to tell Sam he probably had the document because his thoughts had been a million miles away when he’d picked it up. That particular conversation couldn’t be rushed. “I saw you put it in the day’s flight file when we were sorting freight this morning. Chuck saw you take a file from the counter just before you left an hour ago,” he expanded, speaking of the other pilot in their hire. “Since that’s the only one missing, logic says that’s the one you left with.”

The confusion remained. “All I took were the invoices I’d told you I’d total.”

“They’re still there.”

Sam opened his mouth as if to say that wasn’t possible. Apparently realizing it was, he turned to the door. With Jason wriggling to get down, he let the boy slide to his feet and pushed it open.

Preoccupied as he was, he nearly knocked over the lady Zach had nearly flattened on his way out a while ago.

Lauren had just reached to open the door when it opened on its own. Taking a quick step back so she wouldn’t get run over, she sidestepped her brother as he walked in.

“Sorry,” he muttered, oblivious to the fact that there was a woman in a turquoise serape on the other side of the tall panel of pine. Concentration creased his rugged, ragged features as he strode past, saying nothing else as he headed for the kitchen.

Jason walked right past her, too, his chin tucked down as he tugged on the zipper of his jacket.

“Is everything all right?” she called after her sibling.

“He’s getting the manifest.”

At the sound of the deep voice in the doorway, Lauren’s heart gave an unhealthy jerk. She’d suspected Zach would be right behind Sam. The thought alone had given her pause. But there was something about the husky sound of his voice and the unblinking way he watched her as he stepped over the threshold that tensed every nerve in her body.

Since she had no intention of letting him know that, she deliberately shifted her focus to the woman emerging from behind the door.

The apology in her expression moved into her voice. “Are you all right?”

The woman, who’d asked to be called Doe, gave her a forgiving smile. “No harm,” she replied softly, tugging the strap of her fringed bag over her shoulder. Hair the texture of fine wire shifted as she glanced from the dark and disturbing man blocking her exit to the child who’d stopped in the middle of the spacious room. Jason was still working at his zipper. “It’s busy around here, isn’t it?”

“Here it is,” Sam called, retrieving the file from the top of the refrigerator. “Hi,” he said to their visitor, looking slightly puzzled by her presence when he spotted her from the kitchen door.

Doe appeared as sympathetic as she did uncertain as she offered him a smile he barely noticed. “I guess I’ll be on my way,” she said to Lauren. “Remember to call Maddy O’Toole at the Road’s End Café. If you get word out there that you’re looking for a sitter, you shouldn’t have any trouble at all finding someone. Especially if it’s only for a couple months or so.”

“Thanks,” Lauren murmured, meaning it. “And thanks for your time. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Though Doe Adams’s smile was as gentle as she herself seemed to be, Lauren didn’t think the woman who greeted every sunrise in the lotus position looked all that disappointed as she scooted past Zach. If anything, she looked relieved to be escaping the room. Doe was certainly nice enough. Interesting, too, in a decidedly eccentric sort of way. But from the moment she’d walked in, Lauren had had the feeling that she wasn’t quite what her brother was looking for. When the woman’s first question about the children had been about their birth signs, she was pretty much convinced of it.

With their visitor heading down the steps, Zach moved back into the doorway and took the file Sam handed him. The men were the same height and easily met eye to eye, but her brother was stockier than Zach, more powerfully built. Zach was rangier, leaner. More…predatory.

The word powerful described him, too.

Like a panther.

“She looked familiar,” Sam said to Lauren as she shivered against the damp chill of the air.

“She said you flew her to the mainland last year. Apparently that was the only time since 1973 that she’s been off the island.”

“Sounds like a lot of people around here,” he murmured. “Is she going to watch the kids?”

Lauren shook her head, less concerned with the apparent idiosyncrasies of the people who’d chosen to live on Harbor than she was with the finely tuned tension snaking between her and the man edging toward the stairs himself. “She only cooks vegetarian and won’t work in a house that has animal hides on the furniture.”

She glanced toward the leather sofa and armchairs and gave a philosophical shrug. Everyone was entitled to their causes. She would have mentioned that, too, except she didn’t want to hold him up from letting Zach go now that the man had what he’d come for.

Zach obviously wasn’t interested in being held up, either.

“Listen, Sam.” He pulled open his vest, tucking his precious file between the waterproof fabric and his shirt. “I need to talk to you this afternoon. It’s important.”

There wasn’t a trace of curiosity in her brother’s obliging, “Sure. Come back when you’re through. I need to talk to you about switching flights tomorrow, anyway. I want to take the first mail run.”

“I mean at the office,” Zach replied, completely ignoring what Sam wanted to do. “It’s business.”

“We can’t talk business here?”

“Humor me. Okay?”

Looking as if it really didn’t matter to him one way or the other, Sam shrugged. “If that’s what you want,” he murmured. “What time are you leaving?”

“I’ll wait until you get there.”

Sam gave a mechanical nod. An instant later, having pointedly avoided meeting her eyes, Zach bounded down the steps to his truck and her brother finally closed the door on the cold.

Wearily running his fingers through his hair, he turned to where Lauren knelt to pick up the jacket Jason had left in the middle of the wine-colored rug. Jason himself was at the television set, opening the long drawer under it that housed videotapes. His denim-covered behind rested on the heels of little hiking boots that looked like miniature versions of his dad’s and he appeared, for the moment, totally preoccupied.

So did his father.

Lauren had thought a few moments ago that Sam looked a little ragged. Studying him more closely in the light of the bright brass lamps, she decided that he simply looked worn out.

“Do you want me to get you something to eat?” she asked, because food was the only real comfort she could think to offer. “Mom said she left a couple of casseroles in there.”

“She did. Lasagnas, I think. But you don’t have to worry about me. It’s the kids I need help with.” He blew a breath, forced a smile. “I really appreciate you coming, Sis.”

She knew he did. He’d practically broken her ribs when he’d wrapped her in his greeting hug. Yet, when she’d hugged him back, just as fiercely, he’d immediately eased up and let her go. She’d just wanted to hold him and absorb whatever she could of his pain. But he wasn’t the kind of man who could handle sympathy. Rather than make things worse for him by offering it, she would simply offer her support.

That meant doing whatever she could to keep anyone from making his life any harder than it needed to be. And that meant dealing with Zach McKendrick.

She knew exactly what he wanted to talk to Sam about. She knew why he didn’t want to talk to him at the house, too. He didn’t want her around to point out what a louse he was. He’d said he had his reasons for grounding her brother. But she didn’t care what those reasons were. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of him telling her brother he couldn’t do the only thing that provided any real escape for him right now.

“Sam,” she began, intent on ignoring the sudden sick sensation in her stomach. “I know your partner asked to see you, but I need to run an errand before you go. Just a quick one,” she assured him, darting a glance down the hall. “Jenny’s still asleep, so I guess everything should be okay here for a while.”

Jason spun around and scrambled to his feet. “Can we watch Rugrats?” Holding up the video he’d selected, he marched past his aunt and handed it to his dad. “It’s a new one.”

Weighing questions from sister and son, Sam sank into the deep cushions of his favorite chair. Catching his little boy under the arms of his sweatshirt, he hauled him into his lap. “Sure,” he said to him. “Do you want to put it in or do you want me to?”

“You do it.”

“Why don’t I do it?” Lauren smiled as she reached for the brightly colored box. “I’m already up.”

Jason didn’t look too certain about relinquishing his prize. He didn’t really know her. Not the way he knew the grandmother who’d left yesterday and certainly not the way he knew his dad. Lauren knew the child’s only real memories of her would have been of three days last Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and the two days she’d been in Tacoma two weeks ago. He’d had no problem at all crawling into her lap for a story or sharing his cookies with her at Christmas. But, during the awful time over New Year’s he’d wanted only his dad and the woman who’d left just yesterday.

“Let Aunt Lauren help, Jase. She’s going to be here for a while taking care of you and your sister while I’m at work. Okay?”

Beneath the fringe of honey-colored hair, the child’s big eyes looked uncertain. The coaxing helped, though. After another moment of hesitation, he handed over the video he’d chosen, then laid his head on his dad’s big solid chest.

Had she not been in such a hurry, Lauren would have worried about how Jason would react to being left in her care. With him safe in Sam’s arms, her only thought as she slipped the tape into the VCR and got the thing running was that she might not need to be alone with the children at all if she couldn’t convince Zach to change his mind.

There was a certain irony in that thought. Especially when she considered how much more comfortable with the kids she would be if Sam were around during the day. Yet, as she shrugged on her long black raincoat without bothering to change into more suitable clothes, and fished her keys from her shoulder bag, she dismissed the thought completely. This wasn’t about what she was comfortable with. If it were, she wouldn’t be leaving the house.

“Don’t be gone long okay?” her brother asked, his eyes, like his son’s, glued to the cartoon characters on the large screen. “I need to see what Zach wants.”

It was a fair indication of how detached Sam was that he didn’t ask where she was going. She’d only arrived ten minutes before he’d left for the preschool. Given that she’d passed the majority of places to shop when she’d driven off the ferry, it was doubtful she needed anything from a store. He knew she didn’t know a soul in the area, either. But she was grateful he didn’t ask. She could evade, but she’d never been able to outright lie.

“I’ll hurry,” she promised, keys jangling. He looked as numb as he’d told her he felt. “It won’t take you long to get to your office, anyway. Will it?”

“Ten minutes. It’s only five miles to the airstrip.”

Lauren wasn’t exactly sure where she was going. She had only been to Harbor once before. That had been three years ago with her now-ex-husband and that time as this, she’d taken the ferry. They’d been there for two days over a summer festival weekend and she never had made it to her brother’s office.

Driving along the narrow, desolate road now, she rather wished she had asked Sam for a tour of his base of operations. She knew his office was at the airport. She just wasn’t exactly sure where the airport was. When a person drove off the ferry, the town was right there. All fourteen blocks of it, including the boardwalk which lead to an aquarium with a huge mural of a killer whale painted on the side. The sign at the end of the pier read, Welcome to Harbor, Pop. 1,200.

Just beyond that greeting a twelve-foot-high post sprouted signs that pointed in eight different directions and included the mileage to the North End, where thousands of hikers and campers headed in the summer, and Hidden Sound, where she understood the kayakers hung out. It also indicated the directions of Seattle, New York and Tibet, useful information to someone she was sure, but there was no indication of where one might find the airport.

The only road she’d ever taken from town was the main one which curved around part of the big, sprawling island. Since she couldn’t recall seeing a sign for where she wanted to go along that narrow, tree-lined route, and given that she’d already driven five miles, she stopped at the only sign of life she encountered—a tiny mom-and-pop grocery store with a sign in the window advertising espresso and live bait.

Two minutes later she was backtracking a mile to take the shortcut to the shore road. The short cut, she’d been told, was marked by a white stake nailed with two pie tins that served as reflectors.

She’d noticed several roads disappearing back into the woods. She’d also noticed that the island’s citizenry wasn’t big on naming them. Tina had once told her that many of the people who lived on Harbor didn’t much care whether people could find where they lived. Their friends already knew. No one else needed the information.

Lauren had thought at the time that her sister-in-law had made the local residents sound like hermits. At the very least, the resident artists, entrepreneurs, kiwi farmers and seventies dropouts marched to their own drummers. Her brother was hardly a recluse, but he definitely possessed an entrepreneurial spirit. He was also a quiet man who tended to keep to himself and his family when he wasn’t working. Given that he’d always loved the outdoors, she could understand how he’d so easily adapted to this remote and wild place.

She had no problem seeing how Zach fit in there, either.

The man struck her as the classic lone wolf.

The ocean suddenly appeared a hundred yards in front of her, a vast expanse of gray against a paler gray sky. Refusing to dwell on the knot Zach put in her stomach, she followed the curve that made the road parallel the seaweed-strewn boulders and forced her focus back to the reason she was in the middle of nowhere hurrying to see a man who made her think in terms of feral beasts.

She almost missed the turn for the airport. The white sign with the black silhouette of an airplane was about the size of a briefcase, and weather had eroded most of it. There were no markers beyond that. They weren’t necessary. With nothing but the ocean on one side and an open field bordered by trees on the other, it was easy enough to see her destination.

A single landing strip slashed through the low-growing weeds and grasses. A pole with a wind sock dancing lightly in the sea breeze stood off to one side.

She’d wondered how she’d find the office when she got there. She needn’t have worried. There was only one building on the site. She’d heard her brother mention that the landing strip was public, but the building clearly belonged to him and his partner. The arched white airplane hangar proclaimed E&M Air Carriers in yard-high blue letters on its curved roof. Huge doors were open on one end, exposing a small white plane inside. The only other door was toward the opposite end and had a sign over it, which read Office.

Leaving her car beside the two trucks parked in front of it, she whipped her hood over her head, hurried to the door and stepped inside.

She was pulling her hood down and shaking off the rain when she turned and saw Zach look toward her.

He stood at the side of the counter that bisected the rather cramped little room. A large aerial map covered the wall beside him. Behind the tall counter, which was covered with another map, a gray metal desk overflowed with papers, coffee mugs and what looked to be fishing-fly-tying equipment. The scent of something that smelled like motor oil drifted through the narrow door leading to the hangar, mingling with the smell of fresh coffee from the coffeemaker on the filing cabinet.

Zach slowly straightened.

He didn’t have to say a word for her to know he wasn’t at all happy to see her. She also had the feeling from the way his mouth thinned that he knew exactly why she was there.

“Is there any possibility you can change your mind about grounding my brother?”

Her voice was polite, her tone reasonable and designed to invite discussion.

His was decidedly not.

“No.”

“That’s it?”

“As far as I’m concerned it is.”

The man looked as solid as a granite pillar standing there, and just about as flexible. His expression was closed, his tone flat with finality. Coupled with the challenge darkening his eyes, his manner had her digging deep for the tact that had so totally failed her earlier.

“I was under the impression,” she said, truly trying for civility, “that you and Sam are equal partners in the company. Isn’t that true?”

A faint frown flashed through his eyes. “We have equal ownership.”

“Then you both have equal say in its operation?”

“Technically.”

“Then, technically,” she repeated, thinking the man would rather choke than give more than he had to, “what gives you the right to tell him what to do?”

Zach didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even move. He just stood studying her carefully guarded expression and wondering at how out of place she looked in the utilitarian surroundings. On all of Harbor Island for that matter.

She had city written all over her and, while he had nothing in particular against metropolitan women, he had a particular burr on his tailwing for any woman who presumed to know him after three minutes of conversation.

Overlooking the fact that what they’d had hardly qualified as a civilized discussion, he pushed aside the flight schedule he was adjusting and walked into the waiting area with its scuffed linoleum floor and green plastic chairs. Planting himself four feet in front of her, he jammed his hands on the hips of his worn jeans and narrowed his eyes on her upturned face.

“I have the right,” he assured her, not bothering to elaborate. As long as she was there, there was something he wanted to know. And he wanted to know it before she said anything else that would make him wish his partner had been an only child. “Do you honestly think I’m more concerned about myself and this business than I am about Sam?”

It was as obvious as the chips of silver in his storm-gray eyes that her accusation had been eating at him ever since he’d left her brother’s house. The fact that it bothered him that much would have given her pause, too, had he not just taken a deliberate step closer.

Lifting her glance from his very solid-looking chest, Lauren felt certain that most sensible people would be looking for a little distance right about now. The female part of her, the part that remembered the heat in his touch, told her that was exactly what she should be doing, too.

“What am I supposed to think?” she returned, ignoring sensibility for the sake of her brother. “You know his circumstances, and you still want to take away one of the only things that’s keeping him going. You’re right,” she conceded, without backing down, “I don’t really know you. But I know you’re a pilot and I’d think that would give you at least some appreciation of what it will mean to Sam to lose his only means of escape right now.”

Something dark flashed in his eyes, something dark and haunted and repressed so quickly that only a fine tension remained.

His voice grew deliberately, deceptively quiet.

“I know exactly what flying can mean to a man. And I know what it can mean to face the prospect of not being able to do it. I also know that Sam is as aware as I am of the FAA regulation that prohibits a pilot from flying when he’s physically or mentally impaired. And right now,” he said tightly, “Sam isn’t a competent pilot.”

“He’s under—”

“He’s under stress,” he snapped, cutting off her protest. “I know that. And that stress is dangerous because it’s interfering with his concentration. The last thing I want is for him to wrap himself around a tree because his thoughts weren’t on his pre-flight check and he missed something critical. Or because his mind started to drift and he found himself in a situation he couldn’t correct in time. Or, God forbid,” he grated, “he had passengers with him when something preventable happened and he took them down with him.

“Yes, it is business.” His voice was hard, his expression harder still as he pounced on her earlier accusation. “If he kills someone, we lose everything we’ve built here. But I’d rather do that than have him jeopardize himself. I’ve already lost one friend. I damn well don’t want to lose another.”

He hated what she was doing, resented the way she was forcing him to acknowledge the fear he felt for his friend.

He hated the very word. There had been a time when he’d nearly believed that fear didn’t even exist for him. He’d learned how to deny it, to bury it under exhilaration and the adrenaline rush of the close call, the near miss. But that had been back when his training had made him believe that admitting to fear robbed a man of his edge, and once he lost his edge he was no longer invincible. Back when utter confidence had often been all that had kept him alive.

He knew fear now, though.

He knew that loss could happen in the blink of an eye.

And he knew that something about the woman so warily watching him now taunted the ruthless control he’d always maintained over himself.

Annoyed with that, too, he lowered his voice as he forced himself to back off, but the tightness remained. “Does that answer your question?”

Lauren had gone utterly still. In the space of seconds, the imposing, quietly irritated man looming in front of her had ripped away the protective anger that had braced her—and seriously shaken her entire perception of him. There was no denying that he was overbearing, arrogant and bolder than any man she knew, but he wasn’t heartless.

He wasn’t even close.

He was just as worried about Sam as she was. Only he’d had more reason to be concerned because he’d known of circumstances she hadn’t even been aware of.

He’d also lost a friend in Tina himself. And she hadn’t even considered that.

Trying to regroup, all she managed was a faint, “Yes.”

“Good.”

“Look. I’m—”

“Do you want to help your brother?”

“Of course I do. But I’m sor—”

“How long are you staying?”

She was trying to apologize, to let him know she regretted her assumptions. Those assumptions might not have been there had he been a little less impossible, but she wouldn’t shirk her part of the blame.

With his glance narrowed on her face, it was clear he wasn’t interested in making amends. He was, however, confusing her.

“How long am I staying?”

“Here. On Harbor.”

There was a measuring look in his eyes, something she didn’t trust at all. The muscle in his jaw was jumping.

“I can only take about a week off.”

He considered her for another nerve-wracking moment. “That’s better than nothing.”

“For what?”

“Your brother needs to get away,” he told her, expressing no interest at all in what she could only take a week off from. “He said he’d give anything to get away from all the memories of Tina for a while. But there’s no one to stay with the kids. If you really want to help, tell him you’ll watch them for him so he can go over to my cabin. It’s over on Gainey,” he said, speaking of one of the other seven hundred islands in the area. “I’ll fly him there myself.”

The discomfort she felt suddenly shifted course. “Why would he need to go to another island?”

“Because it’s isolated there.”

“This place isn’t?” Incredulous, even more confused, she swept her hand toward the door. “His house is the only one on that inlet. The only house for miles,” she felt compelled to point out, since the location was now taking on an entirely new significance. “I’d think that would be about as remote as it gets.”

“Trust me.” His tone went as flat as the map on the wall. “There’s a difference between being a few miles from town and being in a place you can’t leave.”

“But being isolated couldn’t possibly be good for him right now. He needs his friends. He needs family.”

“Why?”

Why? she echoed, but only to herself. As tempting as it was, she wouldn’t fall for the challenge carved in his face. He’d just proved he wasn’t anywhere near as insensitive as he’d first seemed. She did, however, have major philosophical problems with his perceptions of her brother’s needs.

“Because he needs people around him,” she replied, not sure why he couldn’t see it himself. “To help keep him occupied. To help him deal with his grief. Being alone would be so much worse.”

“Or maybe,” Zach suggested, doing a commendable imitation of her patently patient tone, “it would be easier. Maybe what your brother needs is the opportunity not to be stoic for all those other people and to deal with whatever he’s feeling head-on.”

“He doesn’t need to be stoic around me.”

“Of course he does. You’re his little sister.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

The look he gave her held amazing tolerance. “A man doesn’t want to show weakness around a female member of his family. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to show it in front of another male. The life Sam had is gone and he needs to come to grips with that before he can move past it. The only way that can happen for some people is to leave them alone so they can deal with whatever they’re feeling without worrying about how it’s affecting everyone else. That includes you. Your parents. Me. Everyone.”

There was something about the way he included himself in that list that caught her attention. It was almost as if he were making a conscious effort to keep from adding to her brother’s concerns. But that thought was lost in the face of his absolute certainty. It was heavy in his voice, mirrored in his eyes.

Conviction like that wasn’t born of assumption. The only place something that deeply felt could come from was personal experience.

“Everyone has to deal with what they’re handed in their own way,” he muttered, suddenly looking uncomfortable with the way she was watching him. “The choice isn’t yours or mine, anyway. It’s Sam’s. And whether he chooses to stay or go, he’s not flying for a while.”

He sounded as if he expected her to disagree. Given that they hadn’t agreed on anything either had said so far, the expectation was reasonable. But she wouldn’t debate his decision about Sam flying. Zach had made his point. She just wasn’t at all convinced that what her brother needed right now was solitude.

“Does he know he isn’t a competent pilot?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is he going to argue with you about it?”

“I imagine he will. He’s been taking extra flights so he can be away from here. He’s not going to like the idea of being stuck where he doesn’t want to be.”

The faint buzz of fluorescent lights underscored the soft whir of a space heater in the far corner. Over those quiet sounds came the sharp, electronic ring of the telephone and the thud of Zach’s boots on the scarred linoleum floor when, without a word, he moved to the counter to answer it.

The deep, authoritative tones of his voice carried toward her as her glance skimmed his profile and the wide scar covering the side of his strong neck.

She’d told him she didn’t know him. And she didn’t. The things she knew about him were that he was divorced and that he was no longer in the military. If she had to guess, she would put him near her brother’s age. Thirty-seven or so. Only eight years older than she was herself. But those things were superficial. It was what he’d said about how some people needed solitude to deal with whatever it was they had to confront, and how they needed space so they didn’t have to be stoic for everyone else, that hinted at what might have shaped him.

He had spoken with the voice of experience. And though she could only wonder at what that experience had been, she had the uneasy feeling that he had suffered himself, and that he’d done it alone.

“I have to go.” Zach made the flat announcement as he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. Taking the note he’d just written, he moved to the map on the wall. After using a ruler and string to calibrate the distance between two points, he scribbled the result on his note. “Tell Sam I have to go to Vancouver for a pickup, so I can’t talk to him now. I’ll stop by the house about eight. You have until then to convince him to leave the kids with you. If you can do that, I won’t have to talk to him about being grounded.”

Chapter Three

Lauren stood at Jenny’s bedroom door watching her brother as he leaned over the side of the white crib. He looked big and male and decidedly out of place among the pale pastels of Bo-Peep and her sheep on the walls, and the frilly touches of pink eyelet on the curtains and comforter. But there was no doubt in her mind that he belonged right where he was, and that, at that moment, he found as much comfort as he gave.

His flaxen-haired little girl was finally falling asleep. Jenny’s silky eyelashes formed crescents against her plump pink cheeks. Her breath came softly as Sam slowly rubbed his thumb above the bridge of her little button nose. Soothed by her father’s touch, the child lay curled on her side, her arms around the puffy purple bunny her grandma had given her for her first birthday last week. According to Sam, Jenny dragged it everywhere with her and parted with it only when it came time for her bath.

Tonight, she hadn’t wanted to let it go even then, which was why Lauren had escorted it to the laundry room in the basement for a quick trip through the dryer, then wrapped it in a towel to tuck into the crib when the child had started crying for it before it was quite dry. In between, she’d wiped the water from the bathroom floor and helped Jason into his pajamas while Sam dried Jenny and got her ready for bed. Jason hadn’t seemed to mind her help, especially after she’d shown an interest in the dinosaurs on his pj’s. But Jenny had wanted only her dad.

At that moment, as he stood quietly studying the beautiful child his wife had given him, it seemed Sam only wanted to be with his daughter, too.

Feeling as if she were intruding, Lauren backed away from the door, moving quietly so as not to disturb her brother or Jenny or the little boy already fast asleep in his room next door. She felt helpless to ease her brother’s sadness, and it was perfectly logical that children would prefer a parent over someone they barely knew, but those troubled thoughts only added to the uncertainty she felt about what Zach wanted her to do.

She moved down the hall, picking up toys along the way and dropped them in the toy box on the far side of the living room. A fire crackled brightly in the fireplace. The television was on, its volume muted. She couldn’t tell if it was still raining. It was too dark outside to see, and the log walls of the house were too thick to allow much sound to pass through. But she was listening for outside sounds anyway. Specifically, the sounds of Zach’s truck.

The afghan Jason had wrapped himself in to watch television lay puddled in front of the set. Picking it up, she considered that even if she did agree with Zach about what was best for her brother, which she did not, she had other reservations about his recommendation that she stay with the children. Despite the man’s assertion that this place wasn’t as isolated as his cabin on the other island, it was still miles from town and it was still surrounded by forest and all the back-to-nature things her brother loved and she’d never seen outside a zoo. Her sister-in-law had even refused to let the kids have a pet for fear that one of those beasts would have it for lunch.

It wasn’t that she was afraid. It was more that she was dealing with unknowns, and she’d dealt with enough of those to last her a lifetime. She liked knowing what to expect. She liked knowing what was expected of her. She found security in habit and organization and there was little here but the unfamiliar. When she added the concern of being in such a secluded place without Sam around at night to the concern of taking care of the children completely on her own, she felt none of the confidence she’d acquired at her job. She felt downright apprehensive. Especially when she considered that any child-care skills she possessed were based purely on untested instinct and her mom’s checklist.

She was folding the afghan over the back of the sofa with the same care with which she would have arranged a sales display, when she heard the muffled thud of her brother’s stockinged feet on the pine floor of the hall. She didn’t have to see him to envision the weary slump of his broad shoulders or the fatigue shadowing his deep blue eyes. She could hear his exhaustion in the shuffle of his footfall. Every time she’d looked at him that evening, she’d seen a man who was running on empty.

Masking her trepidation, she offered him a smile. In the past two years, she’d tackled a lot of things she knew nothing about when they’d first been thrown at her and she’d somehow managed to survive. She just hoped that whatever her brother chose to do, his children would be able to survive her.

“How about something to eat now?” she asked, watching Sam pick up the remote control unit for the television from the coffee table and head for his favorite overstuffed leather chair. “You said you weren’t hungry when the kids ate, but you should be by now.”

“I had some of Jason’s noodles.”

He’d had two bites. Both taken to encourage the child to eat. “That’s hardly enough for a man your size. You need more fuel.”

“You sound just like Mom.” He gave her a smile, faint but forgiving and dropped into his chair. “I’ll make a sandwich later. Okay?”

She started to tell him she would be happy to do it for him herself. He really did need some nourishment. But she had the feeling he was no more interested in food than he was in the deodorant commercial he was staring at on the screen, and that the only reason he’d mentioned the sandwich was to make her feel better.

He needs to get away so he doesn’t have to worry about how he’s affecting everyone else.

Zach’s words echoed in her head, the conclusion nudging hard at her own convictions.

She nudged right back, certain that this evening would have been so much more difficult for him if he hadn’t had his children to hug and to think about.

Then, she remembered that getting away hadn’t necessarily been Zach’s idea. Sam had apparently told him that was what he wanted to do.

Her brother had yet to turn up the volume on the television. Now that the children weren’t crawling on and off his lap and demanding his attention, he didn’t seem able to sit still himself. Tossing the remote control onto the lamp table beside him, he rose and shoved his fingers through his short dark hair.

“Your partner should be here pretty soon,” she said, watching him walk to the bookcase and take out a book, only to put it back again. “He said eight.”

It was nearly half past now.

“He could have gotten fogged in.” Walking to the fireplace, he pushed around the flaming logs in the hearth, sending sparks up the chimney, and set the poker back in its holder. “The ceiling was pretty low this afternoon.”

“Wouldn’t he call?”

“If he can, he will.”

Now would be a good time to mention the cabin, she thought, as he walked to the coffee table. Now, while he looked as if he were ready to pace out of his skin and there was nothing else distracting him. There had been no opportunity to bring up the subject before with all the activity with the kids.

Part of her still balked at the idea of Sam being all alone. Another part knew that if he didn’t go, Zach would tell him he couldn’t fly.

“How did he get the scar on his neck?” she asked, working her way up to mentioning the cabin.

His attention elsewhere, Sam’s brow furrowed. “Zach?”

She hummed a note of affirmation. “It looks like a burn.”

“It was. He crashed a jet when an experimental guidance system failed.” Looking as preoccupied as he sounded, he picked up a coloring book and distractedly flipped through the pages. He didn’t seem to pay any particular attention to the scribblings. He didn’t even seem to be seeing the pages at all, until he came upon a beautifully colored castle.

From the painful way he winced, Lauren had the feeling the picture was one Tina had colored for the kids.

“How long ago?” she asked, as much for the distraction it would offer Sam as her own desire to know.

The furrows in his brow deepened. Whether in thought or in pain, she couldn’t tell. “About seven years by now, I’d guess.”

“Do you know how long he’s been divorced?”

“I have no idea.” He closed the book carefully and set it down. “He was divorced when I met him. That was five years ago.”

It was a true reflection of her brother’s mental state that he showed no interest at all in her interest in his partner. He’d been in that distracted fog ever since she’d arrived—which explained why he hadn’t bothered with introductions when Zach had followed him in for the manifest. When she’d told him earlier that evening that Zach had gone to Vancouver, he hadn’t even asked how she’d come by that information.

It was entirely possible that he did need time to himself, she conceded, but she’d no sooner opened her mouth to ask if that was what he wanted, than a heavy, decisive knock on the door stole her brother’s attention—and made her need to talk to him that much more urgent.

“Wait!” she called, taking a step after him as he started for the door. “I need to ask you something before you talk to your partner. It’ll just take a minute.”

“Now?”

“Now,” she quietly insisted. “Please?”

She must have looked fairly desperate. “I guess,” he murmured, giving her an odd little glance. “Just let me let him in first.”

She had no choice but to stand back and allow Sam to open the door. Already uneasy, an odd sense of disquiet moved through her the moment Zach stepped inside and his hooded eyes locked on hers.

Droplets of rain clung to his overlong dark hair. The down vest he had worn earlier had been replaced with a brown leather bomber jacket that made his shoulders look a mile wide. He brought with him the scent of fresh sea air and pine, and, as she pulled in a deep breath, she doubted she’d ever again think of the forces of nature without recalling his dominating presence.

Without a word to her, his unreadable glance took an impersonal sweep of the casual burgundy jeans and sweater she’d changed into and promptly settled on her brother.

“Hey, buddy,” he muttered, closing the door with his elbow since his hands were full.

Sam turned back into the room. “How was the flight?”

“Weather’s minimum. Barely made it in.”

“Air?”

“Bumpy over a thousand.”

“Chuck make it back?”

“He logged in about an hour ago. The GPS in the 185 is working fine now.” Zach lifted a brown paper bag. In his other hand, he carried a six-pack of beer. “Let me get rid of these,” he said, and headed for the kitchen with the familiarity of a man who felt no need to question his welcome.

Much of their verbal shorthand had been lost on Lauren. The only flying she ever did was in commercial jets and her technical knowledge was limited to the operation of seat backs, tray tables and the overhead oxygen mask. But she had no interest in their shop talk. Conscious of Zach ignoring her as he walked past, her only concern was her brother.

“What did you need, Sis?”

From where she and Sam stood in the middle of the living room, she heard the refrigerator open and bottles rattle as the six-pack was shoved inside.

“I just wondered if you wanted to get away for a while,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’ll be here with the kids, so if you want to go some—”

He was shaking his head, cutting her off before she could even finish. The sound of the silverware drawer opening filtered in from the kitchen. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking. I’m volunteering.”

“That’s nice, Sis. It really is. But I can’t leave Zach with all the work.”

“You can talk to him about it,” she suggested, needing for him to at least consider the idea before Zach pulled the rug from under him. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind taking care of things for you. He’s your friend,” she pointed out, in case he was wondering how she could possibly know that.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think he’s your friend, or you don’t think you should go?”

“Look,” he replied, patiently. “Now isn’t the time. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Go ahead and talk about it now,” came the deep voice from the kitchen. “It sounds like a good idea.”

Zach appeared in the doorway with a large bowl of vanilla ice cream in one hand and a beer in the other. Looking as if he were only now hearing the notion himself, he walked toward them both. “You said the other day that you’d like to get away for a while,” he reminded his friend. “Now you have the opportunity.”

He handed the beer to his partner, then looked toward Lauren.

“Do you want anything?”

His manner seemed as comfortable with her as it was with her brother. On the surface, anyway. If not for Sam, Lauren was sure he would have preferred to ignore her. It was that kind of tension she could feel slithering beneath the facade. But this wasn’t about them. This was about Sam, and she would have to be as dense as the forest beyond them not to realize that Zach was doing what he could to make things easy for her brother. He clearly preferred that Sam choose to take a break on his own, rather than insisting on it himself.

“No. Thank you,” she replied, as committed as he was to doing her part.

“I’ll pass on the beer myself,” Sam told him. The bottom of the brown bottle hit the coffee table with a quiet click. “I’m flying in the morning.”

“You’ll be over the eight-hour rule before you fly again. Go ahead if you want it. Chuck or I will take the morning mail run.”

“The eight-hour rule?” she asked, as much to stall the course of the conversation as to understand what they were talking about.

“FAA regs,” Sam muttered. “Eight hours, bottle to throttle. A pilot can’t consume alcohol within eight hours of a flight. And I told you I want the early run,” he reminded the big man dwarfing his sister. “I’ll take whatever’s on the log for the afternoon, too.”

“They’re already covered.” Clearly intending to avoid that particular topic for the moment, Zach stabbed his spoon into the heaped blue bowl. “Let’s get back to what your sister was saying,” he suggested casually. “Getting away is a good idea, Sam. You remember the fishing streams over on Gainey, don’t you?”

For a moment, Lauren didn’t think Sam was going to let the change of subject go. He could be as stubborn as sin itself at times and there was a decidedly mulish look to his brow now. She also had the feeling that Zach was even more obstinate—if not downright bullheaded.

Sam was apparently feeling too apathetic to press his point. Either that, or the men’s relationship was such that they took turns getting their way. Her brother picked up the beer and, after taking a swallow, sank into his chair. Zach claimed the overstuffed chair on the opposite side of the sofa and propped his booted feet up on the ottoman.

“Sure I do,” Sam murmured. “The best salmon I ever caught was in the pool by that waterfall. You can’t beat spring run up there.”

“Or the winter steelhead,” Zach reminded him just before a spoonful of ice cream disappeared. He looked perfectly comfortable, perfectly…at home.

Her brother’s focus settled on the neck of his beer. “Those are the best streams I’ve ever fished.”

“Better than Alaska?”

“Darn near.” In the flickering light of the fire, Sam backed his quiet agreement by slowly nodding his head. “You know, I can’t even remember the last time I was there.” Trying, looking as if the memory just wouldn’t form, he shook his head again. “When was that, anyway?”

“Before Jase was born, I guess. You know,” Zach said mildly, taking another poke at his ice cream, “the steelhead fishing should be pretty good right about now. There’s that stream right behind my cabin. And you can’t beat the solitude there.”

For a moment, Sam remained silent. He simply contemplated the neck of the bottle in his hand.

“Yeah,” was all he finally said. “Yeah,” he repeated, but this time there was longing in the word.

Lauren could hear it herself. She could even see it in the thoughtful way her brother continued to stare at his bottle. Over a fishing stream, she thought, wondering what it was about such a thing that could leave a guy looking so wistful.

She was still wondering when Sam tipped back his beer for another swallow and she felt Zach’s steady gaze on her.

She hadn’t budged from where she stood by the coffee table. As interested as she was in the outcome of the conversation, it hadn’t occurred to her to move, or to be offended by the fact that she wasn’t being included in it.

Zach clearly intended for her to include herself now. He arched one dark eyebrow at her, his expression plainly saying that she could jump in here anytime now and reinforce her offer to take care of the home front.

Slipping around the table, she lowered herself to the sofa cushion nearest her brother. “It sounds like a place you’d like to see again, Sam.” She had a saying taped inside her Day Planner. When in Doubt, Bluff. Calling on the adage now, she spoke with calm conviction. “Jason and Jenny will be fine here with me if you want to go. I’ll be here for a week anyway.” She nudged his arm, gave him a smile. “You might as well take advantage of me. It’s been years since you’ve had the opportunity.”

She was talking about all the times he bribed her into cleaning his room when they’d lived at home. But remembrances of their childhood were lost on him just then.

“The cabin is yours if you want to use it,” Zach told him.

“I don’t know…”

“You might as well get away for a while, Sam.” Finality slipped into Zach’s tone. “There isn’t going to be that much for you to do here.”

Sam’s glance bounced from his friend to his sister and back again. “What are you talking about? There’s plenty to do. We’ve got all that work on the float plane—”

“I’ll do it myself.”

“You’ll…?

“Your concentration is shot, Sam.”

For a moment Zach simply held his glance. The way Sam was waffling wasn’t leaving him any choice but to bring out bigger guns. But he didn’t need to press his point. Sam was getting the message.

“This is about my taking that manifest today, isn’t it? Anyone can pick up the wrong file—”

“It’s not just the manifest,” his partner calmly replied. “That didn’t cause anything but a delay. This is about you forgetting to tell the mechanic about the problem with the alternator in FE 22,” he said, identifying one of their planes by the numbers on its tail. “And the wrong weights on the freight a couple of days ago.” Zach paused, clearly troubled by the errors and oversights. “You know the regs as well as I do, Sam.”

“It’s about you needing time for yourself, too,” Lauren reminded him. She wanted to keep the focus on his emotional needs. That seemed wiser, kinder than enumerating the things he was doing wrong. “I can see how hard it is for you to be in this house right now. And I know you have decisions to make about how long you’ll stay here. I don’t understand why you’d want to be quite so far away from everything, but if going to that cabin is what you need, then you should go.”

The glance Zach cut her was as sharp as glass. Yet, as he dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward, his expression bore nothing but concern.

“It’s more important that you just come to grips with what’s happened,” he said to Sam. “Once you do that, you’ll be able to concentrate on whatever else it is you need to do.”

It sounded to Lauren as if Zach didn’t think Sam should consider anything at all about his future while he was gone. She wasn’t going to call him on his advice, though. The man seemed to understand her brother in ways she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Part of her was touched by his empathy. Another part was more curious than was probably wise about where that understanding had come from.

Sam hadn’t moved. He was still sitting slumped in his chair, staring at the beer bottle. Only now he was picking at its label. “I’d like to go,” he finally, reluctantly, admitted. “I’m just not sure about leaving the kids.”

Lauren reached over, touched his arm. “I’m here for them.”

“I’m not sure about leaving you here, either.”

He looked up then, his despondent gaze settling on Lauren. A moment later, it shifted to his partner. “She doesn’t know anyone on the island…and it’s a long way from town.” A strip of label curled as he pulled it away. His voice dropped. “Tina really hated that at first.”

For a moment, he said nothing else. He just continued to contemplate his handiwork as his thoughts drifted back to his wife.

Lauren felt her throat tighten at the pain he so valiantly tried to hide.

Zach, looking uncomfortably male, focused on his melting ice cream.

Conscious of them both, Sam cleared his throat.

“I really would like to go,” he repeated, his voice quiet but steady as he looked to his friend. “But the only way I can do that is if you’ll check in on Lauren to make sure everything is okay. I don’t want to have to worry about her and the kids.”

Zach didn’t even hesitate. “You’ve got it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with this, Sis?”

She didn’t possess Zach’s lack of compunction. Thrown by her brother’s request of the man openly watching her, a couple of seconds passed before she managed a commendably unruffled reply. “Of course. But the kids and I will be all right,” she assured him, certain that if she repeated it often enough it would be so. “Your friend doesn’t need to bother with us.”

Sam didn’t respond to her claim. Zach didn’t, either, though as the men worked out a departure time for the next day and she asked Sam what food she should pack for him, it occurred to her that she shouldn’t have expected a reply. Sam was too preoccupied. And Zach, she realized, now that she was thinking about it, had undoubtedly agreed only so her brother would go. As little as he wanted to do with her, she was dead certain he had no intention of checking up on her.

Sam left at two o’clock the next afternoon for the airport with his duffel bag, his steelhead rod and the week’s worth of groceries Lauren bought for him in town that morning. By three o’clock, Jenny was awake from her nap and fussing for a snack. Since graham crackers were on the “approved” list her mom had left, Lauren settled the toddler in her high chair with a small stack of the brown squares and a sipper cup of milk, finally coaxed a smile out of her by letting her have a spoon to bang with on her tray and turned her attention to Jason, who was crying for his dad.

The only way she could find to distract him was by having him help her make chocolate chip cookies and letting him load up his dump truck to drive the dough to the oven to bake.

That project took as long to clean up as it did to prepare. It also had the advantages of distracting her from the worry she felt about her brother heading into seclusion, and of occupying the kids until supper time. Though neither child was interested in eating what remained of the casserole her mom had left for them, she finally got Jason to eat chicken soup. Jenny’s appetite was as tiny as the child herself. Not sure what she was doing wrong since the little girl seemed more interested in chewing on her spoon than on what was in it, Lauren eventually coaxed a few bites into her and by the time she got them bathed, read Jason a story while rocking Jenny, and tucked them in for the night, she was ready to fall into bed herself.

She couldn’t indulge in that escape, however. She still had to do dishes and throw a load of towels into the washer, since she’d just used the last two clean ones. If she didn’t, she’d have nothing to dry herself off with after her shower in the morning.

There was also something wrong with the furnace.

For the past hour, the air in the house had grown steadily cooler. At first she’d thought it was because, busy as she’d been, she’d forgotten to add another log to the fire and the fire had gone out. So, between Jason’s story and tucking Jenny into her crib, she’d turned up the thermostat in the hallway.

That had been at least twenty minutes ago and the chill had yet to disappear.

Standing in the hall with her arms crossed over the cabled sweater she’d pulled over her jeans, she frowned at the thermostat’s thermometer. It was actually four degrees colder than when she’d turned the heat up.

The thermometer read fifty-nine degrees. Since it was all of forty degrees outside, she wasn’t interested in seeing just how cold the house could get before they all got pneumonia.

The washer and dryer were in the basement. Taking the load of towels down with her, she tossed them into the washer along with the soap and had the machine running when she turned to warily eye the black behemoth of a furnace in the middle of large, cement walled space.

She hated basements. They were cold and damp and shadowy and the corners were inevitably filled with boxes and old furniture that took on sinister shapes when illuminated by a single bare bulb.

Reminding herself that she was an adult, she ignored the set of narrow night-blackened windows high on the wall above the agitating washing machine. The furnace was still running. She could hear the fan or whatever it was that pushed the air to the upper floors. But the air it was pushing was cool.

So was the heavy black metal of the huge contraption when she reached her hand, palm out, toward it.

“Great,” she muttered, then felt her heart knock against her ribs at what sounded like a faint groan above her.

It’s just the house settling, she chastised herself, torn between figuring out what the problem was with the heat, wishing her brother were there and indulging her chronically overactive imagination. She was trying hard not to think about what might be in those woods. She was also trying to avoid the thought that, while she was an adult, she was the only adult around for a lot more miles than a scream could carry.

An instruction manual dangled by a chain from one of the pipes that poked like the arms of a saguaro cactus from the furnace. Spotting it, she pulled it from the plastic envelope protecting it and flipped through pages of schematics and diagrams that were as clear to her as Sanskrit.

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