There had to be some kind of mistake

The Mac Edwards Rachel knew would have become a great father. He would have loved and supported his child. He would have kept her safe from harm. He wouldn’t have become the man portrayed in the Child Services case file before her.

With shaking hands that betrayed her lack of emotional detachment, Rachel dived deeper into the case file.

Amanda is an angry young girl, and it is my opinion that there is probably some underlying abuse between Mr. Edwards and his daughter. In light of this and Amanda’s growing criminal record, she needs to be removed from the home.

Rachel had to read the words five times before they sank in. There was no way her former best friend could be abusing his daughter!

Rachel knew she should not take this case. It was a conflict of interest if there ever was one. What she should have done was march up to her boss and say, “I know this guy. Loved him, actually. I definitely broke his heart. So I shouldn’t be their social worker.”

She should have done that.

But she didn’t.

Dear Reader,

I am so thrilled about my Harlequin Superromance debut, Family at Stake! Superromance novels started my love affair with romance, so I am tickled to be a part of such an enduring facet of romance fiction. I actually had a box of Harlequin Superromance novels under my bed at a very early age (I am sure most of you did, too). And many of those books—having been packed up and moved dozens of times over the years—are still on my keeper shelf at home. The things we do for good books!

With Family at Stake I tried my own twist on some of my favorite romantic themes—reunited lovers, at-risk children, single fathers, betrayal and, of course, forgiveness. Mac is easily my favorite hero to date—I love a man who struggles to keep his world together even as it unravels around him. And cracking Rachel’s icy protective shell was one of the most challenging conflicts I’ve tried to solve. Even as I tried to change her—or compromise with her character—she wouldn’t let me.

I hope you enjoy my take on Harlequin Superromance books. Please feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think at www.molly-okeefe.com.

Happy reading!

Molly O’Keefe

Family at Stake
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe grew up in a small town outside Chicago. How she ended up in Toronto, Canada, she’s not quite sure. She sold her first romance to Harlequin at age twenty-five and hasn’t looked back! She lives in Toronto with her husband, son, cat and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

For Mick and his Old Man—I love you.

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

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PROLOGUE

May 20, 1992

“GOODBYE, NEW SPRINGS!” Rachel Filmore ripped off her purple nylon graduation gown and tossed it up in the air. It unfurled in the breeze and drifted into the rock quarry like a shadow against the twilight sky.

“Goodbye, Mom!” She ripped off the cap, ignoring the pull of the bobby pins that tore at her curly hair and flung that into the air, too.

“And last but not least, goodbye, Dad, may you rot in hell.” She dug her fake high school diploma—which said her real diploma would be mailed to her—out of her backpack and sent it sailing into the abyss at her feet.

It had been handed to her a few hours ago at the graduation ceremony.

“Your name is on that,” Rachel’s best friend, Mac Edwards, pointed out with a laugh. “Someone might find it.”

“Like anyone is going to care.” She looked over the edge, but in the darkness she couldn’t see the bottom of the quarry, much less her graduation gown spread out among the rocks. “Maybe they’ll think I jumped,” she muttered, feeling the gravitational pull of all that space between her and the bottom. Sometimes when she stood really still on the ledge like this it seemed like the ground reached up for her.

“They’ll think I jumped just to get out of this dumb town. I swear, Mac. New Springs is like a noose around our necks.”

“That’s not funny,” Mac murmured, and Rachel turned to face him. He sat on the hard-packed earth, his own graduation gown in a heap beside him. He still wore the cap, though. He had tilted it at what he called a “rakish angle.” He was always trying to be like Humphrey Bogart or some other old actor. Mac said they had class. Rachel didn’t know one way or another; she never stayed awake during those boring old movies.

But Mac looked cute with his hat like that.

Something weird was going on with Mac these days. Weirder than normal. His face was changing. He suddenly had cheekbones and a jawline and his eyes…well. Rachel found herself unable to look too long into those eyes.

He seemed older, like a man.

His body had changed last year. Almost overnight, it’d gotten bigger. Where he’d been skinny he’d developed muscle. He must have grown five inches in the span of two months.

The coaches had tried to get him to go out for the football and basketball teams. He didn’t do it, but she knew he was flattered that they’d asked. She also knew that Margaret McCormick had been coming to his locker between classes, tossing her hair around and bending over to pick things up from the floor in front of him. Rachel had caught him looking at Margaret’s butt.

Margaret had joined the Science Club and had even asked him to tutor her, since everyone knew that he was a science genius. He’d helped Margaret one night, but Mac wouldn’t tell Rachel what had happened. He said they’d just studied, but he’d blushed when he said it.

Maybe that was what was weird, Rachel thought as she studied her friend. Mac is a little mysterious.

Her belly did that long slow roll it’d been doing whenever Mac was around. That was weird, too. She had known Mac since freshman year and now she was hot for her best friend. Seriously hot—as in “let’s make out and get naked” hot. She didn’t know what to do about it, except of course ignore it, which she had been trying for a few months now, and that just made her more crazy.

She wanted to do whatever he and Margaret had done.

But she didn’t know how to get from best friend to naked all in one night. And one night was all they had left.

“You gonna toss your gown in, too?” she asked, sitting next to him. She flipped her skirt up over her knees and thought about grabbing her sweatshirt from the bag, but it was still hot out and the tank top she wore was fine.

“Nah.” He reclined against the smooth, round rock at their backs. “Thought I’d burn it. Someone said you can get high off the fumes.”

She chuckled and leaned back with him. She brushed his shoulder with hers—totally on purpose—and her breath caught at the zing that raced along her skin.

Touch me. Touch me. Touch me.

If she opened her mouth, she was sure those words would come pouring out like sand.

“Look what your brother gave me today” Mac dug into his own bag and pulled out a small piece of wood.

Her vision blurred with hot tears.

She wished she could pretend there was no Jesse, no little brother she was being forced to leave behind. Maybe then it wouldn’t feel as if she was drowning all the time.

She picked up the piece of avocado wood that Jesse had whittled into a four-inch-high tree with branches and roots using his twenty-year-old Swiss Army knife.

She ran her thumb along the ridges and the veins in the leaves and felt her heart breaking.

“It’s amazing,” Mac whispered. “I mean, the kid is eleven. What eleven-year-old can do that?”

Rachel shrugged and handed it back to him. “He’s something,” she whispered.

“Rachel—” Mac’s tone was soft and sympathetic, and the hand that cupped her shoulder burned her to the bone. An ugly mix of emotions inside of her—a seething, poisonous combination—tried to leak out.

Don’t ruin this night. It’s my last night. Don’t cry. Don’t, Rachel. She pressed down all the impotent anger and raging sadness and turned a bright smile to her old friend.

“Hey, I brought something.” She remembered what she had pilfered from the back of the fridge. Since she was leaving tomorrow she didn’t need to worry about her father finding out and losing his mind. She rummaged in her backpack. “It’s probably warm by now,” she muttered, and pulled out the bottle of champagne she’d wrapped in towels to keep cool. “Ta-da!”

“Wow, champagne,” Mac nodded. “Awesome. Since we’re not having graduation parties—”

“Who needs crappy cake when you can have lukewarm champagne, huh?” she asked. She knew just how sad this was, which was why they had to joke about it. All of their classmates were having parties with volleyball nets set up in the backyard and coolers of pop and beer. But Rachel’s and Mac’s parents just couldn’t get it together to put a special dinner on the table to celebrate their kids’ achievements.

“Mom always says it’s supposed to be for a special occasion, but the dumb bottle’s been sitting in the back of the fridge forever.” There’s no such thing as a special occasion at my house, she thought, and fumbled with the top of the bottle. “How am I supposed to open this dumb thing?”

“Let me have that,” Mac said, and tore off the foil. He stuck his thumbs under the cork, and his arm, pressed against hers, flexed, the veins that had suddenly appeared in his forearms strained against his skin. Rachel swallowed hard, swamped with new painful feelings.

“How do you know how to do this?” she asked. Maybe he and Margaret had champagne.

“Cary Grant,” he muttered, preoccupied with the bottle.

The cork popped and the spray shot all over their feet. Rachel screamed and jerked her sandals out of the way. Mac took a giant swig, catching most of the foam.

“Perfect,” he said, and wiped his mouth. His eyes were sparkly and filled with fun and they made her drunk enough. She didn’t need champagne. He handed her the bottle and Rachel took it, all too aware that she was pressing the glass that had been on his mouth against her lips.

The champagne fizzed, sweet and cool down her throat. It was perfect.

“So?” He bent his knees and slung his long arms around them. He looked up at the stars and she knew he was searching out the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. He always looked for those first. Gotta get my bearings, he’d say.

Rachel took another gulp of the fizzy booze.

“Tomorrow, huh?”

“Yeah.” She handed him the bottle.

“I can still give you a ride. San Luis Obispo isn’t that far.”

“Right, like The Jerk is going to give you the car.”

“Screw him,” he muttered, kicking at a rock that shot off the ledge. Rachel heard it clatter to the bottom. He took a long pull from the champagne bottle. She filled her lungs with as much air as possible and promised this would be the last time she tried.

“Come with me,” she said in a rush.

“Rach—”

“You’ve got awesome grades—”

“And zero money.” He rolled his head against the rock. “We’ve talked about this like a dozen times.”

“I’m going early so I can get a job. You can get a job, too. We can bag groceries, or work with a landscaper. You’d like that. Working with the…” She trailed off. She knew begging wasn’t doing any good. She had gotten the scholarship and he hadn’t even applied. Even bagging groceries wouldn’t make enough to cover books.

And Mac wasn’t going to leave his mom, not while she was married to The Jerk.

Rachel nodded and took another swig of the champagne before handing it back to him. What am I going to do without you? she thought, staring up at the sky. The world suddenly loomed too large without Mac beside her. All the spaces inside of her that she thought would be filled with excitement and hope and joy about college were vacant. Empty. All she felt was an anguished longing for her best friend and a sickening wish that things were different.

“It would be stupid to ask you to stay, huh?” he whispered, and her eyes flew to his in surprise. “I mean you—”

“I can’t, Mac,” she breathed, wondering what brought this on. “He kicked me out. He said after I graduated he—”

“He didn’t want to see you,” Mac finished, nodding. “I know.” He drank some more from the bottle. She watched the shifting muscles in his throat as he swallowed. They were about three-quarters through the champagne and he’d had most of it.

Must be why he’s saying such crazy things, she thought. Stay? What would I do?

“We can get married,” he said, and, for a moment, Rachel thought she was dreaming. “That way you could stay.” He looked at her, his blond hair gleaming white in the moonlight. His face was so handsome to her, so full and real and tight with a want that her body answered.

Heady, reckless desire bloomed in her.

“Married?” she breathed, unsure of what she thought or felt past the solid thumping of her heart.

Mac put down the bottle and turned toward her, and Rachel was caught by the expression on his face. That was why she couldn’t stand to meet his eyes these days, because everything he felt about her was right there.

“I…ah…I love you.” He swallowed hard. “I mean, you are my best—”

Rachel didn’t know why she did it. To stop him from saying such things, or to stop herself from answering with promises that she might not be able to keep. She didn’t know but she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

She closed her eyes tight and listened to him gasp.

Please, please, please. She didn’t know what she was asking for, but there was some nameless ache in her that had to be met. I need you. I’ve always needed you. What will I do without you?

“Rachel, what are you going to do?” He pulled away from her and the cold air between them felt like a knife against her skin. “I can’t do this if you’re just going to leave….”

“I’ll stay,” she lied, knowing she couldn’t, but she couldn’t let him walk away from her right now.

“Rach—” His smile was beautiful and it killed her. She kissed him and closed her eyes.

His tongue touched her closed mouth and his arms came around her, brushing the bare skin of her arms and her shoulders. His fingers found the sensitive nape of her neck and she moaned.

Mac’s tongue licked slowly into her mouth as they carefully leaned back on the ground.

She was seventeen and Mac was going to be the first boy she ever had sex with. Tonight. Her shirt came off and his hand cupped her breast, and that was a first, too. He peeled off his T-shirt. He was lean and beautiful and her fingers touched him, traced the muscles of his chest, his stomach. It was all new.

This didn’t change what would happen tomorrow. But tonight, in the moonlight, held tightly against Mac’s body, she was able to pretend it didn’t matter.

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

OH, BOY, RACHEL FILMORE thought as she paused in the doorway and watched her friend Olivia Hernandez work herself right into a mental health crisis, it’s like watching a train wreck.

“Hello?” She knocked on the door as quietly as she could, but Olivia still jumped out of her seat.

“Stop doing that,” Olivia breathed, clutching the ruffled neck of her pink T-shirt.

“It’s knocking, sweetheart, and it’s polite.” Rachel smiled and leaned against the door frame of her boss’s office.

“Give me five more minutes,” Olivia said, then swiveled toward her computer screen.

“You said that twenty minutes ago,” Rachel reminded her.

“I know, I know, but I’m right in the middle—”

“Code red,” Rachel interrupted, and Olivia’s head snapped up.

“Realmente?” Olivia looked around at the towering stacks of files as if they had just appeared. “Code red?”

“Yep.”

Olivia knew better than to fight code red. Or at least Rachel hoped she did. In six years of working together, code red—their personal cue that one of them was close to burnout—was one thing that they never argued over.

“Your husband called and asked me to make sure his real wife came home, not the ghost he’s been living with for two weeks.” Rachel lifted an eyebrow, daring Olivia to deny that she’d been working like a woman possessed.

Olivia blew a black curl off her forehead. “It’s just been so crazy with Frank leaving.”

“I know, but you’re not doing any good working like this.” Rachel was sympathetic and had been helping as much as possible, but frankly she would rather eat the files than look at any more of them right now.

“Did Nick really call you or are you just making that up so I’ll go have lunch with you?” Olivia narrowed her eyes.

“He called three times.”

“You think you could have told me sooner?”

“You think I haven’t tried?”

“You’re right.” Olivia grabbed a plastic bag from the bottom drawer of her government-regulation metal desk. “I’ve been working too much.” She fished around for her shoes and finally stood, pulling down the hem of her T-shirt. “Let’s go have some lunch.”

Rachel swallowed a sigh of relief. Olivia could be stubborn, and the workload had been making her already fiery temper even hotter these days.

“But I am going to take a few of these.” Olivia grabbed the top five files from the stack on the corner of her desk and Rachel wasn’t all that surprised.

Rachel had one from her own stack under her arm as well.

Every day was a constant struggle to avoid code red.

“Just so long as you actually see daylight,” Rachel said. Rachel looked down at the stack Olivia had grabbed and her heart beat hard. The top folder had been flagged with an interoffice red arrow, indicating the child needed to be removed from the home.

What is Olivia trying to do? she wondered. Olivia, after a month of debating back and forth, had decided to take the promotion into administration that Frank Monroe’s retirement had created and leave behind the stress of fieldwork. Of the cases Olivia had already split up there had been no red arrows, and Rachel wondered if Olivia was going to try to take that family on as well as her increased administrative duties.

Not if I can help it. Those red arrows meant about forty percent more work and Liv had a family.

Rachel had an ex-boyfriend and a fish.

Rachel actually liked the red-arrow cases. Not their existence, of course. But they were a challenge to her, a call to arms. She felt as though she was really doing her job—catching bad guys and helping kids—when she took one on.

Olivia gave Rachel a hard hug. “Thanks, Rach,” she whispered into her hair.

“You’d do it for me.” Rachel hugged her friend back and followed Olivia through the maze of stuffy and small public offices toward the exit and sunshine.

They settled down onto their usual bench in one of the many manicured courtyards of the county government building compound.

Rachel rolled her shoulders and let the perfumed California sunshine melt away her tension. She hovered at about a code yellow these days. Frank’s sudden and disorganized departure had been tough on everyone in the office.

Olivia turned sideways on their bench and licked the residual yogurt from the aluminum cover she’d peeled off. “How are you handling the new cases?”

Rachel kicked off her black slides and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I am surviving,” she said honestly. “I mean, it’s a slog. Frank really got sloppy toward the end. He screwed up some names between files and he’s gotten a lot of dates wrong, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

Olivia laughed, but it, too, sounded stressed. “I wish I could say the same. I feel like I am being chased by a million loose ends. I can’t even remember why I wanted Frank’s job.”

“Ten years in the field, you were ready to burn out, Liv.”

“Still, at least it was simpler. This management thing is making me crazy.”

Rachel forced her eyes not to roll. They’d discussed the pros and cons of this move to death, but she could hit the highlight reel.

“You were breaking the Golden Rule.”

“What Golden Rule?”

“Mine.”

“Rachel Filmore has a Golden Rule? This should be good,” Olivia hooted. “Is it never, ever pay full price for anything? Oh wait, never, ever talk about family or, God forbid, marriage—”

“The Golden Rule states,” Rachel interrupted, “thou shalt not become too involved.” She waved her fork with a little flair. “And you, my dear friend, were getting too involved all over the place.”

“Ha! Like I’ve never caught you crying under your desk. You’ve had your fair share of code red moments.”

She’d had two. In six years. Not a bad average. “You’re totally exaggerating.” Rachel would never in this lifetime cry at work, or in front of anyone, for that matter. Any crying she did was by herself. Alone. In a dark room. She was that kind of crier. “And you are missing the important part. Too. Don’t get too wrapped up in the cases.”

It’s not that she didn’t care, or cared less than Olivia, it’s that she had learned to care the smart way. The way that did good rather than made you crazy. Rachel cared with her head and tried very hard to keep her heart out of it.

It was the only way to stay sane.

“In the six years I’ve been here—”

“You’re still a child, a baby.” Olivia had celebrated her ten-year anniversary with the Department of Child and Family Services last month, which seemed to give her license to expunge Rachel’s years of service.

“The best thing Frank Monroe ever taught me is that a little detachment goes a long way in this business.”

“Well, maybe that explains the mistakes in the cases.”

“It explains how he was able to stay in the job for twenty-five years.”

Olivia scrutinized Rachel as if she was something between glass plates and under a microscope, and she grew uncomfortable. “You know, you might be one of the best counselors we’ve got,” Olivia said. “You’re smart, you’re quick. You work hard.”

Rachel was taken aback for a moment by the praise. “Thanks, Olivia.”

“But you’ve still got a lot to learn.” Olivia scooped another heap of pink yogurt into her mouth and winked.

I should have known there would be a catch.

“You got big plans for the weekend?” Rachel asked, quickly changing the subject, before Olivia launched into a monologue about all the things Rachel still had to learn.

“Everyone is coming to my house on Sunday.”

“What’s Sunday?” Rachel asked, a forkful of lettuce halfway to her mouth.

“Mother’s Day.”

Rachel stiffened as a cold chill slid along her spine.

“Rach?”

Rachel watched the sparrows at their feet, rooting for food in the green grass, instead of looking at the concern and pity that were no doubt on her friend’s face.

“Are you going to see your mom?”

“Nope.”

“But it’s Mother’s Day.”

“So you said.” Rachel fought to swallow another bite of salad and whatever emotion was stuck in her throat. Anger? Guilt? Indifference? Probably indifference, she decided. It was all the feeling she had left for her mother. “It’s just another day, Olivia. Just another day.”

“Not to your mom, who would probably give her right arm to hear from you. Come on, Rachel, she’s forty minutes away.”

Might as well be on the far side of the moon, Rachel thought, and chucked a piece of lettuce at the birds.

“Let’s not spoil your first hour back among the living with talk of my mother, okay?” she asked nicely. She was a pro at dodging the mom questions. And since her dad had died five years after she left New Springs, and no one even knew she had a brother, she didn’t have to answer those questions at all. She liked it that way.

“Fine,” Olivia huffed, and then muttered “obstinado idiota” under her breath.

Rachel smiled and watched the birds squabbling over the limp lettuce. She threw them a piece of cucumber, her appetite suddenly vanished. She wasn’t an idiot. Idiots were people who kept throwing themselves against the rocky shores of their dysfunctional family. Trying to make things right. Trying to fix the past. Well, if there was one thing Rachel knew, it was that there was no fixing the past. The future, sure. The past was better forgotten.

“We’re having Nick’s family and mine for a barbecue all day,” Olivia said.

“Wow, that should be quite a party.”

“Why don’t you and Will come over to my house?” Olivia asked, and Rachel winced. There was no more Will in her life and Olivia’s fuse was going to blow when Rachel told her.

“Your godchildren are dying to see you—”

“No fair using your girls as bait,” Rachel laughed, though she would like to see Ruby and Louisa. It had been a few weeks since their last trip to the beach.

“And you can protect me from my mother-in-law,” Olivia suggested. “You guys can talk about whatever it is you Anglo folks—”

“Tupperware and English muffins.”

“That’s what you talk about?”

Rachel nodded. “Most of the time.”

Olivia laughed and Rachel decided to stop the conversation before it even got started. “Will and I broke up.”

“What?” Olivia’s eyes were wide. “When?”

“Last weekend.”

“No del oh—”

“Oh, stop. It’s hardly the end of the world.” Will had wanted a family, children, a home and a dog of some kind, and Rachel wanted none of that. Had, in fact, made it clear since the second date, which was why, when he asked her to move in, she had been so stunned. Angry and stunned.

Why do they do that? Think that two months of dinners, sex and Sunday brunch will change my mind.

“What happened?” Olivia stroked Rachel’s arm, and she twitched. Rachel didn’t really want Olivia’s pity and she really didn’t want any of the pats on the back and hugs and offers of ice cream gluttony that usually came with breakups.

“We wanted different things, Liv.”

I want the works, Will had said, his eyes wet as he’d watched Rachel pack her overnight bag. Family. Kids. I want to be needed. I want you to need me. And that’s never going to happen, is it?

Rachel with dry eyes and a cold heart had said no. Don’t pretend to be betrayed, Will. You knew how I felt about marriage and kids from the beginning. And then she’d picked up the stash of things she’d kept in his apartment and never looked back.

“You know…” Olivia looked at Rachel with so much compassion that Rachel had to pretend sudden interest in the cuff of her green cardigan. “We are not destined to become our mothers. That’s a lie. You will not become your mother, or your father. You can create your own family and it can work.”

Rachel sighed and looked up at the big blue California sky as if the answers to all of Olivia’s comments might be there and Rachel could just point and say, “Look.” But they weren’t, so Rachel was left to her usual spiel.

“Why is it when a woman decides she doesn’t want a family it somehow all relates to her mother? I just don’t want a family. That’s all, nothing nefarious. Just no thanks. Is that so hard to understand?”

“No, but I understand you’re chickenshit, that’s for sure!”

Rachel turned on Olivia, only to find her friend laughing. “You’re hilarious,” she said.

“Yes, I am.” Olivia set her bag on the files between them and stretched out her legs. Rachel’s attention was caught by that red flag that sat on top like a loaded weapon. “You know, I never really liked Will.”

“What?”

“Yeah—” Olivia scrunched up her face “—he was just a little too…shiny. He used hair gel. Men shouldn’t use hair gel. Even if they are investment bankers.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Rachel muttered. She turned her head so she could see the name on the file label. It started with an A.

“Yeah, he was too together, like he’s played it safe his whole life. You need a man who knows what it’s like to be a little out of control.”

“Your insights into my love life are spectacular, really, but—”

“You are not getting any younger.” Olivia crossed her legs, and the hem of her skirt lifted and settled around her knees. Her toenails, though chipped and faded, were painted pink to match almost the entirety of her wardrobe, but in the center of each was a red rose. Olivia called her homemade pedicures the ultimate accessory.

“I’m thirty, Liv. Hardly ready to pack it in.”

“I’m just saying…”

Rachel wiggled her pale naked toes and figured out the key to getting the red-arrow case and Olivia off her back without having to suffer through any more talk of mothers and men in one fell swoop.

“How about I come over on Saturday and let you do my toes.”

“Really?” Olivia lit up like a Christmas tree. “You haven’t let me at your toes in months, and frankly, sweetheart, they look like you’ve been taking care of them with your teeth.”

Rachel curled her feet under the bench. “I’ll come over on one condition.”

“I know, no dragons.” Olivia nodded, reiterating Rachel’s rule for whenever Olivia did her toes. Dragons looked good on some people, but Rachel believed she wasn’t one of them.

“I’ll take the red-arrow case,” Rachel said, and watched the pride ignite in Olivia’s eyes.

“You don’t have to do that,” Olivia said firmly. “I can handle the workload.”

“You shouldn’t even have it. You’re administration now.”

“Frank always kept his hand in. I can do it, too.”

“Sure, maybe after you’ve had some experience. This is a red arrow, Liv. Not a truancy or welfare fraud. Take the damn help.” Rachel urged. “Second Golden Rule—take help when you need it.”

Olivia was silent for a moment. “You think I need it?”

“I think you’re one week away from drooling in a straitjacket.”

Olivia’s laugh flooded Rachel with relief. “Okay.” She nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Rachel flashed Olivia a smile, picked up the file and flipped through the paperwork. The nice steady hum of adrenaline entered her veins.

She scanned the information at the top of the page. “She’s from my old stomping grounds.”

Olivia’s face mirrored Rachel’s surprise. New Springs was a sleepy agricultural town on the edge of the desert. It was a medium-size town, quiet.

It was an eerie coincidence and the hair on her neck went stiff. She turned to the second page and the picture of the young girl with a sneer, tangled blond hair and eyes so angry and hurt at the same time that Rachel felt like she was looking at herself at that age.

“How old?”

Rachel went back to the first page. “Twelve.”

Olivia’s soft sigh was distressed. “They just keep getting younger.”

Rachel stopped listening. She actually, for a moment, couldn’t breathe. The girl’s name was Amanda Edwards. And she was from New Springs. It could just be a coincidence. Edwards, after all, was a common last name.

She flipped to the photo again. The blond hair, the eyes so blue, unlike most other blues. Like the color of the sky closest to the horizon on a clear day. Rachel knew that color like she knew the same muddy-green of her own eyes. It was a blue just like Mac Edwards’s eyes.

“Rachel?”

Please don’t let it be, she prayed, and turned to the third page with the names of the parents typed in black and white across the top of the page.

Mother—deceased.

Father—MacArthur Edwards.

All the blood in Rachel’s body fell to her feet and she saw stars, her skin crawled. Rachel fingered the red-arrow sticker on the front of the file that meant Frank thought Amanda should be removed from the home.

From Mac’s home.

Oh, Mac, what went wrong? She shook with a sudden chill that filled her bones.

“Rachel? You okay?” Olivia asked, her hand brushing Rachel’s shoulder.

Rachel took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I need to get back into work.” She stood, ignoring Olivia’s protests. She scooped up the files and her half-eaten salad and ran back to her office like a possessed woman.

Mac Edwards had a daughter.

And she was in trouble.

Rachel shut her office door and sat at her desk, rolling her chair up tight so the edge of the desk bit into her stomach. She cleared a small space on her ink blotter and opened Amanda Edwards’s file. There was a shaking in her stomach, an awful quiver. A million thoughts buzzed and careened through her brain like bees.

Mac has a daughter and Frank thought she should be removed from the home.

There had to be some kind of mistake. The man she knew would have become a great father. He had been a caring, gentle boy with patience and kindness to spare.

Look at what your brother made me…

Rachel shook her head, pushing the memory to the black hole it came from.

But something had happened to Mac and his daughter. And when something happened to a twelve-year-old girl it was usually because of the parents.

Rachel touched the picture of Mac’s angry little girl, tracing the eyes that looked as if they had seen too much.

What went wrong?

Rachel dove into the file, tearing through pages, trying as best she could to gather the available information from the clues Frank had left behind.

Amanda Edwards, runaway age twelve. Amanda and a fourteen-year-old girl, Christie Alverez, were investigated six months ago in connection to a fire that burned down a barn and an acre of pasture on a horse farm ten miles away from New Springs.

The farm belonged to Gatan Meorte.

Wow. Gatan Meorte. Rachel wiped her hand down her face as memories assaulted her. She would have thought that old recluse was long dead.

Amanda and Christie had been missing for two days and were caught hitchhiking along Highway 13 the day after the fire.

Horrifying images of what could happen to two girls on the highway flooded Rachel’s imagination and cramped her stomach.

Frank’s notes, printed precisely in damning black and white, filled the last page.

Amanda is an angry young girl, with violent and suicidal tendencies. Her grades have dropped significantly in the past year since her mother’s death. It is my opinion that the mother was Amanda’s primary caregiver and when she died, the father did not pick up the slack. I recommend this child be removed from the home because Mac Edwards is in denial of his daughter’s behavior to the point of delusion.

He says he has never seen her act out and that his daughter’s running away was a complete shock to him. Amanda needs to live in a reality-based situation where her actions have consequences, as opposed to having her behavior excused or swept under the rug as is the case with her father. Even more disturbing, when told that Amanda could be removed from the home if he did not face the reality of his family, Mr. Edwards had a violent outburst. He broke a chair and a window and had to be physically restrained. It is my opinion that there is probably some underlying abuse between Mr. Edwards and his daughter. In light of this and Amanda’s growing criminal record, she needs to be removed from the home.

Rachel had to read the words five times before they sank in.

She leaned back and counted the ceiling-tile squares, a calming exercise that rarely worked, but that she tried with unwavering faith.

She couldn’t begin to picture the gentle, funny Mac she knew breaking a window or a chair in rage.

We could get married, that way you could stay.

She squeezed her eyes shut until the memory faded.

What happened to the mother? Rachel wondered. She went back through the file, but other than the note that the mother was deceased there was no mention of her.

How ironic that Rachel could have been the one with the twelve-year-old daughter—Mac’s daughter. That night at the quarry had been thirteen years ago almost to the day. A twist of fate and her life would have been completely different.

Rachel checked the date of the file. It was one of Frank’s last cases. The last time he’d interviewed Amanda was three weeks ago—the same time he’d told Mac that DCFS might take his daughter.

Mac might have run. Packed up and taken Amanda…where? The Mac she knew had no family outside of his mother and her series of husbands. Maybe he went to his wife’s family?

In any case, Amanda Edwards’s file needed to be updated.

Rachel should not take this case. She knew that. It was a conflict of interest if ever there was one. What she should do is march right back to Olivia and say, “I know this guy. Loved him, actually. I think. I definitely broke his heart. So, I can’t take the case.”

She should do that.

But she didn’t.

CHAPTER TWO

RACHEL PARKED HER CAR and turned off the ignition. It was Friday, two days after finding out about Mac and Amanda, and she had finally been able to clear her late-afternoon schedule and drive to their home.

She shook out her numb hands. She’d been gripping the steering wheel a tad too hard. She had not counted on what it would cost her to drive to New Springs. Every time she looked in the rearview mirror, the scared, unsure girl who had left thirteen years ago stared back at her.

Obviously she wasn’t as detached from the past as she thought.

She grabbed her briefcase and got out of the car. The slam of the door sent a bird flying from the brush bordering the small gravel parking area, beside a low brown house built into a mountain and surrounded by avocado and lemon groves. The trees flourished on the hillsides surrounding New Springs, and all of the houses along the mountain road she had just traveled were farmhouses. The file said Mac was a farmer, and Rachel could see Mac working this land. It made perfect sense.

Rachel still wasn’t convinced she would take this case. She was just here for preliminary fieldwork, a rudimentary home visit that should tell her if Frank had been right. And then she would be better able to determine what to do. She wasn’t convinced that this case was worth all that she had at stake. She could get into big trouble if Olivia became aware of what had happened between Mac and Rachel—it could cost her the job she loved. As she had convinced herself during the trip here, she was just sussing things out.

Rachel had gone into social work to help families. It was her job. And she was good at it. She knew better than to become emotionally involved. And without emotion, this was just another case. Mac was just another father—one who was possibly failing his daughter.

Rachel had to help. Or at least see if help was needed.

There were no ghostly remains of some kind of romantic relationship. They had been friends. Clumsy lovers and then they’d lost touch. End of story.

She checked her watch. Five-thirty, usually a good time to catch people at home. She’d learned early in her career that calling people to tell them she was coming just gave them the information they needed to not be home at the right time.

The gravel crunched under her feet. Somewhere a wind chime made careless music in the soft breeze that blew across the mountain, bringing with it the smell of white sage.

She stepped onto a flagstone path that led to the door, which appeared hidden underneath the eaves. A tomato plant grew like mad in a bucket next to a basil plant growing in a coffee can.

That’s the Mac I remember.

Rachel took a deep breath, cursed that extra-large coffee she’d drunk earlier that made her heart thunder in her chest. She ran a hand down the front of her white blouse, made sure she was all tucked in and presentable and knocked on the dark wood door, which, to her surprise, swung open under the light pressure from her fist.

Rachel found herself in front of a small staircase leading down into a huge room with a wall of windows opposite her that faced the valley and the mountains behind it.

She was taken aback by the beauty the small house hid.

Pale yellow wood floors and walls gleamed in the clear bright afternoon light that filled the long multipurpose room. On one end there was a fireplace made of fieldstone and two big red couches facing an entertainment unit.

A dining room table cluttered with a book bag, homework and a plate with crumbs on it stood in the middle of the room. A small kitchen occupied the far end with an island separating the kitchen from the dining room.

It was warm and cozy, with pictures on the walls and a plate of cookies on the counter. It seemed like the very last place that abuse would happen. But that was the first lesson she’d ever learned, from her own family—things are never what they seem. And homes could be the most dangerous places on Earth.

“Hello?” she called out, leaning into the foyer. She waited a moment but there was no response, no sound, even. She took one step in and looked around the door at a staircase leading up to a second floor. Since the ground floor wasn’t visible from the outside because of the way it was built into the mountain, the seemingly modest-size home was actually quite large.

Mac was obviously a successful farmer. That hadn’t been mentioned in the files.

“Anybody home?”

“Hey!” a man shouted from another part of the house, and Rachel’s breath stalled in her lungs. It was Mac. His deep, rough voice sent shock waves down her spine. “Be right there.”

Irritation flared at her sudden case of nerves and she forced herself to relax, to remember her job. Her skill and detachment.

“Sorry.” His voice was closer, somewhere to the right of her and low on the first floor. Her stomach leaped. She could hear his footsteps, approaching swiftly. “Have you been—”

Suddenly he was there, right in front of her, appearing from an unseen doorway in the corner of the kitchen. Her heartbeat stopped.

Mac. Oh, my God, look at you.

He was beautiful. His body had grown into the promise it had at seventeen. He looked lean but powerful. His shoulders filled the seams of his denim workshirt and the sleeves were rolled up to reveal wiry, nut-brown forearms. His khaki pants hung on lean hips. His hair, overlong and bleached from his days outside, fell over his forehead. She watched spellbound as he brushed it out of his eyes.

His eyes were the same. Blue as the palest part of the sky and growing confused.

“I’m sorry.” He flashed his lopsided grin with the dimple, and Rachel felt her heart start again with a painful double lurch. “Are you Amanda’s tutor?”

“No.” She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, and stood revealed and naked in front of him.

Recognition and painful disbelief twisted his face.

“Rach?” he breathed.

She was going to cry. Her eyes burned and her nose became watery. She looked at her shoes, a habit she had spent the better part of her life trying to break.

“Rachel?” His voice was strong but sharp at the end, and she couldn’t bear to look at him. You have a job to do, Rachel. Get it together. She sniffed and glanced up, meeting Mac’s gaze.

“Hi, Mac.”

He put one foot on the stairs and his hand gripped the banister, as if he wanted it dead. His knuckles turned white as he squeezed the wood. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice strangled.

She was hoping for a different beginning to this conversation. I suppose a hug is too much to ask for.

Sarcasm was her convenient crutch. She knew that about herself, but didn’t have the power to do this without a few crutches.

She opened her mouth to explain herself, but a blond girl appeared at the top of the second-floor stairs and electricity charged the air in the house.

The hair on Rachel’s arms stood on end.

“Sorry, Dad, just went to the bathroom.” The girl’s voice was quiet and thin. Amanda was so skinny, Rachel’s heart heaved.

Something is seriously wrong.

Amanda floated soundlessly down the stairs, carefully stepping on the edges of the steps.

She’s a ghost, Rachel thought, painfully mesmerized by the girl wearing a pair of cutoff shorts and a long-sleeved red T-shirt with the name of a local swim team on it.

Amanda caught sight of Rachel standing in the doorway and her passive face transformed into a hostile mask of suspicion. Her eyes turned hard and old. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Rachel.

Ah, there she is. That’s the girl from the picture.

“Who are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

“Amanda.” Mac put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder, a gesture of unity and warmth, but at the same time Rachel knew he was telling his daughter to relax. “This is—” Mac swallowed “—an old friend of mine, Rachel…” He trailed off, obviously waiting for her to supply her married name.

“Rachel Filmore,” Rachel said. She held out her hand, but Amanda hesitated until Mac elbowed her in the back, a little poke that said “Mind your manners.” Nothing serious.

“Hi.” Amanda barely touched Rachel’s hand. “Can I go up to my room until the tutor comes?” she asked Mac, but she didn’t take her narrowed eyes off Rachel.

“Sure,” he agreed, and Amanda took off like a shot back up the stairs, her long hair a banner behind her. Rachel watched her go, then turned to face Mac, whose tension she could feel like pinpricks along her skin.

He wasn’t happy to see her and it was only going to get worse.

“What are you doing here, Rachel?” he asked slowly in his low voice. He crossed his arms over his lean chest and tilted his head—familiar gestures that tugged at the lock on her memories.

“Mac, I am a counselor with Santa Barbara DCFS.” The words weren’t even out of her mouth before he turned around and paced away from her. His boots clunked heavily on the hardwood floor.

“Mac?”

“I’m listening,” he said, his voice cold and angry. He grabbed the plate with the crumbs on it and walked over to the kitchen sink. “I’m all ears, Rachel.”

Apparently she wasn’t the only one with a sarcastic crutch. She was surprised by how much it hurt to be on the receiving end of that scathing bitterness.

“Frank Monroe, who initially—”

“Oh, I remember Frank.” The plate clattered into the sink.

“He’s retired now and I am taking over the file for Amand—” Mac picked up the plate and threw it back into the sink where it shattered. Rachel flinched and Mac braced his hands against the counter. He swore under his breath.

“Mac, you must know the gravity of what you and Amanda are facing.” Rachel took another step onto the small landing. Just do the right thing here, Mac, she silently urged him. “I am not against you.”

Mac turned and leaned against the counter. A muscle flexed in his jaw and his eyes were hot with frustrated rage. “That’s really funny, Rachel, because that is exactly what Frank told me right before he said he was going to take my daughter away.”

“Look…” Rachel stepped down onto the first step and knew that her decision was made. She didn’t know when exactly it had happened—the moment she opened the file, the second she saw Mac, she wasn’t sure—but she couldn’t turn this case over to someone else. She knew she would be breaking the rules, but Amanda and Mac Edwards were going to be her responsibility. “I can help you—”

“He said that, too.” Mac scrubbed his hands over his face and seemed to be in the process of reining himself in. “I’m not going to lose my daughter.”

“Then you have to work with me.”

“I thought this was over. I haven’t heard from Frank or from anyone in your office in weeks. I thought…” His voice trailed off.

“We’ve been shuffling things around. Sometimes it takes a while.”

He laughed once, a hollow bark. “How the hell…” He shook his head again before looking back at her. “You? Of all the people in the world, you end up on my door?” The way he said the word you, told her clearly what remained of his feelings for her. Nothing.

“I think it’s a good thing,” she said in a soft but firm voice. “I can help you.”

“Optimism?” he asked bitterly. “From Rachel Filmore?”

Suddenly the past surrounded them, tied them together with the ribbons of their shared, emotionally tragic history. She saw him standing in his kitchen, the sunlight casting halos around his blond hair, but she also saw him as he had been thirteen years ago, heartbreaking in the moonlight and asking her to marry him.

She didn’t like where he was pushing her. She didn’t want to talk about the past.

She shrugged. “That used to be your trademark.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Wonder what happened to it.” Mac took a deep breath and pushed away from the counter. “So, what are you going to do? You try to take Amanda away, and I will fight you, Rachel.”

Rachel didn’t doubt him for a moment. “I think it’s best if I review the case first.”

Mac snorted in derision.

“What?” Rachel asked.

“The case.” His eyes burned her with his cold disdain. “I just love it when you guys call us that. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.”

She wasn’t going to let him bait her. She was used to the people she bent over backward to help being angry with her. The fact that it was Mac shouldn’t bother her any more.

But, of course, it did. So, she buried her heart feelings in the cold regulations of her job.

“I think it’s best if I start from scratch. We’re going to need to—” She paused before taking the last step into the room. She wasn’t invited, she definitely wasn’t wanted. And while she did need to force her way into the family, she wasn’t going to force her way into his living room.

“Please,” he said after he caught on to her hesitation. He spread his arms and smiled with scathing fake bonhomie. “Come right on in. Can I offer you a cookie?” He shoved the plate of cookies across the counter toward her, the stoneware grating against the tiles. She tried not to flinch.

“No, thanks.” Her cool, professional tone pleased her. “I know that you have already been through the interview process, but I would like to spend some time with you and your daughter.”

“Fine.” Mac nodded.

“Would it be possible for you to come into the city?” It was a selfish request, she knew it, and from the look in his eyes, he knew it, too.

“Too tough for you to drive across the mountains?” he asked, and the sarcasm that coated the question sent her spine upright. “Maybe you’d like to meet down at the Main Street Café. I think your mom still works there.”

She sucked in a breath, reeling from the emotional slap.

“I can meet you here.” She dug her calendar out of her purse.

“Rachel.” The tone of his voice was different. Sorry. “I can meet you in the—”

“It’s fine.” She continued to dig through her bag.

“Rachel.”

“You’ve made your point, Mac.” She looked up and met his eyes straight on. She was a different woman from the girl she had been. Tougher. Stronger. “I would like to set up weekly meetings. What days work best for you?”

“Thursday evenings,” Mac murmured. “That’s when we used to meet with Frank.”

She opened her calendar and found the appropriate pages. “Okay, I would like to meet with Amanda and you, both together and separately.”

“Fine.”

They set up the dates and she handed him one of her cards that she’d clipped to the outside of her calendar.

“That has my cell phone number on it, so you can get ahold of me anytime.”

He took the card and tucked it into his back pocket. Some of the anger that radiated off of him had dissipated and he just looked tired. And sad.

He cleared his throat and the room filled with uncomfortable silence. “I am sorry,” he said, his blue eyes sincere. “About earlier, that comment about your mom.”

“Forget it.” She waved her hand as if to clear the air.

“But what I—”

“Look, Mac, I am here to help your family and that’s better accomplished if we can agree there won’t be any stroll down memory lane for us.”

He watched her for a long time and she wanted to look away, so, of course, she forced herself to meet his beautiful blue eyes. “You want to pretend like we don’t know each other?”

Never spent every waking moment together. Never held each other while we cried. Never kissed. Never made love.

Those were the things she couldn’t think of, not if she wanted to help the wounded Amanda. And they were right there in his face. He didn’t have to say the words, her ability to guess his thoughts hadn’t faded with the years of absence. Much to her dismay.

His harsh laughter cut her. “Whatever you say, Rach.”

Rachel felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. Nothing was as it should be. This man looked like Mac, who used to know everything about her—every secret and longing and desire.

I am not that girl anymore.

There was nothing but black emotion with sharp edges between them now.

I have a job to do.

Rachel got back to the matter at hand. “Okay, so next Thursday I am going to interview Amanda—”

“Let’s get Amanda down here,” Mac interrupted. “I don’t want to do this behind her back.”

Rachel nodded, surprised, and Mac called his daughter to the kitchen. The girl stomped down the stairs as though she led a death march.

“What?” She scowled from the bottom step.

“We are going back into weekly counseling.” The way Mac treated his daughter like an adult impressed Rachel. She didn’t see a lot of that in her job. “You start on Thursday.”

“No way!” Amanda bristled and turned red-faced. “No way, Dad. I am not going to talk to her.”

“Amanda.” His tone was reasonable and sure. “We don’t have any choice.”

Rachel took a step forward. “I know you’ve heard all of this before, but I really am not the enemy.”

“Screw you.”

“Amanda!” Mac started toward his daughter, but Rachel held out a hand to stop him.

“Go ahead and be mad, Amanda. But you still are going to have to talk to me.” She locked eyes with the furious girl.

“I don’t have to talk to anyone!” Her lovely young face was twisted into a sneer that was too old and ugly.

“No, you’re right. You don’t have to talk to anyone. But it would be better for you, and for your dad, if you did talk to me and you told me the truth.”

“We don’t need you,” she cried. “Tell her, Dad!”

“Amanda, baby.” Mac’s voice cracked. “We need her. We have to talk to her.”

Rachel walked to the stairs and climbed the first one so she was nearly nose to nose with Amanda. “Right now I am your best shot at staying with your dad.”

Amanda’s lips curled and she sniffed hard as her eyes flooded with tears. She backed out of the way, sitting down on the bottom step of the second set of stairs. She hugged her legs to her chest. Rachel walked by her toward the door, knowing these two needed time alone.

“I don’t need anyone,” the girl whispered, her words like ice.

“We’ll see,” Rachel replied softly, knowing the pain of being twelve and believing that Amanda truly felt that way. Rachel walked out the door down the path and across the gravel to where she’d parked.

She climbed into her car, started it and began driving down the mountain. She focused as hard as possible, with every beat of her heart and with every breath she pulled in, on the observations she had made, the rational conclusions she could draw from that first meeting.

But it didn’t work.

As soon as she was out of sight of the house, she pulled over. The reality of what she’d done, of being in the same room as Mac, of risking her career for a friendship that clearly meant nothing to him, fell in on her. She pressed shaking hands to her face and took deep breaths, feeling the black edges of the world pressing in on her.

Oh, my God, she thought. What am I doing?

CHAPTER THREE

“DAD?” AMANDA STOOD, THE tears glittering on her round little-girl cheeks breaking his heart.

“I’m sorry, Amanda.” He held his hands out to his sides. He had failed her so much and so often. “What am I supposed to do?”

The answer burned in her eyes, it radiated off her trembling shoulders. He could see it on her face, in the wild clenching of her hands. I am supposed to take care of her. I am supposed to love her and care for her and make sure no one takes her away from me.

Basic dad things, and he was failing.

She finally turned and ran back to her bedroom. The sound of her footsteps pounded up the stairs, then her door slammed and Mac collapsed into one of the dining room chairs like a sail that had lost all of its wind.

Rachel Filmore. He stared up at the wood-beam-and-stucco ceiling and wanted to howl. Talk about nightmares colliding. The dissolution of his family mixed with the devastating return of Rachel Filmore. Perfect.

He had truly thought the parts of his body that could feel the painful combination of lust and hurt and anger had been burned out of him thirteen years ago. But those numb parts had flared to painful life when Rachel had pushed those sunglasses off her eyes.

God. He rubbed a hand over his face. Rachel.

She still appeared fragile, as though a strong wind would push her over. But he knew better. Her feet were planted wide and firmly on the earth. She was as immovable as one of the trees in his orchard. Her chin was still out, ready to take on the world. Her green eyes held that wrenching combination of hope and cynicism that he’d remembered. One corner of her mouth still curved up, like the suspicious and sarcastic kid she had been, but her whole smile was like the sun coming up on a new day.

She was gorgeous and still had the power to make his heart stop and his hands sweat.

He groaned and shut his eyes. As if his life needed this.

Thirteen years spent erasing her from his memory, trying to forget what it was like to love her and for one night believe that he was loved in return. All of those feelings had come rushing back as she stood on his stairs, in the house he had built, and said she was here to help.

He groaned and winced. Help? Rachel? He couldn’t get his head around it. He’d never thought he would see her again, sure that she had moved as far away from New Springs as possible. And all this time she had been just forty minutes away? He smiled at his own nonsense, as though had he known, he would have done something about it. Nope. He just couldn’t believe that she’d actually stuck around this area.

She’d said she would never come back.

Funny how things work out. Freaking hilarious.

What was funny was how the women he loved were always such mysteries. His wife he’d been able to read like a book, but his mother, Rachel, his daughter—all enigmas.

Things were going on in his daughter’s head that he couldn’t begin to fathom. Since Margaret had died, he’d tried very hard to make Amanda’s home a safe and warm place, despite the absence of her mother. He raced around at double speed to cover up that gaping hole in their home. And until Amanda ran away, he’d seriously thought he was doing a pretty good job.

But now this ghost who looked like his daughter, but wasn’t the girl he knew, wandered through his house and he didn’t know how to help her.

Initially, when they’d been court-ordered into counseling, Mac had been relieved. Finally someone for them to talk to, a guide through this new horrific landscape they traveled, would surely help.

But they’d gotten Frank. Amanda wouldn’t talk to him. She’d become more angry and withdrawn from Mac, with his in-laws, who adored her. Frank hadn’t seemed to care or understand that Amanda was retreating from her family, and Mac had grown frustrated. And when Frank had told Mac that Amanda would be taken away from him, all hell had erupted.

Mac looked over at the counter where the broken plate lay in pieces in the sink.

Way to show your rational side there, Mac thought. A surefire way to keep your family together.

Like a fool, he’d thought they were in the clear. He hadn’t heard from Frank in three weeks after he’d dropped the “removing Amanda bomb” on them. Mac had figured they were just another family who had slipped through the cracks. Only in their case it was a blessing.

I think it’s a blessing. I can help you. Rachel’s words lingered in his head.

Honestly, he doubted it. It wasn’t so much that his faith in the system was nonexistent. It was his faith in Rachel that was lacking. Graduation night he’d let himself believe that she was staying—that they were going to be together. But the next day she’d left without telling him, and then he made that stupid trip to her apartment, when he’d stood out in the rain begging her to come back. Although that was pretty mortifying, it was not what was so disheartening.

Rachel had run away from her family. She’d lied and run away from them. When things had gotten tight, she’d left without so much as a word. She’d abandoned her brother, who never forgiven her. Mac couldn’t blame Jesse. He’d never forgiven her, either.

How could he trust someone capable of that behavior?

How could he trust the woman who’d showed up on his doorstep with promises to help, but who’d acted just as cold and formal as Frank, who’d betrayed him?

How could he trust the woman to whom he’d given everything he had of value? And she’d left it all behind like clothes she’d outgrown.

Mac took a deep breath and pushed himself out of the chair. Right now he had to convince his daughter that they needed to give counseling one more try.

Mac climbed the stairs, feeling a hundred years old, and knocked on his daughter’s door.

“Go away,” she yelled.

“Amanda?”

“Dad.” She ripped the door open and then took three flying steps back to her bed where she curled onto her side away from him.

Her nickname, Eddy, was embroidered on the back of her shirt, the fragile knobs of her spine pressed against the cotton. Suddenly, Mac was nearly on his knees with the desperate desire to rewind time seven years. Amanda would be starting kindergarten, her life an open book to him. There were no secrets, no locked doors, no terrifying three days of her disappearance. No criminal investigations. No Rachel Filmore.

“Amanda.” Two months had passed since the harrowing nights she’d been gone, and he wasn’t any closer to finding out why she ran. “Maybe if you talked to me about why you ran—”

“Dad, I’ve told you,” she mumbled.

“I know it was Christie’s idea, but why did you go?” He watched her thin shoulders shrug. He expected that calculated shrug, considering it had been her standard answer for two months.

Why did you run away?

Why are you so sad?

Why won’t you eat?

Why won’t you talk to me?

Frank had told Mac that he needed to push his daughter for answers, that he couldn’t let her silence get the best of him. But staring at the delicate curve of her spine, he wondered how he could push her. She had already suffered so much.

He cleared his throat and put his foot down on one side of a line they rarely crossed. “Is it about Mom?”

There was a long stretch of quiet that Mac filled with wordless prayers that Amanda would talk.

“No, Dad,” she sighed. “Not everything is about Mom.”

“But maybe you saw something, or heard—”

“I didn’t see or hear anything!” she yelled, flipping onto her back. Mac watched the steady stream of tears running from the corner of her eyes into her hair. “I told you I was asleep. I woke up in the hospital, Dad. I already told you I don’t know what happened!”

“Okay, okay.” He took a step closer to the bed, but she immediately flung herself back onto her side.

“Go away, Dad. Just leave me alone.” Her voice was thick with her tears, and he knew that if he left the room she would sob into her pillows, shoving them into her mouth, probably thinking he wouldn’t hear her. He had stood outside her door for countless hours listening to her do that. What am I supposed to do?

He couldn’t believe after all this time it was going to come down to trusting Rachel Filmore. Amanda had to talk to Rachel. It was the only way out of this mess.

I hope someone somewhere is laughing, he thought.

“If you’re not going to talk to me, Amanda, I wish that you would talk to Rachel.”

“I’ll talk to that woman, I’ll do whatever you want,” she whispered, and even though she was probably lying, he felt a small measure of relief. She’d never said she would talk to Frank.

“Everything’s going to be all right.” He wasn’t sure at this point if that was an out-and-out lie, but he felt better saying it.

“Whatever,” she breathed, her voice tense with sarcasm.

“I’ll call and cancel the tutor.” At the moment he couldn’t force anything else on his daughter.

“Okay.” Her breath shuddered, her thin shoulders shook.

“Do you want to go into town with me, get some chicken at Ladd’s?” Fried chicken used to be a safe bet for his daughter, but these days with her uncertain appetite and mood, he could never be sure. Please eat. Please come eat with me.

“I’m not hungry,” she whispered.

“I’ll go get some for later, then,” he said, unwilling to give up the hope that sometime soon she was going to eat.

“Okay,” she said, her voice muffled.

See? He wanted to shout. See how normal we are?

He lingered for a moment, wanting so badly to have her look at him and smile. She gave him nothing but the cold chill of her silence.

Mac turned and caught sight of the glittery ladybug stickers that she had stuck on the plate of her light switch. She had gotten those stickers for her seventh birthday and put them all over the house. That was a million years ago. He had scraped those stickers off his car, the tractor, off the fridge, a couple of windows. He still had one on his alarm clock. He smiled as he touched them on his way out, those faded but still sparkling reminders of the girl she used to be.

A while later Mac parked the truck in front of Moore’s hardware store in the middle of downtown. The Main Street Café, where Rachel’s mom worked and Mac never ate for obvious reasons, stood next door, and the Dairy Dream ice cream parlor was a few doors down.

Maybe he’d get a pint of rocky road for later.

He smiled ruefully. He kept trying to get his daughter to gain some weight, but he was the only one whose pants were getting tighter.

“Hey, Mac!” Nick Weber, his insurance salesman, waved at him from where he sat with his family on one of the benches outside the Dairy Dream. “You got time next week to come down to the office, look over some of those papers?”

“No problem,” Mac shouted back, and Nick raised his vanilla cone in acknowledgement.

Mac was upping his insurance policies on everything. Fire. Life. Car. Everything was fragile in his life. Nothing was resistant to destruction, and if something happened to him or to the farm, he needed to be sure Amanda would be all right.

“Excuse me,” he murmured, squeezing between the few people standing in line at the movie theater.

The Royal had been standing for more than fifty years. He’d seen his first movie there—Bambi. He and Rachel had seen a million movies at the theater, though always through the back door without paying. And before she ran away, he and Amanda had seen their fair share there, too.

The cyclical way things worked in small towns appealed to him. He checked the marquee to see if the feature was something he could take Amanda to, but the Now Showing poster was for an R-rated movie.

Mac had never felt the way that Rachel did about this town. It had never been a trap for him. He’d always figured his life didn’t need much more than what this little town could offer him.

He’d tried to see the potholes and the bougainvillea and the families differently, as something bad, something to escape, the way Rachel had. But somehow it still all seemed right.

The scent of fried chicken led Mac to Ladd’s front door.

It didn’t matter how many times he walked in those doors, he never got tired of that smell. Ladd’s was right up there with the best smells in the world—sage on his mountain, his lemon grove after a rain, his daughter’s hair when she had been outside all day.

The sound of a girl laughing turned Mac’s head. Christie Alvarez stood with a group of high school boys. She was two years older than Amanda, but tried so hard to be a grown-up. Her black hair was pulled back in a sharp ponytail and heavy black eyeliner rimmed her eyes. Her shorts were far too tight and too short, and her belly, the last remnant of her baby fat, pushed out over the top.

He hardly recognized her. The last time he’d seen her at the courthouse she had been a scared little girl, dressed similarly to his daughter in a long skirt, tights and Mary Jane shoes. Both of them had worn their hair in braids. He remembered the sight of Amanda’s blond braid and Christie’s black one hanging down their backs as they’d stood in front of the judge, their hands locked together.

God, it seemed like yesterday that Christie had played with Barbie dolls with Amanda on the front deck. He had made that girl countless lunches of macaroni and cheese and now he watched as she took a drag of a cigarette.

He was doing the right thing trying to keep Amanda away from Christie. He didn’t know what had happened to the girl, but the very idea of his daughter dressed that way, looking at a boy with such shocking and resigned knowledge, made Mac sick.

Christie must have felt him watching her because she looked up at him with eyes like flat black stones. Empty. Cold. For a moment she appeared ashamed, a flush on her cheeks. But then she turned back to the boy she flirted with, as if Mac wasn’t there.

Mac’s instinct was to go over there, grab her and take her home to her mother. But who was he to judge? He was watching his own daughter fade away moment by moment.

Resigned, he pulled open the door to Ladd’s. Twenty minutes later, he walked back out, his hands filled with brown bags, their bottoms turning damp with grease. He passed in front of the window of the Main Street Café on his way to the truck.

Rachel’s mother, Eve, stood next to one of the window booths, taking an order. He shouldn’t have made that crack to Rachel about her mother. It wasn’t fair.

Eve, her long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun, leaned away from the young couple in the booth to cough violently. He could practically hear her through the glass.

That’s the price of working for twenty years in the only place left where people could smoke unfiltered cigarettes and eat a blue-plate special.

Of course, in every memory he had of Eve she had a smoke of her own hanging from the corner of her mouth.

Eve didn’t look much like Rachel. Maybe she once had before her husband had gotten hold of her. For as long as Mac had known her, Eve had been rough and broad, her eyes a muddy, graceless brown, while Rachel’s had always been an intriguing blend of green and brown.

Mac started walking again. He couldn’t do this. It was one thing to have Rachel in his home and in his family, but he would be damned if he’d let her back into his head.

He didn’t think he could survive being abandoned by Rachel Filmore twice in one lifetime.

AMANDA STARED OUT HER window and counted her father’s steps up the hallway.

He didn’t even try to sneak past her room. He walked right down the middle of the hallway so every floorboard squeaked.

Three. Four. Five. The steps stopped, and after a minute, she heard her door creak open and could feel her father watching her. That’s what he did these days. He stared at her as if he expected her to go bonkers right in front of him. Maybe she should do it, just start screaming and pulling out her hair and lighting things on fire. That’d give him something to watch.

He took a step into the room and she almost stiffened. It felt as if there were two hands at her back. Pushing. Always pushing.

Leave me alone! The scream clawed at her throat, but she just sighed, like a sound sleeper. Her back was to him so she didn’t bother closing her eyes. She knew how to fake sleep. She’d done it enough.

“I love you, Amanda,” he whispered.

Then why did you have to screw everything up?

She bit her lip until she tasted blood and waited him out. Finally, he walked away toward his room, where he would take a ten-minute shower and then try to read for about five minutes before he passed out with the light on and the book on his chest.

And once Dad was out it would take an earthquake to wake him. That’s what Mom used to say, anyway, but she always said it like she wished the earthquake would wake him and swallow him whole.

Amanda waited for half an hour, just to be on the safe side. Once she’d only waited twenty minutes and her dad had caught her. She’d made up a lie about getting a drink and he’d tried to turn it into some conversation about secrets, which was hilarious since he didn’t know the first thing about that. Anyway. She waited half an hour just to be sure.

Midnight on the nose, Amanda slipped out of her bed, grabbed her tennis shoes and slid past her open door without making a sound.

She held her breath in the hallway. His bedside light was still on, but she could hear him snoring like crazy.

Mom always said he was predictable.

She crept toward the front door, sticking to the sides of the hallway where the boards never creaked. She stepped over the middle stair and opened the front door with a fast jerk. If she opened the door slow the hinges whined, not real loud but loud enough.

She turned on her flashlight and picked her way through the forest, over rocks and fallen trees. Animals scattered in the underbrush and something dark and small flew by her head. She ducked but didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around.

She crested the top of the hill. Halfway down the other side she took the old fire road to the rock quarry.

She checked her watch again and hoped she wasn’t too late. Last time Christie had already left by the time Amanda got there.

Every night she thought about running away again. Just taking off from Christie and Dad and social workers and all the memories of Mom and the happy family they used to be. And every night the idea sounded better and better. One of these days she was going to walk out that front door and never come back.

CHAPTER FOUR

“AMANDA’LL BE DOWN IN A second.” Mac stepped into the kitchen where Rachel sat, waiting for her one-on-one interview with Amanda. At the sound of his voice, all of her senses immediately tuned to him like a radio dial searching through static to finally settle in on a clear station.

She could hear him breathe.

Good God, she could smell him—sunshine and soap.

She felt the breeze he made as he walked to the fridge and grabbed a can of pop.

“She just hopped in the shower. She helped me in the orchard today after school.”

“Does she do that often?” Rachel asked, happy to have something to concentrate on rather than the trickle of sweat sliding down his temple. Dirt smeared his cheek and blood beaded from a small cut on his neck.

She noticed all of it in a millisecond, in the time it took her to blink. She remembered how attuned she used to be to him, how she could guess his mood by the way he wore his hat, or the way he said hello on the phone. They’d just look at each other across their second-hour British Lit classroom and she’d know they’d be skipping school the rest of the day.

“Yeah, Amanda does help, actually.” He popped open the top of the can and guzzled the drink. He was in sock feet, and the uncomfortable intimacy of seeing the small hole near his big toe created a snakey warmth in her chest that she tried to ignore. “A few times a week.”

“When she isn’t helping you, does she come home right after school?”

“She has tutoring after school two or three times a week. Isn’t that in your notes?”

“I am making new notes.”

“Must be why your agency is so effective.” His sarcasm was lethal. But she continued writing, pretending to be oblivious to Mac’s stares and the tension that radiated off him.

“I can’t believe you’re a social worker,” Mac said as he hitched himself up onto his counter.

“No?”

“Do you have kids?”

“Nope.”

“Are you married?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“I’m here to help you, Mac. Not talk about my love life.”

“It doesn’t sound like you have one.” He smiled as if it were a joke, but the bottom of her stomach fell to her feet. “At least we still have that in common, we’re still unlucky in love.”

He toasted her with his can.

“Would you classify your marriage as unlucky?” she asked, and the smile seeped from his face.

“We were making it work,” he murmured, and studied the rim of the can.

Rachel bent back to her file. She already had it memorized, but she was shaken by the implications of Mac’s obvious lie. The fact that he had married didn’t bother her, but that he was unhappy in that marriage made her ache for him.

“Is that ours?” Mac asked. “That file, is it ours?”

Rachel nodded.

“What’s it say?” Mac asked.

“Most of it you already know, the rest of it I can’t tell you.”

A smile appeared and vanished on his lean, tan face, so fast she thought she imagined it. “Or you’d have to kill me?”

“It says Gatan didn’t press charges,” she continued. “He agreed with the girls’ claim that the fire was an accident. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Weird?”

“Well, the fire did a lot of damage. Why didn’t he press charges?”

“Bill Martinez was our lawyer, you’ll have to ask him. It’s a small town. You press charges against two little girls for an accident and things can get ugly.” Mac shifted and pulled a worn brown leather wallet out of his back pocket. “Here’s Bill’s card. I know he talked briefly to Frank, and according to Bill, it didn’t go well. I know he’d love to talk to you.”

“Great.” Mac leaned forward and Rachel took the card and tucked it into the special pocket in her folder. She took a deep breath; her next question was a professional one, any social worker assigned to this case would ask just to fill out the record.

But with their history the question seemed far too personal.

“It says your wife is deceased,” she said into the heavy air in the room.

Mac jumped off the counter and turned away from her, busying himself with some nonsense on the counter, but didn’t say anything.

“When did she die?”

“A year ago.” He cleared his throat and Rachel’s eyes, against her will, measured his back, the curl of his hair, his shirt collar. The handsome boy she had made love to the night of graduation had turned into a riveting, masculine and edgy man.

Hey, remember professionalism? You were a kid. Everything seems too important when you’re a kid.

“It was a car accident.”

Rachel took a deep breath to ease the sharp pain of sympathy in her chest. Mac turned again, his face dark and intent. “Amanda was in the car.”

Rachel’s eyes went wide in shock. Damn Frank. These details should have been in the report. This was important information and she looked and felt like a fool for being in the dark about it.

“What happened?”

Mac shrugged and idly wiped at the counter with a sponge, but she could see the rock-hard muscle in his jaw. “She just lost control of the car. Amanda was asleep in the back. She says she doesn’t remember anything.” He sighed and looked at Rachel for a long, long time. And Rachel knew what that look was, could feel it in the pit of her stomach and the marrow of her bones. The look was about trust. And after a moment, Mac glanced away. Silent.

She didn’t measure up and his judgment slid through her like a knife. It would take time, she knew that. It would take time with any social worker, but after what she had done to him, the way she had treated him, she imagined it would take even longer.

“What was your wife’s—”

“I’m ready.” Both Mac and Rachel turned at the sound of Amanda’s voice. The girl stood on the landing like a bird ready to take flight. Her hands were fisted at her sides and her mouth was pressed into a thin angry line, but her eyes darted between Mac and Rachel.

“It’s nice to see you again, Amanda,” Rachel said. She had to have control of this situation. If Amanda caught on to her father’s distrust of Rachel, nothing would ever be accomplished.

Amanda warily approached, and Mac leaned over and whispered, “Remember what we talked about.”

Rachel could guess what they’d discussed.

Amanda pulled out a chair at the island and Mac continued his pointless wiping of the already clean counter.

“How was school today?” Rachel asked, trying to get Amanda’s attention away from her father.

“Stupid.”

Mac cleared his throat.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes.

“Do you like school?

Amanda shrugged, and Mac shut a cupboard door with a little more noise than necessary.

“It’s fine,” she said on a long-suffering sigh.

“Amanda.” Mac faced his daughter with a cold, all-business look in his eye.

Rachel stood and grabbed her light jacket from the back of her chair. “Amanda, let’s go for a walk.” She’d jumped in before Mac could say anything else. The two of them stared at her with their identical ice-blue eyes and Rachel smiled. “I need some fresh air.”

Amanda gave her dad a look that was guaranteed to make him say no—a help-me-Daddy-I’m-scared look that Rachel had seen manufactured on kids’ faces for years. Kids were better manipulators than parents ever dreamed.

“You’ll be fine,” Mac whispered, surprising Rachel a little. “Take a jacket.”

Amanda’s chair grated across the floor as she pushed away from the island. She stomped over to the closet and grabbed a blue windbreaker.

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