Return of the Lawman
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LISA CHILDS

Bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Harlequin and Silhouette Books. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her Web site, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

WARNING:

A first novel requires a long dedication.

To Mom, whose greatest gift was the love of reading.

To Ashley and Chloe, for accepting that gift from me.

To Paul, who gives unfailing support and praise even though he reads only the paper.

To my “BAD GIRLS”—

Kimberly Duffy, Susan Guadagno and Trish White,

the best writers and critique partners I know.

And for Carol, Kathy, Diana and June—

my “fan” club.

I love you all!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Prologue

THROUGH THE SPRINKLING of white flakes on his windshield, Dylan Matthews noted the police cruiser parked in his driveway. The flashing lights cast a red-and-blue glow on the naked tree trunks lining the gravel drive.

His hand trembled as he jerked the shifter into Park and reached for the door handle. He’d heard the call on his radio. Disembodied voices tumbled out of the box on his dash. An ambulance was dispatched, but the sheriff told them it was too late. Jimmy was dead.

With a snap of his wrist he shut off the siren that wailed his arrival in his police cruiser. Dylan Matthews was a rookie deputy in the Winter Falls sheriff’s office. He had to perform his official duties as a deputy. He’d already failed in his duty as a brother.

With a deep breath, he forced himself to find the detachment that had helped him through all the ordeals in his twenty-two years. He closed his eyes and tumbled ten years back to the searing pain of being trapped in a wrecked car. He could hear the echo of his own cries, and then his father’s command. “Shut it off, boy. Don’t let the pain control you. Don’t let yourself feel it.”

With another deep breath he forced down the panic and despair, locked it in a deep part of his soul with all the rest. He’d deal with it someday.

Dylan stepped out of the car onto the leaves littering the drive and crunched the calling cards of autumn beneath his boots. Snow flakes glittered on the russet leaves, another sign of Dylan’s favorite season in northern Michigan.

He’d heard the crunch of leaves, but he barely noticed the screech of brakes as a Jeep jerked to a stop behind his car. Forcing himself out of his stupor, he turned to identify the new arrival.

Lindsey Warner. Over the last few months he’d forced himself to be detached about the teenage daughter of the editor of the Winter Falls Gazette. She was relentless in her pursuit of him, but either out of chivalry or self-preservation, he pre tended not to notice.

But he noticed too much about her. Her glossy black curls. Her curvaceous body. Her sassy mouth. She was too young. But Jimmy had told him to take what she offered. Jimmy…

“I just heard it on my dad’s scanner. It can’t be true!” The words burst from her mouth as she catapulted out of her vehicle.

He couldn’t deal with Lindsey Warner right now and turned away from her.

He had to go inside the house. His duty as a police officer was to secure the crime scene. And he had to know if the call was correct. He had to see that his brother was dead before he could accept the horror of it. Again he fought down the despair.

His heart pounded against his ribs as he walked blindly past the sheriff’s patrol car. He only made it a few more steps before she was at his side. She slipped her hand into his. Cold. Her fingers were cold, and her eyes were huge shadows in her face. She looked as horrified as he would feel if he allowed himself to feel anything.

“Deputy Matthews, Dylan, are you all right?”

Before he could answer, Sheriff Buck Adams joined them. “I’m so sorry, Dylan. Don’t go inside. Let the girl take you some place else. Anywhere else. I’ll handle this for you.”

But Dylan couldn’t let someone else handle Jimmy. For so many years, even before their dad’s death, he and Jimmy had faced the world alone. Could he face it without Jimmy?

He’d meant to drop her hand, but he still clutched her cold fingers in his. Only a few more feet lay between him and the back door. Somehow, on precariously shaking legs, he made it to the screen door of the kitchen. Through the old and snagged mesh, he saw Jimmy lying on the wooden floor in front of the half-open refrigerator. A bright red stain spread from beneath his body across the scratched maple boards.

Jimmy stared back at him. The wide blue eyes held no pain, only surprise. Was he surprised Dylan had let him down? He shouldn’t have been. Dylan had never been able to save anyone he loved. As a lawman, he had been deputized to protect and serve. But he had not protected his brother from murder.

He dropped Lindsey Warner’s hand. “Dylan, I’m so sorry,” she said softly, or maybe it just sounded soft over the roaring in his ears. In the glare of the porch light, tears streaked from her dark eyes to her trembling chin.

He should have been the one to weep. But there was not even the threat of tears. In fact, his eyes were so dry they burned as if he’d spent a windy day on nearby Lake Michigan. “I’m sorry, too,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have seen this.” He gestured at the screen door.

“Dylan, you worry too much about everyone else. You calm down the old ladies who imagine stalkers are peeking in their windows. You try to slow down the reckless speeders for their safety.”

“It’s my job.”

“But who takes care of you?” She reached for him again.

He took a quick step back. “Sheriff,” he called out. “Please see she gets home safely. She shouldn’t have been here.”

Then he walked away from Lindsey Warner, from the crime scene, his home…. When he passed the sheriff’s car, he glanced at the man in the backseat. Jimmy’s best friend. Jimmy’s killer.

His police instincts screamed at him. This wasn’t right. But the sheriff had caught Steve Mars with the murder weapon in his hand. A knife from the block on the counter. For those two men it was over. For Dylan, the night mare had just begun.

Chapter One

Ten years later…

WITH WHITE KNUCKLES wrapped around the leather-covered steering wheel, Dylan drove past the cemetery. Ancient oaks shed colored leaves onto perfectly groomed graves, but Dylan didn’t slow to watch them fall.

He continued toward the heart of town, beyond the new hotels and motels and small strip malls to where the frame walls of the buildings were weathered and the brick was worn. He pulled into a parking lot behind an old Victorian house, which had been converted to a diner before Dylan was born.

For ten years he’d carried a picture of home in his head. And despite the night mares, it was home. This small northern Michigan town had grown. Dylan had not expected that. He’d thought everything would remain the same, perhaps as a shrine to Jimmy.

Before he stepped from his black Expedition into the lot of the local diner, he slipped the shiny badge onto the pocket of his tan uniform. Winter Falls deputy. He didn’t need to glance in the rearview mirror to witness the irony in his smile. His name and badge number were engraved below the title. Sheriff Buck had kept it for him.

For the last decade he’d hidden on the streets of Detroit. Rare had been the opportunity when he’d been able to carry the Detroit PD, Narcotics Division, badge. He’d been so deep under cover he’d thought he’d never come out. A few times he nearly hadn’t.

The last scrape had forced Dylan to face some hard facts. His commanding officer had given him an ultimatum—either get some psychiatric help for his death wish or take some time off. Dylan had turned in that badge and decided it was time to come home.

Although he’d hoped to slip into the diner unseen, he’d forgotten the sharp eyes of the proprietress. “Dylan Matthews!” She launched herself into his arms.

Interested faces turned toward him. Only a few, like the mayor and his old fishing buddy, were familiar. The town had grown, but Marge’s Diner was still the afternoon hub. “Marge, it’s nice to see you.” Awkwardly he reached down to pat her shoulder. Although she was petite, her grip was tight.

“It’s been too long,” she gasped when she finally released him. “You’re home, then?”

He thought of the new businesses, the new faces, the old night mares…. “Yeah.” He tapped the badge. “I’m home.”

A tinkling bell signaled another arrival. The sheriff slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Marge, get the boy something to eat. He looks half starved. Too skinny. I told him to meet me here. I promised him he’d get a good meal from you, not a lecture.”

“I wasn’t lecturing.” She sniffed and dabbed at tears with the edge of her apron.

Sheriff Buck Adams wedged his girth into the vinyl booth that had been “his” as long as Dylan could remember. When Dylan had been a boy, he’d sat on a phone book to share a milk shake with his idol.

Now Marge set a mug of coffee before him. “I’ll get you a special, Dylan. You need some fuel. You look worn out. I can’t believe the surprise. Both you and that little Lindsey Warner home from the big city. I thought we’d never see either of you again.”

The sip of hot coffee he’d taken scorched his throat as he choked. “Lindsey?” Ten years had passed, but he could still picture her wild mane of midnight curls and her snapping ebony eyes. And her sassy mouth.

“She wasn’t in Detroit, of course. She was in Chicago, working on some big news pa per when she got her heart broke. Should have stayed home and helped her daddy with the paper here, but I guess the Winter Falls Gazette wasn’t good enough. She’s back now, though, subdued I bet.”

Subdued? Lindsey Warner? He hoped not.

The sheriff waved Marge away. “Don’t get her started. She’ll be sending out wedding announcements if you show any interest. Of course, you never did, but Lindsey wasn’t so shy. That girl knew where your speed trap—”

“I thought we didn’t call it that,” Dylan teased the older man.

The sheriff waved his beefy hand again. “Whatever we called it, she knew where it was. How many tickets you give that girl?”

“I don’t remember.” Five warnings. Five citations. She’d been reduced to a restricted license because of him.

“Yeah, she was too young. What, sixteen?”

Sweet sixteen. And how he wished he’d kissed her.

“And you were what? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two when I left,” Dylan reminded him. But in his soul, so much older than those years.

“That was a heck of a mess, Dylan. I knew you didn’t have anything to do with that boy’s suicide. I should’ve searched him when he got back from sentencing. But after killing Jimmy, the guilt got Steve Mars to hang himself in jail, not you. There’s just a bunch of busy-bodies in this town with nothing better to talk about.” Sheriff Buck’s face reddened, and a vein jumped at his temple. “I should’ve—”

“You stuck by me, Sheriff. You always have,” Dylan assured him, and closed his eyes. Behind his lids flashed a memory from when he was twelve, and the sheriff had rescued him from the car accident that had left him motherless. “You always were…”

“I’m glad you’re home, boy. I need you around here. It’s not so quiet anymore. More to worry about now than some lovesick teenage girl speeding around town.”

Dylan nodded, but disappointment rose in his throat. After all those years of sense less violence in Detroit, he’d wanted to return home where but for that one night, he’d had nothing more dangerous to worry about than a sassy teenager.

“Lindsey Warner subdued?” he muttered.

The sheriff chortled. “Don’t show any interest,” he hissed as Marge slapped some steaming plates of beefy noodle casserole on the table.

“I haven’t had a casserole in years, Marge. Thanks.” Dylan reached for the fork. He hoped he could eat. Too many memories had his guts tied in knots.

She patted his head the way she had when he was eight years old. He had to smile. Nobody had patted his head in ten years. It was good to be home.

IT WAS HELL TO BE HOME, Lindsey thought as she leaned back in her father’s chair. Throughout the office a satisfying bang echoed as she swung the heels of her boots onto the surface of his old desk. She would have rather kicked something, though.

“Hey, brat,” her father teased as he poked his graying head around the door. “Taking over already? Or hiding out?”

She glared at him, her most lethal glare. He laughed. Then he lifted a bag and waved it in the air in mockery of a flag of surrender. The sweet memory of Marge’s Diner drifted across the room to her. The smell of cinnamon rolls and strong coffee cut across the stale air of old cigars and newsprint that always prevailed in her father’s office.

She’d missed the stale odor. She’d missed the cinnamon rolls and coffee, too. “If that’s what I think it is, I’ll let you stay on for a while before I put you in a retirement home, old man.” But she’d missed her father most.

She swung her boots from his desk and jumped up, but he waved her back down and took the chair across from her. “Get used to it, honey. It will be yours one day.”

“I don’t deserve it, Dad,” she said softly as she took the grease-stained bag from his hands and spread the decadent bounty across his already cluttered desk.

“It’s better than not wanting it.” He expelled a weary-sounding sigh. Lindsey’s gaze clung to his gently wrinkling face. She’d been gone too long. Although he’d come to Chicago for visits, the time had been too brief and passed quickly. He’d aged, and Lindsey hadn’t been able to witness every new line in his face, every new gray hair on his head.

“I never said I didn’t want it,” she reminded him.

“You just wanted more.”

She winced over the hurt pride in his voice. “It’s not that it wasn’t enough. It’s not mine. I wanted something for me. And I wanted out of this town!” With barely con trolled anger she ripped off a sticky piece of roll.

“You ever going to forgive them?” he asked in the understanding tone that had always been her undoing.

She was too old for tears. “It’s over. There are bigger hurts in this world.”

He slid his rough hand over hers, and she turned hers over to link their fingers. “I hate that you had to find that out from a loser like your ex-fiancé.”

“That’s history now, Dad.” She kicked her purse that leaned against her dad’s desk. “He wouldn’t take his ring back in person, so I’m going to mail it.”

Her dad chuckled. “Pawn it. After the way he treated you…”

She squeezed his hand and forced a smile. “Yeah, well, that’s why I had to leave, to get used and abused in the big city.” The smile threatened to slip. “I can appreciate Winter Falls now.”

“Can you?” her father taunted knowingly.

She laughed. “All right. Not yet. But I will if I decide to stay. I haven’t decided yet, Dad.”

“It’s not the same town, brat. There’s so much growth. New shops, new commerce. Snowmobilers in the winter. Boaters in the spring and summer, and hunters in the fall. A wealthy developer wants to build a huge mall on an old farm just east of town. Winter Falls is in the process of a major growth spurt.”

His excitement spilled over in his voice, and Lindsey tried to summon some of her own. But she was more excited over the richness of the sticky cinnamon roll and the bite of the bitter, hot coffee.

Her father laughed. “But you need more action. You were reporting the police beat too long.”

“I wasn’t covering it alone, just assisting.” She winced over the bitterness in her voice, and her pride stung all over again with her stupidity. Why had she accepted her ex-fiancé’s lies?

“I read the paper, honey. I recognize my daughter’s voice whether I hear it over the phone or read it in newsprint.”

She took another gulp of coffee and enjoyed the numbness following the burn. She’d been numb for a while now. It was better that way. “Any action here?”

“Heated debates over the mall proposal. An old trustee and the mayor are fighting it. The developer is rich and powerful. It’s interesting. It’s not life and death, but it’s interesting.”

She sighed. “You’re right. It is interesting. I don’t need life and death anymore. Well, not death, anyhow.”

Her father opened his mouth, but if he scram bled for words, none came out. He stuffed a piece of roll between his lips. They ate in silence for several moments before he spoke again.

Finally he asked, “Are you going to see her, Lindsey?”

She didn’t need to ask of whom he spoke. “Would it matter? Would she even know?” She popped another piece of roll into her mouth, but it was like chewing sawdust now.

“I’ll be honest with you, honey. She probably wouldn’t know you. But I think it might matter to you.” He reached for her hand again, but she pulled back and wrapped it around her cup of coffee.

None of the warmth permeated her icy cold fingers. “I’ll be honest with you, Dad. I don’t think it would.”

He nodded, and disappointment flashed in his eyes. “On another note, there’s more news….”

Lindsey leaned forward, recognizing the tone of her father’s voice. This was something that would matter to her. “Yeah?”

“He’s back.”

“Who?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t want you smashing out the tail light on your Jeep or any other foolishness….”

Lindsey’s face heated, and she managed a giggle. She thought she’d lost the youthful ability to giggle. “Dylan Matthews?” Then she remembered how he had left ten years ago, and whatever pleasure she’d flirted with faded away. “I’m not the only one who has to forgive this town.”

“According to Marge, he’s sworn to protect it. He must have forgiven it.”

She snorted. “I always wondered why you never hired Marge. She’d make a great reporter. She always scoops you.” Her father’s face reddened. Marge had an inside track with Will Warner despite his marriage.

And she remembered another reason why she’d left. Her father was part of this town with its gossip and secrets.

AFTERNOON HAD SLIPPED into evening. Dylan had spent it familiarizing himself with a town he’d once known so well. He’d spent it doing anything but returning to the scene of so many of his night mares.

The leaves crunched under his feet as he walked around the Expedition and headed toward the abandoned house. In the fading light he barely noted the peeling paint and dirty windows. If he were ever fanciful, he might think it looked lonely. But that wasn’t new. It had been lonely for a long time, ever since his mother had died.

Sheriff Buck had offered him a bed in his home, but part of Dylan’s reason for returning to Winter Falls had been to deal with the house.

In northern Michigan fall had a nasty habit of slipping swiftly into winter. Dylan had originally planned a brief trip to Winter Falls to prepare the house for cold weather. The pipes needed to be drained and the water shut off.

And he could have easily asked the sheriff to handle it for him as he had in all the years past. But he hadn’t asked because he’d realized how badly he wanted to leave Detroit for home. This was home. Even with all its night mares.

He pulled open the screen door and slipped his key into the lock of the back door. It hadn’t been locked or closed that night ten years ago. On rusty hinges the door creaked open.

Immediately he glanced at the spot in front of the refrigerator. The door of the old appliance was propped open, much as it had gaped that night. The maple boards had been stripped and revarnished, but still the stain shone through the gleaming surface.

Although his knees shook, Dylan forced himself across the floor. He dropped the house keys onto the counter, rubbed a hand over his face and wiped away beads of sweat.

The sheriff was right. He should have sold the house. Maybe it was that simple. He shouldn’t have left town, just the house.

He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and pulled out a letter. He’d received it before he’d left Detroit. He uncrumpled the paper and perused the shaky handwriting of an old man.

The Winter Falls postmark hadn’t surprised Dylan. Sheriff Buck often wrote to him, and as he’d been working out his notice in Detroit, he had figured the sheriff had had details of Dylan’s reemployment as a Winter Falls deputy.

Instead he’d found the letter had been written by the lawyer of the man who’d killed his brother and then later himself.

Although he hardly glanced at the words, Dylan recited them from memory.

Dylan,

As I hear you’re returning home, I need to make an appointment with you to handle some unfinished business from ten years ago. I have something from Steve Mars that is addressed to you. I should have given it to you years ago, but when you left town, I thought you wanted to leave those painful memories behind. Now that you are returning, I feel it is my duty to deliver this item to you even though I am retired from my law practice. Please notify me when you return to town.

Sincerely,

Chet Oliver

Dylan crumpled the letter again and stuffed it back in the pocket of his leather jacket. Of the darkened room he asked, “Do I really want anything from Steve Mars?” His gaze fell on the stain on the hardwood floor. Other shadows blended into it, but he knew precisely where the stain began and ended.

Before he could give it any more thought, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open. “Dylan Matthews.”

“Deputy,” the sheriff reminded him, but there was no teasing note in his voice. His booming voice shook.

“What’s wrong, Sheriff?”

“Get over to Sunset Lane, Oliver’s place. something happened. I’m going to call it in, but I want you here first. Better yet, you call it in when you get here.”

Dylan reached into his pocket and touched the letter. He remembered where Chet Oliver lived. He’d gone to the lawyer’s house after Steve Mars’s jail-cell suicide. He’d wanted to know if the lawyer had really believed Steve had killed Jimmy. Why hadn’t the old man given him whatever Steve Mars had left for him then? Why keep it ten years?

Dylan slipped his phone into his pocket with the letter and picked up his keys. Would he finally get some answers tonight or only more questions?

WHILE HER FATHER WORKED on his editorial, Lindsey loomed over his shoulder, reading as he wrote. “You’re brilliant, Dad. The things you notice…well, let’s just say you’re a much better reporter than many I’ve known.”

Her father squeezed the hand she’d braced on his shoulder. “Brat.”

Behind her on the scarred credenza, her father’s police scanner sputtered out a call. Despite the static and the poor reception of the ancient model, she recognized the voice. Dylan Matthews. Deputy Dylan Matthews calling for the coroner.

“Chet?” her father gasped when the address sputtered out of the box.

“Chet Oliver. The lawyer? If he died of natural causes, why wouldn’t they have called his family doctor?” Lindsey narrowed her eyes. Then she grabbed her backpack-style leather bag and slung it over her shoulder.

“Lindsey.” Her father reached for her arm. “You’re not going—”

“Do you want the story, Dad?”

Her father leaned back in his chair and stared at her over the rims of his reading glasses. “I want the story. Are you working for me?”

She’d come home to see her father. She hadn’t thought beyond that. “I guess I am.”

“Then remember I’m the boss. Go easy on Dylan, okay, brat?” He softened the warning with a smile.

“You want the story, Dad. To get it, I have to go to the story.” And the man. Not that she wanted the man. She hadn’t wanted him in a long time. She was over her ado les cent crush.

In Chicago she’d learned it was better when wishes didn’t come true. Idols were safer admired from afar. Up close they were human and flawed. When she saw Dylan Matthews again, she believed she’d see just the man, not a heart-stopping hero.

Chapter Two

DYLAN SNAPPED on his plastic gloves and touched the desk where Chet Oliver was slumped. A bullet in his temple. Dylan had already called the coroner, taken crime-scene photos and dusted for prints.

This was his inspection. The one that gave him a “feel” for what had happened that night. He hoped the crime scene would speak to him, not that he had much experience with murder investigations.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sheriff Buck muttered from the chair Dylan had pressed him into earlier. The tiny Queen Anne dubiously sup ported the sheriff’s weight.

Oliver’s Victorian farm house show cased several antiques. Dylan admired the gleaming mahogany surface of the desk as his fingertips skimmed over it.

He raised a white residue to eye level. Then he glanced up. Plaster from the ornate ceiling above Chet’s desk. He spied a bullet hole near some cove molding.

“Did you find it?” Sheriff Buck asked, his breathing ragged.

Dylan glanced at him and wondered if he should call the rookie deputy to look after the sheriff instead of having him wait outside for the coroner.

But the kid had turned green when he’d seen the victim, and Dylan had wanted him to get some air. Perhaps the sheriff needed some, too.

“What? A suicide note?” Dylan gestured at the retired lawyer’s slumped body. “This was no suicide.”

The sheriff sighed. “It wouldn’t make sense for him to kill himself. He just retired. We went fishing a couple weeks ago. He was looking forward to retirement, to his fight with the developers….”

“Fight?”

“Over the proposed mall project. Chet is—was a trustee.”

“You told me about the developer this afternoon.” Dylan retraced his steps across the room. He dropped his hand on the sheriff’s shoulder. “Oliver didn’t do this.”

“I saw the gun in his hand.”

Dylan shook his head. “It was put there. A round was squeezed off. Red marks indicate there will be bruising on his hand. This is murder.”

“It doesn’t make sense….”

“How did you happen to find him, Sheriff? It’s getting late for a visit.”

The sheriff’s shoulder trembled beneath Dylan’s hand. “You didn’t find it?”

“What? I already said there was no note—”

“Not from Oliver. It would have been from Steve Mars.”

Dylan fought a shudder. A ghost hadn’t killed Chet Oliver. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about whatever Chet had for you. He came into the diner after you left today. He said he had something for you, something Steve Mars had wanted you to have.”

Dylan nodded. “He sent a letter to me in Detroit. Told me the same thing.”

“A letter’s one thing. But the fool was talking about it in the middle of Marge’s Diner. William Warner was there, getting something to go. It’ll probably be all over tomorrow’s paper. And for what? It’s old news.” The sheriff’s face reddened, and his breathing grew more labored.

From an antique bureau, Dylan grabbed the glass of water he’d given him earlier and pressed it back into his hand. “Take a sip. Don’t worry. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. I came here to tell him to keep whatever it was. You didn’t need to go through any of that pain again. You just came home. I didn’t want him driving you away.” The sheriff laid his hand over Dylan’s.

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at the lifeless body of Chet Oliver. “He won’t be doing that now. I looked through his desk and his filing cabinet. There wasn’t anything addressed to me.”

“That’s just as well.” The sheriff took a swallow of water.

Dylan shook his head. “But I wanted to know what Steve Mars had left for me. I need some answers. It’s been ten years.”

“Answers to what?” With a shaky hand, Sheriff Buck set his glass back on the bureau, sloshing water onto the gleaming wood. “Some times things just happen. There’s no reason, no explanation. You just have to move on.”

Dylan nodded as if he under stood. But he didn’t. He’d been gone ten years, but he’d never moved on. And for his part, neither had Sheriff Buck Adams.

After Dylan’s mother had dumped him for Dylan’s father, the sheriff had never married. He’d stayed in love with a married woman and then with a dead woman. No, the sheriff didn’t know any more about moving on than Dylan did.

The young officer scram bled inside. His face flushed and eyes wide, he whispered, “She’s out there.”

Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

“A big-city reporter. She wants to talk to the officer in charge. She has questions, lots of them.”

Lindsey Warner. “I didn’t realize she was working for her father. I thought she was home—what had Marge said?”

The sheriff offered no information. The older man rested his head in his trembling hands.

“Yeah,” Dylan continued as if he’d been given an answer, “with a broken heart. Subdued.”

“Subdued!” The kid’s voice cracked.

“She’s not subdued?”

“Hell, no!” His face reddened even more. “Sorry, sir.”

“You can handle her.”

“No, sir, really you should talk to her. I’ve never talked to a reporter before.”

“Tell her she can come to the station tomorrow. We’ll have more information after the coroner gets here. We can’t tell her anything tonight.”

The young officer’s eyes filled with doubt.

“You can do it—” Dylan read the badge pinned askew on the kid’s shirt pocket “—Deputy Jones.”

After the kid dragged his feet out the front door, Dylan squeezed the sheriff’s shoulder again. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise. We’ll find out who did this and why.”

Murder had revisited Winter Falls. This time Dylan was going to get all the answers.

He thought again of the stain on his kitchen floor. He reined his thoughts in. Jimmy was gone. A new victim had taken his place. Dylan had to think of something else.

He thought of Lindsey Warner. Subdued. Hell, no.

“SUICIDE.” LINDSEY SNORTED at her reflection in the rearview mirror of her Jeep. Then she squinted against the glare of the morning sun ricocheting off the rusted hood.

The young deputy, Jones, had called it suicide. Of course, he hadn’t offered it freely. No, Lindsey had had to pry the information from him.

Deputy Matthews had been stupid to let a rookie try to handle her. Even experienced, cynical city detectives hadn’t been able to handle her.

She gripped the steering wheel tighter as the old Jeep bounced along the gravel road. She was headed to the police department this morning, all right.

But after Jones’s stuttered explanations, she hadn’t returned home. Although she’d been gone awhile, she still had connections in this town. The coroner played cards with her father.

Despite the late hour, he’d given her an off-the-record preliminary report. She couldn’t print it until she got confirmation of…

Murder. A murder in Winter Falls. Again.

How did Deputy Dylan Matthews feel about a murder on his first day back on the job?

She hadn’t known Chet Oliver. She’d been gone nine years, and before then, she hadn’t had need of lawyers or city trustees. Dylan knew him, though. Chet Oliver had represented his brother’s murderer, but there hadn’t been much to rep re sent. Steve Mars had pleaded guilty. That case was closed.

Would this case be closed so easily? Although she hadn’t known Oliver, she believed he hadn’t deserved to die. Neither had Jimmy Matthews. She couldn’t imagine how his brother’s murder must still affect Dylan.

Some times it still affected her. His had been the first dead body she’d ever seen. Since then, on the police beat, she’d seen many more. It never got easier.

She shuddered and turned up the heat. Warm autumn mornings didn’t exist in northern Michigan.

She pressed on the accelerator. She had some questions for Deputy Dylan Matthews. Over the clatter of the heater motor, a siren wailed. A glance in her rearview mirror confirmed the flashing lights on the vehicle behind her.

The Jeep tossed up a shower of stones as she ground it to a stop. The last thing she needed was another ticket. Her insurance premiums were putting the agent’s kid through an Ivy League college as it was.

Then again, if it was young Deputy Jones, she would demonstrate to him how ill advised it was to lie to Lindsey Warner. Lindsey couldn’t stand being lied to. Too many people already had.

But the long, muscular body that unwound from the police car was too honed to be the rookie’s. Ten years had brought Dylan Matthews to his full, masculine potential. Despite how mad she was, Lindsey had to appreciate his long legs, lean hips and wide chest. His tan uniform displayed his impressive physique to perfection.

The brisk morning breeze tousled his golden blond hair. The sun glinted off the dark glasses he wore. She wanted them off. She wanted to see if his eyes were as deep a blue as she’d remembered in some stray dreams.

While she drooled over him, lost in la-la land, he tapped on the window. Startled, she quickly rolled it down.

“License and registration, ma’am.” Deputy Dylan Matthews used the same deep, impersonal tone he’d always used when citing her for a traffic violation.

But then he’d used her name, at least. Was it possible he didn’t recognize her? Was her father lying when he swore she had never changed a bit?

“How fast was I going, Officer?” she queried politely as she reached into her leather bag. Her fingers touched on her can of pepper spray, but she passed over it for her wallet.

“Fifteen over the posted speed limit” was his clipped reply. With a leather-gloved hand he accepted the license she’d pulled from its plastic sheath.

Because of the concealing dark glasses, she couldn’t discern if he recognized the name. “Out-of-state license and plates,” he observed. “I need to see your registration, too, please.”

“What? You think I stole this car? This old thing? This is the same Jeep I drove when you pulled me over when I was a kid, Dylan Matthews!” She threw open the door and flew out of the vehicle.

He stepped back, but she was in his face with one stride. She reached for his dark glasses, but before she could whip them off, her wrist was caught tight in his leather-gloved hand.

“Ma’am, are you assaulting an officer?” he queried, his tone too nonchalant.

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to invite me to frisk you like old times, Lindsey?” A grin teased one corner of his hard mouth.

She tried to pull her wrist free, but his grip was too tight. “Very funny, Dylan. You knew me the whole time!” She lifted her other hand to pry his fingers loose. He caught that one in the glove still holding her license. The hard plastic bit into her wrist. And he pulled her closer.

“Ooh.” She feigned a sigh. “Getting physical with me, Deputy?”

“Isn’t that what you were always tempting me to do ten years ago, Lindsey?” His voice had dropped to a low rumble in his chest, which vibrated against hers.

She took a quick breath. “Were you ever tempted, Dylan?” She hated the vulnerability that had slipped into her equally low voice. But he had been the first to break her foolish heart.

After a moment he offered, “You were just a kid then.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Were you ever tempted to catch me any of those hundred times I threw myself at you?” Her heart ached with the old pain of every one of his rejections.

He chuckled. “Another woman would either deny throwing herself at a man, or, at the very least, never bring it up. There’s no humility in you.” He chuckled again and eased his grip on her wrists.

Despite her anger at him, for which he’d pay later, Lindsey was tempted to give in to desire. She leaned into his hard chest, his badge biting through her fleece sweatshirt.

“Lindsey.” Her name was a sexy rumble in his chest. Perhaps he’d meant it as a threat. “Dylan.”

“Haven’t learned to slow down yet?” He clicked his tongue. “How many times have I warned you about going too fast?”

“I like fast.”

His chuckle ended in a strained cough.

“You’re not trying to bribe your way out of this ticket?” He cleared his throat. “You know it’s a crime to bribe an officer.”

“What do you think I’m offering?” Lindsey asked with a coy flutter of her lashes.

Dylan shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what scares me.”

Lindsey batted her lashes again. “Aw, Deputy, it won’t be anything you don’t deserve.” She flashed a bright smile.

Despite the dark lenses of his sun glasses, she read his reaction; he stiffened against her. His chiseled lips descended toward hers. In those dark lenses were twin reflections of herself, soft and feminine, yielding. Lindsey jerked back. The last thing she ever wanted to be again was yielding.

“Lindsey?” His head dipped close to hers, his lips just a breath away from hers. She could almost taste him.

“I want something, Dylan.”

A dark blond brow lifted above the rim of the sunglasses.

“I want the truth.” Although she leaned against him, she wasn’t vulnerable anymore. She’d remembered her anger. She really hated being lied to, and her battered pride stung.

“Jeez, you are determined. Yes, damn it, I was tempted ten years ago. I was tempted to do this….” He dropped her wrists to pull her fully into his arms. Then one gloved hand grasped the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his.

She dodged away, so that his lips grazed her cheek. “That’s not the truth I wanted, Dylan.” But the fast pounding of her heart told another story.

He raised his head, and she fervently wished she could see his eyes. His nostrils flared as he exhaled a deep breath. “What truth do you want, Lindsey?”

“Why are you trying to pass a murder off as a suicide?”

“What?” He dropped his arms from around her and stepped back.

She shivered from the loss of his body heat. “Why are you calling a murder a suicide?”

His response came softly but succinctly. “I didn’t call anything a suicide.”

“No, you didn’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “You sent your flunky to do your dirty work, to deal with the press.”

He had the audacity to laugh. She wanted to belt him, but she suspected he’d arrest her for assaulting an officer. With an effort she grappled for control, amazed she’d almost lost it.

“So you’re not denying it?”

“Denying what? I didn’t send my flunky to do anything. I don’t have a flunky. I told a young deputy to tell you to come by the station today, that we’d have more information then. Nothing was said about suicide. The deputy must have drawn his own conclusion. But none of that matters.”

“No.” A heavy sigh followed her agreement. “It doesn’t. A man is dead, murdered, and you lied about it.”

He chuckled again, but she shivered over the coldness in his tone. “You don’t give up, Lindsey. I didn’t lie about anything. You’re trying to twist my words. Now I have some questions.”

Imitating his gesture she raised a brow.

“I thought you just came home for a visit?” His voice dropped. “There was something about a broken heart?” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek.

Heat climbed into her face, so she dipped her chin. “I guess the rumor mill is still as active as ever. I came home because I wanted to, not because I’m hiding or licking any wounds.” She lifted her chin.

“So why are you covering this story?”

She’d flown out of her father’s office the previous evening on the scent of a story. She hadn’t thought beyond it. Was there any reason for her to stay in Winter Falls? Was there any reason for her to return to Chicago?

“Because there’s a story.”

He nodded. “And your father can’t cover it on his own?”

She really needed to belt him. “No, my father isn’t used to covering murder, Deputy.”

“And you are?”

“I assisted on the police beat in Chicago. Yeah, I’m used to it. So you’re admitting Chet Oliver was murdered?”

“No, you’re saying that, Lindsey Warner, which makes me wonder how you would come to that conclusion if Jones told you suicide. What information or evidence has led you to believe this and how did you come by this evidence? You wouldn’t have intruded on a crime scene? As a reporter who has covered a police beat, you would know better than that. You would know better than to possibly contaminate evidence.”

She glared at him.

“Yeah, I would. I would never contaminate evidence. I’ve been gone awhile, but a good reporter has sources every where.” She waited a full second while she carefully studied his handsome face. He wasn’t giving. Neither was she.

After taking a hope fully calming breath, she asked, “Are you going to give the public the truth?”

“You’re the public now, Lindsey?”

“Damn it, Dylan!”

“After I get the coroner’s report, I’ll give you more details. Anything I said before then would be merely speculation.”

She couldn’t curb her mocking smile.

“He’s your source? You’ve already got the coroner’s report or an idea of what will be on it.” He sighed.

“A reporter protects her sources.”

Behind his dark lenses, she sensed he care fully studied her. What did he speculate about her return to Winter Falls? Did he believe the rumor mill?

Before she could ask, a call sputtered from his police radio. Without a goodbye, he strode back to his cruiser.

He still had her license and wasn’t above writing her up a citation. Because she was curious about the police call, she followed him.

She recognized the code for a missing person. Then Sheriff Buck spoke clearly. Her father often laughed about the sheriff not bothering with the codes. “Mrs. Warner has run away from the sanatorium. She’s been missing since yesterday afternoon, Dylan. After searching the grounds and the surrounding area, the sanatorium finally contacted Warner, and he’s been searching all night.”

Lindsey’s heart clutched with fear. Her mother. Her poor, deranged mother had wandered off and spent the cold autumn evening outside. She sprinted toward her Jeep but didn’t manage three steps before Dylan caught her arm.

“Lindsey, you can’t drive away without your license.”

“Watch me!”

“Come on. Come with me. We’ll find her.”

She listened for the pity the town had always drowned her in. She didn’t hear it. But then Dylan’s life was more deserving of pity than hers.

He directed her to the passenger side of the police car and opened the door for her. Before she could be touched by his gesture, she realized he regularly opened doors for people in police cars. Usually the people were criminals.

When he slid behind the wheel, he turned to her. Finally he removed the dark glasses. His blue eyes were as dazzling as they’d been in her dreams. Now, instead of pity, they were filled with concern. “Where would she be, Lindsey?”

Lindsey sighed. “I haven’t seen her in nine years, Dylan.” The guilt clogged her throat. “I know that sounds awful. You probably think I’m a selfish brat. But I couldn’t…” Her heart hadn’t been able to handle any more of her mother’s rejections. Before Lindsey had left for college, Retha Warner hadn’t even recognized her only child.

He took her hand in his and gently squeezed her fingers. The last time they’d held hands had been after a murder.

“Okay.” She dragged in a jerky breath and fought the urge to put her head between her knees. Panic danced through her stomach. “Okay. She would go home. Wouldn’t she go home? God, would she remember where it is? She hasn’t been there in almost ten years.”

“I didn’t know your mother was in a sanatorium.”

“But you knew she was nuts. Every body knows she’s nuts. After she tried to kill herself, Dad had to put her in that place. She was a danger to herself. He had to.” She winced over the defensive tone. The guilt danced with the panic. “You don’t care about that.” She dragged in another breath and hoped she wouldn’t hyperventilate.

“Yes, I do, Lindsey.”

She shrugged and then shivered. “Let’s go home first. Maybe she’d get there. The last few years before I left, she didn’t know me half the time, but maybe she’d remember how to get home.”

Dylan squeezed her fingers again. “I know where your house is. And if she’s not there, we’ll keep looking. We’ll find her.”

She appreciated his calm assurance. Lindsey had never been good at serenity. While in the throes of her deep depression, her mother had always appeared too serene. She’d sit for days without moving, or even blinking, Lindsey had suspected.

“It’s not the same.” Dylan pulled into her father’s drive way and turned off the ignition of the patrol car.

Lindsey glanced at the vinyl-sided Dutch colonial. “Not since you left, no. She set it on fire. She was inside.” She hated the sting of tears behind her eyelids. That had been so long ago. She shouldn’t still be able to smell the smoke in the air. She shouldn’t remember the struggle for breath when she’d fought the heat and flames for her mother.

“I’m sorry.” Dylan trailed a finger from his free hand down her cheek.

Lindsey let out a shuddery breath. “Why? You weren’t here.”

“That’s why.”

Despite not wanting him to see the tears swimming in her eyes, she turned toward him. He was so strong, so solid. “You’re not responsible for me, Dylan. You had good reasons for leaving.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t release her fingers, either. He hadn’t even while he’d driven over the rutted country roads.

“She’s not here, you know.” Lindsey couldn’t imagine where her mother would be. To get here from the sanatorium, she’d have had to walk miles. Did she have a jacket to keep her warm? Where had she slept? Lying in some rotted leaves in a ditch on the side of the road? Had they passed her?

Lindsey fought down the panic. “Her doctors think she might be schizophrenic, but her erratic symptoms have made her hard to diagnose. She wouldn’t have recognized the old house, let alone the rebuilt one.”

“But it’s at the same address. We should check.”

“I just left here a little while ago, on my way to see you at the police station.”

He opened his door. “You can stay here. I’ll check. Give me your keys.”

“I left them in the Jeep.”

He chuckled. “Well, I suppose it’s safe. I doubt anyone will steal it.”

She rewarded his obvious effort with a weak smile. “I’m sure Dad stashes the spare in the same place.” She hopped out and strode to the door. They’d take a quick gander inside and resume their search. Retha Warner wasn’t there. But they would find her. They had to.

Before Lindsey could reach above the door frame for the key, the kitchen door opened. A fragile-looking woman with dull black hair and glassy eyes reached for Lindsey. “Sweet heart, there you are! I couldn’t catch you when you left the house for school earlier. Are you skipping class?” The woman made a tsking noise.

As she stood stiffly in the fragile arms of her mother, Lindsey trembled, and her stomach pitched as a flurry of emotions surged through her.

Her mother. She pushed some of the scraggly hair from her mother’s scarred cheek. How did she recognize Lindsey now after all these years when she hadn’t then, when a teenage girl had so desperately needed her mother?

“Deputy Matthews,” Retha Warner said in a welcoming voice. “Thank you for bringing her home. She causing you trouble again?” She actually winked at him.

How had her mother known of Lindsey’s infatuation with the young deputy? She’d always seemed oblivious to her surroundings.

“Mom,” she finally said, struggling to clear her throat of the jerky sobs threatening as memories flooded her mind. “Mom, I’m not in school anymore. I’m almost twenty-seven now.”

“Always trying to rush things, Lindsey,” her mother scoffed affectionately. “Come in, you two. I’ve baked cookies and started coffee.”

Dylan’s hand on her back urged Lindsey inside the warm kitchen. Cookies cooled on waxed paper on the counter, and an announcer chattered from the radio on top of the refrigerator.

“Mom, please.” She followed Retha to the counter and put a trembling hand on her shoulder. “You must know that you don’t live here anymore.”

“I know the house looks different. Remodeled, finally. I love it.” Her mother smiled as she poured them mugs of steaming coffee.

Lindsey took her mother’s hands in hers, running her fingers over the scarred flesh of the right one. She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled for a breath. Her mother hadn’t even cried over the burns. But Lindsey had.

Dylan rubbed her back. “Let me tell her, Lindsey.”

She shook her head and opened her eyes. Her mother’s once beautiful face held concern and con fusion. Lindsey dragged in a quick, choking breath. “Mom, you live in the sanatorium now.”

“What? There is no sanatorium in Winter Falls.” A frown puckered Retha’s otherwise unlined forehead. She pulled her hands from Lindsey’s.

Lindsey brushed the hair away from her mother’s face. The thin strands of black slid smoothly between Lindsey’s fingers. At least they kept her clean at the sanatorium even though they hadn’t kept her safe.

Lindsey took in another breath and caught the scent of roses. Her mother’s perfumed soap clung to her.

“Arborview, Mom.”

Her mother shuddered now. “Arborview is the home for unwed mothers, Lindsey. You shouldn’t know anything about that place.” She slid her scarred hand over Lindsey’s cheek.

“It hasn’t been that for years, Mom. You live there.” Lindsey spoke as slowly and gently as she would to a child. Because she didn’t possess any of her own, she figured she must have borrowed some of Dylan’s patience and strength. His long, lean body hovered so near, his heat warmed her.

“You’re doing great,” he murmured by her ear.

Her mother shook her head. “No, no, I don’t anymore. That was just for a little while and so long ago.”

Lindsey brushed the hair back from her mother’s face again. The sting of tears and guilt blinded her for a moment. “You’ve lived there nine years now, Mom.”

Her mother laughed. “Lindsey, always spinning your yarns, just like your father.”

“No, Mom…”

“Shh,” her mother said, pressing a finger over Lindsey’s lips. “Listen.”

The radio news caster reported Chet Oliver’s death. Her mother laughed again. “The old bastard. He deserved to die.”

“What, Mom?”

“Selling babies the way he did—the bastard!” Then her laughter turned into hysterical sobbing.

Lindsey pulled her mother into her arms, more to restrain than to comfort. “Calm down, Mom.”

“He stole babies, Lindsey…” Her body went limp, sagging heavily against Lindsey, as she fainted dead away.

Chapter Three

DYLAN WAITED in the wide corridor outside Retha Warner’s room at the sanatorium. Beside him, Lindsey leaned against the wall. She dragged the toe of her hiking boot back and forth over the squares of spark ling clean linoleum.

“You don’t have to stay,” she repeated. “Dad’s here. He can give me a ride home, you know. I’ll be fine if you leave. You have a lot going on with this murder and all.”

He stepped in front of her and lifted her chin, so she would finally look him in the eye. Then he pressed a finger across her lips before she could say any more. “I’m staying.”

He didn’t know if he got through to her because the door behind him opened. Her father exhaled a ragged breath and brushed a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Is she all right, Mr. Warner?”

The older man nodded and took Dylan’s arm. “They’ve sedated her. Thank you, Deputy, for finding her, for being there.” Then William Warner reached out a hand toward his daughter, but Lindsey shook her head. “Lindsey?”

“No, Dad. I want some answers for once. I want the real reason she’s like that!” Lindsey straightened from the wall, bristling with anger. “I want to know why she called Chet Oliver a baby thief! You know, but you’ve never told me!”

Dylan had never seen Lindsey so distraught. But she wasn’t the girl he’d once known. She was a woman now. Then he realized he’d never known the girl, either. “Lindsey, your father—”

“No.” Mr. Warner sighed and shoved his trembling hands into his pockets. “She’s right. You know about the miscarriages, Lindsey.”

She nodded. “After me, she couldn’t carry another baby to full term. She really wanted another baby, a boy….”

Bitterness dripped from Lindsey’s words. Apparently she thought she’d never been enough to make her mother happy. While Dylan hated being involved in other people’s emotional scenes, he found he couldn’t detach himself from this one. When he held out a hand for her, she grasped it tightly in both of hers.

William Warner shook his head. “No, honey. She wanted a boy to replace the one she gave up a few years before we met at college. This place—” He waved his arms around the wide corridor.

“—used to be a home for unwed mothers,” Lindsey finished. “That’s what she meant when she said she’d been here long ago. She’d—”

“Been sent here by her parents when she became pregnant during her senior year of high school in Chicago. They wanted her to have the baby and give him up for adoption. She was to go off to college that fall. So she came to this place, but she didn’t want to give up her baby.”

Despite his misgivings, Dylan found himself drawn into the story, into a young girl’s loss. “But she did.”

Warner nodded. “Yes. Lindsey, I met your mother at college. When she heard I was from this town, well…”

Lindsey didn’t say anything, but her fingers clutched Dylan’s hand so tightly, he’d have indentations of her short, no-nonsense nails in his skin.

“She told me everything,” Will Warner explained.

“What was ‘everything,’ Mr. Warner?” Dylan asked. “I mean, how did Chet Oliver figure into this?”

“He was the lawyer who handled the adoptions.”

“A baby broker. Is that legal?” Lindsey’s dark eyes widened.

“It was if your mother signed away her parental rights of her own free will,” Dylan clarified. “It would be considered a private adoption. A lot of people prefer them.”

“And if it wasn’t of her own free will?” Lindsey’s dark eyes swam with her mother’s pain and loss. “Then you have a motive for Chet Oliver’s murder. That’s why you’re here, huh, Dylan?” She dropped his hand and whirled away.

“Lindsey!” But she didn’t stop. She stomped down the corridor, and the guard at the outside door didn’t attempt to stop her.

“Is that true, Dylan?” Mr. Warner grabbed Dylan’s arm again. “Is my wife a suspect?”

Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. She left here early yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t found until late this morning. Chet was murdered last night. No one can account for her whereabouts. I don’t know.”

LINDSEY DIDN’T GLANCE UP when Dylan approached her. She continued to balance one hip on the front bumper of the patrol car. With the toe of her hiking boot she pushed a couple of leaves across the asphalt. “What’s that saying about going home again?” she asked.

“You can’t do it.” His tone was flat, unemotional. People said that about him. His mother died when he was still a boy, and with her had died Dylan Matthews’s capacity for emotion. But Lindsey never believed what people said when it came to Dylan Matthews.

She shook her head. “Naw. It feels like it always did. Marge gossiping about me down at the diner. Mom having her episodes. Dad keeping his secrets. Naw. If this was ever really my home, then I came back to it. Why would I do something so stupid?”

His shadow fell across the asphalt at her feet. She glanced up, but he’d put on his sun glasses again. What did it matter? She’d never had a chance of reading his mind. But she was a reporter to her soul. She had to ask her questions. “Why would you?”

He expelled a breath through his nostrils. “Why would I come back? I had to do something about the house.”

She raised a brow. “You can do better than that.”

“There was nothing for me in Detroit.”

“After ten years? No little woman to keep the home fires burning?”

He snorted now. “Yeah, right. What about you, Lindsey? Nobody for you?”

“The rumor is I came home with a broken heart, remember?” She forced the levity. “Really?”

She almost believed he wanted to know. She shrugged. “You know the gossip in this town, only about half of it’s ever true. I may be bruised, but I’m not broken.”

Half his mouth lifted into a sexy smile. “Lindsey. Why are you home?”

“Nothing for me in Chicago. And maybe home is where the heart is, or the heart ache.” She sighed and dropped her gaze to the long shadow Dylan Matthews cast. He’d been there, a shadow across her heart, for the last ten years.

“I figured you had probably hot-wired my car and taken off. You were steamed in there, just a few minutes ago,” he reminded her.

If she was smart, she would have. But she’d never been smart where Dylan was concerned. He would more than bruise her; he’d break her.

She nodded. “Yeah, I should have. But then you’d have to arrest me, and with my record…”

“You have a record now?”

She laughed over his shock. “Well, parking tickets. Didn’t you expect that, after all those tickets you gave me?”

“I let you get away with warnings quite a few times.”

“Yeah, I should have listened.” To straighten away from the bumper, she held out a hand to him. He closed his long fingers over hers and pulled her up. He was too close, too tempting.

“Now I’m going to make you listen,” she vowed.

“Hmm?” He pulled her closer.

Lindsey’s foolish heart raced away from her. “Yeah, you’re going to listen to me. My mother is not a suspect. That’s ridiculous.”

He dropped her hand and stepped around to the passenger’s door, which he held open for her. “Murder is pretty ridiculous when you think about it, not an act of a rational person.”

She agreed. She’d seen too many sense less deaths. “But not my mother’s act. Someone else did this, and I’m going to prove it to you.” She stepped close again, her face to his throat.

“Great.” His breath stirred her bangs.

“Great?”

He gently pushed her into the seat. “Murder isn’t my field. I was in the Narcotics division.”

“Narcotics?” She’d known some Narcotics officers, tough, cynical people who lived life on the edge. She’d attended a couple of their funerals. She shuddered.

He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. “There’re just a couple things about this, Lindsey.”

“Yeah?”

“You stay safe, all right? I don’t want you running around stirring up a murderer.”

She glared. “I’m careful.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, right. You are going to be careful this time. I don’t want you hurt.”

Her heart softened. “And the other thing?”

“It stays out of the paper.”

“What? I’m a reporter. That’s—”

“You’ll have the story after we have the murderer. You will not speculate in the paper.”

She smiled. “If I did that, I’d have to print an article with my mother as a suspect. No, any speculating I do will go no further than your ears. Can I trust you, Dylan?”

HE NEVER ANSWERED HER. Lindsey found that oddly reassuring. If he’d adamantly maintained his trust worthiness, she would have doubted him. If he’d warned her against trusting him, she would have argued. As it was, he’d dropped her back at her Jeep, and they’d parted ways three days ago.

She’d been busy. And by staying busy, she’d kept her mind from straying into some painful areas. Stinging pride could not compare to the pain of her parents’ betrayal. She had a brother, or so her mother claimed. And she’d never known.

She jerked the Jeep to a stop in Dylan’s driveway and with it her runaway thoughts. It was early for some people, late for night owls. The sun was just a hint in a still-dark sky. Of course, it was autumn in northern Michigan. The sun took its time rising in autumn and rarely showed at all for winter.

Dylan was an early riser. She had missed him yesterday. She hadn’t gone to the police station because she didn’t want anyone overhearing and spreading rumors about her mother. The town gossiped about her mother too much as it was.

Lindsey threw open her door and inhaled a huge gulp of crisp morning air. Last night someone had burned leaves. Lindsey could taste the acrid smoke that drifted like fog just above the ground. Before her mother had tried to burn down the house, Lindsey had loved the aromatic smell of burning leaves. Now it left her with stinging eyes.

Kind of like the thought of having a brother. She, who had been so alone in her youth, had a brother. No, it wasn’t possible. She shook off the crazy notion.

She grabbed her backpack from the passenger’s seat and slung it over her shoulder. Her rubber soles were silent on the gravel drive as she strode to his door. But a metallic hammering sound reached her ears. She paused, her hand mid-reach, at the screen door.

Closing her eyes brought forth an image of Jimmy Matthews that night. Jimmy’s murder had stolen Dylan’s last relative. He was all alone now.

She inhaled a quick breath. Dylan wouldn’t want her pity, just as she hadn’t wanted his the day they had found her mother. He hadn’t known how far from reality her mother had drifted. But murder? Could he really believe her mother capable of murder? She had to prove Retha Warner wasn’t.

She pulled open the screen and knocked in rapid succession on the glass of the back door. The knob rattled with each strike of her fist. She grasped it in her hand and was surprised it turned beneath her palm.

He’d lived in Detroit for ten years. How did he dare to leave his door unlocked? She always made certain to dead-bolt hers.

“Dylan?” Cautiously she stepped inside. She automatically glanced to the floor, to the stain in front of the refrigerator. She shuddered. How could he live here?

“Dylan?” she called out again.

An assault of steel guitars and blows and guttural cries emanated from the basement. The maple floorboards vibrated beneath her feet from the racket. Was someone getting beat up to the accompaniment of music?

She found the door to the basement standing open and tiptoed down the stairs. The portable stereo on the bottom step vibrated with the volume of the heavy metal music pouring from it.

In the middle of the basement a huge bag hung from the rafters, and Dylan attacked the bag with his fists and feet.

He wore only the bottoms of his sweat suit and those were cut off at the knee. His muscular chest was bare and glistened with the perspiration of his labor as he hammered at the bag with his fists in boxing gloves. Muscles rippled in his arms and legs as he swung and kicked, the bag bouncing away from the strike of his worn-out running shoe.

She’d never seen him so focused but yet so out of control at the same time. As his fists and feet slammed into the bag with a frenzied speed, cries of rage broke through his lips. When she caught sight of his eyes, the glazed look of them frightened her.

Then his gaze tangled with hers, and the glaze vanished to be replaced by his usual impenetrable stare. “I’m following up my run with a workout on the bag,” he said between gasping breaths.

She nodded and popped off the radio with the toe of her sneaker. “Is that what you’re calling it? If I was that bag, I’d press charges against you.”

“Maybe I should press some of my own. Breaking and entering, Ms. Warner?” He lifted a brow. Then he snagged his sweat shirt from the rusted lid of an old freezer and pulled it over his head.

She bit her lip to stop her protest of his covering his magnificent chest. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Before the shirt dropped to his waist, she noticed a jagged scar across one of his wash board abs.

“You left the door unlocked. Must have been some run. Good thing you do it before sunrise—you’d scare anyone meeting you on the street.” She softened her words with a smile and held back the question about his scar.

He shook his head. “You don’t seem very afraid of me, and you’re exaggerating.”

She laughed. “No, I’m not, but thank goodness the gossips are wrong about you.” And thank goodness she’d been right. She’d always argued Dylan Matthews didn’t lack feelings; he just kept them hidden from the prying eyes of this town. She was glad to finally be right about a man. But that didn’t make him any less dangerous to her stupid heart. Actually, it made him more so.

“Should I care about the gossip?” His ironic tone suggested he didn’t.

“I thought you did. I thought that’s why you left this town a decade ago.”

“Looking for a story, Ms. Reporter?” He grabbed a towel from the freezer and mopped his glistening face and scrubbed it over his sweat-darkened hair.

“Naw, you’re old news,” she scoffed, but it was a lie. Dylan Matthews was still as hot a topic as ever for conversation and idle sexual fantasies. She sighed.

He glanced up at her from under his towel. “You have anything new?”

She grinned, and he laughed. But the intense moment wasn’t for got ten. Her nerves still tingled with excitement. Dylan Matthews was one smoking cauldron of hot emotions. She wanted to stir him up again.

“So smug, Lindsey. You must have something good. Can I trust you to make coffee while I grab a shower? The coffee and maker are on the counter.” He joined her on the stairs.

From her perch above him, Lindsey relished the height advantage, something she rarely had. She peered down at him. “I’m your guest. You should make the coffee. And I could use some break fast, too. Can you make eggs?”

He didn’t stay below her. He sidled up so they shared the same step and pressed her between the concrete wall of the basement and the muscular wall of his chest. The jersey material had darkened with his sweat and the musk of man and perspiration filled her senses. The cold of the concrete seeped through the back of her sweater while his heat scorched her front.

“Usually my break fast guests have spent the night, Lindsey. If that had been the case, I’d make you the most in credible break fast.” His voice had dropped to a low and intimate level.

Lindsey lifted her gaze to his face, only inches from hers, and batted her lashes. “If I’d spent the night with you, Dylan, you wouldn’t have the strength to make break fast.”

His chuckle sounded strained, and he quickly brushed past her to climb the stairs.

“Dylan?” she called out. “You’re walking a little funny. Did you strain something when you kicked that bag?”

“You strained something, you tease. Still playing, huh?” he grumbled.

“Who says I’m playing?”

DYLAN TWISTED THE FAUCET to cold and stood under the icy spray. But it wasn’t enough to extinguish the fire in his blood. Lindsey Warner did something to him, and what was worse than his reaction to her was that she knew it.

He had a murder to solve, and her mother was the prime suspect. He couldn’t get involved with her; it wouldn’t be ethical.

But Lindsey didn’t play by any rules. He stepped out of the shower stall to find the bathroom door half open. She reached around the door to place a mug on the rim of the sink. In the mirror, rapidly clearing of fog, he spied her wicked grin and dancing eyes.

“Lindsey,” he threatened.

“Need any help, Deputy?” Her naughty chuckle grew fainter as she moved down the hall.

He kicked the door closed and stepped back into the shower stall to twist the faucet on to cold again.

His teeth chattered when he joined her in the kitchen. He’d wrapped his hands around the warm mug, but his fingernails were still blue. “You are such a tease!”

She jumped away from the sink, and a tinkle of ice on stain less steel rang out. He drew close enough to watch an ice cube disappear down the drain. “Hot?” He lifted a brow and detected a slight damp flush on her beautiful face.

“I always put ice in my coffee. I’m too impatient to wait for it to cool,” she explained in a far-too-innocent-sounding voice.

He laughed. “I don’t think anything manages to cool off around you. You never said what I’d done to deserve your torture this early in the morning.”

“Torture? Not hardly. I came to make your life easier. I’m helping you solve your murder, Dylan.”

He shivered. “Not my murder, Lindsey.”

“You know what I mean.” But for once her tone was a bit more serious. He followed her glance to the stain on the kitchen floor.

“Chet was a good man as far as I’ve heard.”

“He was a baby thief,” she argued.

“That’s your mother’s story.” And her motive.

“And her motive.” Lindsey spoke his thought aloud. “Yeah, I know that. But other people had motives. I’ve found more suspects.”

“You found the developer, right? Robert Hutchins. And if he has an alibi, he could have always sent his right-hand man, the mysterious Mr. Quade.”

She glared at him, and he chuckled again. “Think I was just waiting for you to wrap this up for me? I may not know much about murder, but I know how to work a case.”

“Hung out in Marge’s, huh?” She snorted.

He grinned. “I take it that was your source of information, as well as cinnamon rolls. Of course, you reporters protect your sources.”

“Nobody needs to protect Marge. She looks out for herself.”

“She’s a nice lady,” Dylan defended.

“She’s not been ragging on you since you got back,” Lindsey grumbled. Then she shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I have other suspects. You have to see that my mother isn’t the only one. And besides, the developer—”

“I really don’t consider him a suspect,” Dylan cut in.

“You don’t?”

He leaned around her, grabbed the coffee pot and splashed some more dark liquid into his mug. She smelled of cinnamon and burning leaves. He took a deep breath, then quickly drew back. The soft purr of a car engine distracted him. Probably Mr. Smithers. He was the closest neighbor. “What?”

“You don’t consider the developer a suspect?”

He shook his head. “No. He would have bought off someone like Chet, not killed him.”

“Maybe he tried and Chet refused the money.”

“A man who sold babies would refuse money for a zoning vote?”

“We haven’t proved he sold babies. My mother has never been the most reliable source of information, you know.”

“She told your father about the adoption when they first met. She didn’t have any episodes until after several miscarriages following your birth.”

She straightened from the sink and paced around his kitchen. “You’ve been checking out my mother?”

“That’s pretty much common knowledge, Lindsey,” he said softly, and caught her on her next circuit around the kitchen table. Her shoulder tensed beneath his hand, and he could trace the bones. She was more fragile than she liked to appear.

“This damn town and its gossips.” Her breath hitched, and her lids dropped over her dark, sad eyes. When she opened them again, the sadness was gone. She shrugged off his hand.

“Lindsey, how do you feel about having a brother? Do you think it’s true?”

“I don’t know. If it isn’t, my mother has no motive for murder. If it is, I have a brother.” She lifted her arms and dropped them back to her sides. “I don’t know what to think, let alone what to feel.”

He under stood. Separating thinking and feeling kept him sane. Perhaps Lindsey had a degree of detachment, too. “Let’s find out what the truth is. I talked to Chet’s nephew, who took over Chet’s practice after his retirement. A few months ago, the office was broken into and some old files stolen. Chet was quite upset about it when Art Oliver told him.”

Lindsey didn’t look surprised. “You knew that,” he guessed.

She nodded. “I went to school with Art Oliver. So there’s no record of those adoptions?”

“The sanatorium is looking for the old records from when it was the home for unwed mothers.”

“I hate the way that sounds. That alone had to be quite a stigma for any girl who was sent there.” Lindsey ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, and Dylan suspected she thought of her mother’s embarrassment and pain.

“I sense another story.” Absently he noted the grind of an engine starting.

She sighed. “Yeah, one I should have been more interested in long ago. Maybe I would have known the truth then.”

Dylan dragged in a deep breath and caught a whiff of gasoline. Had she fueled her tank before stopping by? Was it on her hands or did the rusty tank leak? She loved that Jeep because her dad had given it to her. “Are you talking to your dad yet?” She’d been so angry over her father’s silence.

“Yeah. I’ve never been able to stop talking to my dad, but he knows I’m not happy with him.” She sloshed some more coffee into her cup. A few droplets ran over the back of her hand.

He grabbed her wrist and brought her hand to his mouth. “Did you burn yourself?”

She shook her head. “Naw, coffee’s getting cold. Your pot is ancient.”

He licked the droplets from her skin. “You’re right. It is cold. Your hands are always cold.”

She pulled her hand from his. “You know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart.” She rubbed at her eyes.

Dylan smelled it then, the acrid smell of burning leaves and wood. “Smoke?”

“Someone must have been burning leaves around here. There was smoke when I drove up.” Lindsey coughed. “But it’s getting worse.”

Dylan strode to the kitchen door to peer out. Flames had eaten the scraggly grass close to the house, forming a three-foot-high wall at his back door. His heart slammed into his ribs.

He grabbed the phone, but there was no dial tone. “Go out the front door, Lindsey. I’m going to grab the cell phone from my bedroom.”

“Phone line’s dead?” She rifled through her leather backpack and flipped open a cell phone. “Use mine.”

“Outside. Use the front door.” He didn’t wait for her compliance but wrapped his hand around her elbow and ushered her through the living room.

The snap and crackle of the fire in creased with their steps. He let out a ragged breath at the sight of the smoke billowing under the front door.

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