“Go Away And Leave Me Alone.” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

“Go Away And Leave Me Alone.”

“What if I did?” Rafe crossed the kitchen, stopping when he was directly behind Holly. “Wouldn’t you hate it if I left you alone?”

“No. It’s what I want,” she insisted.

“What about what I want?” Her mouth was moist and softly swollen, her eyes glazed and slumberous. Bedroom eyes, he thought. “I want you, Holly. I want to make love to you. I’ve been waiting for the right time, and that is now. We’ve spent every day together for nearly a month. You can’t say we don’t know each other well.”

Holly twined her arms around his neck, her fingers combing through his sleek dark hair. She didn’t want him to go away and leave her alone—ever....

Dear Reader,

This month, Silhouette Desire celebrates sensuality. All six steamy novels perfectly describe those unique pleasures that gratify our senses, like seeing the lean body of a cowboy at work, smelling his earthy scent, tasting his kiss...and hearing him say, “I love you.”

Feast your eyes on June’s MAN OF THE MONTH, the tall, dark and incredibly handsome single father of four in beloved author Barbara Boswell’s That Marriageable Man! In bestselling author Lass Small’s continuing series, THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS, a feisty lady does her best to tame a reckless cowboy and he winds up unleashing her wild side in The Hard-To-Tame Texan. And a dating service guarantees delivery of a husband-to-be in Non-Refundable Groom by ultrasexy writer Patty Salier.

Plus, Modean Moon unfolds the rags-to-riches story of an honorable lawman who fulfills a sudden socialite’s deepest secret desire in Overnight Heiress In Catherine Lanigan’s Montana Bride, a bachelor hero introduces love and passion to a beautiful virgin. And a rugged cowboy saves a jilted lady in The Cowboy Who Came in From the Cold by Pamela Macaluso.

These six passionate stories are sure to leave you tingling... and anticipating next month’s sensuous selections. Enjoy!

Regards,

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

That Marriageable Man!

Barbara Boswell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BARBARA BOSWELL

loves writing about families. “I guess family has been a big influence on my writing,” she says. “I particularly enjoy writing about how my characters’ family relationships affect them.”

When Barbara isn’t writing and reading, she’s spending time with her own family—her husband, three daughters and three cats, who she concedes are the true bosses of their home! She has lived in Europe, but now makes her home in Pennsylvania. She collects miniatures and holiday ornaments, tries to avoid exercise and has somehow found the time to write over twenty category romances.

One

“Holly, are you sure you want to do it? You really want to go there?” Brenna Worth studied her longtime friend Holly Casale, not bothering to mask her concern. Or her disbelief.

“Not you, too!” Holly shook her head and managed a laugh. A slight one. “I’ve been defending my decision to the family for weeks, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to do it with you, Brenna. Can’t you be happy for me? It’s a great opportunity. I’ll be the only psychiatrist with the Widmark family practice, which is one of the biggest in the city, so I won’t have to go begging for referrals like a newcomer normally would. And I’ve already been asked to serve as a volunteer with the Teens At Risk Task Force and a peer counseling program at one of the high schools.”

“All that’s in addition to your job? Sounds like they plan to run you ragged with volunteering.”

“It’s an ideal way for me to get involved with the community and to work with kids. You know that’s my main field of interest, Brenna.”

“Troubled teens aren’t kids, they’re hazards—to be avoided,” stated Brenna. “I’m so disappointed you aren’t moving back here, Holly. Your mom said you had three good offers all within an hour’s drive. It would be great if we lived in the same area again! And to be perfectly honest with you, how happy can I be when your new job is in South Dakota?”

“Careful, Brenna, you’re starting to sound like my mother. When I told Mom I was moving to Sioux Falls her first words were, ‘If you want to move to a place far away with bad weather, why not Alaska? At least there is supposed to be a surplus of eligible men.’”

“And then, inevitably, one of your aunts chimed in with...?” prompted Brenna. She knew Holly’s family well.

“Aunt Hedy said, ‘With the shortage of marriageable women in Alaska, you’re bound to find a man up there, dear,’” Holly quoted with a wry smile.

Brenna sighed. “They just don’t give up, do they?”

“No. And they won’t until I’m either married or dead. I’ve already received five copies of The Rules. In hardcover.” Holly opened her closet door and brought out multiple copies of the book, which offered women advice on how to coyly lure Mr. Right to the altar.

“Mom bought me the book the day it appeared in the stores. Then Aunt Hedy and Aunt Honoria each gave me one. The copies from my cousins Hillary and Heather arrived in the mail on the same day. My sister keeps quizzing me on the contents to see if I’ve read the book yet. The whole family firmly believes I need all the help I can get when it comes to landing a husband.”

“Subtlety has never been your family’s strong suit, Holly.”

“Not where men and marriage are concerned. Feel free to keep a copy for yourself, Bren.” Holly chuckled. “After all, you’re still single, too. You might find some useful pointers if you decide you want to acquire a—”

“Don’t even joke about it!” Brenna cut in, backing away from the books as if they were radioactive. “I acquire companies, not men. My career keeps me way too busy to even think about the noxious pursuit of husband-hunting.”

“My family would consider that blasphemy. Or maybe insanity.” Holly’s smile faded a little. “You see why I can’t come back home to work, don’t you, Brenna? I love my family dearly, but my visits here over the years have already given me a taste of what it would be like if 1 lived among my relatives full-time.”

Brenna knew. “An endless succession of setups with any man deemed marriageable by your mother and your sister, and your aunts and cousins.”

“And their idea of an eligible bachelor runs a wide gamut, from the twenty-two-year-old video games fanatic to the sixty-one-year-old widower who owns his own real estate agency and has two daughters older than me.” Holly heaved a reminiscent groan.

The heart knows no age limit, Aunt Hedy had said blithely. She was the one who’d fixed Holly up with the real estate agent, already a grandfather five times over.

A young man needs the guiding hand of a loving older woman, said Aunt Honoria. The video games nut, a college student who’d looked and acted not a day over sixteen, had been her contribution to the collective Marry-Off-Holly effort.

Your aunts love you, they care about you, they know a woman isn’t happy without a husband. Helene Casale, Holly’s mother, made no apologies for her two sisters’ matchmaking attempts.

No wonder. Mom had been responsible for her own selection of dud blind dates for Holly. The pet shop owner whose sole topics of conversation were tropical fish and reptiles. The lawyer who specialized in personal injury suits and bribed ambulance drivers to beep him so he could arrive at accident scenes to pass out his cards. There had been others, though none quite as memorably horrific.

Holly’s older sister Hope and their cousins, Hillary, Heather, and Hayley—all married—had also done their share for “The Cause” over the years, producing a contingent of men whom Holly was lovingly bullied into meeting. Sometimes the men actually were nice, normal and perfectly adequate human beings. Sometimes there would be second dates and even a few more after that.

But so far, friendship rather than romance had resulted in every case because both Holly and the selected matrimonial candidate would recognize that their budding relationship was fated to be platonic, not romantic.

The female members of the clan were in despair that Holly, who had countless male friends, had never come close to nabbing that ultimate prize—an engagement ring. To be followed by the traditional big white wedding. Then the nagging to produce children could rightfully begin. Both Hillary and Heather already had a daughter apiece. Hope and Hayley were each trying zealously to conceive.

“I guess the fact that little Heidi is engaged and planning her wedding hasn’t made things any easier for you.” Brenna was sympathetic.

Little Heidi was Holly’s youngest cousin, who’d turned twenty last month and was currently flashing a minute solitaire on her finger. Though barely a diamond chip bought with the twenty-one-year-old husband-to-be’s student loan money, it was still an engagement ring provided by an authentic fiancé.

“Poor Mom. I felt so sorry for her when Heidi announced her engagement at the family’s monthly brunch.” Holly grimaced at the memory. “Mom claimed she was thrilled about little Heidi’s engagement but she left shortly afterward. She claimed she’d been food poisoned, but we all knew why she really felt sick.”

“Never mind that she has a daughter who graduated with honors from the University of Michigan’s med school and completed a psychiatric residency there.” Brenna’s blue eyes flashed. “That doesn’t count because Honoria is the one meeting with bridal consultants and shopping with Heidi for her wedding gown.”

“True. The fact that I’m twenty-nine without a single prospective son-in-law in sight is what really counts as far as Mom is concerned,” Holly said dryly.

“God, Holly, it makes me furious on your behalf! Furious and...and crazy.”

“Don’t be. And as a newly board-certified shrink. I advise you to redirect your anger into something positive. Like making plans to visit me in Sioux Falls as soon as I get settled in. Promise you’ll come soon, Bren.”

“I promise.” Brenna nodded her head. “And it’ll have to be soon because doesn’t winter come early there? Like around the first of September?”

“South Dakota is not in the Arctic Circle, Brenna. And considering some of the winters we’ve had here in Michigan, we really have no room to mock the weather anywhere else.”

“You’re getting defensive about your new hometown already. I guess you’ll fit in out there in Frontier Land. Well, Sioux Falls is lucky to have you, Holly. I just hope that you’ll...” Brenna paused, an unholy gleam in her eyes. “That you’ll meet the man of your dreams there. Imagine the thrill of being deluged with Planning the Perfect Wedding Guides from all your approving relatives!”

There was a knock on the door and Helene Casale entered Holly’s bedroom.

“How is the packing coming, Holly?” she asked, glancing at the suitcases that lay opened and half full on the bed.

“It’s coming along fairly well, Mom.”

“Don’t forget to pack this, Holly. You never know when you might need it for reference.” Helene Casale put a copy of The Rules into the suitcase, then handed one of the books to Brenna. “And you take one, too, dear. The authors practically guarantee a proposal if you follow their advice. Rumor has it that J.F.K. Jr.’s bride was a Rules girl.”

Holly’s eyes met Brenna’s and she read her friend’s silent message. Accepting the offer to join the Widmark family practice in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, far from her ever-loving, ever-obsessed-with-her-marital-status relatives, was definitely the right move.

The plane touched down at the Sioux Falls airport nearly two hours after its scheduled arrival time, the delay resulting from a mechanical problem discovered in Minneapolis shortly before takeoff.

Rafe Paradise glanced at his watch again.

“Watching the clock isn’t going to make the time pass any faster.” His seatmate, a petite blonde in a chic gray suit spoke up, her tone amused. “It’s ten minutes past the last time you checked. You really are in a hurry to get home, aren’t you?”

“Actually, no.” Rafe managed to return her smile. There was a difference between wanting to get home and having to get back as soon as possible, though he didn’t feel like discussing the whys and wherefores with the pretty woman sitting next to him.

She’d been flirting with him all during the flight and had already ascertained that he wasn’t married, that he was a lawyer who lived in Sioux Falls and had no significant other in his life. Rafe had answered her very direct questions without posing any of his own, but the blonde kept the conversation going, undeterred by his perfunctory responses.

He now knew that her name was Lorna Larson, that she lived and worked in the Twin Cities and was making one of her frequent business trips to Sioux Falls. (“Thanks to the deregulation of telecommunications, Sioux Falls has become a major center of credit card processing and telemarketing,” Lorna, a self-proclaimed rising star in a telecommunications company, explained to him.)

As if he, a lifelong native of the city, didn’t already know. Still, Rafe made no comment. Why bother to go through the motions—me flirtatious smiles, the eye contact, the exchange of personal info and other requisite preliminaries? As soon as he mentioned his situation, the come-hither glow in Lorna Larson’s eyes would turn to frost.

Worse, he didn’t care. His interest in sex had sunk to ground zero, Rafe acknowledged grimly, because the lack of female companionship in his life no longer even bothered him. Since he’d inherited his two younger half sisters last year—there were other words he could use to describe how they’d happened to land in his life but “inherited” was the most charitable—his social life had become as extinct as the Neanderthals who once inhabited the earth.

Maybe he was on to unlocking the mystery of their disappearance from the planet, Rafe mused darkly. Their caves had been besieged with kids—other people’s, not their own—who’d worked them over so thoroughly that their sexual drive had been effectively obliterated. The species had faded from sheer lack of time, interest and energy in sex.

Rafe could definitely relate. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had sex. Certainly before Camryn and Kaylin had moved in with him. Before his Little Brother Trent and Trent’s kid brother Tony had gradually become residents instead of visitors to his house. His last few dates, months and months ago, had ended in disaster because crises with the kids had disrupted them in grand style.

Lorna Larson pressed her business card into Rafe’s hand as they reached for their carry-on luggage stored in the overhead compartments. “I wrote the name of the hotel where I’m staying while I’m here in town. Give me a call and we can get together for drinks.” Her smile promised much more. She was clearly in the mood for some action during her stay in Sioux Falls.

Rafe murmured a polite response and tucked the card into the pocket of his suit jacket, knowing he wouldn’t call. He wouldn’t be up to drinks or anything else after dealing with those kids. Especially after his overnight absence. God only knew what they’d gotten into while on their own. At least he’d had the foresight to have his pal on the police force, Joe Stone, regularly check the house during his absence, thereby guaranteeing that the entire adolescent population of Sioux Falls would not have been partying there.

He remembered that first fateful time he’d gone away on an overnight business trip, not long after the kids’ arrival. He had naively expected them to carry on as if he were home. Oh, they’d carried on, all right. His house had been the sight of a teen saturnalia that would have done the ancient Romans proud. The two little guys, Trent and Tony, had their own fun, as well, inventing in-the-house versions of baseball, football, hockey and golf. Never mind pesky obstacles such as lamps and windows that happened to get in the way of a flying ball or puck and break into pieces.

Once again, thinking about the kids had supplanted thoughts of anything or anyone else, he realized. Already, the willing and ready Lorna Larson had been relegated to the realm of forgotten in his mind.

Rafe picked up his car in the parking lot. While driving on Interstate 90 toward home, the urge to keep going—all the way to the west coast without turning around—struck him hard. It was a tempting notion indeed.

But his sense of duty and responsibility was stronger than his longing for freedom. Rafe Paradise headed home.

“We’re gettin’ new neighbors and it’s gonna be cool. Maybe there’s a kid and he’ll go to our school. We can play golf an—” Ten-year-old Trent paused in the middle of the rap song he was composing. “What rhymes with golf?” He kept up his beat, hitting the edge of the coffee table with two wooden rulers.

“Nothing rhymes with golf,” said Kaylin, sixteen. “Why don’t you try another word? Like ball. Lots of things rhyme with ball. Call, fall, mall, tall.”

“Stop! I feel like I’m trapped in a Dr. Seuss book.” Seventeen-year-old Camryn, lying prone on the sofa, adjusted the ice bag on her forehead. “Trent, will you puh-leese quit that pounding! Every beat feels like a nail being driven into my head.”

“Call me Lion,” demanded Trent. “Did you get drunk again last night, Camryn?”

“Like I’d ever tell you! You’d run straight to Rafe and squeal on me, you weaselly little tattletale.” Camryn heaved a groan. “Kaylin, get me a couple Excedrin. And a cola. And some ice cream.”

“Sure.” Kaylin scurried into the kitchen to do her sister’s bidding.

“She’s not your slave, y’know,” Trent declared. “Slavery is against the law.”

“So is murder, but if you don’t stop making so much noise, I’m going to kill you,” Camryn warned.

Trent resumed his ruler beat, this time with a new rap. “I’m not scared of Camryn, even though she’s mean. She’s ugly, too, so bad she’ll make you scream.”

Camryn threw the ice bag at him and he deftly dodged it, laughing. Unfortunately, the ice bag hit the overweight mixed-breed dog dozing in the patch of sunlight in the middle of the room. The dog awoke and began to bark.

“Aw, poor Hot Dog.” Trent tried to comfort the animal by patting its head. Hot Dog snapped at him.

Trent quickly pulled his hand back. “How come Hot Dog hates me?”

“He doesn’t hate you, he’s just grouchy when he wakes up,” said Camryn. “C’mon, Hot Dog. Come here, sweetie. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“Yeah, she wanted to smack me, not you, boy.” Trent attempted to pat Hot Dog again. The dog bared his teeth and growled at him. “Y’know, he’s grouchy all the time, not just when he wakes up.”

“That’s ’cause he hates it here,” explained Camryn. “He liked living in Las Vegas. Me, too. Of course, who wouldn’t like Las Vegas better than Sioux Falls?”

“Me!” crowed Trent. “I love Sioux Falls.”

“That’s because you and your little brother have been stuck here all your lives. You can’t compare it to anything else.” Camryn heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Hey, where is that kid, anyway? Why isn’t he here making my headache even worse?”

“Tony slept over at the Steens’ last night. They’re going to the zoo today, they said we could both come along, too. Hey, know what, Camryn? When I’m as good a golfer as Tiger Woods I’ll go lots of places besides Sioux Falls,” Trent vowed. “I’ll go to Las Vegas.”

“And you’ll probably blow all your golf tournament winnings in the slot machines. All five dollars of it.” Camryn snickered at her own joke.

“I think that Trent is going to be a great golfer.” Kaylin rejoined them with Camryn’s order. “He’ll be the next Tiger Woods. Maybe even better.”

Trent beamed. “I’ll buy a big house in Las Vegas and you can live there, Kaylin. It’ll be a mansion and we can all live there, me and you and Tony and Camryn and Rate and Hot Dog. And my mom, too, if she wants to.”

“What about Flint? And Eva?” Camryn sat up to swallow the pills with a gulp of cola from the can. “Are they going to be living in the mansion with us, too?”

“No.” Trent shook his head decisively. “Flint will want to stay here and work and Eva—”

“Wouldn’t live with us if you paid her to,” Camryn finished for him. “She hates us too much.”

“Wonder why?” Trent looked glum. “Wish she didn’t.”

“If pigs were wishes, we could fly.” Kaylin shrugged philosophically. “Or something like that.”

A few minutes later Rafe Paradise walked into his living room to find Camryn breakfasting on cola and strawberry ice cream and Kaylin in his chair, a massive blue recliner. She was cuddling Hot Dog, the fattest, homeliest, worst-tempered beast Rafe had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Now he lived with the creature. And Hot Dog, with his imperious sense of canine entitlement, was drooling on the chair’s textured upholstery as well as shedding all over it.

Young Trent was stretched out on the floor on his stomach watching TV. Not quality children’s programming, Rafe noted dourly, but a poorly drawn cartoon that featured stick figures blasting other stick figures with some version of nuclear weaponry.

Rafe hardly knew where to begin. Since Trent jumped to his feet and ran to greet him joyously, Rafe decided to let the issue of violent cartoons slide—for now. Trent stopped just a few inches in front of Rafe, his arms at his sides, and beamed. A hug would’ve seemed natural to some, but Trent was wary of physical contact, and Rafe hadn’t been raised to be physically demonstrative. So the two smiled their mutual affection.

“Hi, Rafe. Did you have a good trip?” asked Kaylin.

Since she was the one sitting in his chair, Rafe didn’t scold her about the dog’s presence there, though it was strictly forbidden. Undoubtedly, it had been bratty Camryn who’d placed the offensive Hot Dog in his chair, anyway.

“The trip went well,” Rafe replied. His specialty was contracts law, and he knew the details of his work would bore the kids, should he attempt to explain it. So far, he never had.

He zeroed in on Camryn, who hadn’t acknowledged his presence at all. She was pouring cola over the ice cream and mashing it into a fizzing mess with her spoon before gobbling it down. At ten o’clock in the morning!

Rafe grimaced. “What kind of a breakfast is that?”

“It’s the only breakfast I want,” retorted Camryn

“And it’s not good for you. I went food shopping before I left for Minneapolis and I know we have juice and eggs and—”

“Quit it, Rafe!” Camryn made a gagging gesture. “You’re trying to make me sick on purpose.”

“I’ll have some juice and eggs, Rafe,” said Trent. “I want the kind with the egg fried in the middle of the bread, like my mom makes sometimes.”

Rafe looked at him blankly. He had no idea what kind of eggs Trent’s mother sometimes made.

“I know what he means. I’ll make it for him.” Kaylin rose to her feet and headed out of the room. “Anybody else want anything?” she called over her shoulder.

“No thanks.” Rafe was grateful for her willingness to help. Kaylin was usually cheerful and cooperative around the house, quite different from Camryn, whose disposition could and often did border on the demonic. But although Kaylin was easier to live with, she was as determined as her sister to run wild with the wrong crowd.

Rafe’s temples began to throb. “Did the girls go out last night, Lion?” He never forgot Trent’s nickname-of-the-moment.

“I don’t know,” Trent replied. “I was playing with my Gameboy. It’s the best present I ever got, Rafe. Thanks again.”

Rafe got the picture right away. The kid wasn’t going to squeal on Kaylin and Camryn, maybe his own choice, maybe because they’d threatened him to keep quiet. Perhaps if he rephrased the question, a standard lawyer’s trick... “What time did the girls get in last night, Lion?”

“I don’t know anything, I was playing with my Gameboy.” Trent stuck to his story.

“By the way, Tony is at the Steens’,” Camryn said in the acidly sweet tone she used to induce guilt. “Did you forget about him? ’Cause you didn’t mention him.”

Rafe felt guilty, all right. “I was just about to ask where Tony was.” He hadn’t forgotten about eight-year-old Tony, he assured himself. He’d been just a second or two away from noticing the child’s absence.

As he glanced from the boy to the girls and then to the dog, a peculiar feeling of unreality swept over him. It had been a whole year, and sometimes he still had difficulty believing that they were all here, living with him. That the life he’d known as a carefree bachelor had been so drastically, irrevocably, changed.

“The new neighbors are moving in today,” Trent said, flopping back down on the floor. “Did you see the moving truck when you came in, Rafe?”

“No, it wasn’t there.” Rafe already pitied the new neighbors who’d been unlucky enough to rent or buy the other half of the duplex in this development of town house condominiums. He knew that the kids’ noise and other antics had driven the Lamberts, the yuppie couple who’d previously lived there, to move across town.

“Maybe it just pulled in this second. I’m gonna go check.” Trent leaped to his feet and ran out the front door, closing it with a jarring slam.

Camryn clutched her head with her hands. “That felt like a cannon blast to the brain,” she complained.

“Where did you go last night and what time did you get in?” Rafe forced himself to ask, hating his role as warden. It was a role thrust upon him and he knew he wasn’t very good at it.

“I went miniature golfing with my friends and then we stopped at the Dairy Queen for sundaes. Real wholesome Midwest teen fun, huh, Rafe? Oh, and I was home before my curfew.” Camryn had a smile that was positively angelic.

Rafe had been fooled by her the first few days after she’d moved in. Then he’d caught on—the girl was actually the devil in disguise.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, scoffing his disbelief. “And Kaylin is going to be the valedictorian in her class and you’re going to be the prom queen in yours.”

The odds of either event occurring went far beyond the realm of possibility, with Kaylin’s and her “what’s bad about a D?” philosophy toward education and Camryn’s Princess of Darkness persona so at odds with the wholesome students at Riverview High. The same odds applied to Camryn’s version of how she’d spent her evening.

Kaylin came into the room carrying a plate with eggs and toast and a glass of orange juice. “Where’s Trent?”

“Pestering the new people next door, or trying to.” Camryn glanced at the food and sat up. “I’m starving! Can I have that?”

“It’s Trent’s,” Rafe said.

“I’ll make him some more. It’ll be cold by the time he gets back, anyway.” Kaylin handed the food and juice to her sister and sat down on Rafe’s designer recliner, wriggling in next to Hot Dog. The dog opened one eye, then closed it again, accepting her presence without protest.

“I feel kind of sick.” Kaylin swallowed visibly. “Like I might throw up. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all those Oreos. ’Specially not on top of the Twizzlers.”

“For breakfast?” Rafe heaved a groan.

“I had milk with them.” Kaylin was defensive. “Milk’s good for you.”

“Just don’t puke in here or else I will, too!” Camryn shuddered as she proceeded to shovel the food into her mouth.

Rafe decided to skip this particular conversation. “I’m going upstairs to unpack and change.” He fled from the room.

Two

The moment Holly pulled her overpacked Chevy Cavalier into the driveway of 101 Deer Trail Lane, a young boy came running across the front yard to meet her.

“I’m Lion,” he announced as she climbed out of the car. “I live right next door.” He pointed his finger. “See, our places are connected. If me and my brother pound on the walls, you can hear us real good.”

He seemed pleased by this fact. Holly wondered, a little apprehensively, why and how often the brothers pounded on the adjoining walls.

“Me and Tony—that’s my brother—can do Morse code,” Lion continued, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Not only SOS, either. All the letters!”

“That must have taken a lot of practice,” Holly said politely.

“Yeah. We’ll teach you and then we can send messages. What’s your name?”

“Holly.”

“Can I call you that? Or are you Mrs. Somebody?”

“You can call me Holly. I’m not Mrs. Anybody.” How ironic. to be quizzed on her marital status moments after setting foot in her new neighborhood. Was this child an agent of her mother’s?

Holly smiled and tried to appear more enthusiastic than she currently felt. The exhaustion from the long drive was seeping through her, and the prospect of learning Morse code by pounding on her walls did not enchant her. She felt hungry, stiff, and more than a little frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to move in today as planned.

Lion brandished a golf club like a sword while he chattered on. Holly tried to listen, to respond to his many questions, but her head was still ringing with all the directions and suggestions provided by the friendly real estate agent, who had just given her the keys to her rented duplex town house... Along with the unwelcome news that the moving truck had been delayed and wouldn’t be arriving with her furniture and other household essentials until sometime tomorrow.

Hopefully, the truck would arrive tomorrow. The agent’s perky parting comment, “You know how it goes with moving, there aren’t any guaranteed timetables,” didn’t offer a whole lot of reassurance.

“Watch my chip shot!” exclaimed Lion, placing a golf ball on a wooden tee in the grass along the edge of the driveway.

Holly watched as he whacked the ball with surprising strength. As it sailed through the air, she noticed that an obstacle—her new home—stood directly in the ball’s path. Inevitably, a split second later the ball crashed through a window, shattering it.

“I hate it when that happens!” Lion sounded aggrieved. “How come glass always busts like that?”

Holly stared resignedly at the smashed window. “You have a powerful swing, Lion. But you really ought to practice your chip shots at a golf course or a driving range. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to practice all your shots there.”

“Yeah, that’s what Rafe says, too.” Lion sighed.

“Trent, I heard glass break.” A deep adult male voice sounded behind her.

Holly turned around to see a very tall, dark-haired man in jeans, moccasins, and a white T-shirt approaching them.

“Uh-oh. That’s Rafe.” The boy lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “Would you tell him that you broke the window?” He shoved the golf club into Holly’s hand. “And can I go get my ball while you’re telling him?”

Rafe joined them before any escape could be attempted. He stared from the broken window, to the boy, and finally at Holly, holding the golf club in her hand. “Welcome to the neighborhood.” There was a wealth of subtext in his tone. “I’m Rafe Paradise.”

It struck Holly as strange that his name was Paradise while his cryptic “welcome to the neighborhood” sounded more like a warning heard at the gates of hell. Or maybe she was simply delirious from all the driving.

Nevertheless, she attempted to maintain conventional etiquette. “Thank you. I’m Holly Casale. Uh, from Michigan.”

“She loves golf!” Trent exclaimed winsomely. “Her chip shot is awesome!”

“Give me a break, Trent, I know you broke her window.” Rafe took the golf club from Holly’s hand. “Now, how are we going to arrange to pay for it?”

“You’re mad at me!” wailed Trent. “You hate me! You’re going to send me away, I just know it!” Howling at the top of his lungs, he raced down the street.

Holly was nonplussed. “Should you go after him? Is he running away?”

“No, he has nowhere else to go and he knows it. Trent’s mother would send him back if he tried to go to her place. Looks like he’s heading for the Steens’, who truly take the concept of neighborliness to the highest level.”

They both watched the boy run to the front door of one of the condos halfway down the block. The door was opened by a woman who greeted Trent with a smile and allowed him to enter.

“Yeah, the Steens.” Relieved, Rafe nodded his approval. “God bless them.” He shifted the golf club from one hand to the other. “I want Trent to accept responsibility for breaking your window. How about if he cuts your grass for the rest of the summer? Of course, I’ll assume the expense of replacing your window.”

“I’m confused about something.” Holly glanced up at him. He towered over her, something that rarely happened at her five-foot-eight height. But Rafe Paradise was at least six foot four, and he was definitely towering.

“You have a perfect right to be.” His dark eyes glinted. “Feel free to ask whatever question that needs answering.”

“The little boy called himself Lion. You call him Trent.”

“He’s been Lion for the past few months, since he decided to be a golf phenom like Tiger Woods. But his real name is Trent Krider. He’s my Little Brother.”

“Oh.” Holly was embarrassed to hear how astonished she sounded.

The astute Rafe Paradise reacted immediately. “Think capital letters. Trent is assigned to me by the Big Brother/Big Sister organization. Does that satisfactorily explain how a blond, blue-eyed child could be brothers with a half-breed Indian?”

Holly’s face turned scarlet. As if of their own volition, her eyes dropped to his well-worn moccasins.

Rafe noticed that, too. “They were handed down to me by my great-great-grandfather, Chief Lightning Bolt, who once ruled the Plains,” he drawled. “Being August, it’s too hot to wear my buffalo skins, but I keep them and my headdress in the wigwam out back.”

Holly was aghast. She had unwittingly insulted him and his proud ancestors!

“I—I never meant to imply...or...or...to—to disparage your Native American heritage in any way, Mr. Paradise. I apologize. I—I never intended to be so tactless and I am deeply sorry that—”

“All you said was ‘oh,”’ Rafe said dryly. “How was that tactless or disparaging?”

“I was nonverbally disrespectful,” Holly lamented, horrified by her lapse. She would not spare herself. “I—I looked at your moccasins.”

“Since when is that a crime?”

“Tone of voice, staring, or even silence can be offending and offensive,” Holly persisted frantically.

“I was just kidding, okay? Trying to make a joke, although judging by your reaction, I obviously didn’t succeed.”

Holly wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Look, I don’t feel offended.” Rafe shrugged.

“You are very understanding, Mr. Paradise.”

“It’s Rafe. We might as well dispense with formalities since we’ll be living next door—and my Little Brother has already started breaking your things.”

“Accidents happen.” Holly smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it.”

Rafe stared at her. Suddenly, incredibly, he felt as if fireworks were exploding in his head. That smile of hers affected him viscerally. He had to remind himself to breathe as a fierce jolt of sexual desire blasted through him.

Why? How? Rafe was astonished by his unexpected, involuntary response. He didn’t believe in the fairy tale of love at first sight; actually, he’d never even experienced a bona fide case of lust at first sight. Attraction, certainly. But to become firmly, achingly hard by simply looking at a woman he didn’t know? That had never happened to him before, not even when perusing certain magazines as a curious youth.

Yet he had attained that state right now by looking at the smiling, unsuspecting, and totally unaware Holly Casale. At thirty-two, his adolescence long past, it was disconcerting, not to mention humiliating, to experience a rush of sensual urgency—in public!

Rafe thought of Lorna Larson’s determined campaign to engage his attention on the plane earlier today. Nothing she had seductively implied, said or done had inspired even a sensual twinge in him. But here he stood in the driveway beside Holly—who had done nothing at all to try to turn him on—feeling his jeans become uncomfortably tight from his arousal. He hoped to heaven she didn’t notice.

She didn’t. It should have been a relief to see that she was staring rather bleakly at her car, jam-packed with possessions, the driver’s seat the only empty space within. Instead, Rafe felt irked. She was anticipating the tedious job of unloading her car while he burned with desire!

“Well, I guess I’ll start unpacking,” Holly said, walking toward her car. “Nice to meet you, Rafe.”

“Do you need help unloading your car?” Rafe trailed after her like Hot Dog following someone with a doughnut. His offer was an antidote as much as a wish to help out. There was nothing like prosaic physical labor to quash passion.

“I sure do!” Holly smiled again.

Rafe stopped in his tracks, his eyes riveted to her once more. To her slim figure with soft curves and long legs accentuated by tan shorts and a sky blue T-shirt tucked neatly inside the waistband of her shorts. Her complexion had an iridescent ivory glow and her hair, a rich brunette shade, was thick and curly and tumbled nearly to her shoulders. He gazed at her dainty features; her wide-set brown eyes and well-shaped generous mouth were particularly riveting.

And while he studied her, she was opening both doors of her car to more easily unpack it. Rafe shook his head. He wanted her, but she didn’t seem aware of him at all. What a stupid predicament !

Get your ego in check! Rafe commanded himself. For all he knew, Holly Casale was happily married with eyes for no other man but her husband. Which made his sharp sudden desire for her even more unseemly.

His lack of female companionship of late was finally taking its toll on him, Rafe decided grimly. When he began lusting after strangers and begrudging their lack of response, it was definitely time to resume dating, however daunting the logistics. He tried to remember where he’d put Lorna Larson’s business card. The trash compactor in the kitchen? The wastebasket in his bathroom?

“Trent says he lives here,” Holly said conversationally as she reached into the car for her canvas overnight bag.

“That’s right. His little brother Tony does, too.” Rafe watched the material of her shorts hug the sweetly rounded curve of her bottom as she bent to lean inside the car. His mouth went dry.

“Your Little Brother and his little brother both live with you? How did that happen?” Holly was curious. “I know it’s not usually the case in the Big and Little Brother program.”

Even her voice was sexy, Rafe thought dazedly, unable to tear his eyes away from her. Her soft husky tones managed to sound both soothing and stimulating, an unexpectedly arousing paradox.

He looked at her left hand clutching her bag, at her long elegant fingers, the rounded nails painted with pale pink polish. She was not wearing a wedding ring or an engagement ring. Rafe found himself fantasizing about her lovely, ringless hand doing all sorts of things...

He forgot what she’d asked him, what they were talking about.

“I was a Big Sister when I lived in Ann Arbor,” Holly continued chattily, grabbing a black bag with her other hand. “It was a nice break from the craziness and pressure of med school and my residency. My Little Sister, Stephanie, is all grown up now, but we plan to stay in touch.”

Rafe’s eyes darted to her black bag, the traditional physician’s bag. And she’d mentioned med school. His jaw dropped. “You’re a doctor?”

“And you’re incredulous that I am. Should I be insulted?”

“You look too young to be a doctor. And way too pretty,” Rafe said bluntly. He gathered a huge pile of clothing on hangers into his arms.

“These days everybody pretty much accepts the idea of women doctors,” she said dryly.

They walked side by side to the front door of her condo.

“I accept the idea of women doctors,” Rafe said in defense of himself. “What I said was that you looked too young and pretty to be one.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “That kind of pseudo-compliment is impossible to respond to.”

“It wasn’t a compliment, pseudo or otherwise, it was simply an observation. I have nothing against women doctors. In fact my little sister is in her third year of med school right here in Sioux Falls, and doing really well, too.”

“Does she look young? And pretty?”

“Touché, Doc.” Rafe conceded her point with a chuckle. “Yes, to both questions. Eva is young and pretty and very capable.”

Holly inserted her key in the lock and opened the front door.

Rafe followed her into the empty condo and glanced around. “It’s the mirror image of my place.” He thought of the gang inhabiting his half of the duplex, the kids, the dog. “But a lot neater. Certainly quieter.”

Holly set down her bags on the floor of the L-shaped living room and fixed her gaze upon one long wall. “That must be the adjoining wall Trent said he and his brother use to pound out messages in Morse code.”

“And you wondered why the real estate agent was so eager to give you such a great price on this place.”

He guffawed rather slyly, Holly thought. He was kidding again, right? “I’m renting, with an option to buy,” she hedged.

“So you have a safe out. A wise choice.” Rafe peered at her from around the mountain of clothes he was holding. “Where do you want me to put these?”

He watched her. She was all huge eyes and translucent skin and long, long legs. Much to his consternation, he remained in a state of acute arousal despite hauling a hundred pounds of clothing. But he obviously conjured up no sexual interest in her.

Rafe groaned.

Holly reacted at once. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Here I am rambling on, and you’re standing there with that cumbersome load.”

She’d completely misinterpreted his tortured groan. If she only knew! Rafe was tom between laughing and groaning once again.

He did neither.

“I guess the clothes should go upstairs in my bedroom.” Swiftly, Holly led the way up the narrow staircase to the largest of the three bedrooms.

On the other side of the inner wall was the wall of his own bedroom. Rafe tried not to think about how close—the proverbial so near yet so far—he would be to her when he was in his bed and she was in hers. Without waiting for further instruction, he dropped the hangers over the steel rod in the closet. The clothes swung wildly.

“Thank you so much,” exclaimed Holly. “I know how heavy those—”

“Don’t thank me yet. There’s still most of your car to unload. When does the rest of your stuff get here?”

“According to Mrs. Yoder, the agent who took the message from the moving company, hopefully tomorrow.”

Rafe rubbed his jaw. “Anytime I hear ‘hopefully’ I fear the worst. Expect that truck to show up sometime next month.”

“I thought the same thing. Fortunately, I brought some basic necessities with me in my car. Towels, clothes and shoes, some kitchen stuff. It won’t be so bad.”

“You do have a Pollyanna view of things.” He liked that, Rafe decided. It was a refreshing contrast to his own outlook that sometimes bordered on pessimism and gloom. Often bordered on pessimism and gloom, he conceded. “Never mind that you might not have a bed or a chair or even a plate to eat from, you’re all ready to heal the sick. What’s your branch of medicine? Are you joining an established practice or going solo?”

“I’ll be with the Widmark family practice. I start on Monday, so I have a few days to get settled in my house—if the truck arrives on schedule. I’m a psychiatrist,” she added.

“A shrink?” Rafe was taken aback.

Did shrinks have some kind of secret tricks of the trade to get people to confide their inner thoughts? The idea spooked him.

He looked less than thrilled, Holly noted. She was accustomed to some people’s uneasy reaction to her profession and strove to put him at ease. “Don’t worry, I don’t analyze every word of everyone I meet. I don’t go trolling for prospective patients, and I promise not to try to bulldoze you into psychotherapy.”

Rafe saw the open friendliness in her expression, the shining warmth of her eyes. He was lusting for a psychiatrist who could probably explain why, tracing his feelings back to the womb or something. Worse, not an iota of sexual tension was evident on her part while it hummed through his body like electricity across the wires.

He ran his hand through his hair, making a few renegade strands stand on end. Though her profession dealt with interpreting dreams and fantasies, the classy, personable Dr. Casale would probably faint from shock if he were to reveal the erotic images chasing through his mind right now. Because she starred in every one of them.

Rafe glanced again at her ringless hand. Not all married women wore wedding rings. And might not a psychiatrist be unconventional enough to do away with defining symbols like rings?

“So when will your husband be joining you?” Not his smoothest opening, but Rafe gave himself points for being direct. Well, it was worth half a point at least.

“I’m not married,” replied Holly.

“Your fiancé, then. Is he moving here with you?”

“I don’t have a fiancé.”

“How about your boyfriend? A live-in, or are you doing the long-distance bit?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, either.” Holly shook her head. “You’re beginning to sound like my mother grilling me for information.”

“Feel free to grill me right back,” he invited.

“I’d better not. You got so nervous when I told you I was a psychiatrist, you’d probably suspect me of diagnosing you if I started to ask questions.”

“I’m not nervous. Or married or involved with anyone.” Rafe supplied the answers anyway. “Are you in—”

“If you ask me if I’m looking for Mr. Right, I will not be responsible for my actions,” she warned lightly.

“Is that what all your mom’s grilling is about, finding Mr. Right?” Rafe laughed.

“It’s not only my mother. My sister and my aunts and cousins are just as persistent,” Holly admitted. “They all love to play matchmaker and so far I’ve been their only failure.”

“You present the ultimate challenge, huh?”

There was a certain note in his voice... Holly was quite perceptive when it came to the nuances in tone or language, a necessity in her profession. She comprehended subtext—and knew he wasn’t talking about her mother’s matchmaking anymore.

Holly lifted her eyes and saw him, really saw him for the first time. She knew there were all sorts of subconscious reasons why she’d remained immune to his striking masculine appeal until this moment. She’d been fatigued from the drive, preoccupied with her new surroundings. Uncertain of his eligibility and unwilling to be attracted to another woman’s man?

Bingo. Forget about being tired and preoccupied, now that she knew his status her feminine radar had been fully activated. Holly took in every male detail.

His hair was thick, straight, and black as coal, worn a little longer than the very short, very trendy cuts currently in vogue. He had a long straight nose and well-shaped sensual mouth. His smooth shaven jaw, his skin the color of polished bronze, was strong and firm with high, sculpted cheekbones. And his eyes...

Holly felt herself being drawn into his gaze. He had the most fascinating eyes. Arched by jet-black brows, they were almondshaped and very dark. Compelling eyes, burning with intelligence.

And something else. Something alluring. Daring.

She pulled her eyes from his, yet her gaze didn’t leave him. It lingered on his broad shoulders and muscular arms. He was so tall. Though she’d always tried to reason away such a superficial concern, a man’s height mattered to her. She was attracted to tall men; Rafe Paradise fulfilled that requirement quite well.

Where was her mind taking her? An unnerving combination of excitement and alarm tingled through her. Holly tried to shake it off, but a slow heat began to suffuse her, kindling in her midsection and spreading upward to her face and lower, lower—Her heart jumped. This primitive physical reaction was so unlike her. She was not the sort of woman who looked at a man and felt her insides turn to jelly. She was sensible, logical; too much so, according to her family. Far too prone to rational explanations and intellectualizing, also according to them.

But right now, sensible, logical Holly felt the totally irrational urge to run away from Rafe Paradise and the internal chaos he’d incited in her. Suddenly she was as jittery as a shy eighth grader face-to-face with her first big crush. It was appalling!

“I—I’d better go unpack the car.” Her voice, breathless and higher than usual, sounded strange to her own ears.

Rafe cocked his head and stared at her. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing rapidly. He watched the outline of her breasts rise and fall beneath the sky blue cotton of her shirt.

Holly felt as if he were looking through her, that he could see the riotous confusion taking place within her and was fully aware of his potent effect on her. Maybe he thought she was coming on to him! After all, she’d blatantly revealed the lack of a boyfriend, fiancé, or husband in her life. She’d let him know that she was single and available! Mom and the rest of the family cupids would be thrilled. Holly winced.

She fairly raced out of the room and down the stairs. When Rafe joined her outside, resentment shot through her. He had effortlessly accomplished something that no other man in her life had ever done. Rafe Paradise had reduced her—a self-confident, self-assured professional woman—to the level of a quivering adolescent!

“Are you okay?” he asked.

His voice—deep, gravelly, and low, the same voice she’d previously been listening to with no untoward effects—suddenly affected her like a physical caress. Holly shivered.

“Y-yes, I—” she tried to think of something to say. Some excuse to offer for her manic bolt from the house. And couldn’t She felt like an idiot. Maybe she really ought to read The Rules to learn some clever quips to disguise this sort of wildly emotional reflex. Not that she expected it to happen to her again—not ever again!

She and Rafe stared at each other for a long moment.

The silence was shattered by the sound of a young, very disdainful voice coming from the vicinity of Holly’s car. “Hey, know what? Your music really sucks! I mean, totally.”

Startled, Holly and Rafe turned to stare at the teenage girl who was sitting behind the wheel of the Chevy Cavalier, going through the container of compact discs that had kept Holly alert and entertained during her long drive from Michigan.

“Camryn!” Rafe rasped through his teeth. He strode to the car, Holly at his heels.

Camryn continued to riffle through the CDs. “Yuck, what is this crap? Guys and Dolls, Finnegan’s Rainbow, Annie Get Your Gun? Even you have better stuff than this, Rafe.”

“Get out of there right now, Camryn!” Rafe grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her out of the car. “You have no right to—”

“Believe me, I’m sorry I did,” Camryn cut in sarcastically. “I’ll have nightmares for weeks about what I saw here. The soundtrack from Brigadoon? You gotta admit that’s scary, Rafe.” She stared at Holly, incredulous. “Do you actually listen to that? Or maybe you have your real CDs in those faux covers because—” Camryn paused, trying to think of a possible reason why anyone would resort to such a scheme.

“Thanks for graciously offering me an out, but no, what you see is what you’ll hear,” Holly said wryly. She shrugged. “I love Broadway show tunes, maybe because I was in the spring musical every year, from middle school through high school. We put on all those—”

“Oh, God, you were one of those perky, girly types who sings in school musicals and sells candy bars to raise funds for the big class trip!” Camryn accused. She stared at Holly with the horrified revulsion most people reserve for cold-blooded killers.

Holly’s eyes swept over the girl, taking in her chopped-off black hair, greasy with styling mousse, bobby pins stuck in at haphazard angles. She wore the definitive punk makeup, anemic white face powder, at least three coats of black mascara, smudged black eye shadow, and ultra-pale lipstick.

Camryn’s attire was the urban decay look: black spandex leggings—never mind the August heat—and a tiny black T-shirt that exposed her midriff and most of her stomach. Naturally, she had a belly button ring. Holly would’ve been surprised if she didn’t.

But the ghastly makeup and hacked-up hair couldn’t conceal an indisputable fact: Camryn possessed an exotic beauty. Minus the startling diversion of her cosmetics, clothing and hairstyle, her looks would ascend to the traffic-stopping level.

Holly’s professional interest was piqued. Why had the teenager chosen to look alarming rather than attractive? There could be any number of reasons, ranging from normal teenage rebellion to a multitude of pathologies.

“Who are you, anyway?” demanded Camryn, still glowering at her.

“I’m moving in—”

Camryn erupted with a disgusted, “Duh!”

Rafe heaved an exasperated sigh. “Holly, this is my half sister Camryn. She and her sister Kaylin live with me. And I apologize for her rudeness because she never will.”

“Notice how he said half sister.” Camryn was sardonic. “Making sure you know that me and my sister are only half related to him.”

“I did notice that,” Holly said quietly.

She’d also noticed that Rafe was eyeing his younger half sister as if she were an alien from some incomprehensible galaxy. She’d seen that same look on the faces of the frazzled relatives of her angry and confused young patients back in Michigan.

“Oh, wow, get ready to apologize to our new neighbor again, Rafe. ’Cause here comes your other half sister to embarrass you, too,” Camryn taunted as Kaylin emerged from the duplex and walked toward them.

Rafe’s lips thinned to a grim straight line. Camryn had scored a direct verbal hit. He’d never realized it before, but he always did refer to the two girls as his half sisters. He always thought of them that way.

His half sisters. Never his little sisters. They’d shared the same father, Ben Paradise, but their mother had not been his. Maybe the fact that he had Eva, whose parents were also his, who had always been his adored “little sister,” kept that “half” firmly affixed in regards to Camryn and Kaylin.

Certainly all those years spent apart from the pair made him feel less connected to them. And the big age difference between himself and the girls didn’t make things any easier. Nor did their rebellious personalities.

He’d really enjoyed Eva as a teenager. Maybe if Camryn and Kaylin were more like her...but they were the antithesis of Eva. They scorned their older half sister as one of those “perky, girly” types, the same despised category Camryn had just assigned to Holly.

Rafe looked at Holly, saw her glance from Camryn to Kaylin and back to him with the alert intensity of a microbiologist who’d just discovered a new species of pathogens. That flare of sexual awareness he’d seen in her soft brown eyes was gone. Her interest in him now was as a prospective case study. One of the dysfunctional Paradise kin. He conceded they could give an ambitious shrink plenty of material to work with.

“Hey,” Kaylin greeted them cheerfully, and returned Holly’s welcoming smile with a shy one of her own.

Holly introduced herself.

“I’m Kaylin. Cam’s my little big sister.” The girl amiably slung her arm around Camryn’s shoulder, and Holly observed the four-inch difference in their height.

Camryn was a petite five-two, thinner and smaller-boned than her younger sister. Kaylin was cute with long, dark, straight hair and bangs. She wore no makeup at all, and was dressed in baggy oversize pants and an equally huge shirt that rendered her completely shapeless.

“You’re the big little sister,” Camryn amended affectionately. Then she looked back at Holly and Rafe, and her dark eyes flashed with anger. “Wait till you see the sainted Evita. You’ll know why Rafe and—”

“Camryn, drop it, okay?” Rafe cut in impatiently. “And since you’re both out here, make yourselves useful and help Holly unload her car.”

Holly was confused. “Evita? You mean the movie? Or the CD soundtrack? I haven’t gotten around to purchasing it for my collection.”

Camryn and Kaylin looked at each other and snickered. “Evita is no soundtrack—she’s Rafe and Flint’s wicked sister,” explained Camryn. “Not a half one, a whole one.”

“That would be Eva, the medical student?” Holly recalled Rafe’s mention of her.

It took no special intuitive powers to ascertain that the diminutive used by the girls was not based on fondness. The teens’ hostility toward their half sister was palpable.

Kaylin nodded her head. “That’s her, Evita the Witch Doctor. And Flint is Rafe’s Evil Twin.”

“Are you really a twin?” Holly looked at Rafe in genuine surprise. Or were the girls playing word games with her?

“Yes,” Rafe muttered.

He wasn’t about to deny his own brother, though he guessed what his admission would mean. Studies of twins were highly valued in the fields of both psychology and biology; he and Flint had certainly been invited to take part in enough of them by eager university researchers. As Native American identical male twins, they were coveted as a resource treasure. Rafe scowled. He did not appreciate Holly Casale viewing him as a potential lab rat.

“And Eva is not a wicked witch and Flint is certainly not evil,” he added, in defense of his siblings.

He reached inside the car and pulled out Holly’s bulging, battered old suitcase that she knew must weigh about eighty pounds. The muscles of his arms rippled as he carried it.

Kaylin pulled out a hanging shoe rack, the compartments stuffed with shoes, and dragged it toward Holly’s front door.

Camryn didn’t move. “You can see how much Rafe doesn’t like us,” she said, sensing Holly’s interest, watching her stare at Rafe and the suitcase. She smiled her angel smile. “Still, he’s the good one. When our mom called to tell him she was sick, he promised that Kaylin and me could live with him after she died ‘cause there was nobody else. And he came and got us when she did. Flint and Eva wouldn’t’ve even—”

“Stop stalling and get to work, Camryn,” Rafe called, feeling his anger rise.

He never discussed private family matters with anyone. And Holly was a shrink! That was easy to forget when his mind was fogged by her potent allure, but the appearance of his half sisters had cleared his head as effectively as a whiff of old-time smelling salts.

“I don’t have to!” yelled Camryn as Rafe lugged the suitcase into the condo. “And I’m not throwing a pity party for myself, either,” she added, as if to fend off that particular accusation.

Holly had no intention of making it. “From what I’ve heard so far, you have every right to.” She lay her hand on Camryn’s forearm. The girl was trembling. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s death.” Her training and her own natural instincts kicked in; she wanted to interpret and diffuse the rage and discord plaguing this family.

“Our dad is dead, too,” Camryn said flatly. “Kaylin and me didn’t know him at all. He got divorced from Mom when we were one and two years old and we never saw him again. We didn’t see Rafe or the others again, either, not till last year after Mom died.”

Holly found the information tragic and disconcerting but was skilled enough not to show it. “You and Kaylin hadn’t seen your brothers and sister from the time you were one and two years old until last year?” she calmly restated the essential facts she’d been told.

Camryn nodded. “And now I’m seventeen and Kaylin is sixteen, so you do the math.”

Holly accepted the challenge. “You hadn’t seen them in fourteen years.”

Which meant Rafe had last seen his half sisters as babies, but had taken in two distinctly individualistic teenagers. No wonder he’d stared at them as if they’d been dropped from outer space!

“Yeah, fourteen years. You’re a regular math genius,” Camryn drawled. “Color me impressed. But they’re our half brothers and half sister, don’t forget that. They never do.”

“Do you sometimes wish they would?” asked Holly.

Before Camryn could answer, Rafe was back, having deposited the suitcase inside the house. “Camryn, it may interest you to know that Dr. Casale here is a psychiatrist.”

Camryn’s expression was instantly thunderous. “I refuse to talk to any shrink! I’m not crazy.”

“No, you’re not,” agreed Rafe. “Don’t let her fool you, Doc. Camryn Paradise is no pitiful Little Orphan Annie. Vampira is closer to the mark.”

“What I am is a wild, in-your-face-brat with a bad attitude,” Camryn proclaimed. “Right, Rafe?”

“So we’ve been told.” Rafe sucked in his cheeks. “Some have claimed you’re the most monstrous brat ever to set foot in the city of Sioux Falls—or maybe the entire state of South Dakota.”

“That’s exactly what my history teacher said and the music teacher agreed!” Camryn was gleeful. “And how about my French teacher?”

“Let’s not get into that.” Rafe remembered the scene with the French teacher. It had gotten ugly; Camryn would not be taking French when she started her senior year the day after Labor Day, just a few weeks away.

“Aren’t you scared I live next door to you, Dr. Nutburger? You should be! You better not try to trick me into any stealth therapy because I’m capable of anything!” boasted Camryn.

Rafe tried to remember who’d made that last quote—“The little fiend is capable of anything!” The outraged home ec teacher? The hostile volleyball coach? Everybody in Riverview High had something to say about Camryn. None of it good.

“I’m not afraid of you and I wasn’t trying to trick you in any way, Camryn.” Holly remained unruffled. “But I am curious as to why both you and your brother are so opposed to the idea of any kind of—”

“Family therapy?” Camryn interjected. She made it sound as appealing as imbibing rat poison.

“So you’re familiar with the concept,” said Holly. “I wish it had been presented to you as a positive aid instead of a negative threat.”

“Forget it, Dr. Headshrinker. I won’t talk to you.”

“Nobody in the Paradise family has ever gone to a psychiatrist,” Rafe added.

“Watch out, Rafe, there are sooo many comebacks to that one!” Camryn was suddenly all smiles again. “She could really zing us good.”

Holly wondered if the duo realized they were both on the same side; she doubted that occurred very often. Unfortunately, they were allied against her and her profession. Still, she was accustomed to looking for strengths to work with and for the first time she saw a bond, however tenuous, between Rafe and his little sister. The insight cheered her.

“Too easy. I think I’ll pass.” Holly grinned.

Rafe found himself staring at her again. When Holly Casale turned on the full force of her smile, her whole face lit up and she was downright irresistible. He swallowed. Incredibly enough, he was starting to get turned on all over again, simply standing there gazing at her.

“Well, I’m not going to help you unpack your car, Dr. Head-case,” announced Camryn. “I have other plans.”

Rafe wondered if he should demand that she stay and help. He hadn’t heard of any plans she’d made for this afternoon—not that he was ever consulted first by either girl. Their modus operandi was to do what they pleased, hope they didn’t get caught, and show no remorse if they did.

His eyes met Holly’s, and he knew that she knew he was totally at a loss in dealing with his young half sisters. Part of him was angry, the other part relieved. He needed help but was loath to seek it, wasn’t sure how and where to look. He guessed that Holly probably knew all that, too.

They both watched Camryn stroll back into Rafe’s side of the condo.

“Don’t say a word,” warned Rafe.

“Who me? I wouldn’t dream of it I already promised I don’t troll for prospective patients.”

“Even though you think we’re a prime collection of basket cases.”

“I don’t think that at all, I just—”

“Uh-oh, this is awful heavy!” Kaylin called from the car. She had managed to get Holly’s television set out of the back seat and stood holding it—while tottering precariously.

“Kaylin, put that down!” commanded Rafe. “It’s too heavy for you to carry. I’ll get it.”

“Okay.” Kaylin panted. She swayed backward, rendered off balance by the television’s weight, then leaned forward in an attempt to put it down.

Holly and Rafe were both watching at the crucial split second when Kaylin’s arm strength completely gave out.

The television set crashed onto the cement driveway.

Three

Kaylin burst into tears. “I’m sorry! I didn’t do it on purpose! It just fell!”

Rafe picked up the set, which had hit at an angle and then bounced to a facedown landing. The double impact caused the screen to shatter and the back console to split open. Inside parts began to spill out.

“Looks like a gutted trout,” he observed grimly.

“Stupid piece of junk!” wailed Kaylin. When Rafe placed the wrecked set upright on the ground, she gave it a furious kick, inflicting even more damage, though it was already plainly irreparable. “It only fell a little way and it broke into a zillion pieces!” She kicked it again. “Crummy old trash!”

“I’m inclined to agree with you.” Holly calmly surveyed the wreckage. “They obviously don’t make these things good and sturdy like they used to.”

Kaylin stopped crying and caught her breath. “Yeah,” she agreed, her voice tremulous. “If it was good and sturdy, it wouldn’t be so smashed.”

“It wouldn’t be so smashed if you hadn’t dropped it,” Rafe noted pointedly. “For crying out loud, Kaylin, you—”

“You’re mad at me! You hate me!” Kaylin screamed. “You’re going to send me away!” She raced to her own front door and disappeared inside.

Rafe and Holly stood in silence.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that Trent co-opted those heartrending lines from Kaylin,” Holly said dryly. “Both seem to share a penchant for highly dramatic exits.”

“They all do. And I honestly don’t know what to say, Holly.” Rafe jammed his hands into his pockets and stared glumly from the smashed television set to the smashed window of her condo. “An apology is hardly adequate, but I am terribly sorry that the kids—”

“Rafe, you don’t have to apologize. It’s okay. The set was ancient, it was on its last legs, anyway. I have a better one, a newer model, that’ll be arriving on the moving truck. Really, it’s no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Rafe countered. “Don’t try to minimalize what’s happened, Holly. Things started going wrong from the moment you arrived here—thanks to us, your hellacious next-door neighbors.”

Silently, dispiritedly, he ran down the list: Trent and Kaylin breaking her things, Camryn insulting her and her taste in music. And of course, both he and Camryn had heartily disparaged her chosen profession. Mustn’t leave that out, he reminded himself.

He shook his head. “You must be ready to—”

“I’m not about to run away screaming,” Holly assured him. He looked miserable, and compassion swept through her. “But I am ready to take a break from unpacking and I would love something cold to drink.” She gave him her most winning smile, inviting him to make her an offer.

“I’d ask you over but you probably feel like you’d be taking your life in your hands if you dare to step inside my place.” Rafe was morose. “And if the possibility of something crashing down on you or into you doesn’t scare you, the threat of being in the company of an ogre like me—who sends kids into shrieking paroxysms of terror—should.”

“I don’t believe for one minute that you’re an ogre. What I see are kids who are expressing their insecurities, but the fact that they can verbalize their fears shows they feel enough confidence in their relationship with you to—”

“English, please,” Rafe interrupted. “I’m not fluent in shrinkspeak.”

Holly knew she was not being all that obtuse.

“Simple translation—there are all kinds of families and you and the kids are working to establish your own version. I admire that.”

“God knows why! After seeing what you’ll be living next to, you should already be in your car, heading for the real estate office to demand another place to rent.”

“Hmm, that penchant for high drama must be contagious.”

Was she being wry or sarcastic? Her delivery left room for interpretation, and Rafe tried to decide. His eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you heading for the hills, looking for another rental? Why would you consider staying here after—all this?”

Holly looked at him and felt her insides clench, heat pooling deep within her, her breasts tightening. Once again, her sensual response to this man floored her. She almost reached out and touched him; she ached with the need to.

But she didn’t dare. He was already suspicious of her. He would probably either assume she was making a pass at him—and she wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences of that!—or he would accuse her of applying some sort of touchy-feely therapy.

Holly folded her arms in front of her chest, a defensive gesture to keep her hands from reaching, touching, feeling. “If I was the kind of person who ran away at the first small sign of difficulty, I would have never made it through med school, let alone my psych residency.”

“So you’re saying that you’ve dealt with a lot worse than the likes of us?”

Rafe wasn’t pleased by her answer. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected her to respond but relegating them to the ranks of “bad-but-I’ ve-seen-worse” definitely wasn’t what he wanted. Hell, he knew what he wanted—her!—but the likelihood of that happening was about as probable as Eva, Camryn and Kaylin going to the Empire Mall together for a jolly sisterly shopping trip.

“I’m saying that I’m moving in next door, come what may.” Holly’s voice jolted him from his reverie. “And I’m also willing to brave going inside your place for a cold drink—if you ever get around to inviting me in for one.”

Rafe shrugged. “Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Let’s go in.”

He almost reached for her hand; it seemed the natural thing to do. But he caught himself just in time. Natural? He really was losing it. He’d just met this woman and he was not the handholding type.

He never had been. One of the frequent complaints lodged against him by his girlfriends—back in the days when he’d had the time and energy for girlfriends—had been his reserve. He never indulged in demonstrative little signs of affection like holding hands... But he had almost taken Holly’s hand to bring her inside his home.

Instead, he walked briskly ahead of her. She followed at her own pace, making no attempt to match his stride.

Once inside the air-conditioned living room, Holly sat on the sofa and sipped a ginger ale while Rafe opted for his massive blue recliner and a root beer.

“I used to have the genuine stuff.” Rafe set his can of root beer in the drink holder built into the arm of his chair. “You know, real ale and beer. But Camryn and Kaylin and their delinquent posse drank every drop in the house one evening when I went to a movie. I never made that mistake again.”

“Which mistake?” teased Holly. “Going to the movies? Or leaving alcohol with unsupervised teenagers?”

“Both, actually. Now I wait for movies to come out on video and I only buy soft drinks. What a way to live, huh? My brother thinks I’m nuts.” He cast her a droll glance. “Oops, am I allowed to use that word around you?”

“I’m a firm believer in free speech. Say whatever you want.”

“I figure we’ve already offended you enough, Doc. No use adding more trouble to the tab. There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” he added under his breath.

“I heard that. And I’m not anticipating any trouble.”

“Well, you should be. From the time the kids moved in here, not a day went by without a complaint from Craig and Donna Lambert. They’re the couple who owned your half of the duplex, the people who couldn’t wait to escape from it—and from us.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe the Lamberts were pathological fault-finders?” Holly leaned forward, her brown eyes earnest. “That they were using their complaints against the kids as a bond between them because their marriage was falling apart and they needed something to unite them? But instead of facing their problems and their growing estrangement, they seized the easy way out. They found a convenient scapegoat to blame for everything—the kids next door. In some marriages, parents will choose one of their own children to fulfill the scapegoat role and—”

“Did it ever occur to you that not everything needs to be analyzed, Holly?” Rafe interrupted. “The Lamberts complained every day because they had reason to. Trent and Tony practiced Morse code on the walls in preparation for their career as Navy Seals. They played all kinds of sports right here inside in preparation for whatever pro career they were considering at the moment. That includes yelling, jumping, throwing, and knocking things over. You get the picture.”

“I guess there are practical reasons why sports are played outdoors and not inside a duplex,” Holly conceded. “Still, as the old saying goes, ‘boys will be boys.’ Craig Lambert used to be one himself and Donna Lambert was once a teenage girl who should’ve understood the—”

“As a teenager, Donna Lambert was nothing like Camryn and Kaylin. There’s no way she could understand them. Donna showed me her roomful of high school awards and trophies back when we used to be friends in the prekids days. She was a joiner, a high achiever, practically a different species from Camryn and Kaylin.”

“Am I to understand that Donna Lambert kept a shrine to her high school career?” Holly frowned thoughtfully.

“Well, I hadn’t thought of it as a shrine, but the stuff was impressively displayed. But before you pronounce her an insufferable egotist—”

“Ah! So she was one.”

“No! No, she—”

“You just said so, indirectly. Your choice of words was very telling.”

“Didn’t you promise not to go around analyzing everything you hear? Well, you’re doing it, Holly.”

“I apologize. But the more I hear about this Lambert couple, the more my sympathies tend to lie with the children. I think they’ve been unfairly maligned.”

“It should be interesting to get your opinion this time next week—after you’ve walked the figurative mile in the Lamberts’ shoes and literally lived in their ex-condo. And I almost forgot to mention Hot Dog, the hound from hell. The girls brought him with them from Nevada, and he barks and howls whenever the spirit moves him. That can be in the middle of the night, and often is.”

He stood up and began to restlessly pace the room. “I try to keep a lid on things when I’m here but I’m not always around. I can’t be. I have to go to the office, I have to go out of town on business. If the Lamberts were pathological fault-finders, ultimately, we drove them to it.”

Holly took a long drink of her ginger ale. He had painted a rather daunting picture of life in the House of Paradise—as well as life in the place connected to it. But she wasn’t about to let him unnerve her, she was no whiny wimp to be driven away. She promised herself then and there that she would not be like the Lamberts who protested every noise. Kids made noise, it was just a fact of life. And she’d always loved dogs.

Her eyes focused on the pair of school pictures in cardboard frames sitting atop the large-screen television set. Two little boys. She recognized one, blond, blue-eyed Trent.

“You never did get around to telling me why your Little Brother is living with you,” Holly reminded him. “And his little brother, too.” She continued to stare quizzically at the pictures.

“Go ahead and ask me if that is Trent’s little brother Tony in the picture beside his.” Rafe’s eyes gleamed. “You know you’re dying to.”

“Well, I was wondering if the African-American child in the picture is Tony,” Holly admitted.

“Yes. Tony and Trent are half brothers, and please spare me any lecture or analysis on my use of the word ‘half.’ It’s a biological fact of life. The boys have the same mother, Tracey Krider, but different fathers. Unfortunately, neither father is in the picture—or even in the state—and Tracey has hooked up with a jerk who doesn’t like having other men’s kids around.”

“So the boys are here with you,” Holly said softly.

Rafe sat down on the other end of the sofa. Holly was two cushions away from him. Close enough for him to smell the alluring scent of her spicy perfume mixed with the heady aroma of her skin and sweat—yet too far away for even an accidental touch. A recipe for frustration. He leaned his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Best not to look at her, best to recite the facts as dispassionately as possible.

“I’ve been Trent’s Big Brother since he was seven. I sort of unofficially inherited Tony a couple years ago when they couldn’t place him with a Big Brother of his own. There is such a long waiting list of kids and a shortage of volunteers—”

Rafe shrugged. “But that’s another story. The boys often spent weekends and part of their summer vacation with me but when Tracey took up with her current loser boyfriend, Trent and Tony ended up moving in here full-time. Tracey signed over legal guardianship to me. That also coincided with Camryn and Kaylin’s arrival.”

Holly gazed at Rafe who had taken in those rejected sons of other men. Who had taken in his orphaned kid sisters. True, he seemed somewhat overwhelmed by his four charges but he hadn’t backed away from them, he had willingly accepted responsibility. He was a good man in the true, old-fashioned sense of the term.

A giddy rush of emotion surged through her. She wanted to tell him how much she admired him. He had taken four children into his home when so many men she knew wouldn’t commit to even tending a houseplant.

But how to say so? Holly felt strangely shy and couldn’t seem to find the words, a most unusual situation because communicating was one of her strengths.

Instead, she resorted to more questions. She was very adept at asking questions. “Do the two groups of kids get along together?”

“Yeah. Oh, there are the usual spats, but on the whole, they all hit it off pretty well. In fact, there are times when it’s the Gang of Four versus me.”

“And their alliance surprises you?” Holly quipped.

It was one question too many. Or maybe it was the way she’d phrased it. Holly watched Rafe’s lips curve into a sardonic smirk. He turned his head and opened his eyes to lazily survey her.

“Yeah, Doc, their alliance surprises me. Are you going to explain why the kids are allies? And why I’m surprised? Since you’ve already evaluated the Lamberts, let’s hear your psychological take on the kids and me.”

“Sorry.” Holly looked sheepish. “A hazard of my profession, I guess.”

“Which one? The interviewing or the analyzing? Maybe I should be lying down on the couch while we’re talking, huh, Doc?”

Instantly, Rafe felt heat flash through him. He’d been trying to be glib but it had backfired. There was nothing funny about the image of himself lying on the couch—and Holly Casale anywhere within his reach. The suggestion conjured up erotic images that made his dark eyes smolder.

He tensed as a critical part of him grew stiff as a warrior’s lance. And there was nothing he could do about it. The more he looked at Holly, the more he wanted to stretch out on the sofa and pull her down on top of him. Or maybe lay her beneath him. Both scenarios were torturously arousing. But he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t attempt to enact either one.

Rafe abruptly crossed the room to snatch his can of root beer and chug it down, wishing it were something a lot stronger. Something to render him senseless, to blot out desire and need. His whole body throbbed with it.

Oddly enough, the whole house seemed to be throbbing, too. It took a moment or two for Rafe’s deductive reasoning skills to kick back in. No, the walls weren’t shaking, but the pulsating drumbeats blasting from the stereo speakers upstairs in the girls’ bedroom gave that illusion. Accompanying the boom was the sound of caterwauling that ranked right up there with Hot Dog baying to ambulance sirens. Camryn and Kaylin called it singing, by their favorite rock bands.

Rafe was actually glad for the return trip to reality. At least this was something he could act upon! He strode from the room to stand at the foot of the stairway.

“If I have to tell you two to turn down that noise again, I’m going to confiscate every single compact disc you own and donate them all to the state prison!” he roared up the stairs.

Camryn and Kaylin responded with complaints and some doorslamming but the blaring volume of the music was lowered.

Rafe returned to the living room.

“The state prison?” Holly laughed. “What kind of a threat is that?”

“Probably an unfair one. After all, the prisoners are serving their sentences, it’s illegal to inflict additional punishment on them. In fact, the Constitution specifically prohibits it.”

“You think having to listen to the girls’ CDs constitutes cruel and unusual punishment?” Holly was amused.

“I guess you think I’m a tyrant, huh, Doc?” Rafe eyed his huge blue recliner across the room but stayed where he was, standing beside the sofa. Holly looked up at him, as if trying to gauge his mood.

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