“I still have moments of rebellion,” Lorrayne said. “Like now.”

“Now?” Cole asked, the word shimmering between them. He thought of warm moonlit nights and soft, supple bodies. Kisses that went on forever.

Did her kisses do that? Had she ever felt that strong pull that drew a person into the eye of a hurricane? Or had she been like him, seduced by the promise only to be disappointed in the execution?

“What are you thinking?” Cole smiled.

“Nothing that has to do with the case.”

“Yeah, me too.” He took a breath. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes. Slowly he rose to his feet, slipping his hand to her cheek. “Want to get it out of the way?”

“You’re on,” she heard herself whispering.

The moment he kissed her, he was on. Completely turned on.

Dangerous Games
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

writes books distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To

my readers,

with sincere thanks

for being there

Love,

Marie

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” Lorrayne Cavanaugh declared loudly before anyone else had a chance to comment on the time as she burst into the kitchen. She was still dressing herself, her hair only half dry from the whirlwind shower she’d taken less than five minutes ago. To the eleven people already in the room, she knew she had to look like a tornado searching for somewhere to land. But they were used to that. They were her family. “I’m late.”

“You’re not late, honey,” Andrew told her mildly, setting her plate down on the table. His gray-blue eyes met his youngest daughter’s as she slid into her customary chair. “For lunch.”

Not trusting the watch she’d just strapped on, Rayne glanced at the clock on the wall above the industrial stove.

“Dad, it’s just a little past seven-fifteen,” she protested.

“More like seven-thirty,” her oldest brother, Shaw, corrected. Amusement played on his lips. Rayne had been born six days past her due date and had been habitually late ever since.

Clay, her other brother, reached for a second helping of eggs and bacon. He spared her a fleeting glance. “Give it up, Rayne, we all know you’re going to be late for your own funeral.”

About to refill the decreasing supply of hotcakes, Andrew looked up sharply. As head of a clan that had, for the most part, all found their calling in some form of law enforcement, he took some things far more seriously than the rest of them. He’d been to too many funerals in his time, seen too many good people cut down in their prime and put into the ground.

His eyes swept over the group he loved more than life itself. “There’ll be no talk of funerals at the breakfast table.”

“Right, much better topic at the dinner table,” Rayne cracked. It earned her a chiding look from her older sister, Callie. Though she didn’t move a muscle outwardly, inside, Rayne squirmed. “What, did I miss something?”

Teri, Clay’s elder sister by a minute and a half, a fact she rarely allowed him to forget, laughed shortly. “The way you like to lounge around in bed, it’s a wonder you don’t miss everything.”

There were two years between the sisters and if there was one thing Rayne hated, it was to be made to feel like the baby of the family. At twenty-five, she was hoping to have finally left that issue behind her. She was beginning to realize that the odds were she never would.

But that didn’t mean she was about to accept it docilely. “That’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” They all knew that Teri loved to sleep in whenever she could.

With a sound of finality, Andrew placed the plate of hotcakes in the middle of the table, giving each of his daughters a warning look. Unlike Callie who’d never given him any grief and who’d now settled in with a good man, Teri and especially Rayne enjoyed burning the candle at both ends whenever the opportunity arose. There were nights when both or either of the girls would roll in only to have to leave for work a short while thereafter. He was utterly convinced that youth was wasted on the young.

“No bickering at the table—any table,” he deliberately underscored before one or the other resorted to a sarcastic question.

“Nope, that’s your domain,” Rayne pronounced cheerfully just before she bit into the short stack she had liberally doused with maple syrup.

The battleground between father and daughter was familiar, if no longer so frequently tread. “I don’t bicker, I impart wisdom,” Andrew informed Rayne, then widened his scope. “The rest of you bicker with it.”

“Not me, Dad.” Rising, Teri crossed to her father and kissed his cheek. “I know you just spout pearls of knowledge.”

He looked at the plate Teri had left in her wake. She’d hardly touched any of it. He was a firm believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day. “Is that all you’re eating?”

It had never taken much to fill her. She was usually the first one up from the table. This morning was no exception. Besides, there were reports waiting for her, reports she’d put off filing. She had that in common with the rest of her siblings.

With a grin, Teri patted her flat stomach. “I eat any more and I won’t be able to catch the bad guys.”

“You could always try talking them to death,” Clay suggested. It earned him a sharp poke in the ribs from his fiancée who sat beside him with the little boy he’d only recently discovered was his.

Ilene flashed an apologetic smile in Teri’s direction. “He hasn’t had enough coffee to seal his mouth yet.”

Teri returned the smile. “Don’t need to explain Clay to me. I had his number years ago, right, Clay?” She sent a penetrating, affectionate look his way before going toward the back counter where all of their weapons were carefully placed whenever they entered the house. With six of them police detectives, that made for quite an arsenal.

Rayne glanced in Teri’s direction. The display of weapons was something they all took for granted, but sometimes she saw it through the eyes of an outsider, a role she’d once occupied within her own family. “Enough hardware there to start a gun shop,” she commented, shifting her attention back to her meal.

At any one given mealtime, there were anywhere from the three Cavanaughs who still lived in the house Andrew and Rose had bought on their fifth anniversary to the eighteen members and almost-members of the Cavanaugh family. Most of the time, the count was far higher than three. That was due in equal parts to Andrew’s skills in the kitchen where the love of cooking he’d inherited from his own mother bloomed, and to the fact that they were a tightly knit family, a credit to the man who required their presence on a regular basis.

Rayne knew he was determined to keep them all together no matter what went on in their separate lives. “In family there is strength” was something he’d instilled in all of them.

The credo was fashioned after Rayne’s mother’s disappearance and in no small way helped to keep Andrew Cavanaugh going from one day to the next.

Sitting at her side, Callie leaned over and whispered, “It’s the anniversary of Uncle Mike’s death.” The expression on her face told Rayne that Callie was certain she’d forgotten the date. Rayne said nothing because she had remembered. “He’s a little touchy today. Try not to get under his skin too much, okay?”

Rayne bristled slightly. She would have done more so if it hadn’t been for the fact that her oldest sister was right. In her time, she’d gotten under her father’s skin far more than the rest of them combined. But then, she’d been the youngest when her mother disappeared, not quite ten at the time, and it had been an almost impossible adjustment for her.

She’d been the closest to Rose. It had taken her a while to get over her resentment toward the others who had had more time with the mother she adored. She’d felt cheated somehow, both by fate and her siblings who could recall more things, had more stories concerning their mother than she did.

It had taken her more time still to forgive her father for the argument that had caused her mother to leave the house that day in the first place. Heated words had been exchanged, and Rose Cavanaugh had gone for a long drive to cool off. It was a habit of hers. Except that this time, she’d never returned home.

A massive dragnet had been set in motion. Only three Cavanaughs had been on the police force then: Andrew, Mike and Brian. Her father and his brothers, aided by the entire force, had hunted extensively. Rose Cavanaugh’s car was found at the bottom of the river the next day.

It took little imagination to piece the sequence of events together. Visibility had been poor that morning, with a low-lying fog enshrouding the winding road that was her favorite route to take. The car had swerved and gone over the side, plunging into the river just beyond. “Death by drowning” was the official verdict when the case was finally closed.

But Rose’s body had never been recovered and so, Andrew maintained, she was still out there somewhere. Everyone outside of the family had given up hope of finding her alive years ago. And then, one by one, though none ever put it in so many words, everyone within the family had eventually accepted what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion: Rose Cavanaugh had perished that morning and her body had been swept out to sea.

Everyone within the family except for Andrew. Taking early retirement and leaving the force, he still retained the copious notes on the case, still periodically pored over them in hopes of seeing something that he hadn’t seen the other thousand times he’d reviewed the file. Something fresh that would lead him in the right direction and to Rose.

He didn’t seem like a man given to unfounded optimism, but he clung to his hope the way a drowning man clung to a piece of floating wood.

“I might be retired, Callie, but my hearing’s not.” Andrew turned from Teri as she took her leave and looked at his oldest daughter. “When you’re a cop, or an ex-cop,” he added significantly, even though he maintained that once a cop, always a cop, “death isn’t something you like to joke about. It sits in that squad car or unmarked vehicle beside you every day, keeping you company whether you want it to or not.” He looked at his late brother’s children, Patrick and Patience. His door was always open to them as it was to his brother Brian’s four. He couldn’t love any of them any more than if they were his own. “Mike’s death just reminds us of that.” He felt himself tearing up and deliberately turned back to the stove, even though there was nothing left on there to cook. “I’ll be going to the cemetery around three today. Any of you is welcome to join me.”

Rayne didn’t wait for any of the others to say something. She knew they’d all be paying their respects, one way or another, when they could manage it during the day.

“I’ll see if I can stop by, Dad,” she told her father.

He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. Everyone knew that there was a special place in his heart for the child who had caused him the most grief. “That’s three today, not tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, but without animosity in her voice. There had been a great deal of it once, but all of it had long since been leached from her. She’d come to terms with her demons. Gulping down her coffee, she snatched up a piece of toast to see her on her way. Her plate was immaculate.

Rising, she shoved the chair back into place. “Well, if I’m going to claim some personal time today, I’d better put in a few hours first.”

Clay shook his head as he looked at his sister’s plate. The last one at the table, she was technically the first one finished. This after two servings that had gone by at lightning speed. “Damn, but you eat faster than any three people I know.”

Rayne gave him a knowing look before glancing sympathetically toward the woman next to him. “That’s because until Ilene had the clear misfortunate of hooking up and taming you, all you knew were exotic dancers who consumed a grape a day and pronounced themselves fat.”

The disgruntled look her brother shot her was reward enough for her. Rayne headed toward the collection of weapons on the counter. Hers had been there since last night.

“Cole Garrison’s back in town,” Patrick told his cousin just as she was about to strap on her holster.

It stopped Rayne in her tracks. Cole. She hadn’t thought anything would bring him back to town. “What?”

Patrick looked at the others. It was clear that he had the inside track on this piece of news. “Yeah, I heard that he came back last night, driving a flaming red Porsche. I guess he doesn’t hate money anymore.”

Shaw gave a low whistle of appreciation. “A flaming red Porsche. Not bad for a black sheep.”

Left in the dark, Ilene looked from Patrick to Shaw to Clay, waiting for enlightenment. Like the others, she’d grown up in this city, but she’d gone to a private school. “Cole Garrison?” The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Someone I went to school with,” Clay told her.

Shaw drained the last of his coffee. “The town’s official bad boy.”

“Except that it’s his brother who’s accused of murder, not him,” Callie said as she pushed her plate back. “That makes Eric Garrison the new winner of the title, wouldn’t you say?”

“Keyword ‘accused,”’ her fiancé, Brent Montgomery, reminded her.

As a criminal court justice, Brent had been the presiding judge who had placed bail for the younger Garrison. The amount had been high, but certainly nothing to cause Eric’s affluent parents more than a momentary pause. It had surprised everyone when they hadn’t come up with the money. Especially when they had gone through the trouble of securing Schaffer Holland, an excellent defense lawyer for him. Currently, Eric was still in lockup.

“There’s an awful lot of evidence against him,” Patrick pointed out.

Without realizing it, Rayne squared her shoulders. “Maybe.”

Rayne saw the others all turn to look at her. She knew what they were thinking. That she was tilting at windmills again. Maybe that made her like her father, unwilling to accept something that everyone else took to be true.

Shaw put the obvious into words. “So you don’t believe he killed Kathy Fallon?”

The blond crop of curls moved about her head like rays of sunbeams dancing along the wind as she shook it. “Not a hundred percent, no.” It was a gut feeling, but she wasn’t about to admit that to this crowd. She knew what they’d say. Gut feelings were instincts reserved for the older members of the family, not her. “Eric’s spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he’s not violent.”

Shaw leaned back in his chair, his eyes pinned to her. “You went out with him, when? Seven, eight years ago? People change.” And then he laughed as he gestured at her. “For God’s sake, look at you. Eight years ago, your hair was blue, and so was your mouth. We all became cops so we could cover your butt and keep you out of trouble.”

Rayne rolled her eyes. “Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically.

“Hey, every family’s gotta have a goal that pulls them together,” Callie told her.

She was backed up by a chorus of murmurings. Amusement played on Callie’s lips as she looked at her watch. They all liked to tease Rayne, but there’d been a time when they’d been really seriously worried about the youngest Cavanaugh. A time when the future hadn’t looked as good as it did.

“I think all of us better be heading out.” Rising, Callie stopped to look at her almost stepdaughter, the child responsible for bringing her and Brent ultimately together in the first place. “Time to get you to school, Rachel, and your dad to the courthouse.” She looked at Brent. “Justice can’t make a move without him.”

A chorus of groans met her comment. “Kiss him and get it over with already,” Shaw ordered with a heavy sigh as he gained his feet and threw down his napkin.

“In front of all you Peeping Toms, no way.” Taking charge of Rachel, Callie moved the little girl toward the door, then paused to nudge aside Rayne and pick up her own holster and weapon. “You need a woman, Shaw.”

“I could fix you up,” Brent offered, helping his daughter on with her jacket.

Shaw held up his hands to ward off the offer and any others that might be following in its wake. “I’ll find my own woman, thanks a bunch.” He looked at the youngest Cavanaugh and attempted a diversion. “Besides, Rayne is the one you should be concentrating on. She’s the wild one, not me.”

“Not wild enough to want my own woman,” Rayne deadpanned. Ready, she paused long enough to brush a kiss on her father’s cheek. She figured if they both lived another fifty years, she might just be able to make amends for the way she’d treated him those awful years after her mother disappeared. “See you at the cemetery, Dad.”

Andrew eyed her. Like all his children, Rayne had good intentions. But her follow-through left something to be desired. Still, she’d come a very long way from the tremendous handful she’d been. There were times during those years when he’d been convinced he’d be celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday standing over her grave rather than joining the rest of her family at a ceremony naming her Aurora’s newest, youngest police detective. That had gone down as one of the proudest moments of his life.

He nodded, then winked. “I’m only half counting on that, you know.”

Stepping out of the way as Clay retrieved his weapon, she fixed her father with a reproving look. “Where’s your faith?”

“Plenty of faith,” he declared, sinking the skillet into a sink of sudsy water. “That’s why I’m half counting on it instead of not at all.”

“Someday,” Rayne told him as the rest of her family filed by on their way through the back door and to the cars that were parked outside, like as not blocking access to her own vehicle, “you’re going to learn to count on me completely.”

“I’m looking forward to that day, Rayne,” he told her as she hurried out the door, the last as usual. “I surely am.”

He glanced at the photograph on the seat beside him to make sure.

It was her.

Lorrayne Cavanaugh.

If his private detective hadn’t taken the photograph and given it to him, Cole doubted that he would have recognized her. Certainly not at first glance. She’d changed a great deal since he’d last seen her. The clothes were no longer this side of outlandish, but tasteful and subdued. She wore a crisp light gray jacket over pants the same color and a light blue blouse that even at this distance brought out her eyes.

The most startling thing about Lorrayne’s transformation was her hair. It was normal instead of the bright royal blue he recalled. She was a blonde now, like the rest of the females in her family. The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn it spiky. Now it was short, curly. Soft. It suited her.

So did the life she’d elected to follow instead of the hell-bent-for-leather one she’d led when he’d finally left town.

He supposed that gave them something in common. Once upon a time, while in their teens, they’d both been on a slippery slope, aimed toward inevitable self-destructive endings. But apparently she had reversed her course. Just as had he.

That gave them something else in common.

They had a third thing in common and it was that third thing that had brought him here to the Aurora police department’s recently repaved parking lot, waiting for her to put in an appearance.

A private detective was all well and good, but he needed someone on the inside. Someone in the know. Before it was too late.

He sat watching her for half a second longer. Lorrayne emerged from her vehicle looking a little breathless, as if she’d pushed her car to the maximum to get here. Slamming the car door, she took long strides toward the front of the building.

The expression on her face dovetailed with the one clear memory he had of her. She’d come barreling into the high school cafeteria just after the last bell had rung and run smack into him. Her books had gone flying, but it wasn’t that which had made an impression on him. And it wasn’t her blue hair, either, although that had fleetingly registered.

It was her wide eyes as they’d look up at him that had imprinted themselves on his memory. That and the press of her body against his. Soft in the right places, firm in the rest.

But he’d been a senior at the time and she was just a freshman, utterly wild by reputation, even then. He’d wanted none of that, none of Aurora. What had driven him at the time was a desire for escape. All he had wanted then was to finish high school and to get the hell out of the town, away from his family. More specifically, away from his parents.

And now here he was, back again. Looking to right what he knew in his soul was a horrible wrong.

Funny how life turned out. He would have bet anything of the fortune he’d managed to accrue that he would never set foot back in Aurora again, no matter what.

But then, having his younger brother accused of murder had never been factored into that initial scenario.

“Lorrayne,” he called as he got out of the cherry-red convertible. If she heard him, the woman gave no indication as she continued to hurry toward the front entrance. Cole lengthened his stride as he tried to catch up. She was small, but from what he could see, she was all leg. He raised his voice another decibel. “Lorrayne Cavanaugh.”

Lorrayne.

No one ever called her Lorrayne anymore unless it was official business—or someone in the family trying to get under her skin.

With an impatient sigh, Rayne abruptly stopped and swung around to see who was calling after her. And narrowly avoided colliding into a man who smelled good enough to eat.

Chapter 2

It took Rayne less than a second to recognize him. The man she was looking up at was older now—ten years, if she recalled correctly—and perhaps even better looking now, if that were possible. But it was Cole Garrison, all right. She’d stake her next month’s pay on it.

She would have known him even if conversation at the breakfast table hadn’t found its way to the subject of his brother’s arrest for suspicion of murder. There was just no mistaking those chiseled cheekbones, that artistically perfect cleft chin, those deep blue eyes or that mane of deep black hair that, though tamer and shorter now, still reminded her of the mane of a proud lion prowling over a domain he considered to be singularly his own.

The thing she didn’t understand was what Cole was doing here, calling out to her. She didn’t even think he knew her name. Undoubtedly he was here to see his brother, but why was he trying to get her attention?

And how had he even known it was her? She’d only been thrown into his speech class that one semester when she was fifteen. That was ten years ago and she’d gone through a hell of a lot of changes since then. When she looked back at photographs from that period, she hardly resembled her younger self.

Well, whatever his reasons were, Rayne thought as she watched him cross through the parking lot, she was about to find out.

“You might not remember me—” His voice, deep, low, rumbled over her like a warming breeze in April.

“I remember you.” A hint of a smile curved her lips. “Cole Garrison, right?”

Her eyes swept over the tan camel-hair coat he wore. It was a complete departure from the black windbreaker he used to favor. He was dressed like a businessman, not like the brooding heartthrob half the female population of Aurora High had mooned over. Time caught up to all of them, she supposed.

“Nice coat,” she commented. Looking back, she realized that it was probably an inane thing to say, but she wasn’t at her best when caught off guard in a social situation.

This wasn’t a social situation, Rayne reminded herself. The man was clearly here about his brother. But again, what did that have to do with her?

“Thanks.” Surprising her, he took hold of her arm, giving every impression that he wanted to lead her off to the side. “Have you got a minute?”

She glanced down at his hand, her inference clear. She didn’t like being led around, even by men who looked as if they could start up a dead woman’s heart with one well-timed kiss.

Cole released her arm.

She remained standing where she was. “You want to see me.” It wasn’t quite a question as it was an astonished statement.

“Yes.”

Her eyes never left his. “Not your brother.”

He’d learned the value of planning things out. He wouldn’t have been where he was if he hadn’t. There were arrangements to be made. “I’ll see him after I talk to you.”

She shifted to the side, allowing several uniformed policemen to pass and enter the building. “Why?”

“Because I hear that you’re not satisfied.”

Rayne blinked, drawing a complete blank. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not satisfied that Eric committed the murder. That he did what they arrested him for.”

The pieces pulled themselves together. For a second there, when he’d said satisfied, her mind had leaped to an entirely different set of circumstances. Because she wasn’t satisfied. Her life was good now, far better than it had been for many turbulent, troubled years, and her family was the best she could ever hope for, having stuck by her when even archangels would have bailed. But she was haunted by the feeling that there was something more out there.

She wasn’t sure just what, only that it was something. And even though it had no shape, no name, not even a vague definition, that feeling called out to her.

Rayne was quick to rally together her thoughts. “I’m really not the one you should be talking to,” she pointed out. “I’m not handling the case. I wasn’t even the first officer on the scene.”

That had been Richard Longwell, a patrolman she’d been through the academy with. They still maintained a friendship, although distant now since she had surpassed him by becoming the youngest detective on the force. It had driven an unspoken wedge between them.

The case belonged to Webber and Rollins, both of whom were very territorial when it came to their cases. “I can point out the detectives—” she began to offer, turning toward the entrance.

He cut her off. “No.”

“No?” She was lost again. The man persisted in not making any sense.

This time, Cole moved so that his body blocked her immediate exit. He didn’t want to talk to the first officer on the scene or the detective handling the case, at least not yet. Because facing them alone, he would be given the polite but disdainful treatment accorded to all family members. As far as the police saw him, he was the brother of a murderer. No matter what kind of a picture was painted for the public at large, once the police had a suspect, the burden of proof was on the accused’s side. The accused had to prove he was innocent.

Cole needed someone involved, but not in the middle of it. He needed someone at least partially sympathetic to his cause. Which had brought him to a former hippie/wild child.

“No,” he repeated firmly. “I want to talk to you.”

They waltzed around in circles and as gorgeous as this dance partner was, she had a desk to get to and overdue reports to file. “At the risk of repeating myself, why?”

He gave her the same reason he’d just cited. “Because I heard that you don’t believe Eric did it.”

She’d done a little discreet nosing around on her own since Eric’s arrest less than a week ago, but she certainly hadn’t made her feelings public. As far as she knew, only her family was aware that she wasn’t on board with what the D.A.’s office believed.

Unless the man was into mind reading, there was no way he could have known.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “And just where did you hear that?”

He waved a dismissive hand at her question. “That doesn’t matter—”

“Oh, but I think it does.” Her voice was deceptively calm. She didn’t like not knowing things, especially when they concerned her. It irritated her beyond belief, chafing her like a stiff tag sewn into the back of a shirt.

His eyes darkened impatiently. “I don’t have time to argue.”

“Well then you’ve come to the wrong place,” she informed him, “because my family tells me that I could argue the devil out of his pitchfork, if only in the interests of his own self-defense.”

Cole did the unexpected. Rather than make a derogatory comment or utter an uncensored remark about what others referred to as her infuriating behavior, he smiled.

He smiled and she had the exact same reaction she’d had that very first time when she’d collided with him in the lunchroom. Butterflies. Big, fat butterflies with enormous wingspans that fluttered and tickled the edges of her entire inner structure with every movement.

For all intents and purposes, for a tiny instance in time, she was fifteen again. Fifteen and a veritable outcast, self-made or not, from every scenario life had to offer including the one that involved her own family. The only normal path she took was to have a crush, a crush that was born that day, only to die ignobly several weeks later when she’d overheard Cole making a comment about her to a friend of his. He said she looked like a clown. And she’d felt utterly and completely devastated, not to mention angry and humiliated. It took a long time for a phoenix to rise out of those ashes.

Funny what the mind chose to remember. She hadn’t thought about that moment in maybe nine years or so.

“Did I say something funny?” she challenged, her cool evaporating slightly as the memory of that day grew a little more vivid.

“Under any other circumstances, I’d pay to see a demonstration of that,” he told her. “But right now—”

“Your brother’s under arrest for murder and your parents won’t put up the one million dollars to bail him out,” she concluded. “Not exactly the Brady Bunch, are you?” God help her, but for one moment she felt smug. Her family would have never subjected her to the kind of public humiliation that Eric’s had heaped on him. They would have sold the house before they’d allow her to languish in jail one extra minute.

He laughed shortly and this time there wasn’t a hint of amusement. “More like the Addams Family without the humor.”

The smugness vanished and she felt sorry. For Eric.

“Wow.” The word escaped. She hadn’t expected Cole to be this honest, especially not with someone who, high school alma mater aside, was a complete stranger to him. “So what exactly is it that you want from me—” she glanced at her watch “—other than making me late?”

“I’d like to talk to you when you get off duty.”

“All right, fine, but I really can’t help you,” she warned. “It’s not my case.”

“So you said.” His mind jumped ahead to a meeting place. Somewhere she’d feel at ease. He needed to win her over. “Do they still have that Mexican restaurant on 4th and Silver?”

“El Rancho Grande?” For a second she’d forgotten that he hadn’t been around all these years. The restaurant had closed down after a fire had gutted it almost eight years ago. “It’s gone. There’s a Chinese restaurant in its place now. The China Inn.”

Cole smiled again. He’d traveled over most of the lower forty-eight states. Whenever he came into a new city, one of the first things he’d do was find the best Chinese restaurant. It was a weakness he allowed himself.

“Even better. When do you get off?”

She was taking off early today, as she’d promised her father. Rayne didn’t feel like sharing that with him. It was too personal. “How does six sound?”

“Earlier would be better,” he told her honestly, “but six’ll do.”

She nodded then looked toward the electronic doors significantly. “It’ll also be impossible if I don’t get in there to start my shift.”

He moved out of her way, then followed her up the stone steps. Rayne found herself struggling with an uneasy feeling that had no name, no reason for existence. It was the same kind of feeling she had when something was about to happen. But there was no stakeout here, no reason to want someone watching her back. She didn’t get it.

Cole waited until she made it through the doors before walking in behind her. “Who do I talk to about seeing my brother?”

“That would be the desk sergeant.” She pointed the man out to him.

“Thanks.” As he began to walk toward the policeman, it was clear that he and the woman he’d stopped were bound in opposite directions. “By the way—” he tossed the words over his shoulder “—you look good. Electric-blue was never your color.”

Her mouth dropped open. That was twice he’d caught her off guard.

She was definitely slipping, Rayne thought as she hurried down the corridor toward the elevator. But then, as she recalled, Cole Garrison had that kind of an effect on people.

Some things never change.

“Three-ten, not bad for you.”

The lush green grass hushed her quick steps as she’d hurried across the field toward her father. His back was to her and he was kneeling over his brother’s tombstone. She could have sworn he hadn’t heard her approach.

The man still had ears like a bat, Rayne thought. But then, he’d always been one hell of a cop. It had taken her years to appreciate what she and the others had taken for granted.

“Not bad for anyone,” she corrected as she reached him, “considering that the city’s fathers in their infinite wisdom are rerouting Aurora’s main thoroughfare, making it almost impossible to get across town. I’ll have you know I left on time.”

Andrew nodded. There was a chill in the air but he was bareheaded as he kneeled over his brother’s grave. His hands were folded in front of him.

“I believe you.” He looked down. There were two headstones there. Diane Cavanaugh was buried next to her husband. They were side by side, at peace in eternity the way they’d never really been in life. “It’s not like Mike’s got anywhere to go.”

The depth of sorrow in her father’s voice seemed immeasurable. At a loss as to what to do, Rayne placed her hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Reaching back, Andrew covered her hand with his own, remembering when that same hand had been so small, almost doll-like.

“Yeah, thanks for asking.” Swallowing a groan, he rose from his knees, deliberately ignoring the hand she offered until he gained his feet. Only then did he glance at it. “You know, I can remember when you used to jerk that same hand away from mine. Wouldn’t let me hold it, wouldn’t let anyone steer you.”

She pushed her hands into her pockets. The January wind was getting raw. She should have remembered her gloves. “Had to find my own way, Dad.”

He nodded. There was no arguing with that, although he’d tried. “I’m glad you did, Rayne. And that when you finally found it, it was here, with us.”

She knew what he wasn’t saying, that he’d lived in fear that she would wind up in this lovely little cemetery, buried beside her relatives, years before her time. There was a period when she’d thought she would herself.

“Hey, why would I go anywhere else? Can’t beat the food,” she quipped.

Meals weren’t what kept her home. She felt she owed it to him. Owed him for years that were lost, years that she’d turned his hair gray and brought his heart to the brink of an attack. Truce was a good thing. It brought understanding with it.

And right now, she ached for what she knew he was feeling. It was hard to stand here and not feel the tears well up. Without realizing it, she laced her arm through his.

“Hard to believe it’s been fifteen years already,” Andrew murmured, still looking at the tombstone he and Brian had bought. Mike had left debts as a legacy to his family. The pension helped provide for Diane, Patrick and Patience, but pride had necessitated that they provide the burial for their fallen brother. “It feels like yesterday…” Andrew looked at his daughter. “Mike was a good man, Rayne. In his own way.”

She wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself. Of the three Cavanaugh brothers, Mike had been the one who’d made waves, who hadn’t been satisfied with his life. Ever. Outshone by both his older and younger brothers, he’d let it eat at his self-esteem. He’d sought absolving comfort in the arms of other women and in the bottom of a bottle. Though Rayne was the youngest, she knew that there were times her uncle had taken his feelings of inadequacy out on his children and his wife. Which was why Patrick and Patience looked upon her father with far more affection than their own. He, along with Uncle Brian, had had more of a hand in raising them than Uncle Mike had.

She felt close to her father right now, vicariously sharing a grief with him she didn’t entirely feel on her own. “He was kind of like the black sheep, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah.” The word came out with a heavy sigh.

It was a term she’d silently applied to herself more than once. “You know,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “there are times when I’m still afraid that I’m going to wind up just like him.”

Andrew looked at her sharply. “Oh, no, not you, Rayne. He was the black sheep, or maybe just a gray one,” he amended. “You were the rebel. Still are in your own way.”

The look he gave her seemed to penetrate down to her very soul. It was all she could do to keep from flinching. She withdrew her arm, shoving her hands into her pockets again.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look at me as if you had X-ray vision and could see clear through to my bones.”

To lighten the moment, she pretended to shiver. But the effect of her father’s steady gaze was no less real. The way he could look at any of them would easily elicit a confession to some slight wrongdoing when they were growing up. She used to imagine that her father could force confessions from hardened felons just by giving them that look.

“It’s not your bones that tell me what you’re like, Rayne,” Andrew told her gently, “it’s more of a case of memory.”

“Memory?” She felt a familiar story coming on. As much as she’d bristled over hearing stories when she was younger, she’d come to welcome them now. They were a comfort to her and a way of bonding with her father.

“Your mother was just like you,” he recalled fondly. “Always bent on doing her own thing. Always had to find her own way to the right conclusion.”

This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. As was the note of bittersweet sorrow in her father’s voice. For a second she was tempted to put her arms around him and hug tightly. But there was still a small portion of her that resisted.

“You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

He sighed and nodded. “More than words can say, Rayne. More than words can say. I miss them both a lot.” He looked down at the tombstone. “The difference being is that I know Mike’s gone.”

She shut her eyes, knowing what was coming. It was a path she walked herself more times than she cared to think, but to hold on to irrational hope wasn’t healthy. He was the only parent she had left and as much as she declared herself to be full grown and independent, she didn’t want to lose him.

“Dad—”

He laughed softly to himself. “You’re going to tell me not to start again. But I’m not. I’m just maintaining the same steady course I always have over all these years.” He looked at her, debating. Then he made his decision. She needed something to make her a believer again. And maybe he needed someone else to believe besides himself. “I haven’t told the others, but I found your mother’s wallet.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? When?”

He fell into police mode, giving her the highlights. “A little more than a month ago. Just before Thanksgiving. Homeless man had it in his shopping cart. He was dead, so he couldn’t be questioned. I don’t know where he found it and the lab couldn’t get any readable prints off it, but it was your mother’s.” He saw the doubt returning to Rayne’s eyes. “It had her license and pictures of all of you in it. She had that in her purse on the day she left the house.

“I went to see that homeless man in the morgue. He didn’t look like any deep-sea diver to me, which meant that he found the wallet on dry land.”

“Which means what?” Rayne asked. “That she was mugged? That her purse washed up on shore?” She took hold of her father’s shoulders, desperately wanting to get through to him. This was killing both of them by inches. “Dad, just because you found her wallet doesn’t mean that you’re going to find her, or that she’s even—”

He cut her off sharply. “It means exactly that, Rayne. She is alive and we’re going to find her. It’s as simple as that.”

He made her want to scream. “Dad, you have to move on with your life.”

“I have moved on.” He struggled not to raise his voice. He’d moved on from one day to the next, accumulating fifteen years. Getting things done. “I’m not sitting in any closet, or staring out the window for days on end. I’ve raised five kids, had a hand in raising a couple more and even now make sure that everyone’s fed, warm and thriving to the best of my ability.”

He looked down into her eyes, fighting to keep his voice from cracking. “But don’t ask me to stop believing that someday I’m going to see her, see your mother walking toward me. Because the day I stop believing in that is the day I stop breathing. She was my life, Rayne, my every breath. My mistake was in not letting her know that.”

A smile played along her lips. “You don’t make mistakes, remember?” And then, breaking down, Rayne embraced him. “God, Dad, I hope that someday someone loves me just half as much as you love Mom.”

For a moment he held her to him, just as he had when she was small. A lot of time had gone between then and now. “They will, Rayne, they will. Or I’ll personally fillet them.”

He was rewarded with her laugh. Andrew stepped back, glancing over his shoulder. He saw three men walking in their direction.

“Okay, dry those tears, here come your brothers and Patrick.”

Straightening, she wiped away the telltale signs of rebellious tears before turning around to face the approaching threesome.

She tossed her head, her hair bobbing about her face like golden springs. “You’re late,” she declared with no small amount of glee.

It earned her a shove from Clay.

“There’ll be no fighting at the grave site,” Andrew informed them.

“Yes, Dad,” Clay and Rayne dutifully chorused before they grinned at one another.

Chapter 3

It was a room that reeked of desperation and despair. Furnished only with two chairs squared off on either side of a scarred metal rectangular table, its gray walls—the hue of an old buffalo nickel—provided the only color within the small area. There were no windows, only a single door. A door with a guard standing on the other side.

Cole watched as his younger brother was brought in. Clad in a faded orange jumpsuit, Eric rubbed his wrists the moment the required handcuffs were removed.

He looked bad, Cole thought. A mere shadow of the laughing, carefree boy he’d once known.

Anger welled within his chest. Anger at his parents who should have stopped this years before it happened. Anger at Eric for choosing the path of least resistance, for squandering his life and allowing himself to be devaluated this way.

Cole had pulled strings to see his brother inside this room. Ordinarily the room was used only by lawyers for consultations with their jailed clients. Anyone else was required to meet with prisoners in a communal area with a soundproof length of glass separating them and words echoing through a phone line.

He knew Eric. Eric had trouble dealing with restrictions. The very thought of bars around him fed his claustrophobia.

It surprised him to see how old Eric looked. He’d left a boy behind. The person standing uncertainly before him was a hollowed out man.

They’d always been worlds apart, he and Eric. He’d been born old. Eric, he’d thought, was destined to be eternally young. His brother was more childish than childlike, but it had had its appeal, especially among the kinds of women Eric gravitated toward.

For Kathy Fallon, the appeal had apparently worn thin. Cole knew without being told that Kathy’s leaving had been difficult for Eric to accept. His brother was accustomed to people liking him, seeking him out for a good time. Eric always had an endless supply of money and loved parties.

There was no party for Eric here.

There might not be one for a very long time if all the wheels he was trying to put into motion ground to a halt, Cole thought.

The expression on Eric’s face was equal parts surprise and relief when he looked at him.

Cole pulled his own chair out and nodded toward the other chair, indicating that Eric do the same. The metal legs scraped along the floor. Eric fell limply into his chair. His eyes looked eager as they fastened themselves to Cole’s face.

“You came.”

“You’re my brother,” Cole replied simply, hiding the fact that a wealth of emotions, too many to count, were tangling up inside of him.

It had been that way ever since Eric’s lawyer had called to tell him that Eric had been arrested and was asking for him. He’d booked the next flight out of New York and spent most of the time on the phone, planning, gathering what information he could. By the time he’d landed late last night, Cole had had as much of a handle on things as he could.

Long ago, he’d learned to rely first and foremost on himself.

Eric’s knuckles were almost white as he clenched his hands into impotent fists in front of him on the cold table. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”

His brother’s voice was almost quivering as he begged to be believed. Cole shook his head. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”

Eric’s eyes widened. The brown orbs were badly bloodshot, a testimony to the recreational drugs that had found their way into his system. He was in withdrawal and it was taking a toll on him.

“Then you believe me?”

Cole knew his brother was many things, many of them unflattering, to say the least. But a murderer wasn’t numbered among them. He’d known that even as he’d listened to the lawyer’s recitation of the police report. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“Because everyone thinks I did it.” Eric’s voice nearly cracked with hopelessness. “Mother and Dad think I’m guilty.”

Cole hadn’t been by to see his parents yet. He was putting off a visit until it became absolutely necessary, or until he had the stomach for it. Other than giving their seed, neither Lyle nor Denise Garrison had ever been parents in any real sense of the word.

He didn’t have to see them to know how they felt about all this. If there was any doubt in his mind, the fact that neither had put up bail for Eric was proof enough.

“They only think you’re guilty of bringing shame to the almighty Garrison name.” An ironic smile twisted his mouth. “Something great-great-granddad beat you to in his youth, but they don’t want to acknowledge that.” The fact that the family money had been accrued by a robber baron was never spoken of. Cole took a deep breath, bracing himself. “So, what happened?”

Shoulders that were far less broad than Cole’s rose and fell haplessly beneath the orange jumpsuit. “The police arrested me.”

“Before then.”

The expression on Eric’s face was tortured as he tried to remember. “I was at a party. I think.” Frustration ate away at the thin veneer of his confidence. “I don’t know, I passed out.”

“At the party?”

Eric looked as if he was taxing his brain. “No, alone I think. There was this girl—but she wasn’t there when I came to,” he concluded helplessly.

“Where did you come to?” Cole enunciated each word slowly. In a way, he thought, he was dealing with a child, a child that was too frightened to think. Whenever Eric became afraid, he made less and less sense. He remembered that from their childhood.

Eric screwed his face up as he tried to think. “At my place.”

So far, Eric’s story didn’t sound promising. The lawyer, an old family friend with tepid water in his veins, had warned him off the record that the facts looked pretty damning.

“Did you see Kathy anytime that evening?” When Eric didn’t answer, Cole leaned forward across the table. “Did you?”

Like a child caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t, Eric hung his head and stared down at his hands. “Before I went to the party.” Then his head jerked up. “But she was alive when I left her. She was screaming at me.”

“That’s because you weren’t supposed to come around anymore,” Cole reminded him. “She’d gotten a restraining order against you.” It had happened less than two months ago, after Kathy had broken it off with his brother. Quinn, the detective he’d hired, had told him that Eric hadn’t been able to reconcile himself with the fact that they weren’t together anymore.

“I didn’t think she meant it.” An urgency rose in his voice as he tried to make Cole understand. “This is the first woman I ever really cared about. I loved her, Cole. And then just like that, she said it was over.” Color flooded his cheeks. “It couldn’t have been over. I didn’t want it to be over. Why did she have to call in the police?”

“You were stalking her, Eric.” Quinn had been very thorough in his summary, faxing him the details rather than wasting time with a phone call.

“I wasn’t stalking her, I was trying to win her back. I don’t have any practice with that,” Eric lamented. “I never wanted anyone back before.” He hit his chest with his outstretched hand, the reality of it all not making any sense to him. “This was me, Cole, everybody likes me.”

Eric honestly believed that, Cole thought. In some ways, his brother was still very much an innocent, not realizing that what most people gravitated toward was Eric’s money, not his company.

“Not everybody, Eric,” he said quietly.

A storm cloud filtered over his face. “You mean, Mother and Dad?”

Cole truly doubted either of his parents liked anyone, not even themselves. But that wasn’t the issue here. “No, I was thinking about the person who’s trying to frame you.”

The simple statement hit Eric with the force of an exploding bomb. “You think that’s it? Somebody’s trying to frame me?”

Eric’s fingerprints had been found all over Kathy’s apartment. More damning was the ring that had been found in Eric’s apartment. The ring with Kathy’s blood on it. An impression of it had been left on her face where he’d hit her. Something else Quinn told him that Eric didn’t recall. His brother’s memory of the night in question was filled with more holes than a package of Swiss cheese and he’d claimed to have given Kathy the ring because she’d admired it weeks ago.

“Well, it’s either that, or you did it.” He saw Eric drag his hand erratically through his hair. Nerves? Fear? Was he wrong? Had his brother killed the woman in a fit of jealousy? He felt clear down to his bones that Eric wasn’t capable of something like that, but maybe he was letting the past color his vision. “Eric, is there something you want to tell me?”

Eric covered his face with his hands. “I don’t remember.” When he looked up, panic lit his eyes. “Cole, I don’t remember. I get these…” He licked his lips, as if they were too dry to produce the words he was looking for. “Blackouts the doctor calls them…”

Cole never took his eyes off his brother’s face, trying to read every movement, every nuance. Looking for answers to questions that hadn’t been formed yet. “You’ve been to the doctor about this?”

Eric’s head bobbed up and down. “Last May. Dad insisted.”

Cole frowned. So there was someone to testify in a court of law that Eric had periods where he blacked out, where he didn’t remember what he did. Cole felt as if he was staring down into an abyss.

“Cole, is it bad?”

Cole folded his hands in front of him. “I won’t lie to you, Eric, it’s not good.”

Eric bit down on his lower lip to keep from whimpering. A tiny bit of noise escaped anyway. “Then I’m screwed?”

“No,” Cole said firmly, “you’re not.” If his brother was innocent, he was going to prove it. Even if he had to resort to the proverbial movement of heaven and earth to do it.

Eric grasped his hand between both of his. Eric’s hands were clammy. “You’re going to get me out?”

Cole gave one of Eric’s hands a squeeze, trying to infuse a little courage into his brother. “I sure as hell am going to try.”

Eric’s eyes shone with a sudden onset of tears. “You’re the only one, you know, the only one who cares what happens to me. You always were.”

Any minute, Eric was going to go to pieces. He knew all the signs. Like the time there’d been a locker search and the principal had found a nickel bag of marijuana in Eric’s locker. The only way to save his brother was to say that he’d been the one to leave it in Eric’s locker. But this was a great deal more serious than a three-week suspension.

“Don’t fall apart on me, Eric. I need you to focus, to keep it together. Try to remember what happened that night, what you did and, more important, who saw you do it. Work with Holland, he might be a friend of Mother’s and Dad’s, but he’s also one of the best lawyers around.” Cole saw that none of this was getting through to Eric. He looked like a frightened rabbit. “I’m going to see what I can come up with on my end.”

Eric brightened. “You’re my only hope, Cole.”

Truer words were never spoken, Cole thought, leaving the rest unformed even in his mind. “We’ll get through this, Eric. We always have before.”

As Cole rose, his brother suddenly leaped to his feet. Coming around the table, Eric threw his arms around him and embraced him.

Cole had never been a demonstrative man by nature. He’d been through too much, seen too much at home to leave the door to his emotions unlocked. It was the only way he had managed to survive. But this was his brother and he loved Eric beyond any rhyme or reason.

After a beat Cole closed his arms around his younger brother and gave him what he knew Eric needed most at this moment. He needed to have someone love him.

For a long moment Cole did nothing, said nothing, only hugged him.

“I’m scared, Cole,” Eric sobbed against his shoulder.

He knew that. Knew, too, that he was scared for him. But that was something he wasn’t about to admit out loud. Eric needed to think that his older brother was a rock. Confident. Unafraid.

So he perpetuated the illusion. As he always did. “Hey, it’ll make for a good story once it’s behind you. And it’s going to be behind you,” he promised with conviction. Eric pulled his head back and Cole saw a hint of a shaky smile forming. “It’ll give you something to impress people with.”

Ever since Eric’d been in elementary school, his brother had been a weaver of stories, colorful stories that drew the listener in and bonded him with the teller. It was his one gift.

Eric nodded, fighting more sobs. “Yeah,” he mumbled, trying to muster up feeling, “a good story.”

Crossing to the door, Cole knocked once. The next moment, it was being opened and the same guard that had accompanied Eric into the room stepped inside. He was holding handcuffs.

“I’ll be back soon,” Cole promised. He fought a sinking feeling as he saw Eric being handcuffed again. Unable to watch, Cole walked quickly out of the room.

Rayne pulled up the hand brake on her secondhand Honda. It’d been a gift from her father when she’d graduated from the police academy, coming to her with more than forty thousand miles on it. She intended to keep it until it was pronounced dead by Joe, the mechanic they all used.

The lot behind the restaurant was crowded and it had taken her two passes before she’d found a spot to park. Getting out and locking the door, she wasn’t completely sure what she was doing here.

She supposed, as she made her way to the large red entrance doors, that it was curiosity that brought her. That, and the fact that she felt as if she were taking a dare. She wasn’t the kind to back away from a challenge. Ever. And there’d been a challenge in Cole Garrison’s deep blue eyes.

The cold and noise of the outside world faded the instant she crossed the threshold. A soft, subdued murmur of voices greeted her as did a petite Asian hostess dressed in what Rayne took to be authentic Chinese garb. The menu the woman held in her hand was almost half as large as she was.

“Table for one?”

“No, I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”

Rayne looked past the woman’s shoulder and scanned the subtly lit room. She spotted Cole sitting in a corner booth located just beyond an incredibly large fish tank. An array of lights broke through the water, shining on a variety of saltwater fish.

But her mind wasn’t on fish, it was on the man she’d come to meet. Setting down his menu, he sensed her entrance and looked in her direction.

Even at this distance, his eyes seemed to lock with hers.

“Him,” Rayne told the woman, pointing Cole out.

The woman inclined her head, turned on a very high, very thin, heel and led the way to the rear of the dining area.

Cole half rose as she approached the table and remained that way until she’d taken her seat. Old-fashioned manners. Who would have thought?

“Sorry I’m late,” Rayne murmured, accepting the menu from the hostess without looking.

He wore the same clothes he’d had on earlier, except for the coat, and looked as crisp and relaxed as if he’d stepped out of some magazine meant for the discerning man. Obviously his day had gone better than hers. In between her trip to the cemetery, she’d wrestled with a mountain of paperwork, then got called away to investigate a shooting at a convenience store. If she had her way, all convenience stores would be outlawed. Or at the very least, renamed inconvenience stores.

She was more than half an hour late. It was obvious by the set of his jaw that he didn’t like waiting. His tone did little to mask his shortened temper. “I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”

“I don’t leave people dangling,” she informed him crisply. “When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. Just not always in the allotted time frame,” she added after a beat.

She didn’t like being late, she really didn’t. Whenever possible, she went out of her way to try to be early. But most of the time it was as if the forces of nature conspired against her, by either causing her to sleep through what was the loudest alarm she could find, or by conjuring up extra vehicles on the freeway, or by arranging things so that they went awry.

“Admirable quality.” He saw his waiter approaching their table. “Do you want to order?”

Rayne nodded. She knew exactly what she was in the mood for and gave her choice to the waiter, passing on the drink. Cole, she assumed, had already ordered. “Been waiting long?”

“I was here at six.”

Which meant that he’d been sitting here for half an hour. She refused to feel guilty about that. She wasn’t the one repaving the main thoroughfare. “Maybe you should have picked an Italian restaurant. At least you could have nibbled on the bread sticks.”

“I would have ruined my appetite. Chinese food is worth waiting for.” He paused only long enough to allow his eyes to slide over her. “As were you.”

“Someone else might call that a line.”

“Someone else doesn’t know me.” He waited until the waiter, who’d returned almost instantly with their orders, set the plates down and withdrew. “I don’t waste my time with lines.”

Once the meal was in front of her, she realized just how hungry she was. The only thing supplementing the huge breakfast she’d had was an energy bar she’d found in the back of her desk. It had been far too long since her last meal. No wonder she felt a little light-headed.

“Then you’re nothing like Eric,” she told him as she dug in.

“Not really,” Cole said, noting Lorrayne was a woman who ate instead of picked at her meal. Considering how small she was, he had to admit he was pleasantly surprised. “How well do you know my brother?”

The information was at the tips of her fingers. The D.A. had already asked her the same question. She wasn’t the only Cavanaugh who was acquainted with the accused. Because her cousin Janelle, an assistant in the D.A.’s office, had also gone to school with Eric, the D.A. hadn’t assigned her to the case.

“We dated a couple of times in high school.” Then, in case Cole was attempting to recall whether he’d been aware of that sequence of events, she told him, “You’d left town by then.” He looked surprised that she would have known something like that. “You took up a great deal of the conversation on our first date. Eric idolized you. Said he wanted to be just like you, but didn’t have the discipline.”

And then she smiled.

He found the look disarming and infinitely appealing. He wondered if she used it as a weapon. “What?”

“As I recall, you didn’t have all that much discipline.” She’d made short work of her egg roll and was onto to the main course without missing a beat. “Didn’t you almost get expelled once?”

“Minor misunderstanding. They found some marijuana in Eric’s locker that was mine.”

“Was it?” Her tone was mild. A little too mild in his opinion.

“That’s what I told the principal.”

Her eyes met his. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

He’d never bothered telling anyone the real story. There didn’t seem to be a point. “Eric wouldn’t have been able to put up with suspension. He probably would have dropped out.” Not that graduating high school and going on to college had managed to do very much for his brother. It had been just another excuse to continue floating. Cole had hoped otherwise.

“So you took the fall for him. No wonder he thought of you as a saint.” She stopped to take a sip of her tea. “You didn’t drop out,” she recalled.

He smiled more to himself than at her. “Someone convinced me I needed an education.”

“Oh?” Interest peaked, she cocked her head. “Someone in the Addams Family?”

He grinned. The woman had remembered the analogy he’d made earlier. But there was no way that his grandfather could have been considered part of the circus that comprised his family except in the strictest sense of the word “family.”

“My father’s father. He was a black sheep, like me.” A fondness came into his voice. It was the money his grandfather had left him that now allowed him to do what he felt was his calling. And to be his own person, unlike Eric who had always been tied to his parents’ purse strings. “He was the one who told me that the way a black sheep keeps from getting sheered is by learning to stay ten steps ahead of everyone else.”

“And do you?” she wanted to know. “Stay ten steps ahead?”

He knew she was pulling information out of him. More information than he was accustomed to volunteering, but for now, it amused him to watch her at work. So he played along.

“At least five.”

Because she identified with what he was saying, she laughed softly. It wasn’t all that long ago that she’d followed the same path. “That sounds more like the credo of a con artist than an educated man.”

He thought of the paths he’d followed before he’d settled down to his present way of life. He’d been a little of everything, including a mercenary for a while, taking on all life had to give just to feel something, anything. Adrenaline coursing through his veins when his life was on the line in the jungles of Bogota was as close as he got to experiencing anything.

“I’m guilty of both.”

She was surprised he admitted it. “And are you still a con man?”

His smile locked her out. “At present, I’m a respected businessman.”

But she apparently wasn’t one to accept a locked door and back away. “What sort of business?”

He put it in the most nebulous of terms. “I buy houses that need work—then work.”

She’d done a little homework before coming to meet him. It helped to have an in with someone in the IRS. His last form had referred to him as a builder. And there had been numerous charitable contributions cited, as well. “You make it sound simple.”

He shrugged as he finished his main course. “At bottom, most things are.”

Finished, as well, she pushed aside her plate and reached for her fortune cookie. “Interesting philosophy. But it’s usually hard to get to the bottom.”

He watched her long, slim fingers crack the golden shell. “Never said it was easy.” He indicated the paper she cast aside. “Aren’t you going to read your fortune?”

“I don’t believe in the clairvoyant powers of a cookie.” But because he was watching her, she glanced at the slim paper. You will find love soon, it read. Yeah, right. She raised her eyes back to his face. “What do you want with me?”

The prepared answer was not the one that rose in his mind. The word “want” all but shimmered in front of him. A man could want a woman like Lorrayne. She was more than pleasant to look at, the rebelliousness in her eyes having not quite been tamed by the position she’d assumed. Everything appealing and attractive had conspired to join forces within Lorrayne Cavanaugh. The last job in the world he would have said she’d been drawn to was that of police detective.

But a police detective was exactly what he needed right now. If there were other needs unexpectedly raising their heads, he would just have to ignore them.

He was fighting the clock. The D.A.’s office was out for blood. Eric’s blood. Even if his brother wasn’t guilty, everyone thought he was and appearance was enough to appease the masses.

He had to change that. But he couldn’t do it alone.

“I want you to help me prove that my brother’s innocent.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m part of the Aurora police force.”

She began to refill her cup, but he took the teapot from her and did the honors himself. “I noticed. That’s why I came to you.”

Ignoring the tea, she began to slide out of the booth. “I’m afraid there’s more than a slight conflict of interest here.”

Cole took hold of her wrist. “Just hear me out.”

Training told her to shake off his hand and to keep walking. Instinct told her to stay. She’d learned that the Cavanaugh instinct was more than just a pleasant myth her father liked to regale them with. It was based on the truth. They could all testify to that.

With a sigh, Rayne settled back in the booth. “Okay, talk.”

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