As light as a feather, she laid her palm against his jaw.

“I do worry about you, Sean. I worry that you don’t see the good in yourself. I worry that you take on far too much responsibility for someone who says he doesn’t want any at all. I worry that you mistake safe choices for good ones.”

Safe choices. Yeah, that was what he’d been making all these years, and where had it gotten him? He couldn’t help but think that taking a few risks couldn’t have landed him in any more trouble than he was already in and might have been a hell of a lot more fun, too.

But he didn’t want to think about any of that. Time was limited, and he had a beautiful, sexy woman waiting to be kissed in a way he hadn’t kissed a woman in a long time. She smelled of tequila, Mexican food and something delicate and expensive, and her shoulders were slender beneath his hands as he leaned closer.

Undercover in Copper Lake

Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN PAPPANO has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.

For the kids in my life, some grown, some still working on it, who gave life to Daisy and Dahlia: Brandon, Lauren, Kate and Kevin Kadon, Cameron, Gavin and Declan

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

A stiff breeze blew in off the harbor, carrying with it the smells of salt and fish and pollution, along with a chilly hint of fall on its way. Sean Holigan stood in the shadows of two buildings, face to the water, and toyed with the cigarette he held. Though he hadn’t had a smoke in six and a half months, the temptation to light it was there, the desire no less than it had been 195 days before.

But the flare of the lighter, the glowing end of the cigarette and the acrid blue-gray smoke would be like a neon sign pointing straight at him. Not the best idea, since the last place anyone expected him to be at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday was on the docks. If his boss or their buddies found him there, it was a sure bet he would pay the price for it. He just didn’t know how big a price that would be.

Maybe, probably, death.

Fog swirled around the two massive warehouses that shielded him and turned the cargo containers stacked between them and the water into islands of dull metal. The damp seeped into his jacket and misted across his skin. It darkened the thin paper of the cigarette wrapper and increased the stiffness in the middle three fingers of his left hand. Ever since he’d gotten them caught between an engine and a car frame three years ago, those fingers had developed an aversion to cold and damp.

He’d been waiting more than ten minutes without bothering to check his watch when he sensed rather than heard someone approaching. Like him, Alexandra Baker was always early to these meetings. Unlike him, she completed a thorough check of the area before appearing before him, tonight from around a corner, like a magician’s illusion.

She wore dark clothing, dark shoes, a dark hood covering her white-blond hair and casting her pale face in darkness. She could stand absolutely still on a night like this and blend completely into the background. The way she moved and walked and talked was unnaturally quiet, still. Illusion was a good description of her. Since she’d first approached him three months ago, she seemed about as real as a dream.

A bad dream.

“Why do you tempt yourself?” she asked, her voice quiet but not soft, her question personal but lacking curiosity.

He glanced at the cigarette, shrugged and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Why do you get me up in the middle of the night?”

“Because I know Kolinski’s tucked safely in bed.”

Craig Kolinski. His boss. His best bud for thirteen years. The man responsible for Sean’s relatively comfortable life. The man he was betraying every time he spoke to Baker.

“He’s going to ask you to look into something for him tomorrow,” she went on. “It’ll mean going out of town for a while. You’ll agree.”

Sean didn’t ask how she knew Craig’s plans. He figured his boss had more bugs than a Volkswagen plant, thanks to the Drug Enforcement Administration: his house, his cars, his office above the garage, probably even the garage bays themselves. Sean hoped whoever listened to all those hours of tapes got a headache from the constant whine of pneumatic tools.

“Where out of town?”

If it were anyone else, he would have said Baker hesitated, but since she was the calm, collected ice queen, he would call it a pause instead. “Georgia.”

A chill passed through him that had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d grown up in Georgia and had left the first chance he’d gotten, swearing he would never return. Nothing, not the family he’d left there, not even the father who’d died there eight years ago, had lured him back.

“Where in Georgia?”

Ice queen or not, this time she flat-out hesitated. She and the DEA knew damn near everything about him, including where he was from, why he’d left and why he’d go hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid the place. They knew Georgia wasn’t an acceptable answer. They’d already demanded too much from him and he’d given it, but this...

“Copper Lake,” she said with the first hint of emotion he’d ever heard from her, as if her frozen little heart knew what a huge request—order—this was. But it was just a hint. Emotion didn’t rule Alexandra Baker. She didn’t sympathize, never felt regret, never let feelings get in the way. She was committed 100 percent to her job, and by God, she would do what she had to do.

Which meant everyone around her would do what they had to do.

“No.” He never thought of the place if he could avoid it, never considered it home. Home was a place where a person belonged, where he fit in, where people wanted him around. Copper Lake was a nightmare that had taken eighteen years to escape.

Baker didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t have much of a choice in ratting out Craig.” There were limits to what he could overlook, and his boss had stomped all over them. “But I’m not doing this. I’m not going back to Copper Lake.”

“Kolinski will ask you to go, and you will. You don’t have a choice this time, either.”

The calm disinterest in her voice, as if the idea that she wouldn’t get her way had never occurred to her, got under his skin. He shoved his hand through his hair, dislodging water. “The hell I don’t. I’ve told you everything I know about Craig’s business and his personal life. But there’s no freaking way in hell that I’m going to—”

“It’s about Maggie.”

That sucked the air from his lungs. He hadn’t heard his little sister’s name in more years than he wanted to count. He tried not to think about her, either, in a situation worse all those years ago than his own. She’d cried when he left and begged him to take her with him, and, bastard that he was, he’d promised to send for her just as soon as he got settled.

Did it make any difference that part of him had wanted to take her with him and give her a better life? That he hadn’t known he would land in prison, just like every Holigan man before him?

No, no difference. Because from the time he was twelve years old, he’d intended to leave everything behind, including Maggie. He’d wanted a life with no responsibilities but himself. He’d wanted to escape the curse of his family, and how could he have done that dragging his baby sister along?

“What about Maggie?” His voice was rough, harsh, in the night air.

“Did you know she’s involved romantically with one of Kolinski’s people?” She didn’t pause long enough for him to answer. She already knew the answer. “She lived with the guy before his most recent arrest. They trust him to keep his mouth shut about the business. They don’t trust her. You know what happens to people they don’t trust.”

He’d seen it for himself once. Imagining his sister in that position, terrified, on her knees, begging for her life... Bile rose in his throat, and for one moment he thought he was going to puke right there in front of Baker. Nothing like showing weakness to someone who was as cold-blooded and single-minded as Craig was.

“He’ll call you into the garage today and tell you to go to Copper Lake. To keep an eye on Maggie. To determine whether she can hurt him. He’ll use your information to figure out the best way to deal with her.”

“Am I supposed to believe you’ll use it to keep her safe?”

Baker nodded, the action practically lost in the folds of the oversize hood.

How the hell had Maggie caught the attention of one of Craig’s dealers in the first place? And why in hell had that dealer been in Copper Lake long enough to even meet her?

Leverage, maybe. Sean had been loud in his opposition to Craig’s first expansion of the business, to the point that he’d almost walked away from the garage he’d worked his ass off to help save from bankruptcy. Craig had made a few concessions, keeping what he laughingly called his parts supply service separate from the garage and keeping the next expansion to himself.

And maybe sending someone to Copper Lake to find something to hold over Sean if it became necessary.

He shook his head slowly. “I won’t do it.” But even as he heard his own words, he recognized them for the lie they were. Maggie was the only person in the world who could make him return to the town he’d run away from.

“We’ll be in touch with you once you get there.” More sure of him than he was of himself, Baker tugged the hood forward another inch, then melted into the darkness. He didn’t hear her footsteps as she retreated, couldn’t even sense her presence. She stepped around the corner and was gone.

He let his head fall back until it connected with the warehouse wall with a solid thunk. How the hell had he come to this? Was this the payoff for betraying a friend? For abandoning his family as if they’d never existed?

He snorted derisively. Craig was a friend, yeah—one who’d made a fortune in stolen vehicles and drugs. What felt like a betrayal to Sean was really just the regular action any normal person would take. If Craig had dragged Maggie into this to control Sean, that was a betrayal.

Sweet damnation, all he’d wanted was a regular life: a job that didn’t make him want to shoot himself; enough money to pay his bills and have a little fun on the side; a place to live that wasn’t falling down around him. He hadn’t wanted any attachments to people, places or things. Drinking buddies, not friends. Hookups, not girlfriends. No obligations, no emotional connections, no having to think of anyone besides himself.

And he’d had that for a lot of years. Until three months ago, when he’d stopped by the garage late one night to pick up the cell phone he’d left behind and walked in on Craig shooting a man in the back of the head.

Everything had gone to hell after that.

Tomorrow he was going to another kind of hell, better known as Copper Lake. He would hate every damn second of it, but he would go and do whatever was necessary to protect Maggie. He’d let her down once before.

He wouldn’t do it again.

* * *

For Sophy Marchand’s entire life, Sunday morning had meant church, and though she’d missed the past two Sundays, she vowed that stopped today. She stood in the guest room of her second-floor apartment, one hand on her hip, watching the two little girls snuggling together in one of the twin-size beds, eyes closed, lips parted, looking angelic in sleep.

Except they weren’t asleep, and God bless them, there was absolutely nothing angelic about them.

“Dahlia, Daisy, this is the last warning. Get up now, or we’ll be late to church.”

One of them—Dahlia, she thought—made a sound that was more snort than snore, but neither moved. No lashes fluttering, no eyes shifting beneath their lids, no twitch of their mouths.

You are the most incompetent foster mother in the history of the world, Sophy chastised herself, but that didn’t stop her from lifting her free hand, fingers wrapped around vivid yellow plastic, and squirting both girls in the face with cool water. It was a trick her grandmother had used when trying to rouse five recalcitrant boys to do their chores, and it proved effective.

Daisy, the younger, slighter child, shrieked and dived under the covers, while Dahlia, older by a year, sprang upright and fixed a mutinous glower on Sophy. She refused to swipe the fine mist from her face but instead folded her thin arms over her chest. “You could’ve just woke us up.”

“I woke you up. Three times.” Sophie set the spray bottle on the table just outside the bedroom door, then went to the closet. “You’ve got just enough time to brush your teeth, comb your hair and get dressed. Hustle, now.”

Dahlia grumbled as she pushed back the blanket, exposing Daisy to the sunlight that filtered through the sheer curtains at the windows. Her black hair in a tangle, Daisy scrubbed her fists over her eyes. “What about breakfast? I’m hungry.”

“You could have had breakfast if you’d gotten up the first three times I was in here. Now there’s no time.” Of course, there were protein bars waiting on the counter beside Sophy’s purse. She would never send them off without something to eat, though they didn’t know that yet. Before they’d come to stay with her nearly three weeks ago, their previous experience hadn’t included anything like consistency, stability or being a priority for anyone, not even their mother.

The thought sent an all-too-personal pang through Sophy. She knew how it felt to have a father who didn’t want you and a mother who couldn’t take care of you, and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

She pulled a hanger holding a pastel dress from each side of the closet. Daisy’s was white with her favorite cartoon characters, while Dahlia’s was simple, a pale green shift with a forest-green ribbon that served as a belt and a three-quarter-sleeved sweater in the same shade.

Daisy’s natural response on seeing her dress was a smile of pleasure, but after an elbow poke from Dahlia, she wiped it away and scrunched her face into a frown that matched her sister’s. “We have to wear that?” Dahlia asked.

“Yes, you do.” Sophy hung each dress on hooks on the closet door, then gestured toward the bathroom. “Teeth, hair, dress. Go.”

As they stomped across the hall and into the bathroom, her phone rang from the kitchen counter. Her heels made soft taps on the aged wood floor as she strode to the phone, picking it up on the fourth ring.

“Are you skipping church again today, or did you decide to catch the later service?” her mother asked without a greeting.

“Uh, no, Mom, we’re just running a little behind.”

“How are the children doing?” Caution seeped through Rae Marchand’s voice. It underlaid everything she and Dad had said to Sophy from the moment she’d told them she was becoming a foster parent and that her first kids would be the five-and six-year-old Holigan girls.

“They’re getting ready now. They’ve never been to church before, so they’re not eager for the experience. They’ve been dragging their feet.”

I want to give back, Mom, she’d told her. Someone fostered me when I needed it, and you and Dad adopted me. I just want to pay that along.

Rae had choked up. You’ve got a good heart, and I love you for that. But Maggie Holigan’s kids? Honey, that’s like going to buy your first kitten and coming home with a Siberian tiger. Jill Montgomery told me they’re the hardest kids she’s ever had to place. No one wants them.

That was why Sophy wanted them: no one else did.

“Will you be over for dinner?”

Dinner at her parents’ house was another Sunday tradition. Her older sister, Reba, and her family always came, too—four kids who adored their aunt Sophy. Maybe they would be a good influence on Dahlia and Daisy. “I plan to, but it depends on how things go at church.” Whether the girls tried to escape, went on a rampage, maybe burned down the sanctuary. They could well be the first kids ever kicked out of Sunday school in Copper Lake and banned from returning. Even the Lord’s patience had limits.

Matching stomps sounded in the hallway—amazing how much noise two skinny little girls could create—and Sophy’s fingers tightened. “Here they come, Mom. I’ll let you know about dinner.”

As she laid the phone down, she watched Daisy and Dahlia enter the room. As far as she could see, they’d done as she’d instructed. Their teeth had been brushed, if the toothpaste stains on Daisy’s chin were to be trusted. Their hair was combed with zigzag parts and bangs wetted and pasted flat against their foreheads. Their dresses were on, though Dahlia’s belt hung untied from two slender loops and her sweater was askew. They even wore shoes—ratty sneakers Dahlia had brought with her and bright yellow flip-flops Daisy had fallen in love with when they went shopping.

The best advice Sophy had been given so far: pick her battles carefully. She wasn’t going to argue about shoes.

“Wipe your chin,” she said, handing a napkin to Daisy. “You look lovely. Let me grab my stuff and we’ll go.” She slid her cell into a pocket of her purse, handed each girl a breakfast bar and grabbed her Bible, then went to the door, undoing multiple locks, ushering them out.

“Why’re you taking a book?” Daisy asked. “You plannin’ to read while we have to go to Sunday school?”

Sophy blinked. “It’s a Bible.” Seeing no comprehension cross their faces, she explained, “This is the book we study at church.”

Still no understanding. It was hard to imagine the girls having zero exposure to something as common as the Bible. Sophy had received her first one—white leather with her name embossed in gold—her first Christmas with her new family. She still had it.

But Daisy and Dahlia were Holigans. Enough said in this town.

It was entirely possible to live life comfortably in Copper Lake without a car, though naturally Sophy had one. Her apartment was above her quilt shop less than half a block off the downtown square. Her favorite restaurants and the businesses she primarily dealt with were within a few blocks. The house where she’d grown up and the elementary school she’d attended were along the way to church. The grocery store was a nice walk away, and living alone, she didn’t have to worry about buying more than she could carry.

But she wasn’t alone anymore, she reminded herself as she took Daisy’s hand, waited for Dahlia to claim the other one, then headed across Oglethorpe with them. They might be skinny little girls, but they’d increased her shopping list by about 500 percent. Instead of frozen dinners and ice cream, she now had to buy milk, fruit, veggies, snacks, green and yellow and red foods, chicken fingers and hot dogs and hamburger fixings.

It was almost like having a family of her own.

“Why do we have to walk everywhere?” Dahlia asked, scuffing her feet along the pavement.

Sophy kept her voice measured and calm. “I like walking.”

“I do, too,” Daisy echoed. “It’s fun.”

“Daisy!”

“Sorry!”

Dahlia’s chiding and Daisy’s apology were so habitual that their voices overlapped. They were close, not only in age but also in heart. It was a good thing, since they didn’t appear to have anyone else.

“Daisy’s allowed to have an opinion of her own,” Sophy said, earning a scowl from the older sister.

“We don’t walk nowhere ’less Mama don’t have the money for gas.” Daisy hopped over a crack in the sidewalk where a tree root reached for the surface, then swiped a strand of hair from her face with the hand clutching half an oatmeal bar. “When is she comin’ home this time?”

Her chest constricting, Sophy avoided looking at either girl. They were young, but they’d experienced things no kids ever should. If she lied, they would recognize it, or at least suspect it. “I don’t know.”

Truth was, Maggie wasn’t coming home from jail this time, not unless she had something substantial to offer the district attorney in exchange for leniency. This was the third time she’d been caught making meth in the house with the girls. With a lengthy list of previous offenses, this one would surely send her to prison.

Before either girl could respond, Sophy gestured to a house fifty feet ahead of them. “Bet you didn’t know that’s where I lived when I was a little girl.”

Dahlia’s look and shrug made clear her response: Bet we don’t care. Daisy, though, stared wide-eyed. “It’s got a porch. And a swing. And grass and flowers. And it’s yellow. That’s my favorite color.”

From their time spent together in the quilt shop, Sophy had learned that Daisy’s favorite color changed on a whim. Yesterday it had been lime-green. The day before it was red stripes with purple polka dots. “I used to sit on the porch swing and pester my sister while my dad mowed the grass and my mom knitted in that rocker. We had a big ole Irish setter who stretched out across the steps, so we always had to climb over him to get in or out.”

Her smile was a little pained. Those had been happy times, doubly precious because of the heartache she’d been through leaving North Carolina and her first family behind. She still loved her birth mother, two sisters and brother, still resented the hell out of her birth father, but she would forever be grateful to her Marchand family.

“What’s an Irish setter?” Daisy asked.

“A dog.”

The girl sighed longingly. “We had a dog once. She licked my face and slept on my feet and had really stinky breath. Her name was Missy, an’ I loved her. But she had babies, and we had to move, and Mama said she couldn’t come, so we left her behind.”

For the hundredth time in a week, Sophy wondered how the Maggie she’d known in school had turned out to be such a poor excuse for a mother. Sure, her situation at home had been tough. She’d been born into the world with automatic strikes against her. But people could overcome their upbringings. Sophy’s sister, Miri, was a perfect example.

When their father abandoned them to the care of their mentally ill mother, Miri, ten years old at the time, had taken charge. When the state had terminated their mother’s rights after a failed inpatient treatment, Miri managed to stay with her, doing whatever it took to survive and keep her safe. When their mother had died, Miri had buried her, mourned her and finally, for the first time ever, begun to live her life.

Now she lived in Dallas with a job she loved and a husband she loved even more. She used her computer skills to locate men who abandoned their children and denied them support, and private investigator Dean did the rest. Just as Miri had looked out for Sophy, Chloe and Oliver when they were little, she was still looking out for kids, making their lives a little easier.

While Maggie used drugs and drank and neglected her babies.

“Is that it?”

Daisy’s question was accompanied by a tug on her hand, pulling Sophy from her thoughts. She glanced up and saw her church across the street, the redbrick-and-white-wood structure glowing in the morning sun, looking solid and strong and peaceful. She hoped the girls found a measure of peace inside.

Failing that, she hoped they didn’t destroy it.

“Come on, kids, we’re just in time. Let’s get you to your Sunday school class.”

* * *

Sean let himself into Kolinski’s Auto Repair and Restoration, closed the door and walked to the middle of an empty bay before taking a deep breath. Grease, metal, paint, solvents, leather, sweat—it all smelled like home to him. As a kid, he’d spent more hours at Charlie’s Custom Rods than in school, learning the basics of car repair and restoration from Charlie himself. It had been the first practical use he’d found for fractions and the first place he’d felt safe, and he’d known then that working on old cars was what he wanted to do.

Craig had given him the chance to do that and make decent money. This was the best garage in three states for turning old rusted heaps of junk back into the classic beauties they were meant to be, and Sean had pretty much free rein.

Over the legal part, at least. He didn’t mess with the stolen auto parts, and he stayed hell and gone from the drugs. He was a Holigan. He didn’t need cops or pharmaceuticals to screw up his life.

The coated concrete floor softened the sound of Craig’s footsteps, along with the running shoes he wore. He never ran, he joked, but he never knew when the sport might be required, so he was always prepared. “Some people start their days with coffee. You start yours with engine grease. You’re just not happy without it, are you?”

You used to be the same way. When the old man had died and left the broke-down place as his only inheritance, Craig had worked hard to make a go of it. Like Sean, he’d been tinkering with cars most of his life. The work was in his blood.

Unfortunately, it flowed with a good supply of greed. Keeping the garage in the black, building a reputation as the best, making more money than his dad had ever dreamed of—none of that had been enough for him. Once he had a taste of success, like an addict, he’d wanted more.

He had more now. An expensive condo, a collection of restored cars whose value ran into seven figures, a weekend place near the beach, a different gorgeous woman every week, regular vacations to Atlantic Beach, Las Vegas, New York and Miami...and his own secret squad of DEA agents tracking his every move. Would he learn something when he lost it all, or would he somehow manage to skate on the charges and go on with life as usual, if more discreetly?

“Goober said you wanted to talk.” Sean gestured toward the small door in the back that led upstairs to Craig’s big fancy office above. He didn’t need to see the bodyguard to know he was there in the shadows; one or two beefy brawler types went everywhere with Craig. He didn’t bother to see which one it was, either. He called them all Goober to keep from having to learn their names, and Craig kept them from kicking his face in for it.

“I need you to do something for me, man.” Craig tore off a length of heavy-duty paper toweling, scrubbed the surface of the chair behind him, then tossed the paper onto its mate before sitting.

Feeling like a puppet with everyone else pulling the strings, Sean obeyed the unspoken order and sat on the second chair. Damned if he’d clean it like a fussy old maid first. Wadding the paper, he tossed it into the nearest trash can, then laced his fingers loosely together, arms resting on his knees, waiting.

“I know we agreed I’d leave you out of the stolen-parts business. That’s why I never told you about my other, uh, income source. I wouldn’t be telling you now except I’ve got a big problem and it involves your sister.”

Sean had wondered if he’d be able to fake surprise when Craig brought up Maggie, but he didn’t have to fake anything. His eyes narrowed, and he felt the blood leaving his face, turning his skin pale. His lips barely moving, he said, “If you’ve gotten her involved in anything—”

“I wouldn’t do that, man. You’re my family, and she’s your family. I would never have let anything happen. I just didn’t know about it in time.”

Craig dragged his fingers through his hair. He paid a hundred bucks every few weeks for a haircut that always looked as if he’d just dragged his fingers through it. His shirt cost two hundred, his shoes three, his watch five grand. His jeans, on the other hand, looked a lot like Sean’s—old, faded, ragged along the hems. Maybe thirty bucks a lot of years ago.

“Moving auto parts from the South to New York isn’t the only thing that turns big profits. I expanded into the drug market a few years back.” Craig raised his hand to head off any reaction Sean might have. “Don’t preach to me, okay? I knew you wouldn’t go for that. That’s why I kept it secret, totally separate from the garage. Anyway, my guy in Copper Lake obviously isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He hooked up with your sister—did you know she has a meth problem?” He waited long enough for Sean to shake his head grimly. “They started living together—him, her, her kids. Did you know she has kids?”

Sean’s gut knotted, and his hands grew sweaty. That girl’s gonna be pregnant before she’s sixteen, their dad always predicted. On her sixteenth birthday, though Sean was locked up, he said his annual prayer. Don’t let her be pregnant. On her seventeenth, the prayer had been, Don’t let her get arrested. Every year since then, it had been, Let her have a better life than all those bastards in Copper Lake thought she deserved.

A meth head with kids and a drug-dealing boyfriend.

Apparently, God hadn’t been listening.

“Yeah, two girls.” With two fingers, Craig pulled a photograph from his pocket and handed it across. “Pretty little things, aren’t they? Someday I’m gonna have kids. A whole houseful of ’em. I’ll join the PTA and we’ll go to church on Sunday mornings and have dinner together every evening. You know, they say kids who sit down to dinner with their parents regularly get in less trouble.”

Sean took the picture, and his hands began to shake. Two familiar little faces—dark eyes; lank hair awkwardly cut, straight, black. The younger one grinned from ear to ear, while the older scowled, arms folded over her chest, one hip cocked and one bony knee turned out.

They were Maggie twenty-some years ago, happy when she was younger, convinced everyone in the world loved her, sullen and put out when she was older and discovered what a lie that had been. She shone in the little girl’s face and lurked in the shadows of the older one’s.

Craig knew when to talk and when to be quiet, and he didn’t know that Alexandra Baker had already coerced Sean into agreeing to his yet-unasked request. He waited, giving Sean plenty of time to notice every detail in the shot. The house in the background, shabby and well-worn when he’d lived there himself. The yard, mostly bare of grass thanks to the tall pines that covered the ground with their needles. Two rusted lawn chairs, one missing a screw so it tilted drunkenly to one side, the other with a hole punched through it. The carcass of a beat-up pickup, wheels missing, balanced on cinder blocks. Birds had made nests on its dash, and the bed was half-filled with trash.

Trash. That was what the Holigans had been for the past hundred and fifty years. Poor white trash. Drunks, fools and thieves; irresponsible, lazy and worthless, uncaring about the children they brought into the world.

Heat ignited inside Sean, burning outward until his face gleamed with it, until it felt as if it would singe off his ears. It was fueled by anger and resentment and bitterness, but mostly shame. He was so damned ashamed of where he’d come from, who he was, what he was. Yeah, he’d gotten out; he’d escaped the town and his family and made something better for himself, but he’d left Maggie behind to ruin her life just as surely as he would have ruined his.

He’d left her to ruin her babies’ lives.

“So.” Craig leaned forward, hands together. “The thing is, my guy got arrested a couple weeks ago, along with Maggie. I know he’ll keep his mouth shut, but...Maggie isn’t exactly known around town for her discretion. If the D.A. offers her some sort of deal, she might tell him everything she knows.”

After committing the two faces to his memory, Sean looked up and offered the picture back to his boss, but Craig gestured. You keep it. Sean held it carefully in one hand. “So you want me to...”

“Impress on her the importance of staying quiet. She’s a doper, Sean, a meth head, and she’s locked up. She’d sell her soul for a little comfort. She’d sell her kids’ souls. She needs to understand how bad that would be for everyone.” Craig waited a moment before adding, “Especially those pretty little girls.”

His skin that had been burning a moment ago cooled with the chill that exploded through him. Sean had never been any more violent than was necessary. In Copper Lake, it just wasn’t possible for a Holigan to reach eighteen without his share of fistfights, but he’d never let it go beyond self-defense. Even at twelve, fourteen, sixteen, he’d had a plan to get out, and self-control was a part of it.

But right this moment, he wanted to hurt Craig. Wanted to hurt him bad, to smash his face in, to beat the hell out of him for even implying that he or his people might hurt Maggie’s kids.

It took a moment to make his voice work, and it came out rough as gravel with sharp, pissed-off edges. “You want me to talk to Maggie. Convince her that going to jail is the best thing for her now. Make her keep her mouth shut or...”

Craig’s only response was to pointedly look at the picture.

A muffled sound came from the shadows at the back, Goober shuffling his oversize feet, probably moving to stay limber in case he needed to spring into action. Sean and Craig both glanced that way, and Sean muttered, “Freakin’ rat.”

It was hard to tell from Craig’s grin whether he suspected which of them Sean was referring to.

“I know you left Copper Lake for a reason, man, and like I said, normally I wouldn’t ask you to get involved, but when it’s family...we gotta make exceptions for family, right? Little sisters, little nieces... Man, I’m sure you wouldn’t want me sending anyone else, would you?”

Muscles so taut a few were on the verge of spasm, Sean stood. “Yeah, right.” He walked a few paces before turning back. “If she keeps her mouth shut, if she doesn’t roll on you...”

“If she stays quiet and still doesn’t go to jail, I’ll pay for the best rehab around. We’ll get her clean. If she does do time, when she gets out, she and the kids will have a new start. I’ll set ’em up wherever she wants to go. Either way, I’ll take care of her.”

“Okay.” Without further conversation, Sean crossed the bay to the door, let himself out and strode to his car.

Craig’s last words should have been reassuring. I’ll take care of her. I’ll see that she’s safe and healthy and clean and can be a decent mother to her girls. I’ll give her a new life in a new place where no one knows her name or her history. I’ll get her counseling and medical care and help her to live the life she deserves to live.

That was what Sean would have meant by I’ll take care of her.

But Sean wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

And Craig was.

Chapter 2

As Sophy combed conditioner through Daisy’s silky black hair, the little girl peered up at her. “Are me and Dahlia stupid?”

Startled by the question, Sophy lost her balance and slid from her knees to the floor beside the bathtub. “Of course you’re not stupid. Why would you think that?”

“We played a game at church, an’ the teacher asked a lot of questions. Me and Dahlia didn’t know the answer to any of ’em, and this kid named Paulie said we were stupid. I think any boy named Paulie is stupid.”

Sophy sighed internally. Paulie Pugliese’s father was a deacon, his mother the choir director. They loved their authority in the church and their spoiled brat of a little boy better.

From the far end of the tub, hidden beneath a dress and cap made of fragrant pink bubbles, Dahlia deigned to join the conversation. “Miss Jo said you can’t know a subject you ain’t been taught. She asked Paulie to count to ten in French, and he couldn’t do it. She said he wasn’t stupid and we weren’t stupid. We just needed to learn.”

“Un, deux, trois.” Sophy smiled awkwardly when both girls scowled at her. “Counting in French. Miss Jo’s right. If you’ve never been to church or read the Bible, how could you know what’s in it?”

“It don’t matter.” Dahlia stretched one leg up and fashioned a bubble high heel. “Mama’ll be home soon, and we won’t have to go again.”

“I kinda liked it.” Daisy anticipated her sister’s censure and didn’t wait to respond, “Sorry! But they sang songs, and they had pictures to color, and there were doughnuts. I like doughnuts.”

Sophy pushed to her feet and dried her hands. “You guys get rinsed and dried off and put your jammies on, and maybe we can have our bedtime snack outside.”

Dahlia almost drowned out Daisy’s cheer. “Sitting on dirty wooden stairs? Oh, boy.”

“It may have escaped your notice each time we’ve gone into the shop, but there’s a lovely porch downstairs with flowers and chairs and everything. Go on, now, and help your sister.”

The last wasn’t necessary, she acknowledged as she left them in the bathroom. Dahlia was always quick to give Daisy whatever she needed. Maybe part of it was just being the big sister. Probably a larger part was that their mother had rarely been in shape to help the kids herself.

In the kitchen, she pulled out the industrial-size blender that used to make margaritas when she had friends over but now mostly turned out fruit smoothies. Listening to the up-and-down of the girls’ voices, the words indistinguishable, she spooned in ice cream, milk, a little vanilla and three crumbled chocolate-chip cookies her mother had sent home from dinner with them.

By the time the girls shuffled in, she’d divided the milk shakes between three tall cups, added straws and long spoons, and placed them with a pile of napkins on a tray painted with sunflowers.

Used to her inspections, Dahlia had brought a towel and the wide-tooth comb. Neither of them minded water dripping down their backs from wet hair, Daisy had earnestly explained to her, and Sophy had just as earnestly explained that she did. She gave both heads a quick rub, combed their hair, made sure they wore flip-flops, then picked up the tray of shakes.

After securing the front door behind them, Sophy led the way down the stairs and around to the front porch. With the flip of a switch, two ceiling fans came on, one above each side of the porch. The glass-windowed doors in the center looked in on the dimly lit quilt shop, all bright colors and endless possibilities, and a path led across the tiny yard to the picket fence and the sidewalk.

The evening was relatively quiet. Most church services were over. All the bars were closed. An occasional car passed on Oglethorpe Avenue, and a few couples strolled around the square, their destination A Cuppa Joe or one of the restaurants still serving customers. It was her favorite time of day, a time to reflect, to unwind, to set her worries to rest and consider the next day.

Or to answer questions.

“What is this?” Daisy asked. Dressed in ladybug pajamas, she ignored the rocker and crouched back on her heels, holding the drink in both hands.

“A milk shake.”

She jiggled it. “It doesn’t shake.”

“No, but it can make you shake. It’s cold.”

“What’s in it?”

“Milk, ice cream and a surprise. You have to taste it to find out.”

Hesitantly Daisy put her mouth to the straw and sucked until her jaw puckered. “I can’t get any.”

“It’s got to melt a little first. Use the spoon.” Sophy took a large bite of hers, savoring the richness of the ice cream and her mom’s incredible chocolate-chip cookies.

“Where’d you learn to make it?”

“My sister taught me.”

“Miss Reba?”

“That’s the one.” Sophy used one foot to keep her rocker moving. To Reba’s kids, Daisy and Dahlia had just been two more kids to play with after Sunday dinner. Their mother hadn’t been so accepting.

You brought Hooligan kids into your house? You’ll wake up one morning trussed like a hog with all your money and your car gone.

They’re five and six years old. Where do you think they’re going to go?

Reba had scowled. I see TV. I read the news. The little one works the pedals while the big one steers. Besides, my friend Linda is a foster parent, and she said they couldn’t pay her enough to take those kids again. Her friend Tara fosters, too, and she said they set her house on fire. They climb out windows, they jump off roofs, they run away, they steal. Neither one of them’s ever spent a day in school.

Sophy had given her a dry look. Then they’ll keep me alert and aware and on my toes.

Reba had sighed. Oh, Sophy.

Sophy knew what that meant: poor, childless, clueless Sophy. Overprotected, overoptimistic, all sunshine and rainbows. Reba had forgotten the Christmas when Sophy had been threatened by two armed killers in the back room of her shop. She wasn’t Mary Sunshine. She knew bad things happened in the world, and if she could keep a few from happening to Dahlia and Daisy, she would be happy.

“Miss Reba doesn’t like us.” Dahlia sat cross-legged in her chair, all skinny limbs, her usual scowl fading only when she took a bite of ice cream. “She called us Hooligans.”

Heat flooded through Sophy. She’d thought the kids were occupied in the family room with Reba’s kids and her father when her sister had started that conversation. She should have known better. Know-it-all mother-of-four parenting-expert Reba certainly should have.

“She shouldn’t have said that,” Sophy agreed. “It was rude, and it’s not true.”

Dahlia shrugged. “’Course it’s true. Mama says most people don’t like us, and that’s okay because we don’t like ’em back.”

Sophy didn’t know what to say to that, because sadly that was the case. Way back in middle school, when some kids had been giving Maggie a hard time, she’d overheard one teacher ruefully tell another, Everyone has to have someone to look down on. Maggie, it seemed, had gone out of her way to give people reasons to look down on her. Where someone else might have taken it as a challenge to prove them wrong, she’d been in their faces, flaunting every bad decision and behavior.

Granted, she’d never been taught anything different. Her brothers, her father, her uncles...Holigans had made an art of reveling in their reputations.

“I like you,” Sophy said. “And Mom and Dad, and Mr. Ty and Miss Nev and Miss Anamaria.” Lord, it was a short list. It made her heart ache.

Dahlia responded with a disbelieving snort before taking a huge bite of ice cream. On the floor, without lifting her gaze from an ant crawling across the boards, Daisy asked, “What’s a hooligan?”

“Remember, Mama told us. It’s someone who runs wild and breaks all the rules and misbehaves and acts like a heathen.”

“I like running wild and making people shake their heads and say, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but trouble, Daisy Holigan.’” Daisy grinned. “I like being a hooligan.”

Wondering which neighbor or irresponsible family member had told her that, Sophy forced a smile. “You like acting that way. But the secret is, you and Dahlia are clever and smart and capable little girls who can be anything you want to be.”

Another snort from Dahlia, and she’d lost Daisy’s attention completely. The girl had risen to her feet and was avidly staring at the sidewalk—rather, at the dog being walked there.

“Good evening,” the man at the other end of the leash called.

Sophy repeated his greeting as Daisy moved to the second step. “What’s your dog’s name?”

“Daisy! We don’t talk to strangers!” Dahlia whispered fiercely.

“But he’s got a dog.”

Sophy made a mental note to talk to the girls about strangers and ruses involving pets.

“Her name is Bitsy,” the man said. “You want to meet her? If it’s okay with your mom.”

The girls’ voices drowned each other out: “She’s not our mom,” from Dahlia and “Please, can I?” from Daisy.

“Sure.” Sophy followed Daisy into the yard as Bitsy pulled her owner through the gate. Wiggling from nose to tail, the dog sniffed the girl, making her giggle. The sound almost stopped Sophy’s heart. Was that the first time she’d heard Daisy laugh?

The man offered his hand. “Hi. I’m Zeke.”

“Sophy.” She shook his hand, his fingers long and strong, his palm uncallused. She still thought of Copper Lake as a small town, but he was one of the twenty thousand or so residents who weren’t a regular part of her life. He was fair skinned with auburn hair, blue eyes and a grin that had surely charmed more than his share of women. Though only a few inches taller than her, he was powerfully built—broad shoulders, hard muscles, not lean but solid. First impression: he was the sort of guy who could make a woman feel safe.

Though she knew better than to rely on first impressions.

“You picked a perfect evening for sitting on the porch with milk shakes.”

She glanced at the glass in her left hand. “The day’s not over until we’ve had ice cream.”

“A woman after our own hearts. Bitsy loves the ice-cream shop, but we’ve got to be careful. Her vet caught us there once and wasn’t happy.”

A glance at the short distance between the dog’s rounded belly and the ground made that easy to believe. “Cute name,” Sophy said while thinking the opposite. All of the dogs she knew had solid names—that they lived up to—Frank, Misha, Scooter, Elizabeth, Bear. Bitsy sounded so fussy for a grown man’s dog.

Zeke winced. “My daughter named her. Bitsy has a digging fixation, and my ex is a big-time gardener, so Bitsy came to live with me.”

So he was handsome, friendly, liked dogs and was single. Sophy was beginning to wonder how their paths hadn’t crossed before tonight. She thought she’d dated every friendly single guy in town.

Every one of whom had wound up married or engaged. To someone else.

Oh, Sophy. Reba’s sigh echoed in her head. It wasn’t a good time to meet anyone new, particularly anyone handsome with a quick grin. She’d taken on a huge responsibility when she’d volunteered to keep Daisy and Dahlia, and that meant putting her social life on hold.

“Your daughter and Bitsy are lucky you were able to take her.”

“There’s not much I wouldn’t do to make my kid happy...besides get back together with her mom. And I’ve kind of grown attached to the mutt, too.”

A car turned onto Oglethorpe at the nearest cross street, and they both glanced in that direction. The engine made a low growl, one that spoke of power tightly reined in. Sophy wasn’t much of a car person, but she could tell the vehicle was older than she was, was meticulously maintained and pretty much defined the phrase muscle car.

And it was painted a gorgeous deep metallic red. Her favorite color.

The air shimmered and the ground vibrated as the car slowly passed. Okay, maybe that was a little fanciful, but it felt that way. When it was gone and she turned back to Zeke, he was crouching on the ground beside Bitsy, head ducked, coaxing her to offer Daisy her paw for a handshake.

When the dog finally obeyed, he stood. “We’d better head home. She always wants a treat when she shakes, and I didn’t bring any. It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Daisy, Miss Dahlia...Miss Sophy.”

“Nice meeting you, too. Maybe we’ll see you again.”

Zeke grinned as he and the dog headed toward the gate. “You can bet on it.”

* * *

Monday was the kind of late-summer day that helped keep Sean in the South. The temperature was in the low eighties, the humidity down for a change, and occasionally when the wind blew across the Gullah River, he could smell the coming of fall, cooler weather, changing leaves, shorter days.

He’d driven around Copper Lake the night before, noticing how much things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same. New businesses and old ones, new people and old ones, familiar places, even a good memory or two. Charlie’s Custom Rods on Carolina Avenue looked as if the only turnover had been in merchandise. The front plate-glass window that Sean and his buddies had cracked late one Saturday night a lot of years ago was still there, the crack still covered with duct tape grown ragged.

The SnoCap Drive-In was still open, too, though it had had an update on its paint from neon turquoise to a subtler shade, and the same old guy who’d run it fourteen years ago was behind the counter.

The Heart of Copper Lake Motel still stood on Carolina, too, seriously renovated, but he would have recognized it. That was where he’d checked in, taking a parking space on the back side of the building even though his room was on the front.

After a restless night’s sleep, Sean knew the first thing he had to do today was talk to Maggie. He’d left the motel with that in mind but decided to have breakfast first. An hour had passed, and he still sat in the coffee shop on the downtown square, a couple blocks from the jail, nursing his third cup of regular sugar-and-cream coffee, reluctant to confront two blasts from the past at once: the sister he’d let down and the jail where he’d spent more than a few nights himself.

The bell above the door rang every few minutes with customers arriving and departing. Most of them were in a hurry to get to work and paid little attention to anyone besides the couple filling orders. They were named Joe and Liz, husband and wife, he’d picked up eavesdropping, and they were strangers to Sean. He’d seen a few older faces that were vaguely familiar—lawyers, maybe, or probation officers or social workers—but none that he could put a name to.

The knot in his gut knew his good luck wouldn’t last.

Liz was topping off his coffee when the doorbell sounded again. “Morning, Sophy,” she called, then asked him, “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thanks.” Without glancing her way, Sean stirred sugar and cream into his cup. He’d been concentrating on the scene outside the window—square, gazebo, flowers, war memorials, traffic, pedestrians—for so long that he’d memorized it, but it was better than actually making eye contact with someone.

It beat the hell out of making eye contact with someone who might recognize him.

A young and unhappy voice came from the vicinity of the door. “I. Want. To. Go. To. School.”

“I know you do. You’ve made that perfectly clear. But you’re not old enough,” a woman, presumably her mother, replied. She sounded tired, as if they’d been having this conversation for a while.

“That’s not fair! I’m not a baby!”

“I didn’t say you were. You’ll start next year.”

“I want to go this year!”

Sean had never had conversations like that when he was a kid. For starters, his mother had left them when he was about five, and they’d all been born knowing not to tempt their father with tantrums. Patrick Holigan hadn’t been a talkative lad to start with, but he’d had loads of things to say about what happened to children who disrespected their dear old pop.

“You want your usual for here or to go, Soph?” Liz asked, and Sean detected hopefulness for the second option in her voice. The coffee shop was too peaceful a place for a small child who excelled at whining.

“We’ll take them to go,” Sophy said. Hopefulness in her voice, too, as if the kid might suddenly become sweet and sunny when they walked back outside.

Good luck with that, lady.

He shifted his head enough to see Sophy, her back to him, wearing a red dress that clung to a sleek body—muscular arms, narrow waist, well-toned butt, great legs. She wore her blond hair in a ponytail falling halfway down her back and shoes that seemed a compromise between looking good and feeling good. It was a great backside. Did the front side live up to its hype?

Standing beside her, also with her back to Sean, was the girl with the voice pitched to cut glass. Her red shorts skimmed her knees, her top was red with purple stripes, and on her feet were yellow flip-flops decorated with fuzzy, sparkly blue-and-green butterflies. Too much color for this early in the morning.

Her hair was straight, too, pulled into a ponytail that was falling loose, but unlike her mother, hers was jet-black. Her arms were folded mutinously across her middle, and she was tapping one foot as if planning how to break into school and stay there.

Pushing them out of his mind, he rubbed one hand over his jaw, two days’ worth of beard scratching even over the calluses years of mechanic work had built on both his hands. He’d called the jail when he got in last night and found out that they were generous in their visiting hours, taking breaks only for meals. In double the time it would take him to drive over and find a parking space, he could be sitting in a room with Maggie.

Telling her Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t cooperate. This is worth going to jail for.

Most of Craig’s employees in his other businesses knew that from the start. Don’t snitch; don’t inform; take the heat and the time from any trouble they got into, and they’d get along just fine with the boss.

Maggie hadn’t known, probably hadn’t cared. Hell, she’d gotten herself and her kids on Craig’s radar without the benefit of even one paycheck.

If there’s a bit of trouble around, you kids will find it, Grandpa Holigan used to say. Apparently it was still true.

Sophy and the girl left, taking drinks in paper cups with them. He waited a minute to give them time to walk away, left a decent tip for table rental, and walked out to find Sophy standing at one of the outdoor tables and chairs that had been in his blind spot, talking to an older woman, and the girl stealthily making her way to the corner of the building.

Sean passed her, turned the corner and, totally surprising himself, stopped, waiting for the little girl to slide around the corner to freedom. It came in about five seconds, ending in a sudden halt as she realized she wasn’t alone. Her gaze traveled up from his work boots, over his legs, on up across his black shirt and finally reaching his face.

If his shaggy hair and unshaven face scared her, it didn’t show. She still looked as bold as could be. But the sight of her put fear into him. The dark skin and black hair he’d seen in the shop, but the delicate features of her face: the shape of her nose, the deep dark eyes with long lashes, the mouth, the jaw, the fragile, vulnerable, tough air about her...

This was his niece. Maggie’s baby. The threat Craig was using over both him and Maggie.

“Who are you?” She had the sense to whisper so her voice wouldn’t draw Sophy’s attention.

“The one who’s gonna drag your butt back to your foster mother if you don’t go on your own.”

A scowl transformed her pretty little face into a pretty little unhappy face, and she folded her arms over her chest. “You’re not my boss.”

Matching the scowl was easy. He’d perfected it sometime between crawling and learning to walk. No five-year-old could do it better.

After a stare-off, she backed up a few steps, curving around the corner until she was out of sight. Her voice whispered back, though. “I don’t like you.”

“Good for you.”

A moment later, Sophy called, “Come on, Daisy. It’s time to get to work.”

Leaning one shoulder against the warm brick wall, Sean imagined just being with Daisy all day was work in itself, especially for a pretty blonde who hadn’t been raised in the Holigan ways. Apparently, it was too hard for Maggie when she had been raised in the family.

He watched Daisy dance away as Sophy tried to claim her hand to cross the street. Sophy won that round. The kid dragged her feet, but Sophy kept her moving. Daisy deliberately walked on the wrong side of the light pole at the next intersection, forcing Sophy to release, then quickly reclaim her hand. His gaze followed them all the way to their destination, an old house with a shop on the first floor and living quarters upstairs, just down the street, then he spun around and headed for his car.

He’d seen the younger of his nieces. Now it was time to see Maggie.

* * *

The county jail was located behind the Copper Lake Police Department. Back in the day, most of the cells had been in the basement with only small, barred windows high on the outside walls. The only thing a prisoner could see, depending on his position, was the sky or the feet of people walking by. The glass, inlaid with wire between the layers, had been thick, making conversation tough though not impossible. Being loud and disruptive was one of the Holigan family qualities.

Sean parked his car, shut off the engine and stared at the squat brick building ahead. He could think of about a hundred things he’d rather be doing—even wrangling the youngest Holigan had to be easier than this—and he seriously considered putting it off for an hour or two or five. He hadn’t talked himself into action either way when abruptly the driver’s door was jerked open.

Sean flinched, leaned away, drew one leg onto the door frame for a quick kick, but a flash of images stopped him: eyes he’d once known as well as his own, an ear-to-ear grin, a gold badge, a holstered weapon. That was all he had the chance to notice before strong hands pulled him from the car and into a bone-jarring hug.

“I’ll be damned,” Ty Gadney said, letting him go, then giving his shoulder a punch that made him fall back against the car. “Granddad always said you’d be back someday, and here you are. Hell, Sean. You could keep in touch with the people who tolerated your smart mouth at least once every fifteen years.”

Ty, all grown up, shaved head, a detective, just like he’d always wanted to be. How many nights had Sean shared his room, dimly lit, the box fan in the window drawing in the damp night smells, talking about what they were going to do someday?

Sean had to force his voice to work. “How is Mr. Obadiah?”

From behind Ty came the answer in a distinctly sultry, sweet Southern woman’s voice. “Feisty and sassy as ever.” She stepped into view, pretty, womanly, and maternal and sexy all at once.

Ty’s grin widened as he slid his arm around her waist. “My old buddy Sean. My fiancée, Nev Wilson.”

She offered her hand, and Sean took it after a moment. She held on longer than he expected. “So you’re Daisy and Dahlia’s uncle. Heartbreakers, all of you.”

Saying that he’d only learned of his nieces’ existence yesterday, that he’d caught his first glimpse of Daisy this morning, didn’t seem the way to ingratiate himself with Nev, so he pulled his hand back. “Don’t blame them. You can’t choose your family.”

“Oh, don’t I know it,” she said.

There was a story behind that fervent agreement, but he wasn’t here to learn anyone’s story but Maggie’s.

Letting his hold on Nev slide free, Ty circled to the front of the car, hands on hips, an admiring look on his face. “So you got The Car. Babe, from the time he was thirteen, this was all he ever talked about—this car. A 1970 Chevelle SS 454. Oh, man, she’s a beauty.”

When Nev made a dismissive sound, he gave her a chastising look. “Don’t be making fun of my appreciation for a fine vehicle. You practically cried when your car burned up at the Heart of Copper Lake, and it had nothing on this one.”

“That car was my baby.”

“This car is his baby.” Like a cloud passing over the sun, Ty went serious. “You here to see Maggie?”

“If she’ll see me.”

“Of course she’ll see you. Why wouldn’t she?”

Sean could think of fourteen years’ worth of reasons.

“Hold on, and I’ll go in with you.”

Taking Nev’s hand, Ty walked with her to a big old Mercury a few spaces away, half a block long and two lanes wide, hell on gas but with enough room for a party inside, all done up in baby-blue. Sean had worked on that car plenty of times when he was living with the Gadneys—and plenty of times when he wasn’t. It was the only way he’d had to repay Mr. Obadiah for giving him a place to stay when he needed it.

Another thing he would have to do: go see Mr. Obadiah, knowing that he’d let him down, too. This trip was going to be all kinds of fun.

After kissing his fiancée and helping her into the car, Ty stood back and watched as she drove away. Sean watched, too—his old friend, not Nev—then quietly said, “She’s a beauty, too.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Ty grinned. “I’m a lucky man.” He slapped Sean on the back and turned him toward the jail entrance. “So what have you been doing all these years, and where have you been doing it?”

What have you been doing? Patrick used to ask Declan and Ian, among other relatives, when they showed up after an absence. Time was the answer so often that it became a family joke.

One fifteen-month stint in prison had taken all the humor from it for Sean.

“Working on cars.” Being able to give a respectable answer sent a kind of relief through him. “Mostly for people who buy cars like mine and don’t have the time or the skills to restore them.” Honest work, even if his boss wasn’t.

“I’m not surprised. You’ve always had the magic touch. And where?”

Sean walked through the glass door Ty held open. “Norfolk.” Just inside, he stopped. An air-conditioning vent in the ceiling nearby blew cold air onto the back of his neck—the reason a shiver was doing its damnedest to break loose. Not nerves. “Tell me, Ty. How much trouble is Maggie in?”

As Ty’s face went somber again, Sean could see traces of his grandfather in him. “A lot. This is the third time she’s been caught making meth at home with the kids. You know she’s got kids?”

Sean nodded.

“She loves Dahlia and Daisy as much as she can, but...she’s an addict, Sean, and a bad one. She’s got to get straight before she kills herself, for the kids’ sake if nothing else.”

His gut knotting, Sean stared at the wall behind the check-in desk. He figured pretty much his entire generation of Holigans had experimented with at least marijuana, but he didn’t know of any who’d gotten addicted. Like their father and grandfather and their fathers before them, most Holigans preferred a good Irish whiskey to feed the soul, enliven an evening and dull the pain.

“You ready?”

Though he wanted to run away like a scared kid, he nodded and followed Ty to the desk. Within ten minutes, he was in a communal visiting room filled with round fiberglass tables with four stools of matching orange attached. They reminded him of playground seating, somewhere between child-and comfortable adult-size, with no back support to lean against. They were bolted to the floor so they couldn’t be used as a weapon and seemed pretty indestructible. A box of ragged toys occupied one corner, and signs warning against physical contact of any sort hung on the institutional-green walls.

It was depressing as hell.

He was standing at one of the barred windows overlooking the alley when the door opened and Maggie shuffled in. The fact that she was here, finally in a room with him after so many years, shocked him. Her appearance really shocked him.

Her hair had been bleached blond at some point in the recent past and hung, greasy and tangled, to her shoulders, the strands about equal parts blue-black and dingy yellowish-white. She was fourteen years older, a few inches taller and thin, emaciated, looking more like a scarecrow than the girl he remembered. She didn’t lift her feet when she walked, and she had a bad case of the shakes, like a kid on a major caffeine high—or a meth head on an involuntary withdrawal.

People who knew him, other than maybe Craig and Ty, would scoff at the thought, but his heart broke just looking at her.

Her gaze darted around the otherwise-empty room, skimming across him a couple of times before finally settling. “Look at this.” She turned to include the guard standing impassively at the door in her words. “My big brother, Sean, finally come home. You know, me and Declan’s kids had bets going for a while that you were dead somewhere. Guess I win.”

Part of him wanted to step forward and wrap his arms around her and cuddle her the way he used to when bad dreams woke her in the night. The other part of him recoiled from the idea. “Hey, Maggie.”

“What brings you back here?”

“You.”

“Took you long enough. I’ve been here more than three weeks.”

“I just found out yesterday.”

She shuffled to the nearest table and plopped down on one stool, making the entire thing tilt. “Well, if you hadn’t run off and pretended the rest of us didn’t exist, you would’ve known sooner.” Picking at a sore on her arm, she asked, “You gonna get me out of here?”

“I—” Sean was at a loss for words. Craig hadn’t said anything about bailing her out, and he hadn’t given it a thought. If he did pay her bond, he could take her home, talk to her in private, have unlimited time to persuade her of the best action to take.

Or maybe run away with her.

Though if he took her home, Craig and his thugs would know where to find her. They could take care of her at their convenience, and him, too, and maybe Daisy and Dahlia. Surely she was safer in jail. Yeah, they could reach her there, but it would have to be harder inside than out.

And if he took her home, he would have to duct tape her wrist to his. She’d been an expert at sneaking out when she was thirteen. Twenty-eight and in need of a high, she would disappear the first chance she got. He’d be on the hook for the money and for her escape.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” he lied. “Sorry, Maggie.”

Anger knotted her thin little face. “What the hell you been doing all these years?”

“I work on cars.”

“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “You always did love them stupid cars more than any of us. So if you’re not gonna bail me out, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I—I want to help you.” Help you get out of this life, help you stay alive, help you clean up... Though she didn’t look much interested in getting clean at the moment.

For a time she stared at him, then a ghost of the grin he remembered so well touched her mouth. “If you want to help me, go to Marian at Triple A Bonds and buy her goodwill with ten thousand bucks. That’s ten percent of my bail. Otherwise, I’ll take care of myself, Johnny boy, like I’ve been doing ever since you took off.”

Johnny. Only family had ever called him by the American version of his Irish name. Hearing it stung.

As she stood, hitching up her too-big pants, and walked away, he blurted out, “Maggie, I saw Daisy this morning.”

That stopped her a foot or so from the door. Slowly she turned, gave him a flat look, then said, “Yeah. Well. She’s five years old. If you hadn’t run off, you could’ve seen her a lot of times.” Dismissing him, she turned back to the guard. “Come on, bubba, get me outta here.”

After the door closed behind him, Sean exhaled heavily. “That went well.”

Oh, yeah, this trip to Hell was going to be all kinds of fun.

Chapter 3

Hanging by a Thread, Sophy’s quilt shop, opened at 10:00 a.m. six days a week. Business was good enough that she could hire Saturday help—Rachel, just graduated from high school last spring—but weekdays were generally hers alone.

Hers and Daisy’s.

Sophy turned the Closed sign to Open, switched on lights all around the shop, stowed her purse in the storeroom and booted up the computer before giving her attention to Daisy. If only she were the older of the two girls, the morning would have gone so much more easily. Daisy thought school was a grand adventure: other kids, toys, books, play, classroom pets. She wanted to go.

Dahlia didn’t.

She’d never been away from her sister. She was so much more suspicious of strangers and so much more aware of her family’s place. She didn’t trust anyone but her mother and Daisy—and Sophy wasn’t sure about Maggie. Her job had always been to look out for Daisy, to make sure she didn’t talk to anyone or say anything she shouldn’t. She was the protector, and how could she protect when she was locked up in a stupid school with stupid people?

Daisy was walking in circles around the worktable Sophy had made available for her and Dahlia, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking every other step. Her ponytail had failed completely, the band hanging from a small clump of strands, ready to fall any moment. Pink from her strawberry milk rimmed her upper lip, while her lower lip was stuck out in major pout mode.

“What do you want to do this morning?” Sophy asked with a cheer that was mostly phony.

Daisy gave her a look that was mostly stony. “I want to go to school with Dahlia.”

“Besides that?”

“Nothing.” She gave her foot a little twist, intensifying the squeak against the wooden floor, then did it again.

“Stop that, please.”

Defiantly, she did it again.

Jaw clenched, Sophy turned to her own work area. In addition to selling fabrics and quilting supplies, she offered her own quilts for sale, taught classes, made custom pieces and machine-quilted tops for customers interested only in the piecing aspect. She always had a dozen or more projects in the works, and as Daisy continued the noise-making, she pulled out a plastic tub that contained one.

The piece was a twin-size quilt, creamy-hued pieces of fabric, plain or with tone-on-tone patterns so subtle she had to look twice at some to see them. It was a simple quilt, twelve-inch blocks with a scalloped edge. The beauty of this one was in the quilting, a meandering maze that led to a small outline-stitched heart. Though the long-arm quilting machine stood a few yards away, Sophy was finishing this one by hand because it was special.

It was for Dahlia, and maybe it would be with her when she someday found her heart’s desire. Please, God, let it be more worthy than her mother’s.

Daisy continued to wander, but the shop was a reasonably safe place to let her do that. The back door required a key to open the dead bolt. The stairs that had once led to the second floor ended at a blank wall and were used for display. There was a bell at the front door that chimed the instant anyone stepped on the floor mat, before they’d had a chance to even touch the door, and the windows were secured with extra locks.

As Sophy settled in, a sense of peace seeped through her. She loved every aspect of quilting, from choosing a pattern to assembling fabrics, cutting and piecing and quilting. To make her parents happy, she’d tried to major in business in college, dutifully attending classes at Clemson, stuffing dull facts she cared nothing about into her brain, giving up her social life and spending all her time studying. Quilting was the only other thing she made time for, and when one of her quilts won a major competition, she’d thrown in the business-major towel. Though there had been some lean times the first years the shop was open, she’d never regretted it.

Thanks to a Christmas gift from her sister, Miri, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for a long time.

When the bell dinged, she secured the needle in the fabric, then set the quilt on the worktable. Neither Daisy, too short to be seen over the stands of fabric bolts between them, nor the customer was visible from Sophy’s location, but clearly they could see each other as Daisy greeted the newcomer.

In a particularly Holigan sort of way.

“What are you doing here?”

Giving her chair a hip bump to slide it into place, Sophy hurried down the wide center aisle.

“Maybe I came to make a quilt.”

Sophy blinked. The voice was low and gravelly and definitely male, definitely not anyone she knew. It was the kind of voice that belonged on the radio in the middle of the night with a half-moon casting slivers of light across the bedroom floor while the half-open windows provided brief drafts of air cool enough to dry the skin. She would have recognized it if she’d heard it before. She would have dated this voice without caring a damn about the rest of him.

She saw Sophy first, head tilted back, hands on her hips, then another couple steps brought the man into view on the other side of a sampler hanging from the ceiling. She stopped suddenly.

She was wrong. She’d heard this voice before, a long time ago, and it had been Reba dating him. Her rebellious stage, Reba had later called it, designed to drive Mom and Dad insane. But Sophy had always thought her sister’s laugh when she said that seemed a tad wistful.

“Men don’t make quilts,” Daisy announced as if she actually knew.

Sean Holigan. Sophy had spent maybe a total of twenty minutes in his presence in all the time he and Reba had dated. She’d practically lived on the front porch swing back then, and he’d never been invited in while her parents tried to dissuade Reba from leaving the house with him. He had always leaned against the porch railing, smelling of cigarette smoke and heat and essence of bad boy, and he’d usually ignored her with her nose buried in a book.

Naive and just turned fourteen, she’d pretended to ignore him back, but deep inside, she’d been intrigued by him. It had broken her innocent little heart when he and Reba broke it off after less than a month. Soon after, he’d left Copper Lake, followed in the family tradition of going to jail, then disappeared from the radar.

And now he was back.

Not yet noticing her, he gazed down at Daisy, the resemblance so strong that anyone could see they were family. “Men can make quilts if they want to.”

“Nuh-uh. I’ve been here a long time, and I never seen one man makin’ a quilt.” Daisy’s vigorous headshake was the final straw for the band holding her hair. It flew loose, landing on the floor right between Sean’s scuffed boots. He bent to pick it up and, somewhere in the process, became aware of Sophy’s presence.

Slowly he stood, his gaze rising with the same easy fluidity. Her feminine ego wished she’d chosen prettier shoes, was glad she wore a dress that showed a lot of leg and hugged all her curves, and couldn’t help but shiver inside as he reached her face and his dark eyes turned smoky.

She’d bet her eyes were smoky, too. In fact, she was pretty sure steam was escaping wherever it could—her ears, the strands of her hair, the pores of her arms. The handsome teenage bad boy was all grown up, sinfully and wickedly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. His black hair was a little too long, his jaw unshaven for a few days, his mouth quirked in a way that was part smile and part sardonic curl and totally sexy.

As he finished straightening, he stretched the hair band over the second and fourth fingers on his left hand. She couldn’t help but look at his hand, noticing the absence of a wedding ring first, the scars and crooked joints of the fingers second. He’d been one of the guys who’d hung out at Charlie’s Custom Rods back then, always messing with cars. That could be dangerous work. So could being a Holigan.

It finally penetrated her dazed brain that she should say something, but before she could find even one word, he spoke.

“If it isn’t little Sophy Marchand. You grew up.”

Heat bloomed in her cheeks, and her heart fluttered. Her fourteen-year-old self was dancing in circles: He noticed me! He remembered me! He knows my name! She was searching for the woman sharing space with the girl—she didn’t want to act like a flustered kid—and thought she managed a reasonable substitute. “Sean Holigan. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

A blur somewhere on her left, Daisy said, “Hey, that’s me and Dahlia’s name, too. We’re hooligans. We like to run wild and break rules. Do you run wild, too?”

Aw, Sean Holigan embodied wild and rule breaking.

That quirk touched his mouth again. “Me? Do I look wild?”

Daisy’s gaze narrowed as she studied him. “Yup,” she concluded. “You got long hair and a beard.”

“Nah, anyone can grow hair and a beard. It takes more than that to be a Holigan. Your mama doesn’t have a beard yet, does she?” He pretended to scrutinize Daisy’s jaw. “Though it looks like yours is about to come in. There’s a tiny hair here and another over there.”

With a squeal, Daisy ran off to find the nearest mirror.

Smiling, Sophy drew him away from the door and deeper into the store. “How did you remember my name?”

“I waited on the porch at least three times a week for nearly a month, with you in your prissy little dress and your prissy little ponytail and your prissy little books. You’re the only one in the family who didn’t routinely close doors in my face.”

Though he said it lightly, shame stabbed at Sophy. When Sean had shown up for his and Reba’s first date, Mom and Dad had been arguing upstairs with her, so Sophy had answered the door. She’d invited him inside, and he’d taken maybe two steps across the threshold when her father had rushed down the stairs, ushered him back out, then closed the door. A quick peek out the window had shown that his features were bronzed, but they’d been nowhere as hot as her face was now.

After Reba had ridden off with the bad boy destined to lead her straight into hell, Sophy and her father had had a rather heated conversation about manners and being polite and standing behind the welcome they symbolically issued to everyone. The conversation had run in Dad’s favor, and that was why she’d made the point of being on the porch every time Sean came over. Waiting outside with her, she’d figured, would seem less a slap in the face than being told to wait out there alone.

“I’m glad you stuck with the dresses. Legs like those should be seen, not covered.”

The warmth of a pure flush touched her cheeks. “I remember hearing about this in middle school. Blarney, isn’t it? Pleasant flattery, charm, not to be trusted?”

“So young to be so cynical. All those books you were reading on the porch swing...what were they? Dry, dull stories by people who didn’t get their share of flattery and charm growing up?”

His description might describe the outside of the books, but she’d usually had one of her mother’s romance novels hidden inside. She would admit—only to herself—that despite the characters on the covers, all the heroines resembled her as she’d imagined herself in ten years, and a fair number of the heroes had had black hair, beard stubble, tight jeans and tighter T-shirts.

Interesting to know that fourteen years later, he was still prime romance-novel cover material.

Corralling those thoughts, she gestured toward the work space. “Come on back. We’ve got coffee and snacks.” She patted an empty table as she passed and felt when he stopped following her there. It was a combination of heat and cold, comfort and risk and danger. Giving herself a mental shake, she continued to the corner, started the coffee, and carried napkins, forks, paper plates and her usual box of pastries from A Cuppa Joe to the table.

“Daisy, are you going to join us?” Please don’t, Sophy thought. No, please do. Pint-size safety was better than none.

Daisy skipped over to kneel on the chair across from Sean’s. “You fibbed. I don’t have any hair growing there.” Her pout made clear she was disappointed. She would have had some fun with whiskers.

“You will before long,” Sophy murmured back in the corner, putting coffee mugs, cream and sweetener on a tray. She didn’t intend for Sean to hear her, but his grin when she turned around suggested he had.

She carefully set the tray down, then took the chair beside Daisy. “I don’t believe you two have actually met, have you?” she asked as she took her coffee, holding the cup in both hands to steady it.

Daisy looked up over her apple juice, poured into a coffee cup so she didn’t feel left out and earnestly replied, “We just met. He’s a hooligan, and I’m a hooligan. Didn’t you hear?”

Sophy smiled for the girl but kept her gaze on Sean. After a sip of coffee, he grimaced, shifted his attention to his niece and asked, “Do you know your mom’s brothers?”

“Yup.” She held up one hand to count them off. “There’s Declan and Ian and Sean. They’re all gone. That means they’re in jail.” Conspiratorially she whispered, “Mama’s in jail, too, so she’s gone—”

As understanding dawned on Daisy’s face, Sophy realized that gripping the cup wasn’t enough to keep her hands from shaking. She set it down and clasped them together in her lap.

“My mama’s got a brother named Sean, and your name is Sean, too. Isn’t that funny?”

Maybe it was premature to say understanding.

“Not really.” Sean took a breath. “I’m your mom’s brother. I’m your uncle, Daisy.”

* * *

Sean had never imagined himself saying those words to anyone. Hell, he’d never planned on having family in his life again. He’d had enough of Holigans to last three lifetimes, and he had no intention of taking on a wife, her family, maybe kids. Too much responsibility.

But he’d said them, and here he was, holding his damn breath waiting for them to sink in. He had no idea what to expect, but it wasn’t the reaction he got.

Daisy stared at him a long time, her head tilted to one side, then put her cup down, got to her feet and slid her chair under the table. “Mama says she don’t need her worthless brothers, so we don’t, neither.”

Picking up the cup again, she walked away with a fair amount of dignity for a five-year-old.

Maggie’s words were no surprise. Neither was the fact that she’d said them to her daughters. She’d always been one to speak first and consider the consequences—well, usually not at all. The surprise was that hearing them in Daisy’s little girlie voice added an extra sting to them. He hadn’t even known she existed before yesterday, and she knew just as little about him. Of course she would repeat what she’d heard Maggie say.

“I’d love to be able to say something wise here, but the truth is, I’m pretty new at this fostering business. I’ve only had the girls a few weeks, and we’re still getting to know each other.” Sophy smiled ruefully. “They have a lot of personality.”

That was a polite way to put it. He’d usually heard words like unruly, undisciplined, out of control, disreputable when people described Holigans. “I wasn’t expecting a warm and fuzzy reunion.” He shouldn’t have met the kids at all. There was no need. He was here to deal with Maggie.

But when he’d left the jail, he’d walked out to his car, then kept on walking. Before he’d known it, the sign for Hanging by a Thread—looking like a tabletop holding scissors, needles, thimbles and a big spool of thread, with a slender pony-tailed blonde climbing up its dangling tail—was ahead of him. He’d turned automatically through the gate, climbed the steps, walked through the door...and there had been one of the Maggies he remembered: young, inquisitive, bold and innocent.

Innocence being relative, he thought, recalling her casual words: Gone means they’re in jail.

Five-year-old girls with big eyes shouldn’t know what jail was.

“So...” Sophy fiddled with her cup. “What brings you back to Copper Lake?”

“I heard about Maggie.”

Concern crossed her face, making her brown eyes shadowy. “You came for the girls?”

“You mean to take them?” He’d faced a lot of scary things—hell, he’d been in prison—but the idea of taking custody of a five-and a six-year-old girl made him quake. “What would I do with them?”

Relief washed over her, and she tried to cover it by breaking off a piece of cookie from the box in the middle of the table. “Mostly answer questions. Repeat things to them. Try to teach them a few manners here and there. Chase them down.”

“Are they escape artists?”

“The best.”

Sounded familiar. “Our father used to tell us about when Declan started school. He ran away and made it all the way back home by himself three of the first five days. Ian did it four.”

“And did you make it five?”

He shrugged modestly.

“They haven’t succeeded in getting away from me yet, except for the day Ty and the social worker brought them. Since Ty was still here, I share the blame with him.” She rapped her knuckles on the wood tabletop for luck. “The only reason they haven’t escaped yet is because this place and my apartment—” she gestured toward the second floor— “are pretty secure. They’ve tried when we’re out, but I’m fast and I know my way around better than they do.”

The minds of kids baffled him. He had a pretty good idea what life was like for Daisy and Dahlia with their mom—a shabby house, probably never cleaned, dirty secondhand clothes, no regular or healthy meals, baths only when they couldn’t be avoided, men in and out, always a little drama going on. Sophy’s apartment was surely as clean as her shop; it was probably quiet, homey, with a room of their own, clean sheets, clean clothes that fit, good food, a healthy environment.

Gazing at her, he wondered if there was a man in her life. Probably. She’d fulfilled the promise of beauty he remembered in her fourteen-year-old self. Golden skin, a pink Cupid’s-bow mouth, a smile that could make a man think about forever, and who didn’t love a brown-eyed blonde?

If he were a different sort of man, he could. But he wasn’t. No attachments, no obligations, no emotional ties—those were his goals.

How’s that working for you, buddy?

“Where are you living these days?”

“Norfolk.”

“Still crazy about cars?”

“How do you know that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. Everyone knew the Holigan boys and the Calloway boys practically lived at Charlie’s.” Then she grinned. “When my friends and I walked over to SnoCap for cherry limeades, my mom always told us not to talk to any of you. She had us half-convinced that something awful would happen if we did, that we’d go straight to hell or grow horns and a tail or something.”

Of course she did. Mrs. Marchand had had very strong ideas about who was suitable company for her daughters and hadn’t been shy about expressing them. “A Marchand and a Calloway seems like a good match.”

Her mouth pursed slightly, Sophy shook her head. “They’re all married and so settled you wouldn’t recognize them.”

“Even Robbie?” He’d been the youngest of the Calloway brothers, the one least likely to do anything of merit with his life.

“Loving husband, adoring father of two, lawyer, goes to church, does volunteer work and everything.”

“I’m impressed.” Not that it was hard for a Calloway to amount to something when the family owned half the damn county.

Jeez, even to himself, Sean sounded bitter.

“Why Virginia?”

Before he could answer, Daisy came scuffing back around. She glared at him, then at Sophy. “What time will Dahlia be out of school?”

“About three-fifteen.”

“How long is that?”

“Four hours.”

“How long is that?”

“Halfway between lunch and dinner.”

Daisy’s face wrinkled with impatience, then she cocked her head Sean’s way. “He’d better be gone when Dahlia gets here.”

Sean would have let her wander off again, but Sophy turned to face her. “Remember when we talked about being rude? What did I tell you?”

Her ducked-down head muffled Daisy’s voice. “Not to, or I’ll get a time-out.”

“And that would mean no class for you today. Why don’t you get your bin out and start setting up?”

While the girl shuffled off, Sean got to his feet. He’d seen the sign in the front window about this month’s classes but couldn’t imagine one that could hold Daisy’s interest for more than five minutes. “I should get going.”

Leaving Daisy settling in at another worktable, Sophy walked with him toward the front door. “Have you seen Maggie yet?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yeah, for a few minutes. She wasn’t happy, so she didn’t stick around long.”

“Did she ask about the girls?”

It hadn’t occurred to him until now that she hadn’t. Even when he said, I saw Daisy this morning, she hadn’t wanted to know how she looked, if she was okay, if she missed her mama. All she’d done was turn it into an opportunity to criticize him.

He shook his head, part embarrassed, part annoyed with his sister and part of him just plain sad.

Sophy’s expression was resigned, as if this wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question and gotten the same answer.

They were just feet from the door when it swung open and two white-haired women started inside before freezing in their tracks. One was a stranger to him, but the other had been the queen bitch of Copper Lake fourteen years ago and probably still was. Louise Wetherby had never liked anyone, but especially anyone she considered beneath her. The Holigans hadn’t had the money to eat in her pricey restaurant or the right, in her mind, to live in her town or breathe her air. Even now, her nose was twitching as if she smelled something unwelcome.

Though her icy gaze was locked on him—as if he might grab her purse and run if she looked away for a moment—her words weren’t directed to him. “What is that man doing here, Sophy?”

“The same thing you are, Mrs. Wetherby. He came to see about making a quilt.”

The tautness of Sean’s muscles eased slightly.

The Queen sniffed haughtily while her minion twittered. “Don’t be ridiculous. We thought we’d seen the last of him when we ran him out of town all those years ago.”

“You must be confusing him with someone else, Mrs. Wetherby,” Sophy said with scorn camouflaged by sweet Southern politeness. “As I recall, he graduated from high school one day and climbed on the back of his motorcycle and left town the next. He was gone long before anyone in town even knew. Now, just head on back to the work area. If you ask nicely, Daisy will be happy to help you get your supplies.”

Another sniff as the two women began walking again. “A five-year-old has no place in a quilting class,” Louise huffed, but her friend hesitantly argued.

“Now, Louise, she is learning to piece a quilt top, and that’s exactly what the class is for. My grandmother learned to quilt when she was six, so it’s not...”

As the old women’s conversation faded, silence vibrated between Sean and Sophy. This time she hadn’t turned red, the way she had when he’d mentioned the lack of welcome for him at her house, but rather looked more irritated than embarrassed. She opened the door, the bell ringing, then stepped outside onto the porch with him.

He broke the quiet when the door was closed behind them. “I see Louise is still her sunny, smiling self.”

“Lucky us. You know, I’ve always wondered just what is so bad about that woman’s life that she has to treat people the way she does. She’s had every privilege money can buy.”

“Some people are just that way.”

She drew a deep breath, and in the late-morning light, he appreciated the fit of the red dress and its contrast against her skin and hair all over again. Out here, away from all the fabric, he could smell her perfume, sweet, teasing, there with one breath, gone with the next. Her eyes were browner, her skin warmer, her presence magnified, her smile twice as dazzling.

“Here I felt honored that you remembered my name, and then you pull Louise’s name out of the thin air of your memory.”

“Different reasons for remembering. She tried to have me arrested for hanging outside her restaurant. Said we were scaring customers away. And she tried to get us taken away from my dad a couple of times. She didn’t think he was a fit father.” After a moment, he added, “She was right about that. He was a lousy father, but he was ours. He was what we knew.”

“Is that why you didn’t come back for Mr. Patrick’s funeral?” Sophy asked quietly.

He walked to the top of the steps and stared across the street. On the left was River’s Edge, one of Copper Lake’s grand old mansions, and on the right, a much-smaller, less genteel place that advertised itself as a bed-and-breakfast.

Probably a more comfortable place than the motel.

Definitely better situated for keeping an eye on Daisy and Dahlia.

As well as their foster mother.

Are you freaking crazy? The kids don’t want you around; you need to keep your distance from Sophy; and what the hell does comfort matter to a Holigan?

“It’s complicated,” he replied at last, the answer as well suited to his thoughts as her question.

She came to stand a few feet away, making the warm day hotter. “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight so you can meet Dahlia?”

His gaze shot to her. A Marchand not only inviting him inside her home but to pull up a chair to the table and eat with them. Was she freaking crazy? There would be hell to pay with her parents, maybe even with the social worker. He doubted hanging out with disreputable uncle was on the social worker’s list of acceptable activities for the kids.

“You can’t meet one and not the other. Daisy would lord it over Dahlia to make up for not getting to go to school, and you don’t want to see Daisy lording anything over Dahlia. About six? We eat early so they can have a little downtime before I have to wrestle them into the bathtub and pajamas and bed.” She made a wry face. “They never had a regular bedtime before, and they’re not loving it.”

If he said yes, it would be one more stupid, dangerous agreement he’d made in the past day and a half. He hadn’t had much chance at saying no to Special Agent Baker or Craig, but he could turn down Sophy. He could suggest coming after school to meet Dahlia, who wasn’t likely to be any more welcoming than Daisy. He could even suggest they go out to dinner instead—somewhere about twenty miles away from town. He had a reputation to live down. She had one to protect.

But he didn’t try to get the words no, thanks out of his mouth. He knew a losing battle when he saw it. All he could do was be on guard. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll see you at six.”

Chapter 4

Sophy and Daisy were waiting on the porch when the school bus rumbled to a stop out front and Dahlia climbed off. Bouncing in place, Daisy waited until her sister had come through the gate, then raced to her. “Guess who I saw, Dahlia? Mama’s brother Sean.”

Shifting her backpack to the other shoulder, Dahlia scowled at her. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I saw him at Cuppa Joe, and then he come here. His name is Sean, and he’s Mama’s brother.”

Leaning against the post at the top of the steps, Sophy wondered how she could have missed Sean at the coffee shop that morning. Oh, yes, because she’d had a whiny five-year-old in meltdown mode.

“No, you didn’t. You’re just makin’ that up. He’s locked up somewhere, just like Declan and Ian.”

The set of her mouth smug, Daisy shook her head. “Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

Dahlia’s gaze flickered to Sophy, then away again before she sullenly climbed the steps and went inside the shop.

“How was school?” Sophy asked as she and Daisy followed.

Dahlia shrugged her thin shoulders, continuing to the back, the refrigerator and the treats. Her uniform of khaki shorts and blue polo shirt was surprisingly clean and neat—Daisy wore milk, juice, grime and the oops of lunch on her clothes—and her ponytail was still in good shape. Because she hadn’t met anyone to play with?

“I wanted to go to school, too,” Daisy said, dogging her footsteps, “but I’m glad she didn’t let me because then I wouldn’t have met Sean. Mama’s brother. Our uncle.”

After getting a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, Dahlia dropped her backpack on the table, turned to Sophy and gave up resisting. “Really?”

“Really. He’s coming to dinner tonight to meet you.”

She considered that a moment, then shrugged again. “I don’t care. Mama says he’s bad and we don’t need him.”

“That’s what I told her!” Daisy exclaimed.

Mama says. Sophy wished Maggie had kept at least a few thoughts to herself. Who was she, anyway, to judge anyone else? Given the life she’d chosen, odds were good that her daughters might have to turn to one of their uncles one day, but loving-mom Maggie had tried to poison the girls against them.

“He’s not bad, Dahlia, and he hasn’t been locked up somewhere.” Belatedly, Sophy hoped that was true. “He lives in Virginia. He just found out your mom was in trouble yesterday, and he came straight here.”

“Is he gonna get her out of jail?”

“Um, I don’t know.” Ty had told Sophy that Maggie wasn’t likely to get out on her hundred-thousand-dollar bond. She didn’t have money like that, her boyfriend wouldn’t spend it on her if he did and her local family—a couple of teenage nephews and two ex-sisters-in-law—couldn’t afford it. Could Sean? If he could, would he?

Sophy wouldn’t. She loved her sisters and her brother, but she wouldn’t risk ten thousand dollars to get them out of jail, especially if they had a track record like Maggie’s. But then, her sisters and brother wouldn’t be in jail in the first place...well, except for Miri’s one arrest. But Miri hadn’t been selfish enough to get involved with drugs. She’d tracked down their birth father, gotten a job with his company and, um, relieved him only of the child support he’d failed to pay for all those years after abandoning them with their mentally ill mother.

Miri also hadn’t expected to slide on it. She’d pleaded guilty, gone to prison and served her sentence...then delivered a share of the money to each of her siblings—Sophy, Chloe and Oliver. The payback was nice. Knowing how hard Miri had worked to recover what their bastard father had hidden from them was precious. Reconnecting with the siblings she’d been separated from more than twenty years ago had been priceless.

“If he’s not gettin’ Mama out of jail, I don’t wanna meet him.”

Dahlia got her work bin and settled at the table. She had a great eye for putting fabric colors and patterns together. That had been the hardest part about quilting for Sophy, something she hadn’t mastered until she’d been in business a year or two. Even now, she sometimes questioned her choices until she cut out the shapes and laid them out together, but it came naturally to the six-year-old.

“You have an artist’s soul,” she murmured.

Though she pretended not to hear, the tips of Dahlia’s ears turned red.

Sophy spent the next few hours waiting on customers and working on a baby quilt due next week. She’d already completed the rest of the order, all in light blue and tan and featuring a pudgy smiling elephant: a wall hanging, curtains, pillows, linens and, for future use, a tooth-fairy pillow, bearing the same elephant with a pouch beneath his back to hold the tooth and the money the fairy left behind. She planned to do something similar for her own babies’ nurseries. She didn’t have a dream wedding in mind, but she had already designed a couple of fairy-tale nurseries.

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