“I enjoyed myself tonight.”

Lucy smiled at Jon’s words. As she climbed the porch steps, his hand came to rest on the small of her back, as if she needed guidance. She was dismayed by how very good that large hand felt touching her.

“I did, too.” So much it scared her. They hadn’t talked about anything that special, they hadn’t gone dancing, he hadn’t kissed her yet, but she liked looking at him and listening to him. That was dangerous. She couldn’t imagine that an ambitious man willing to run for public office to get what he wanted would find she suited his public image.

His knuckles stroked her cheek. She looked up at the shadows and planes of his face, at his crystalline eyes, narrowed now, and finally at the mouth she’d thought to be hard even when he smiled politely.

She wanted, quite desperately, for him to kiss her.

Dear Reader,

I loved the idea for Finding Her Dad the minute I had it. Who doesn’t enjoy the whole secret baby theme? Although in this case, the baby is a kid…well, a teenager. And I really like teenagers at that age when they’re a wonderful mix of vulnerable and surly, feeling a huge need to pull away even as they need just as desperately to feel confident someone is holding tight on to them.

This is a secret baby who isn’t found by chance, or because Dad goes looking for Mom, or Mom for Dad. No, sixteen-year-old Sierra is the one who finds her dad—because with her mom dead, the only other person she has in the world is her foster mother, Lucy, who has good reason for being suspicious of men who aren’t around to raise their own children.

And yes, Sierra has a teensy bit in common with my own two girls, now safely past those teenage years (whew!), but still needing (as all of us do) to know that their parents are always there when needed.

Happy reading,

Janice Kay Johnson

P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me c/o Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, ON, M3B 3K9, Canada.

Finding Her Dad
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

For my own,

much loved daughters, Sarah and Katie.

May they always find what they seek.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“SEE, I DIDN’T WANT TO just, like, email him or something. I thought I should really go talk to him. In person. You know?” Earnest and wide-eyed, Sierra twirled one lock of indigo-blue hair around her finger. Elaborately casual, she finished, “It would be cooler if I had my driver’s license, but since I can’t drive myself with only a permit…”

Permit. Driver’s license. Email him. Him who? Lucy Malone realized, as she stared at her foster daughter in bewilderment, that her mind seemed to be scrolling backward through what had been a fairly lengthy recitation. Back to the beginning, which had been…

“I found my dad.” Perfectly timed, the sixteen-year-old said it again, hugged herself and did a small end-zone dance. “Is that amazing or what?”

Lucy pressed her fingertips to her suddenly aching temples. “Wait. No. You don’t have a father.”

Sierra rolled her eyes as only a teenager could. “Of course I have a father. What do you think? Mom managed an immaculate conception? I mean, sure, it was close, but…”

Oh, Lord, Lucy didn’t want to believe Sierra knew anything at all about conception, especially the kind that wasn’t immaculate. Which was foolish in the extreme. What else did girls—and boys—her age think about, if it wasn’t sex?

Fathers, apparently.

What Lucy did know was that Sierra’s mother had never married and had decided to have a child on her own. She’d gone to a sperm bank; yes, the closest thing to an immaculate conception that a woman could achieve. From what Sierra said, all her mother had ever known about Sierra’s father was what he’d chosen to share about himself for the women shopping for sperm. Catalog copy. And how accurate was that likely to be? No guy selling sperm was likely to admit that his IQ was really eighty-five and his best skill was belching louder than his buddies.

Lucy sank onto the stool behind the cash register. “Explain,” she ordered.

Thank God there were no customers in the store at the moment, a fact that wouldn’t normally make her grateful. She’d opened her gourmet pet food supply store only a year before, and although business had been steadily climbing, she still sweated through paying the bills every month. But this was definitely not a conversation she wanted overheard.

“I told you!” Sierra complained. “Weren’t you listening?”

“You know me. My idea of high-tech is ultrasonic teeth-cleaning equipment. I know zilch about DNA.” Lucy was a licensed veterinary technician who’d gotten tired of taking orders from other people. But if there was one thing she knew, it was animals, so her choice of business made sense.

“I sent in a swab from the inside of my cheek to a lab for DNA testing,” the teenager said with exaggerated patience.

“Isn’t that expensive?”

“Not that much. Anyway, I was saving all the money I made babysitting and working for you.”

“Okay.” Lucy closed her eyes briefly. “Then what?”

Then, Sierra said, she had compared her DNA results to millions of others on a variety of online databases.

Lucy frowned. “Surely you couldn’t get on— I don’t know. Whatever one law enforcement uses. Isn’t that the main one?”

Sierra’s sky-blue eyes gave a betraying flicker. Lucy recognized it. Aghast, she whispered, “You didn’t.”

Her foster daughter was going through a Goth phase. Currently her hair, shoulder length and blunt cut, was dyed blue, a change from last year’s jet-black. A tattoo of a dragon twined around one slender ankle. Her nose and one eyebrow were pierced. More piercings climbed the rim of each ear. Lucy had nixed the idea of a tongue piercing until, at a minimum, Sierra turned eighteen. Fortunately, she’d taken the refusal in good humor.

The thing was, she was brilliant. Scary smart. At home she was rarely without her fingers on a computer keyboard. She carried her laptop everywhere. Screens constantly popped up as friends sent instant messages. They didn’t seem ever to talk; they communicated in a sort of bizarre shorthand via the internet. Lucy knew that Sierra was very, very good at hacking in to forbidden websites; she’d gotten into big trouble while in eighth grade for changing a friend’s marks in the school records. When telling Lucy about it recently, she’d said blithely, “It was easy. Hey, I did them a favor! They’ve at least made it a little harder now.”

Lucy had not pursued the subject. Had there been more recent incursions into the school district personnel or student records, she didn’t really want to know about it. What worried her were Sierra’s exact capabilities now, almost three years later.

Now gazing sunnily back at Lucy, Sierra said, “Um…I didn’t have to. I bet I could, though. It’s called CODIS. Combined DNA Index System. You can do partial-match searches in it, too. Haven’t you read about it? The American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t think cops should be able to compare, like, some guy’s brother’s DNA to the sperm taken from a raped woman.”

Lucy grappled with that. “You mean, if I had a brother who’d raped a woman, my DNA could be matched to his sperm?” She heard her voice rising.

“Sure. I mean, it wouldn’t be a perfect match. That’s what a partial match is. See, that’s what I did.”

She went on to explain that there were DNA databases for all kinds of reasons. Some were medical, for people trying to find a match who might donate an organ, or bone marrow. Others were for people into genealogy. DNA was a new way to track family and ancestors.

“So I found this woman in Seattle.” Her pretty face was aglow with enthusiasm. “She’s a really close match. Then I did more research, and I found out she and her husband had two kids. One was a girl, one a boy. He’s the right age, and he went to college at the UW.”

Lucy found herself nodding numbly. The University of Washington was in Seattle, less than an hour northwest of Kanaskat, where Lucy had her home and business. Sierra’s mother had grown up in the Seattle area and never left, and had presumably used a local fertility clinic.

“And…this man. He’s still around here.”

“Yes!” The teenager indulged in another delighted dance. “It’s just got to be him. I know it is.”

Lucy couldn’t argue on a factual basis, given her relative ignorance of DNA testing and profiling and online databases. And, heck, genealogy.

Maybe I could find my father.

A little shocked that the thought had even flitted through her mind, she almost snorted. Like she’d want to find him.

“Sierra,” she said, “this man gave sperm with the understanding he’d remain anonymous. The deal was never that he’d actually take any kind of parental responsibility.”

For a timeless, stricken moment, Sierra’s crystal clear eyes held Lucy’s. Then the girl ducked her head and her blue hair swung down to hide her face. Lucy felt cruel.

“I know,” Sierra said in a small voice. “I just, um, want to meet him. And see. That’s all.” She lifted her face, a pleading expression on it. “He might like to meet me. I mean, wouldn’t you think he’d be curious? It’s not like I expect him to actually want me.”

“I want you,” Lucy said quietly.

Her foster daughter gave her a tremulous smile and her eyes filled with tears. “I know. I know how lucky I am. I love living with you, Lucy. It would just be nice to have family who would, like, call sometimes. Care if I get accepted into college. You know?”

A lump filled Lucy’s throat. She knew.

Sierra’s mother, Rebecca Lind, had died in a head-on car accident eight months ago. She’d never had any other children. She did have a brother, who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When social services contacted him, he’d said there was no way he and his wife could take on a teenage girl. The social worker had privately told Lucy that his exact words had been “For God’s sake, I haven’t seen Becky in twenty-five years. We didn’t even try to stay in touch after Mom died. It’s too bad about the accident, but I can’t take on some kid of hers.”

The last thing a grief-stricken fifteen-year-old had needed was to be rejected by the only relative she had left in the world. At the time, Sierra had begun working on Saturdays for Lucy, cleaning and stocking shelves. After her mom died, she’d stayed temporarily with a friend. She had come by midweek to tell Lucy she wouldn’t be able to make it to work anymore.

Lucy hadn’t seen her since the funeral. She’d looked awful. Her hair had been dyed black at the time, but the pale roots were showing. A tall, skinny girl, she looked as if she’d dropped ten pounds in two weeks. She was gaunt, and her eyes were puffy, and her fingers writhed together while she talked.

“I’m being sent to a foster home in Midford,” she said. Even her voice was dull. Her thin shoulders moved in a listless shrug. “They tried to find one here so I could stay in the same school, but I guess there weren’t any.”

Lucy was still in shock that the aunt and uncle had said no. Hearing that they had refused made her mad. No, worse than that. It made her ache inside for this gawky child-woman who had already been so very vulnerable, even before the only person in the world who loved her had been stolen from her by a drunk driver.

Sierra might have a little barbell through one eyebrow and a ring in one nostril, her hair might be dyed pitch-black, her clothes black and the dog collar she wore around her neck spiked, but she was a sweetheart. She was smart, and funny, and oddly innocent. Lucy had already thought that she would like nothing better than to have a daughter like Sierra.

Which was probably why, that day, her mouth had opened and she heard herself say, with no forethought whatsoever, “Would you like to live with me?”

So now here they were. Although at twenty-eight she was too young to actually be a mother to a girl Sierra’s age, she’d gotten properly licensed as a foster home, and now she was Sierra’s family.

Which meant, of course, that there was no way she could let the girl go by herself to see this man who might or might not be her father. Clearly, stopping her wouldn’t fly. Look at all the effort she’d gone to finding him in the first place. And, face it, the chances were really good that he wouldn’t believe Sierra’s claim, even if he had given—or did the men sell?—sperm when he was in college. If he did believe her, he probably still wouldn’t want to admit he was her father.

Were she honest with herself, Lucy couldn’t even entirely blame him. He probably had a wife and children. It would be more than slightly awkward for him to admit that not only was this teenager who’d appeared out of the blue—and had blue hair—his daughter by a woman he’d never even set eyes on, but he might have other daughters and sons running around. Not might; probably did.

Nightmare city.

She waited until Sierra met her eyes, and then she said very softly, “Are you sure you want to do this, honey? You know he might want nothing to do with you.” Especially after he took in her clothes and her piercings and her tattoo.

In Lucy’s experience, men tended not to look beneath the surface.

Sierra squared her shoulders, held her head high and said, “Yes. I’m sure.”

Lucy nodded. “Then I’ll take you to see him.”

The teenager grinned. “Cool! I already have an appointment with him. Except I made up an excuse.”

“You’ve what?” Alarm filled Lucy. “What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a cop.” She made a face. “Jeez. My dad the cop. But he’s one of the ones in charge, I think. He’s a captain.”

Alarm metamorphosed into dread. Lucy had this sudden, terrible premonition. Yesterday’s Dispatch had carried a front-page article on the electoral race for county sheriff. The incumbent was retiring. One candidate was the police chief of Willis, the county’s largest city, the other the captain of Investigative Services for the Emmons County Sheriff’s Department. She had stared for a long time at the photo of that candidate, her attention caught for reasons she hadn’t quite been able to pin down.

“Oh, no. Please tell me he’s not…”

Sierra nodded, as if to confirm Lucy’s suspicions. “His name is Jonathan Brenner. He’s running for sheriff. I found tons of pictures of him online. I look like him,” she said simply.

Dear God, she did, Lucy thought. That was why she hadn’t been able to look away from his photo.

Well, it was one of the reasons. The other was the disquieting fact that simply looking at him, even in black and white, had made her heart do an odd little skip and bump.

And she hadn’t been able to help noticing, in the article, that he wasn’t married.

As if, she’d told herself, folding the newspaper up and determinedly depositing it in the recycling bin, she would ever meet him.

“When I’m wrong,” she murmured, once Sierra had wandered away to the pair of cages that held two shelter cats awaiting adoption, “I’m wrong. Really wrong.”

Lucy had a strong suspicion that her role in the upcoming meeting was not going to endear her to the very upright, conservative Captain Jonathan Brenner.

“I’M NOT LETTING HIM BACK on the street until the investigation is complete,” Jon Brenner said flatly.

Eddie Prindle, the police union representative, said, “You don’t have grounds to put Deputy Chen on suspension. At this point, you have no evidence that the incident was his fault.”

They’d already said this. Several times. Jon abruptly lost patience.

“Then file a grievance.” He rose, but stayed behind his desk. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I have another appointment.”

Prindle didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual. Jon didn’t hold out a hand. After a moment the other man stood, too. “You’ve gone too far,” he said. “Are you afraid voters will think you’re colluding to excuse a deputy’s malfeasance if you don’t come down hard enough on Deputy Chen? Whatever the truth of the incident?”

Jon didn’t allow his expression to change. “The election has nothing to do with this. Chen screwed up. I don’t know how badly yet. When I do, I’ll make a decision. I can tell you this. It’s to his benefit for me not to make that decision prematurely. You’re not doing him any favors, Prindle.”

“You’ll be hearing from us,” the union rep said. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the office.

Jon swung away to gaze out the window. On a clear day he had a glimpse of Mount Rainier from here. Today the mountain was wrapped in puffy clouds.

He was pissed off enough to mutter a couple of obscenities. At the very least, the young deputy had been hotdogging. At worst, he’d been criminally careless. No one had died in the incident that had resulted in his suspension, but that wasn’t thanks to him. Right now Jon was inclined to fire him, but there might turn out to be extenuating circumstances. And Chen was, while not a rookie, far from seasoned.

After a minute Jon rubbed the back of his neck and turned to his desk. There was a name on his calendar for three o’clock—Sierra Lind. A high-school kid, apparently. Something about the school newspaper. Which was strange in August, when school wasn’t in session. Probably she was an eager beaver who wanted to have an article on the election ready for the first issue. Jon didn’t have time for this kind of thing and he wasn’t in the mood right now, but it wasn’t optional. Community relations were too important.

Election or no election.

He touched the button on his intercom and said, “Dinah, is my next appointment here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send her in, please.”

He walked around the desk as the door opened. Two people entered, a girl and a woman. The girl caught his eye first, thanks to hair dyed a ridiculous color and a bunch of piercings. Nothing unusual there, but a shame all the same. She’d be prettier without metal impaled on her face. Unusually tall for a girl, maybe five foot ten or eleven, she was skinny and long legged. Had long arms, too, that hung awkwardly as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Blue eyes, strangely intense.

The woman who came in behind her didn’t look like any relation. The teacher in charge of the school newspaper, maybe? She was a good six inches or more shorter, with long wavy black hair, chocolate-brown eyes and a curvaceous figure. Plump by modern standards. Just right by his, he couldn’t help thinking, even though lusting after random visitors to his office wasn’t exactly appropriate.

Both of them were looking him over with unusual gravity. The girl seemed nervous, maybe even a little scared. The woman was wary, edging into hostile.

What the hell? he asked himself, even as he held out a hand to the girl, who was in the lead. “Welcome. I’m Captain Brenner. Are you Sierra Lind?”

“Yes.” Her voice squeaked, and she flushed. “Yes,” she repeated. She looked from his hand to his face and then back again before tentatively reaching out.

They shook, her long, slender fingers icy enough that he glanced down in surprise.

She retrieved her hand, and he smiled at the woman. “And you are…?”

“Lucia Malone.” Her voice was pleasantly husky. It didn’t go with a persona that seemed to bristle. “I’m Sierra’s foster mother. And chauffeur.”

“Ah.” He wanted to shake her hand, too, but she was gripping a large purse fiercely enough he had a feeling she might ignore his hand if he proffered it. Instead, he gestured toward the seating area separated from his desk by only a few feet. “Please.”

They sidled that way, not taking their eyes from him. Rather like a cautious doe and fawn unsure whether the other visitor to the water hole was a predator or not. Ruefully amused, he stayed where he was until they’d sat side by side. Then he chose a seat on the far side of the coffee table. No point in panicking them.

His gaze wanted to linger on Lucia Malone’s pretty face. Her first name, brown eyes and black hair suggested that she had Hispanic blood.

He dragged his attention to the teenager. She was the one who’d made the appointment.

“What can I do for you, Sierra?” he asked.

She gulped, then cast a panicky look at her foster mother. When she looked back at him, he thought idly that her eyes were as blue as his. They were several shades lighter than her hair dye.

In a rush she said, “I’m not really here to do an article for my school newspaper.” When he didn’t say anything immediately, she hurried on. “That’s what I said when I called. Because I thought then they’d let me in to see you.”

Feeling considerably more cautious now, he studied her. “All right. Why did you want to talk to me?”

She gnawed on her lower lip. After a moment Ms. Malone reached out and squeezed one of her hands. Jon’s gaze dropped to those clasped hands, one small and competent and warm skinned, the other very white and longer fingered. And yet, from the way those two hands clung, he could feel a connection beyond the physical. Reassurance. Love.

He met the girl’s eyes again and waited.

“The thing is,” she said, so fast the words tumbled over each other, “I think you’re my father.”

He stared. Either she was delusional or his recurring nightmare had just become real. He couldn’t seem to think. To figure how old she was. Whether she could be… But, goddamn it, how would she have found him?

The silence stretched, became painful.

“I know you may not want anything to do with me,” she said hurriedly, “and that’s okay. Really. I just, well, wanted to meet you. And see.”

He cleared his throat. “To say you’ve taken me by surprise is an understatement. Forgive me, but…do I know your mother?”

She shook her head. “No. Mom is— She died.” The girl—Sierra—sucked in a huge breath. “Mom went to a sperm bank.”

God help him.

Voice hoarse, he said, “How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen. I turned sixteen in July.” She paused. “I’ll be a junior this year.”

Sixteen. Jon had quit breathing. Sixteen years ago he was a senior in college. Oh, damn.

He could feel the foster mother watching him. He didn’t let himself look at her.

“What makes you think I’m your father?” he said finally.

“I compared DNA in a whole bunch of databases. I came up with a partial match. To a Linda Brenner. Then I did some research and found out she had one son, who was the right age.”

“Me,” he said slowly.

Her head bobbed.

His mother had become obsessed with tracing her family heritage, lord knows why. He did vaguely recall she’d sent off a DNA sample at one point. Jon had argued against it; once something like that was out there, you lost a piece of your privacy. She’d laughed and said, “What do I have to hide? The only people I’m likely to hear from are relatives. Imagine finding cousins I didn’t know I had.”

Imagine, he thought grimly, finding a granddaughter you didn’t know you had.

He cursed. Lucia Malone gave him a reproving look.

“You did this on a whim,” he said to the girl.

Her teeth closed on her lower lip again. Her eyes slid from his, then came shyly back. “It was after Mom died that I thought…” She gave a little shrug. Her shoulders stayed slightly hunched after that, as if she were braced for a blow.

When she didn’t say any more, he did look at Ms. Malone. “She doesn’t have any other family?”

“An uncle in New Mexico.” Her voice was repressive. “He wasn’t able to take Sierra.”

Jon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been staggered like this. He didn’t know what to think. There was supposed to be no way he could ever be traced. DNA testing had been around, but in its relative infancy. The idea of partial matches, of people casually sending off spit so they could track down unknown relatives, had been unimaginable.

No longer.

He made himself study the girl and immediately thought, hell. Her eyes were the same color as his, an unusually crystalline, pale blue. Her hair…well, who knew? No, that wasn’t true. Her eyebrows were light brown. Which meant she was likely a blonde. He’d been blond as a kid, but by his twenties his hair had darkened to a medium brown that bleached easily in the sun. This summer, between work and politicking he hadn’t gotten outside enough for that to happen.

He was tall—six foot three. His sister was five-ten. Fine boned like this girl, too. The nose and Cupid-doll mouth weren’t his, but the shape of her face…yeah, she could have gotten that from him.

Desperately he wondered what the voters would think of this. Was there any way to keep Rinnert from finding out about Sierra? He had a horrifying vision of what his opponent could make of the stunning appearance of an unknown daughter.

“Do you have any proof at all,” he said, his voice harder than he intended, “or did you pick me out of the phone book?”

Lucia Malone let go of her foster daughter’s hand—he hadn’t noticed until now that she’d continued to hold it in silent reassurance—to pluck a file folder from her capacious bag. She glared at him as she handed it over.

He opened it and took a quick glance, barely keeping himself from swearing aloud again. He’d seen enough DNA typing on the job to know he was screwed.

He closed the folder. “I’ll need to study this.”

Ms. Malone’s eyes narrowed. “You did donate sperm, didn’t you? Or you’d have kicked us out by now.”

His jaw muscles flexed. “I don’t have to answer that question.”

They stared at each other, her expression angry and contemptuous. At last she stood.

“Sierra, I think it’s time we go.” Her voice was astonishingly gentle, considering the way she was vibrating with outrage. “We’ve put Captain Brenner on the spot. I think it’s fair to give him time to think.”

“Oh.” The girl scrambled to her feet. Her cheeks were flaming red. “Yeah. Sure.” She didn’t want to meet his eyes anymore. “My phone number’s in there if you want…. But if you don’t, that’s okay. I really didn’t mean…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t mean…”

Oh, hell, she was going to cry. He almost groaned.

But she pulled herself together and looked at him with sudden dignity that gave him an odd, burning sensation beneath his breastbone. “Thank you for your time, Captain Brenner. I’m sorry if this felt like I was attacking you or something. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Then she inclined her head, as regal as a princess, and walked beside her foster mother to his door. She carried herself proudly, and he felt like scum.

“Sierra.” His voice emerged rough.

She paused without turning. Ms. Malone did.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

The lips that had spoken so softly to the girl tightened. Ms. Malone nodded, and the two of them left, carefully closing the office door behind them.

He didn’t move; just stood there, stunned, and saw his chances of becoming sheriff implode. And knew he was a son of a bitch to even let that cross his mind after looking into the eyes of a girl tossed into the foster-care system because she had no family who wanted her—a girl, he had no doubt, who was his daughter.

CHAPTER TWO

JON DIDN’T KNOW how he got through the day. He had several other appointments, and had to attend a potluck dinner at a seniors’ center and then, later in the evening, a volunteer fair at a community center. The brief talks he gave to the seniors and the volunteers came by rote, for which he was grateful. He was getting good at running for office, which these days seemed to matter more than whether he’d be an effective sheriff. He could tell his tough-on-crime stance went over better with the old folks than it did with the activist kinds at the fair. They were inclined to be softhearted. He found their suspicion of him ironic, considering his core belief was that every person should take responsibility for his or her own actions. He believed in a kind of morality that was very personal. Wasn’t it that same sense of morality, a need to take responsibility, that had driven all of them to give of their precious time to some cause?

The whole time he talked, listened, smiled, shook hands, he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. He would have sworn he was standing outside himself watching critically.

Knowing the guy he watched was a hypocrite.

He argued for a morality that should govern every choice a person made, a sense of responsibility that wouldn’t let you look away when it was convenient to do so.

Responsibility. Now, that was funny, coming from a man who’d sold his sperm. Who might have a whole bunch of unacknowledged kids out there. Kids who were deeply wanted, he’d told himself back when he was twenty-one and saw the sperm donation as a quick and easy way to bring in bucks. He was doing the world a favor. After all, he was healthy, smart, athletic; he carried no genetic booby traps of which he was aware. What was wrong with helping women have babies, if their husbands were sterile or they’d chosen to go the single-parent route?

He’d returned to the clinic two or three times, hating the sordid feel of the process itself. But he’d been working as many hours as he could and still keep his grades up, and yet struggled to pay his tuition and rent and buy food and books. He’d been damned if he would take a cent from his father. He would do anything not to have to surrender his pride enough to ask for help from his parents.

He worked his butt off. And, when necessary, he’d sell sperm, and he’d sell blood. He had done both.

Personal responsibility wasn’t the strong suit of twenty-one-year-old boys. He’d been blithe enough about jacking off and handing over the tube of milky liquid, until one day he was waiting for a bus near a medical clinic. A pregnant woman came out and sat on the bench near him. He remembered looking at her sidelong. He didn’t know how pregnant she was. She was round, but not waddling. Five or six months, maybe. No husband with her. He’d wondered a little disapprovingly why not. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have to wait for the bus. What if it was full and she had to stand? Or she got jostled and bumped hard against the sharp edge of the seats? There were punks who hassled lone women on buses. And then he’d thought, Oh, my God. She might not have a husband, or a boyfriend. She could be pregnant with my baby.

He’d sat there in shock, trying not to stare but unable to help sneaking looks. Of course the kid she was carrying wasn’t his; that was stupid even to think. What were the odds? The sperm bank supplied fertility clinics all over the country and even abroad. Not just locally.

But it could be.

Man, that had given him cold chills. After that he’d stuck to donating blood when he was desperate. It wasn’t as if the money had been that fabulous. He pretended to himself he didn’t even notice the pregnant women who seemed to be everywhere.

It was a couple of years before an obviously pregnant woman didn’t seem to light up like a neon sign to him, and before he succeeded in putting from his mind the fact that probably some of his sperm had been put to use, that at least a few babies had been born that were blood of his blood.

And now, he thought as he stood outside himself and watched while he went through the motions of politicking, he’d met one of those children. Sierra Lind.

The question was, what was he going to do about it? About her?

Had she meant it when she said she didn’t expect anything? That she wouldn’t tell anyone he was her father if he didn’t want to acknowledge her?

Maybe. He thought she did mean it now. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t change her mind.

It would matter less later, once he’d won the election, if he could put her off.

He felt cold-blooded even thinking that.

Even if Sierra kept her mouth shut, what about her foster mother? Ms. Malone had started dubious and moved right along to mad because all she could see was that he was hurting her precious chick’s feelings.

And he had. Jon didn’t like to remember the wounded look in those blue eyes or the pride with which Sierra—his daughter—had carried herself when she assured him that he had no obligation to her. Sierra might even believe that she’d been operating on mere curiosity, that she had no secret wish for him to hold out his arms and gather her into the bosom of his family. But he knew better. She’d lost her mother, and her only other relative didn’t want her. She’d gone to extraordinary effort to find him. Of course she hoped, desperately, that he would feel an immediate bond. Curiosity to match hers.

So…what did he feel?

He had no idea.

No surprise, even after having downed a shot of straight Scotch while watching the late-night news, that he couldn’t sleep.

The day had been muggy enough that he’d left the ceiling fan running. He slept naked, the moving air cooling the sweat on his body. Lying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, he gazed at the pale square of moonlight that fell through the open window onto the bed. Most of him was in the dark, leaving only his knees, calves and feet exposed by that cool light.

He wondered if she was able to sleep tonight. What had she felt, meeting him? Anything in particular? Had there been some sort of recognition, on a cellular level, or did she imagine there was? Was she lying awake right now, too, hungrily remembering his face or the pitch of his voice and the set of his shoulders, deciding which bits and pieces of him had been echoed in her by the genes that had imprinted her?

He muttered a soft imprecation. Those long, skinny arms and legs… He’d gone through that phase. In middle school he’d taken to hunching and hunkering low in his chair, because he towered over everyone. He’d been ridiculously, embarrassingly skinny. PE was a nightmare for him, when he was required to wear shorts that exposed stick-thin legs. Jon smiled a little, thinking about the boy he’d been. A boy with size-thirteen feet that sometimes seemed to be only loosely attached to him. Getting interested in girls, and knowing he looked ridiculous to them.

Sierra’s body still wasn’t quite finished, but she hadn’t looked as if she was clumsy, not the way he’d been. But maybe she had been when she was younger. He wouldn’t be surprised. By sixteen, he’d finally been gaining some muscle, some coordination. By twenty, he guessed Sierra would be a beauty, model-slender and graceful. Did she know that, or still despair?

She had to be smart, or she wouldn’t have been able to track him down. He had a feeling Ms. Malone hadn’t helped. She’d radiated too much disapproval. So Sierra was enterprising, too. Creative. He’d never heard of a kid using DNA to find a sperm-donor father. And she must be a dreamer, or she wouldn’t have embarked on her plan in the first place. He’d been driven, but he wouldn’t call himself a dreamer. At that age, he’d been engaged in ice-cold warfare with his father. Sometimes he thought his every decision had been made in anger and rebellion. He’d been consumed by that anger.

Sierra’s decisions were being made in grief and loneliness.

“Damn,” he whispered to the moonlit room.

His mind drifted. What would Mom think of her? He knew. His mom would be shocked at first, that he’d sold sperm, that she had unknown grandkids out there. She would look as disapproving as Lucia Malone had. But she would love Sierra, given her innate dignity and vulnerable eyes the exact color of his.

His sister, Lily, would, too. Although it would be awkward explaining to her two kids why they’d never met—or even heard of—this cousin.

After the election…

Jon gritted his teeth. That was almost three months away. Three months, during which Sierra would believe her father didn’t want anything to do with her. He wasn’t her father, not in any meaningful sense. There had never been any such expectation of him. Her mother had known the deal when she purchased sperm. He should be able to feel detached.

He couldn’t.

She might not be his. There was clearly a relationship to his mother—the DNA test confirmed that. But he probably had dozens of second and third and fourth cousins he didn’t know. Either he’d have to give a DNA sample, or they’d go to the sperm bank or fertility clinic together and ask for confirmation.

But he knew. He knew.

And he also knew he couldn’t live with himself if he turned away from that girl.

Election or no election.

“IT’S OKAY if he doesn’t call.” Sierra sat on one of the two tall stools at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, watching as Lucy put together a salad to go with the leftover casserole she was reheating. The teenager’s arms were akimbo on the tiled bar. Lucy heard her feet lightly bumping the cabinet as she swung her legs. Sierra was always in motion, even when she was at rest. “Really,” she said, convincing neither of them.

Chopping a carrot, Lucy said, “Give him time.”

Behind her reassuring facade, she roiled. The son of a bitch had better call. Or she was personally going to hunt him down.

Wham. She wielded the knife with unnecessary force. Wham.

No, she didn’t blame him for being shocked. She did blame him for being so careless with something as personal as sperm. She couldn’t imagine giving away her eggs. Men, of course, were a whole lot more likely to strew their sperm hither and yon with no thought for consequences. Except he’d known darn well that his would produce consequences. That had been the whole point, after all.

She didn’t even know why she was so mad. Her sympathies had—somewhat—been with him when this started. What Sierra had done was outrageous. It should have been impossible. Because of the publicity about his campaign, Lucy knew that almost seventeen years ago, when Jonathan Brenner gave/sold sperm, he’d been only twenty-one. Hardly older than Sierra was now. Lucy had done stupid things herself at that age. Who didn’t?

But she’d felt things when she first saw him stepping out from behind his desk, smiling at Sierra and holding out his hand. A quivering inside. Because he was perfect. Not perfect-perfect—his nose was too big for his face and looked as if it had been broken, his hair was cut shorter than she liked, to suit his law-and-order persona, and she couldn’t imagine that smile was sincere. And yet her first idiotic thought was that he would win the election because he embodied strength and razor-sharp intelligence and a gritty determination to protect.

She had done her best to convince herself that he could just as well be a cardboard cutout, with no more substance.

Except that he did have an excellent record on the job. The current sheriff had endorsed him rather than his opponent.

But then she saw the shields he erected when Sierra told him she believed he was her father. There was an instant of understandable shock, then…nothing. Blank. Except Lucy had the sense that he had immediately begun to calculate the pros and cons and develop a strategy. Would this pretty daughter be an asset or a huge detriment? His gaze had flicked over Sierra’s piercings, lingered briefly on her bright blue hair. None of which could be good, in his view. If he admitted he was her father, could the fact be kept secret? Would she go away if he made no admissions?

So okay. Wham. Wham. Lucy didn’t actually know that he’d thought anything of the sort. He was a cop. Of course he was good at hiding what he was thinking. She shouldn’t succumb to her own prejudices.

But oh, it was very hard not to.

Sierra had been watching in silence, but now she said wistfully, “How much time should I give him?”

“As much as he needs. Unless you plan to pester him?” Lucy took the salad dressing from the refrigerator, then handed it and the bowl of salad over the breakfast bar. “Put this on the table.”

Sierra took the bowl. “I said I wouldn’t,” she said, looking offended. “Just because he’s probably my dad doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he never wanted to have kids.”

Then he should have kept his sperm to himself, Lucy thought but didn’t say.

“I was hoping,” Sierra said. “That’s all.”

Lucy set the casserole dish on the table. She half wished she’d heated some rolls or a baguette, but she didn’t really need bread, too. She must have put on ten pounds in the past year. The financial risk and long hours required to get a small business off the ground added up to stress. Lots of stress. Lucy ate when she was stressed. She’d vowed to lose those ten pounds this year. One pound a month. How hard could that be?

The phone rang. Sierra quivered, but didn’t move.

“Do you want to get it?” Lucy asked.

“It’s probably for you.” Head bowed, Sierra stirred casserole around on her plate.

Lucy looked at her thoughtfully. Sierra was boisterous, cheerful and bold. Vulnerable yes, but she hid it well.

Usually Lucy ignored calls during dinner. Although she carried a cell phone, she didn’t believe everyone should be available 24/7 to any demands. But if there was a chance the caller was Captain Brenner…

“Excuse me,” she said, and went to the kitchen. She caught the phone on the fifth ring, before it went to voice mail. “Hello?”

There was a momentary silence. “Ms. Malone?”

Oh, Lord. It was him.

“Yes?” she said cautiously.

“This is Jonathan Brenner. I called to speak to Sierra.”

Lucy kept her back to the dining room and her voice low. “I hope you intend to be kind.”

After another pause, he said, “You weren’t predisposed to like me, were you?”

She hesitated, a little embarrassed to have been so obvious. “That’s not it,” she said finally. “I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. I actually, um, felt a little bit sorry for you, blindsided that way.”

“Then why the hostility?”

Because my father was a sperm donor of a different kind. A one-night stand. But she wasn’t going to say that.

She felt herself making an apologetic face, which, of course, he couldn’t see. “I’m scared for Sierra. I suppose I was…”

When she didn’t finish, he did it for her. “Striking preemptively?”

Chagrined, Lucy admitted, “Something like that.”

He sighed. “I hurt her feelings. I lay there in bed last night thinking about the expression on her face. When you were in my office, I was too stunned to be as sensitive to her feelings as maybe I should have been. Part of me was thinking it all might be nonsense, or even a con. Maybe I wanted to think that. I don’t know. But…” He was the one who didn’t finish this time.

“She looks like you.”

“Yeah. Enough that…it’s possible. I looked at the DNA results, and she’s definitely a close relation to my mother.”

“Does your mother have siblings?”

“Three. Two of them have sons somewhere in the right age range. And there are probably second cousins. I don’t know.”

“So Sierra jumped to conclusions,” Lucy said slowly.

This silence shimmered with tension. His voice was tight when he said, “But seventeen years ago I gave sperm. What are the odds that any of my male cousins did?”

Startled at the admission, Lucy only murmured, “Oh.”

“May I speak to Sierra, Ms. Malone?”

“Lucy,” she heard herself say. “You can call me Lucy.”

“Not Lucia?”

“No.” She’d never gone by Lucia, although it was her legal name. Her mother told her it was a tribute to her Hispanic heritage. She didn’t want anything to do with the father who didn’t want her. Lucy wasn’t sure why she’d said Lucia and not Lucy when she first met him.

“I go by Jon,” he said, sounding…gentle, as he hadn’t been earlier. Less wary, anyway.

She took a breath, on the verge of asking what he was going to say to her foster daughter, but instead said, “I’ll get Sierra.”

“Thank you.”

She took the phone with her to the dining room. She mouthed, “It’s him,” and handed it to Sierra, who had a deer-in-the-headlights look. In a normal voice Lucy said, “If you want to take the phone to your room, that’s okay.”

Sierra sat frozen. The hand gripping the receiver was white-knuckled. After a moment she gulped. “No, that’s okay. I—I don’t mind you listening.” She visibly girded herself, then put the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

She listened. Lucy could hear the low rumble of his voice, but not his words. Surely, surely he wasn’t brushing Sierra off, not after admitting to her that he might be Sierra’s father. Not after the way his voice had softened.

She ate a few bites, chewed and swallowed, and she might as well have been putting foam packing peanuts into her mouth. Expressions washed over Sierra’s young face with such rapidity, Lucy couldn’t pin any one down.

“I— Yes.” She nodded. “Uh-huh.” Listened some more. “No, Mom never said.” Pause. “Okay. I—” More rumbles from Jon. At last Sierra said shakily, “Thank you. Okay. Um, bye.”

She dropped the phone, which clunked on the tabletop. Tears welled in her big blue eyes. “That was him!”

Smiling, Lucy said, “I know.”

“He…he… Oh, Lucy!” Her mouth trembled.

Oh, Lord. He hadn’t rejected Sierra after all, had he? Lucy jumped up and circled the table to hug the teenager. “What did he say, sweetie?”

Sierra buried her face against Lucy’s shoulder and hugged her fiercely. “That he’s going to call the clinic,” she mumbled. “He thinks that, with both of us giving permission, they’ll tell me who my father is. At least, they will if it’s him.”

Lucy laid her cheek against Sierra’s bright hair and closed her eyes in relief. Mostly relief. She was surprised to discover some other emotion tunneling beneath. It felt furtive, as if she should be ashamed of herself. In astonishment, she wondered if she could be jealous.

“Oh, Lucy,” Sierra whispered. “I’m so happy. He was really nice.”

The position was awkward, but Lucy held her tight as she sobbed. Maybe, she thought, I am a little jealous, but mostly I’m glad. If Sierra really had found her father, if he accepted her—no, wanted her—that was the best thing in the world for a girl who eight months ago had been left with no one at all.

JON HALF EXPECTED TO GET the runaround when he got in touch with the sperm bank. Probably he should have started with the fertility clinic Sierra’s mom had gone to, but Sierra didn’t know what one it was. Why would she? So the next morning he looked up the phone number of the sperm bank on his BlackBerry and called from his car, where he could be sure no one would hear.

He explained his mission to three different people; he wasn’t surprised when the first two hastily passed the buck. All three expressed shock and dismay, which he fully understood. If they couldn’t guarantee anonymity to donors, how many men would be willing to give? Jon had no trouble imagining what his own reaction would have been if he had a wife to whom he’d have to explain the teenage daughter who’d shown up unexpectedly on his doorstep. Yeah, this wasn’t the 1950s. Times had changed. He still doubted that most women would be thrilled to find out their husband might have God knows how many children out there who could come a-knocking.

The final person he spoke to, a woman, conceded that they did indeed keep such records. The circumstances were unusual…. Unprecedented was what she meant. The mother was deceased? They would require proof of her death, as well as his and the child’s identification before releasing the requested information. However, assuming he was the father, she didn’t see why they couldn’t then give confirmation.

Lucy answered that evening when he called. Sierra was at a friend’s, apparently. Jon tersely explained what Sierra would need to produce.

“Doesn’t a doctor or the medical examiner or somebody have to sign a certificate of death?” she asked.

“Yes. Sierra wouldn’t necessarily have that, but we could get it. I suspect a newspaper article would do as well, though.”

“She has clippings.” Lucy was quiet for a moment. He pictured her face with its soft, round chin and a mouth that had struck him as feminine rather than sultry. For some reason, he imagined her biting her lower lip. “She put them in her photo album after the last picture she has of her and her mother together.”

Well, damn. He didn’t like to think of the girl sitting alone in her bedroom—in a foster home, no less—flipping through that album. He wondered if she did often. Every night? Gazing at her mother’s face, desperate to be sure she never forgot it. Turning the last, stiff page to the black-and-white newspaper clippings. Had the paper printed a picture of Sierra’s mother?

“How did she die?” he asked.

“Drunk driver. Middle of the afternoon, not even nighttime. He pulled out to pass someone who was daring to go the speed limit and hit Sierra’s mom’s car head-on.”

“Hell.”

“He wasn’t even badly hurt.” Outrage was evident in her voice.

“Too often, drunk drivers aren’t.” He hesitated. “What was her name?”

“Rebecca Lind. She went by Becky.”

Jon vaguely recalled the accident. County deputies had responded and arrested the other driver. He was engulfed again by the stunning feeling of unreality. What if he’d known at the time that Becky Lind might be the mother of his child? A woman he’d never met. He shook his head. He’d made…what? Two hundred bucks over the course of his several donations? A pittance. Not worth it.

But then, Sierra wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t. Or she wouldn’t be Sierra—she’d be someone else, with a different father. And he suspected she was a remarkable girl. So maybe it wasn’t so bad, what he’d done. He felt weirdly…protective. As if he hadn’t liked the notion that he could have been responsible for her failing to be born. Jon heard himself make a sound that might have been a laugh, but came closer to the sharp exhalation of air a man made after a fist to the gut.

“Sierra has a birth certificate?” he said finally.

“Yes, of course. She had to produce it to get a driver’s permit.”

“She’s driving?” He didn’t know why that shocked him.

“With me. She didn’t get into driver’s ed last semester, so she’s taking it this fall. That’s the only reason she doesn’t have a license.”

“How’s she doing behind the wheel?”

Lucy’s chuckle tripped down his backbone like dancing fingers. It was closer to a giggle—young, yet just husky enough to remind him she was a woman. “Not well. She scares me to death. She’s, um, not as coordinated as she could be. She always looks down when she moves her foot to the brake or the gas. I can’t seem to break her of it.”

He grinned, even though he was wincing, too. “You’re a brave woman.”

“Not brave enough to let her out on the highway yet.” There was a tiny silence, and her laughter was gone. “Especially after what happened to her mom.”

After a moment he said, “She’s brave, too, to be willing to drive so soon after her mom was killed behind the wheel.”

“That’s probably part of the reason she’s so stiff driving. She wants the independence, but…”

But. He got that. Warring impulses. Sierra Lind, he thought, was indeed courageous. He was more than a little surprised to realize a part of him half hoped she was his child.

“Poor kid,” he said softly.

“Yes.” Stoutly Lucy said, “I can drive Sierra to Seattle tomorrow afternoon. She can show her ID and the newspaper clippings. It would be awkward if the two of you went together, especially if it turns out you’re not her father.”

He supposed it would, but found that he was a little disappointed. He would have liked to see both woman and girl again.

Jon frowned when it crossed his mind that Lucy might be married. But wouldn’t she or Sierra have referred to the husband if there was one? There wasn’t a live-in boyfriend, or she couldn’t have gotten licensed as a foster parent. Did she have other foster kids, or had she known Sierra and gotten licensed specifically to take her? He wanted to ask his questions, but knew the timing wasn’t right. If Sierra was his daughter, he’d be getting to know Lucy, too. If she wasn’t…

Determination firmed in him. He would find out whether Lucy was single, and if she was, he’d ask her out.

He was both thoughtful and irritatingly aroused when he said good-night and ended the call.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN HIS CELL PHONE RANG, Jon was in the middle of a conference with two commanding officers of the SWAT team, who were requesting new-and-improved weaponry and body armor. After glancing at the screen on his phone, he said, “I need to take this,” and stood, walking to the window to answer the call. “Brenner.”

“This is Lucy Malone. I just wanted to let you know that Sierra and I have done our part.”

“Good,” he said. “Did you have to take the day off work?”

“I got someone to cover for me.”

He realized he didn’t know what she did for a living. If he hadn’t had two men waiting right behind him, he might have asked. “All right. I’ll be in touch.”

Ending the call, he walked to the table. “Let me look at the budget. I don’t know if I can okay your whole shopping list, but I’ll do what I can. Now I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.”

Lieutenant Stevens looked faintly surprised at the abrupt dismissal, but said only “Good enough.”

Stevens, Jon thought, was an ambitious man, but also fair with his officers, smart and diplomatic. He was Jon’s choice to take over his own current position if he won the election. He was less sure he believed Sergeant Clem Hansen had what it took to be in charge of the team as Stevens’s replacement.

Jon was still mulling over the problem ten minutes later when he drove out of the multilevel county parking garage. SWAT members had to make tough decisions. He wanted someone with a cool head and a good sense of public perception to be leading them. The men respected Hansen, but he made Jon uneasy. For one thing, he seemed to enjoy being deliberately crude in front of female officers. Stevens had called him on it, and he’d excused himself by saying they should be treated the same as the men. If they weren’t tough enough, they didn’t belong on the job. Plainly, he didn’t think they did. There were no women on the team; the sheer physicality of the requirements had so far kept the few women who’d applied from qualifying. But if Hansen felt contempt for women in general, it would affect his decisions as commanding officer.

Thinking about Clem Hansen led Jon into consideration of some of the other personnel shifts he had in mind. He’d passed Boeing Field on I-5 before he let himself think about why he was taking a couple of hours in the middle of the day to drive into Seattle. His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and he realized he had a ball of tension lodged in his belly.

He was opening a can of worms here. Once he’d pried the lid off, they’d start wriggling out. Once he heard the words Sierra Lind is your daughter, he’d have to face the fact that the news would spread. He could ask Sierra to keep their relationship quiet for now—but if he did that she’d think he was ashamed of her.

It would help if she wasn’t into that Goth look. She’d present better to voters if he could get her to take out the eyebrow and nose piercings. Her hair…well, hell. His mouth curved in a reluctant smile. At least the color was cheerful.

And the truth was, she wasn’t really the problem. He was. Choices he’d made long before he had ever considered running for electoral office. Maybe that would make a good addition to high-school life-skills classes. Always keep in mind that your behavior now may disqualify you in future from public office. Do you want to close that door?

His campaign manager wasn’t going to be happy when he told her. Edie Cook wouldn’t appreciate being kept in the dark this long.

Tough. There was always the chance he’d learn today that, in fact, he was not Sierra Lind’s biological father. He’d be off the hook. He wouldn’t have to confess the sins of the past to anyone.

Jon drew a ragged breath that did nothing to ease his tension. He parked outside the modern building not far from the University of Washington campus and got out, locked and went in without letting himself dawdle.

The woman he’d spoken to on the phone was willing to see him immediately. Afraid he’d sue?

Miranda Foley was an attractive woman in her fifties, at a guess. She was pleasant and poised as she led him into her large, elegantly furnished office. He took a seat on the other side of her desk and handed over his driver’s license.

She scrutinized it for a moment, then gave it back. “This is an unfortunate situation. Are you quite certain you want an answer? You were guaranteed anonymity, and I’m very willing to be the bad guy here.”

Temptation showed its ugly face, but he didn’t let himself forget his mantra. Personal responsibility. Sierra deserved better of her father.

“I take it Sierra is my daughter,” he said quietly.

Miranda’s gaze dropped to the single piece of paper that lay squared in the center of her otherwise bare desktop. “Yes.”

He sat still for a moment, absorbing the news. The ball lodged in his gut didn’t unknot…but neither did whatever reaction he’d braced himself for happen. It seemed he’d already achieved acceptance.

“She explained how she found you,” Miranda said. “If word gets out, women’s access to donor sperm could be severely curtailed. I imagine there are a great many men who would live in fear that they’ll be tracked down as you’ve been.” She hesitated. “I’m a little surprised at how calmly you’re taking this.”

He was momentarily amused. If only she knew what was churning inside him.

“The circumstances are somewhat unusual,” he pointed out. “I doubt Sierra would have ever set out to find me if her mother hadn’t been killed, or even if she’d had other family who cared. It was finding herself completely alone that apparently inspired her…quest.”

“Yes, so I gathered.” She sighed. “You do intend to acknowledge her, then?”

“Yes.” He stood. “May I have a copy of that?” He nodded at the paper on her desk.

“This is for you.” She handed it to him.

He thanked her and walked out. He’d gone numb again, he realized. Or something. He found himself sitting in the driver’s seat of his car with no recollection of getting there, and he was a cop. He was always aware of his surroundings. Jon groaned and pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. The pressure grounded him. He heard himself breathing hard. Maybe he wasn’t numb after all.

I’m a dad. Break out the cigars.

She’d be waiting to hear from him. She and Lucy. He hadn’t told them he was coming up to Seattle right away. He didn’t have to call this minute. He could wait until evening. Tomorrow, even.

But that would be cruel.

After a long sigh, Jon took out his cell phone. He went to Received Calls, found Lucy’s number and hit Send.

It rang only once. “Captain Brenner?” she said warily. So she’d either memorized his number or entered it in her phone.

“Yes,” he said. “Is Sierra with you?”

“Right here.” There was a murmur of voices. Then a different one, young and full of nerves, said, “This is Sierra.”

“They confirmed to me that I’m your biological father,” he said bluntly.

“Oh!” This was almost a squeal, followed by a more subdued “Oh,” probably after she’d taken in how stilted he sounded.

“I’d like to sit down with you this evening, if you’re free.” It was the first evening in nearly a week that he had been.

“Um, sure. Do you want to come to my…to Lucy’s house?”

He felt a pang that she couldn’t confidently claim ownership of her home. Kids needed to feel safe. Rooted.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can I talk to her for a minute?”

She came on, gave him her address, which he scribbled on the notepad he kept in his breast pocket, and they agreed on seven o’clock. All very matter-of-fact. He ended the call, but made no move to start his car. Instead, he kept staring blindly through the windshield at other parked cars and at the passing traffic on the cross street.

What was he going to say to his daughter tonight?

LUCY TRIED TO LEAVE THEM in privacy. She was eaten up with curiosity, of course, about what Jon was thinking, but he and Sierra were entitled to share things that would remain private.

But Sierra gripped her hand when Lucy tried to excuse herself shortly after letting him in the front door. “I—I’d like you to stay.” Her gaze darted to Jon. “If that’s okay.”

His eyes met Lucy’s. She told herself she was startled because she was used to seeing eyes that color in her foster daughter’s face, not in a man’s. But she knew better. It wasn’t just the stunningly clear, pale blue, it was what she saw in them. His eyes betrayed a rueful acknowledgment of his bemusement at being in this position. And—she thought—some attraction to her.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Lucy will be involved with any plans we make.”

Her knees weakened and she sank onto the sofa beside Sierra, still holding her hand. Plans. Oh, thank goodness. He wasn’t going to try to weasel out of any relationship with Sierra.

Lucy had already offered coffee or tea. He’d pleasantly declined. She had shown him into the tiny living room of her tiny house. He was simply too big for this room, she couldn’t help thinking. He chose the easy chair that was sized for him, but his knees bumped the coffee table. On the other side of it, she and Sierra were ridiculously close to him. Much closer than they’d been in his office. She could see every weary line on his face. His eyebrows and lashes were considerably darker than Sierra’s, making the clear blue of his eyes all the more surprising. There was the faintest hint of a cleft in his chin, and the shadow of a beard on his hard jaw and cheeks. His fingers drummed a staccato beat on the upholstered arm of the chair, but otherwise his composure was absolute.

“Sierra,” he said, “maybe you’d better tell me what you’re hoping for from me.”

A flush rose from the collar of the girl’s black T-shirt, blotchy by the time it reached her cheeks. Her fingers tightened on Lucy’s. “I don’t know.” Lucy could feel her struggle for dignity. “I guess… I thought…maybe you wouldn’t mind having a daughter. Not…not to live with you or anything, but, I don’t know—”

“To pay your college tuition?” he said mildly.

Despite the vivid color in her face, she swiftly lifted her chin and met his eyes. “I never expected money from you. I just wanted…” Her mouth worked. Her voice had gone so soft, he leaned forward, as if afraid he’d miss the rest of what she had to say. “Family,” she finally whispered.

His eyes closed for a moment. Some powerful emotion crossed his face. Lucy couldn’t be sure what it was. Finally he took a deep breath and looked at Sierra. “You have that now.” His voice was kind. He was even smiling faintly. “Not just me. You’ll meet your grandmother and an aunt and uncle and two first cousins, too.”

She stared. “Have you…told them about me?”

“Not yet, but I will. I feel confident they’ll welcome you, Sierra.”

The wonder on her face scared Lucy. It couldn’t possibly be this easy. She hated watching Sierra’s hopes rise like shimmering soap bubbles, all too fragile and certain to pop. Lucy didn’t believe that he was prepared to joyously embrace a teenage daughter’s arrival in his life. There had to be a catch. Probably a whole bunch of them, little traps she imagined closing, snap, snap, snap, until Sierra was dancing fearfully to miss them.

Her own voice was harsh when she said, “Do you intend to tell anyone else about Sierra?”

His dark eyebrows rose. “Do you mean, do I plan to go to the Dispatch or KOMO TV?”

His sardonic tone was probably meant to embarrass her. In her defense of Sierra, Lucy didn’t let it. “I’m asking if you’d rather her existence stay private.”

“Secrets are hard to keep, and this doesn’t have to be one.” The gaze that met hers now was hard. “Would I rather the press not catch wind of her right away? Yeah. I want my campaign to focus on my ability to do the job, not on the surprising appearance of a daughter I didn’t know I had. Is that unreasonable?”

Of course it wasn’t. She wasn’t entirely willing to back down, though. “I’m asking whether Sierra can tell her friends about you, or if you want her to keep quiet for now.”

He noticeably hesitated for a moment. Sierra couldn’t miss that any more than Lucy did. Then he grimaced. “She can tell her friends.” He sighed and met Sierra’s gaze again. “I won’t pretend I’m not concerned about the impact on the election. My opponent will probably try to make something of this if he learns about you. But we’re not going to sneak around, Sierra. You’re indisputably my daughter. I want to get to know you.”

She gave a tremulous smile that made her momentarily radiant. The sight seemed to transfix him. Watching their faces, Lucy felt the oddest lurch in her chest that almost—but not quite—hurt. It felt a little bit like envy.

Jon’s voice was huskier than usual when he said, “Perhaps I can take you both out to dinner Friday night.”

Wouldn’t he be recognized? She imagined him shaking hands with people who paused at the table. The speculative glances.

“Why don’t I cook instead?” she suggested. “Sierra can make dessert. She’s becoming quite a baker.”

If she hadn’t been looking so closely, she wouldn’t have seen how he relaxed. “That sounds good,” he said, smiling. “In the meantime, I’ll talk to my mother. We’ll figure out a time for you to meet her.”

“O-kay!” Sierra all but sang. “A grandmother.” She let go of Lucy and hugged herself, making no effort to hide her delight.

Lucy saw him watch Sierra, then unexpectedly turn his gaze to her. His eyes flickered, the color momentarily deepening. He’d recognized her worry, she suspected. She didn’t care.

“What do you do for a living?” he asked.

“I own a pet-supply store,” she told him. “Barks and Purrs.”

“Ah.” He glanced around. “No pets of your own?”

“Two cats. They disappear whenever we have visitors. You?”

He shook his head. “I work too much. I had a dog growing up. A mutt. Moby lived to be sixteen.” His mouth wasn’t exactly smiling, but his eyes were. “Is there a Mr. Malone? I’ve had the impression not.”

“No. It’s just Sierra and me.”

“No family?”

She didn’t like how perceptive his eyes were. “Only a mother,” she said. “We’re…not close.” She didn’t talk about her mother. Ever. She didn’t let herself think about how soon that would have to change. “Sierra hasn’t met her.” Yet. “I take it your father has passed away?”

“Massive stroke a couple of years ago.”

“He couldn’t have been very old.”

His look became quizzical. “Worrying about what kind of genetics Sierra carries?”

Flustered, Lucy began, “No, I—"

He grinned, the effect both wicked and astonishingly sensual considering how unrevealing and almost grim his face usually was. “It’s all right. Dad’s parents lived to be eighty-nine and ninety-one respectively. My father spent most of his life angry. I figure he worked himself up to the stroke.” He transferred the smile to Sierra, although it was softer for her benefit. “You wouldn’t have liked him. My mother is a nice lady, though.”

She smiled shyly back. “How old are my cousins?”

“Younger than you. Reese is ten and Patrick twelve. You’ll be the only girl.”

Still shyly, she asked, “You don’t have any other kids?”

His mouth quirked, and Lucy knew what he was thinking. He almost certainly did have other kids, ones he’d never know. She wondered if he felt regret now.

“I’ve never been married,” he said. “I was engaged years ago, but she was killed. It hasn’t happened since, despite my mother’s nagging.”

Killed. That made Lucy wonder, but she didn’t ask. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.

He made I-need-to-be-leaving noises, and Lucy stayed where she was so that Sierra could walk him out. They talked for a few more minutes on the porch, his quiet bass in counterpoint to Sierra’s soprano bursts. She heard the sound of his car starting, the slam of the screen door and then Sierra burst into the house.

“Lucy! Isn’t he amazing?” She went sur la pointe and spun. She was astonishingly graceful, although she’d given up dance lessons at age twelve when she grew so tall. “He wants to be my dad! I can’t believe it. Oh, Lucy.” Eyes drenched with tears, she flung herself onto the couch and into Lucy’s arms, where she wept quietly and happily against her shoulder.

Lucy said the right things, and she wanted to believe in Captain Jonathan Brenner, that he was as decent and kind as he seemed, but she knew that people rarely were. She loved Sierra too much to lower her guard.

What scared her most was knowing how little she could do to protect her foster daughter’s too-vulnerable heart.

EDIE COOK WAS NOT PLEASED. She paced the confines of his campaign office after staff and volunteers had gone home, her indignation making her steps choppy.

“We couldn’t have discussed this before you walked out on a limb?”

“No.” He half sat on a desk, his legs stretched out and his arms crossed. “This is personal. I had to do what was right. To hell with politics.”

She glowered at him. Edie was small and stocky, her graying hair cut severely short. She had the energy of a hyperactive kindergartner. She could be running campaigns of far more significance than his, but she had a daughter with multiple sclerosis, and she needed to stay close. He knew he was lucky to have her. Even so, he wasn’t going to let her shape him with her nudges and prods the way she’d like to. He wasn’t clay that could be molded into a pretty face. He was a cop. A man on a crusade begun to avenge Cassia.

Jon was honest about his own motivations. Along the way, it had all become more complex, but he’d gone into law enforcement out of anger. He had fallen in love with Cassia Winterbourne the minute he met her during his first year of grad school. They had been engaged and living together six months later when one night she closed the coffee shop where she worked part-time as barista, started for the bus stop and never made it. She was raped and murdered by a man released from prison the day before.

Rage and grief had consumed Jon, to the point where he’d scared himself. He’d almost dropped out of college. He’d taken incompletes on several courses and had to finish the work later, after the rage froze into a solid chunk of ice that lodged in his chest where his heart had once beaten. He had vowed never to let himself feel so intensely again. He’d never come close to falling in love since.

And when his mother came to Cassia’s funeral but his father, who’d never liked her, didn’t, Jon had severed the last bitter ties with him. He never spoke to his father again, and went to his funeral for his mother’s sake, not his.

Edie knew about the estrangement, in case it became an issue in the campaign. She knew about Cassia, too. She’d wanted him to use the tragedy as the lodestar of his campaign. He’d refused. His heart beat again, and the ice had receded, but the rage remained. He could tap into it too easily. That didn’t mean he would use the horror of her death or his feelings for her as something cheap to sway voters.

“I’d rather keep Sierra out of the public eye,” he said, his head turning as Edie stomped by.

She snorted. “Fat chance.”

“If we don’t make any announcement, how will Rinnert find out about her?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he already knows. Hell, he’s probably got a P.I. trailing you.”

His jaw firmed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t kid yourself. He’s behind in the polls. But really, he doesn’t have to go to those lengths. Are you telling me no one saw you walk into the sperm bank? Wait in the lobby? Your race is a hot one. Your face is on the local news often enough—you’re all too recognizable.”

“You want my face to be recognizable,” he said sardonically.

“That was before you did something stupid like visit a sperm bank.”

“Most people would assume I had questions relating to an investigation.”

She stalked by again. He felt like a spectator at a tennis match, his head swiveling.

“You don’t do investigations. You supervise other people who do them.”

That was true, but he doubted that the common voter realized he was pretty well trapped behind a desk these days. When he pointed that out, Edie snorted again.

She eventually wound down, conceded they might get lucky and no, it probably wasn’t the end of the world if Sierra’s existence became public knowledge.

“Will she be living with you?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Not right away. We need to get to know each other.”

“You found your daughter, and have left her living in a foster home? That may not play well.”

“You know how seldom I’m actually home these days.” He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he said that. But he was. The exhaustion wasn’t physical, but it was real, and went bone deep. “I can’t be an adequate single parent right now, even if that was the right thing to do for other reasons.”

Edie, grudgingly, supposed he was right. She made noises about Sierra going to live with his mother or sister. He still hadn’t told either that he had a daughter. Even if they’d been eager and willing to have Sierra with them, he wouldn’t insult Lucy that way. Remembering their clasped hands, he knew it wouldn’t be right anyway to separate them.

He and Edie made the decision to keep quiet about Sierra for now, but Jon warned her that he’d answer questions honestly if they came to be asked.

“This woman she’s living with? Is she an asset or a detriment?”

In a flash that startled him with its vividness, he saw Lucy Malone sitting on that couch watching him with the spark of suspicion in her chocolate-brown eyes. He saw the lush curves of her petite body, her pretty face, the thick, glossy, wavy black hair that to his disappointment she’d worn in a fat braid last night. And he hated himself for, however briefly, actually giving some consideration to Edie’s question.

“Asset,” he said finally, shortly.

Edie gave him a startled glance, opened her mouth as if to say more, then visibly thought better of it. “All right,” she said. “Keep me informed.”

She left, but he lingered in the deserted campaign headquarters. Usually he focused on his goal—becoming sheriff. Finally being in a position to make the decisions that counted. But he was unsettled tonight, and he found himself looking around at the half-dozen desks where volunteers would sit making phone calls on his behalf, at the stacks of campaign posters and the placards stacked in corners waiting for supporters to jam them into their lawns or beside well-trafficked roads. Jonathan Brenner for Sheriff. Hard Decisions Made with Integrity.

That was him, so defined by integrity that he could weigh a woman’s worth only as it related to him. How would it look that he was spending time with her?

A phone rang at one of the desks, the sound shrill in the otherwise quiet storefront.

Jon muttered a profanity, scrubbed a hand over his face and let himself out, locking the door behind him. He wasn’t often ashamed of himself, but there were moments, and this was one.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M TOTALLY INTO COMPUTERS,” Sierra told her father. “But I don’t know if I want to work in software or anything. I might decide to be a doctor. Or maybe a veterinarian.” Her expression became eager. “Did Lucy tell you she helps finds homes for cats that end up in shelters? I’ve been spending lots of time with the ones she has at the store right now. And with Rosemary and Magnolia, too. Those are Lucy’s cats.”

There was a smile in Jon’s eyes when he looked at Lucy over the dinner table. “I noticed you’re a gardener. I gather that’s where your inspiration came from.”

“Yes,” she said ruefully. “Only, the cats are really Rosie and Maggie. Every animal I’ve ever had ends up with a name that ends in an ie sound.”

Jon thought about it. He’d grown up with Moby. His mother had a fluffy, yappy little excuse for a dog whose name was Renoir, but who had come to be called, of all things, Really. It was a joke at first—yes, he’s really Renoir—but it stuck. Jon grinned every time he heard his mother stick her head out in the backyard and shout, “Really! Come to Mommy!”

“Maybe there’s something to that,” he had to admit.

“We convert children’s names that way, too. Jimmy, Stevie, Katie, Susie.”

“Becky,” Sierra said softly.

Her flash of sadness came and went so quickly, he’d have missed it if he hadn’t been looking.

Lucy smiled at her. “I like to think that softened ending is affectionate. Think how often it sticks. It did for me.” She reached for her wineglass.

“Were you ever Johnny?” Sierra asked him.

Lucy sputtered and had to slap a napkin to her mouth.

Jon pretended to glower. “You’re laughing at me.”

“No…yes. Oh, heavens. You just don’t look like a Johnny.”

He loved the way merriment danced in her eyes and puckered her cheeks. It sure beat the chilly stare of suspicion she also did well.

“No, I was never a Johnny. I think you have to be cuddly to deserve having your name softened. Me, I was born long and skinny, and only got longer and skinnier.”

“Me, too!” Sierra exclaimed, her face bright. She wrinkled her nose, looking down at herself. “I think I’ve quit growing.” Her tone said she wasn’t betting on it.

Lucy smiled at her. “You probably have. Girls usually reach their full height long before your age. It’s boys who still keep growing into their twenties.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jon began constructing another taco from the selection of ingredients laid out in the middle of the table. He chose the shredded chicken and heaped on the salsa Lucy made herself. It seared the mouth and opened the sinuses. He’d seen the challenge on her face when she first offered it to him. He had been damn careful not to react when he took his first bite. On his third taco now, he’d developed a taste for it. “I added another couple of inches in college. Mostly I got broader, though. I was a rack of bones until then.” He smiled at Sierra. “Remind me to show you some pictures. Forget it,” he said ruefully. “You won’t have to remind me. Mom will whip out the family albums the minute you walk in the door.”

“She really wants to meet me?” Her voice was wistful.

“She really wants to.”

His mother had reacted exactly as he’d predicted. She was stunned to think she had grandchildren she would never meet. He thought she would have been angrier yet if she hadn’t known why he had scrabbled to raise money any way he could back in those days. She felt guilty that she hadn’t been able to persuade his father to treat him more decently. Jon didn’t like knowing that his mom lived with more regrets than he had. In this case, though, guilt served a purpose; she’d forgiven him faster than he deserved.

“She expects me to bring you to Sunday dinner, if you’re free.” He transferred his gaze to Lucy. “She’d like to meet you, too.”

“My feelings won’t be hurt if you only take Sierra,” she said. “I’m not family.”

She was so composed, he was willing to bet it was a facade. She’d wanted him to accept Sierra as his daughter, there was no question of that. But he couldn’t help wondering if her feelings weren’t a little hurt, too, that Sierra had set out to find her biological family. It would be one thing if Sierra had been assigned to her, a licensed foster parent. But he’d learned that she’d taken the teenager in out of affection.

The teenager. No, he told himself, my daughter. Get used to thinking it. My daughter.

Aware of Sierra watching them both, he said quietly, “You’re family.”

Lucy stared at him for a moment that stretched. He forgot about Sierra. He lost himself in those warm brown eyes that seemed to darken with emotion, and lighten and shimmer with laughter. Right now they were the color of Belgian chocolate, rich, dark and somehow stunned. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she’d started to say something and forgotten what it was.

She blinked. “I suppose I am.” Her mouth curved into a heartbreakingly sad smile, although he doubted she knew it was. Very softly, she finished, “I’m family as long as Sierra needs me.”

Now he felt like a heel. Would every wish of Sierra’s he fulfilled hurt Lucy? Damn, he hoped not.

“Will you come Sunday?” Sierra begged. “Please? I’d…really like it if you would, Lucy.”

This smile was more natural. “If you’d be more comfortable, of course I will.”

“Is the store closed on Sunday?” Jon asked.

“Sundays and Mondays,” she confirmed. “Although I have to go in to take care of the cats.”

He asked questions, and found out that she had two part-time employees, one of whom was Sierra. Lucy had been a licensed vet tech. She told some stories from her years working in veterinary clinics. He had the impression her last boss, at least, had been an ass. Sierra was wide-eyed not at the tales of eccentric owners or animals run amok, but at the notion the clinic hadn’t been computerized.

“A wall of file folders?” she said, as if Lucy had been describing a holdover from the Edwardian age. Maybe even Jurassic. “How did you ever find anything?”

Lucy chuckled. “Easily. As long as it wasn’t misfiled. And I might point out that a misfiled folder is still more easily recovered than a computer file with a locator name misspelled.”

“That’s not true!” Sierra launched into a passionate explanation of search functions. Jon and Lucy listened with amusement.

At the end of her lecture, Jon said only, “The world did run precomputer, you know. America was settled, railroads spread, manufacturing changed society, wars were conducted. Nobody knew what they were missing.”

Sierra sputtered a little, but tongue in cheek.

Lucy rescued her. “Sweetie, why don’t you bring out your dessert? I’ll start clearing the table.”

The teenager jumped up. “Okay.”

“Can I help?” Jon asked, starting to rise.

“Don’t be silly,” Lucy said comfortably. “This isn’t a three-person kitchen.” She had picked up a couple of the serving bowls and almost bumped Sierra when she turned. Over her shoulder she made a face at Jon. “It’s not even a two-person kitchen.”

No, it wasn’t. The snug eating area was tucked in what he suspected had once been a glassed-in porch. One more could have sat at the table, but wouldn’t have been able to get in or out once everyone was seated. Like the rest of the house, though, the room was charming, the windows that wrapped it small-paned and looking out at roses and tall, daisylike flowers in deep blues and purples that he thought might be asters. Walls were painted a buttery-yellow, woodwork snowy-white, the floor tiled. A small watercolor painting of tulip fields hung on the one stretch of wall not filled with windows.

Jon examined his feelings of contentment as he watched woman and girl work in the kitchen in a seemingly practiced dance of steps that kept them from colliding. Sierra was more graceful than he’d thought at first; she made him think of a blue heron, with those long limbs and initial awkwardness overcome when full flight was achieved. And Lucy… His gaze tracked her, small and pleasantly rounded, her waist tiny and the glossy black braid swaying seductively as she moved, emphasizing the supple line of her back and the equally seductive sway of her hips in neat chinos.

Lucy Malone wasn’t a beautiful woman, exactly. Jon couldn’t even have said why she attracted him so powerfully, but she did. She was really too short for him, he mused; he’d have to bend over to kiss her. He contemplated the kitchen counter. No, he wouldn’t stoop, he’d set her butt up on the counter and stand between her thighs. That would work. And lying down, height didn’t matter much, did it?

Oh, hell. He was getting aroused thinking about it. Wondering how firm or soft her generous breasts were, whether her skin, a pale cocoa, was ivory colored where the sun didn’t touch it. Would she have small, pert nipples, or ones with broad aureoles as generous and womanly as her breasts themselves?

He almost groaned aloud. This was—what?—his third meeting with her and in his mind he already had her in bed with him. Although he wanted to think she was attracted to him, too, he doubted she was anywhere near as far along in her thinking about him. She was still too suspicious of him, for one thing.

As well she should be. He had no idea whether he could meet this unexpected daughter’s needs. Whether he really wanted to. He’d accepted responsibility, acknowledged that she was his, but that might not be enough, whatever Sierra insisted to the contrary. She wanted what she’d lost: a parent who loved her, completely and absolutely. He’d never felt that way about anyone.

He refused to feel guilty yet. He had to get to know her first. As smart as she was, she probably had a personality more complex even than the average teenager. He saw the sweetness, the quick leaps her mind took, the eagerness and yearning. But he knew there had to be considerably more. How did she feel growing up without a father in a world where most kids had one, even if they saw him only every other weekend? Had her mother been enough? Were they closer than usual, given the need teenagers had to push away from their parents? How much did she still grieve privately? Did she have crushes on boys? Have one especially good friend? Feel rage or self-loathing that she hid for fear she’d be rejected by Lucy or her newfound father?

Thinking about Sierra had given his body time to relax. He was able to smile naturally at Lucy, who brought dessert plates, and Sierra, who produced a cheesecake.

“I hope you like it,” she said anxiously. “I was going to bake a pie. Lucy has an apple tree in the backyard. But I’ve been experimenting with cheesecake, so I thought I’d make that.”

“I love cheesecake,” he told her. “I’m afraid I have a sweet tooth.”

Her face lit in that way she had. “Me, too. I must have gotten it from you. Mom didn’t care about desserts at all. Mostly we had store-bought cookies. Like Oreos and Fig Newtons. But it was fun when we made, like, Christmas cookies, so I started baking when Mom would let me. I don’t like regular cooking that much. Mom said I was her pastry chef.”

Sierra cut the cheesecake, which she said was layered with tiramisu. Jon took the first bite figuring it would be good—this was a kid bright enough, after all, to manufacture a nuclear bomb if she put her mind to it—but he hadn’t anticipated pure nirvana. He actually closed his eyes to savor the pure, melting flavor on his tongue. After he swallowed, he said with complete honesty, “I think that tastes better than anything I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

Sierra grinned in delight. “It is good, isn’t it?”

“Heavenly,” Lucy murmured around her first bite.

Jon’s body stirred again at the sight of her face. He’d have sworn color had risen in her cheeks, and her eyes had closed as his had. Her mouth was moist, and as he watched the pink tip of her tongue flicked out to sweep over her lips. Damn, he thought. Would she look like that when he touched her? When he suckled her breast?

He wrenched his gaze from her and took another bite, good enough to be distracting. After a minute he said to Sierra, “Tell me about your mom. What did she do for a living?”

“She was a bank manager. She’d just gotten promoted to having her own branch not that long ago. She was good with math and computers, like me.”

She was silent for a moment, seemingly having forgotten her own serving of cheesecake. She’d withdrawn somewhere inside, and he could tell she was no longer really seeing him or Lucy. He hoped asking her to talk about her mother hadn’t been a mistake.

“I think sometimes Mom felt bad that I’d had to go to day care and after-school care and all that. I mean, that she couldn’t ever be stay-at-home. You know?” Her eyes briefly focused on him, and he nodded. “But the thing is, she wouldn’t have been any good at that. She wasn’t into stuff like sewing or crafts or really even cooking. She hated mowing the lawn and we didn’t have flowers like Lucy does.”

Jon was conscious that Lucy, too, had stopped eating and was watching her foster daughter. He wondered if, like him, she’d tensed at the unconscious comparison between her and Sierra’s mother. He wondered, too, where Sierra was going with it.

“I guess, like, when I was really little I wished Mom was more like some of my friends’ mothers. You know? But later I was glad she wasn’t. Because she didn’t just have to work. She liked her job. That made me want to do something I’m as happy doing. Some girls I know want to have babies, or get married, or take some classes at the community college. But you can tell they think jobs are just something you do to make money. Mom was different. She talked to me about anything.” She shrugged finally, and looked at the two adults. “I love Lucy’s garden, and the cats, but now I know that everyone has different things that make them happy.”

To Lucy she said, “I see how you like to touch. I mean, you run your fingers over the cats, or smooth my hair, or stroke that antique bookcase you bought, or the petals of a flower. Mom lived more in her head. She wasn’t so…” Her face reflected her struggle to find the right word.

“Tactile?” Lucy suggested gently. “There have been studies, you know, about different ways of learning. Some people learn best by touching, some by reading, some by hearing information.”

Sierra nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Tactile.” Jon could tell she was sampling the word. “Mom and I weren’t that huggy, but I knew she loved me.”

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