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      To Diane, Sydney and my Roz

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter One

      It was a lazy day in late spring. Nick Reed was feeling restless again. Working for Dane Lassiter’s Houston detective agency had been exciting at first, and he’d enjoyed the work. But wanderlust called to him through the open window from the park across the way.

      He watched a particularly trim young woman strolling along with a small furry dog and he smiled, because her pert figure reminded him of Tabby.

      Tabitha Harvey. Shades of the past, he mused, leaning back in his chair. He’d deliberately avoided thinking about her over the past few months, because of what had happened when he and his sister, Helen, had flown back to their childhood home in Washington, D.C., on business. The trip had been right before New Year’s, and Tabby had been around. That was natural, because she and Helen had been friends forever. They’d all been invited to a party together.

      Nick had noticed that Tabby was watching him with unusual interest that night. She’d gone back to the punch bowl several times, as he had himself. But the punch had been spiked and Tabby hadn’t known. She’d cornered Nick in a deserted room and started kissing him.

      He could still feel her fervent, if untutored, mouth trembling under his lips. For a few seconds, he’d returned her kisses with everything in him. But he’d stopped her then, and demanded an explanation.

      Fuzzily she’d explained that she knew he’d come all that way just to see her, that she knew he was finally ready to settle down. They’d be so happy, she said dreamily, smiling through an alcoholic haze.

      Nick had no idea where she’d come up with those wild statements. If he’d ever thought of Tabby romantically, it had been years ago. Her remarks had come right out of the blue, and he’d reacted with shocked anger. He’d said some cutting and sarcastic things about her confession, which had sent her running. He’d gone back to the house with Helen and packed to leave D.C. He’d never told Helen exactly what happened, but he imagined Tabby had. He and Tabby hadn’t had any contact since. Not that he wasn’t sorry for the things he’d said; apologies were just hard for him.

      He was scowling over the memories when Helen tapped at his office door and let herself in.

      “Have you thought it over?” she asked eagerly.

      He glowered at her, swinging his chair back around with a long, powerful leg. His blond hair gleamed like gold in the light from the window. His eyes, as dark as her own, had a hard glitter. “Yes.”

      “You’ll do it?” she asked with a grin, pushing her long hair back from her elfin face.

      “Yes, I’ve thought about it, and no, I won’t do it,” he clarified.

      Her face fell. “Nick! Please!”

      “I won’t,” Nick said firmly. “You’ll have to get your information some other way.”

      “Blood is thicker than water, remember,” Helen Reed persisted hopefully. “I’m the only sister you have. There’s only the two of us. Oh, Nick, you’ve got to!”

      “Not really,” he said with maddening indifference and a grin.

      There were times, she thought, when he’d look really good hanging from a long rope. But then she’d be alone in the world except for Harold, to whom she was engaged.

      “You’re the only ex-FBI agent we’ve got at the Lassiter Detective Agency,” she reminded him. “You’ve got contacts in all the right places. All you have to do is make one little-bitty telephone call,” she persisted.

      And she fixed her big brown eyes on him in their thin elfin face in its frame of long, straight brown hair. Except for his blond hair, they looked very much alike. Same stubborn chin, same elegant nose, same spirited dark eyes. But Nick was much more introverted and secretive than she was. He’d been that way all their lives, since they’d grown up in Washington, D.C.—where she attended college and he worked for the FBI.

      Over the years, he’d done a lot of traveling, and she hadn’t seen him for months, sometimes years at a time, until he’d received the offer of work from Richard Dane Lassiter. He’d met Dane on a case just before the Texas Ranger had been shot to pieces. When Lassiter began his own private detective agency, he coaxed Nick away from the FBI and Nick volunteered Helen as a paralegal, with her two years of business college giving her an edge over the competition. She’d come hotfoot from Washington to be with her brother. Their parents had been dead for some time, and she’d liked the idea of being near the last of her kin.

      She did miss Tabitha Harvey very much at first, because she and Tabby had been friends since they were children. They still corresponded, although Tabby was very careful not to ask how Nick was. Obviously her memories of Helen’s brother were painful ones.

      “No,” he said again. “I won’t call the FBI for you.”

      She grinned at him, her slender hands together. “I’ll tell.”

      “You’ll tell what?”

      “That