Matt rolled his eyes and got out of the car. "Howdy," he said to Officers Dooley and Schmidt.

Dooley nodded. "I don't suppose I have to ask who was driving the Cadillac."

"Don't suppose you do," Matt said.

"And I guess the naked guy slapping leather on the Harley was the flasher?"

"Yup."

Dooley shifted his attention to the squad car. The entire front end was smashed. Both headlights were broken, steam escaped from a cracked radiator, and the bumper was lying on the road. The Cadillac didn't have a scratch.

"You guys got a lot of nerve following so close," Elsie said. "Look here what you've done with the taxpayers' money." She patted the Cadillac's rear fender. "I tell you, they don't make cars like they used to. Next time you get yourselves a car, you get a real car. Like my Caddy here."

Dooley's left eye twitched. He put a finger to it and pressed his lips together. "It would probably be best if you took her home, now. I'd hate to be charged with police brutality," he said to Matt,

By the time they got home, the Harley had already been returned. It was parked in the driveway, key still in the ignition, just as Matt had left it.

"You see," Lizabeth said, "he isn't such a bad guy. He even brought your bike back."

The sun broke over the horizon with barely a whimper as Bob the Cat sat on the back stoop cleaning his front feet, pretending nonchalance while keeping an alert ear for the sound of familiar feet treading across the kitchen floor. It was six-thirty and Lizabeth felt raw-eyed from lack of sleep. She quietly crept down the stairs and smiled at the sight of Matt stretched out on the couch in a tangle of sheets. He was fully dressed and looked mildly uncomfortable. He slept on his back with his arm flung over his head, and even in the dim light of dawn the red stubble on his chin was distinctly visible. Lizabeth stood beside the couch and watched him. His breathing was even, like a child's, she thought. But that was where the similarity stopped. There was nothing childlike about the lean planes of his face or the fierce slash of blond eyebrow. His large frame dwarfed the couch and charged the room with virility and latent energy. She wondered if the latter was real or imagined. Her perspective was hardly impartial. She touched his shoulder. "Matt."

The thick, curly blond lashes fluttered open, and he stared at Lizabeth with unfocused eyes. 'I'm not in my bed," he said. "Am I in yours?"

"No. You're on my couch."

"Oh yeah. Now I remember. I was having this awful nightmare that I was chasing the flasher and Ferguson attacked me. And then the flasher stole my motorcycle because I stupidly left the key in the ignition. Then we went on this bizarre ride with Elsie…"

"It's all true."

He closed his eyes and groaned. "I'm going to kill myself. I'm a failure. I let a potbellied, out-of-shape pervert get away from me. You aren't going to tell the guys at work about this, are you?"

"Speaking of the guys at work… it's after six."

"Oh hell, I have a building inspector coming at seven." He swung his legs over the side of the couch and ran a hand through his hair. "I have a stack of forms to fill out before he arrives."

"Will they take long to fill out?"

"No. It's finding them that's going to be the problem." He shuffled into his shoes and swung an arm around her shoulders. "I'll give you a raise if you'll help me look for the forms."

Three hours later Lizabeth was still sifting through papers on Matt's desk. She'd found a half-eaten salami sub, a red wool sock, notice that the lease on his town house was due to expire, and a month-old unopened letter with the return address of J. Hallahan, Scranton, Pennsylvania, but she hadn't found the appropriate forms for the building Inspector. She pushed her chair back when Matt stomped down the basement stairs. "You need help," she said. "You're in big trouble with this paperwork."

He slouched in a battered oak captain's chair, stretching his long legs in front of him. "I know. Did you find the forms?"

She shook her head. "No. But they're going to evict you from your town house if you don't do something immediately. And I found this letter." She slid the white envelope from J. Hallahan across the top of the desk.

Matt looked at it and slid it back to her. "Throw it away."

"Aren't you going to open it?"

"It's nothing important."

Lizabeth leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. "It's from a relative. Did you read the return address? It's from a J. Hallahan."

"I know who it's from."

"Ah-hah." She tapped her index finger on the envelope. It seemed to her that copulation carried some privileges-such as the right to be nosy. "So, who's this J. Hallahan?"

"He's my father."

Lizabeth's eyebrows shot up in silent question.

"It's a request for money, and I've already sent some. There's no reason to open the envelope. The letters are always the same." He should tell her about it, he thought, but he hated dragging all those skeletons out of the closet. He didn't want to seem pitiable in her eyes. And he didn't want to seem callous. And he knew if he told her he would appear to be both. When he was eighteen he'd literally run away from his past. In some ways he was still running. Always would be. He could see she was concerned about the contents of the letter, so he took it from her, opened it, and glanced over his father's almost unreadable scrawl. His mouth curved into the tight, crooked smile he reserved for those times when he managed to find some wry humor in distasteful situations. "No surprises here," he said, handing the letter to her so she could read it for herself. "Someday well sit down with a bottle of wine and tell each other all our grim family secrets. Fortunately, I haven't got the time to do it right now." He stood with his hands on his hips, his brows drawn together in a scowl. "Damn, I wish we could find those forms." His eyes swept over the desk, the file cabinets, the cases of cola stacked on the floor. A guilty smile spread across his face. "I remember! It was raining when I brought the forms back from the municipal building." He went to the open area behind the stairwell, picked up a pair of rubber boots caked with dried mud, and under the boots he found the forms. "I didn't want to get the floor dirty," he explained, wiping at the brown smudges.

Lizabeth bit her lower lip and considered Matthew Hallahan's husband potential. He was sensitive, sexy, and he had a decent Income, she decided-but he'd be hell to housebreak. She took the forms from him and smoothed them out on the desktop. "Want me to have a go at this?"

"That'd be great." He noticed the neat piles of papers on the desk. She'd cleaned up the dried splotches where he'd spilled coffee and chicken noodle soup, and she'd gotten the smear of roofing tar off the telephone. The salami sub had been removed from his out box, and had been replaced with a batch of stamped, unsealed envelopes.

Lizabeth gestured to the envelopes. "There were a few things I felt comfortable handling, but you'd better check everything just to make sure. I've tried to divide the rest up into categories. Bills, bids, contracts. I've filed the catalogs and advertisements."

She'd shut off the air-conditioning and opened the sliding patio door, letting the moist morning air pour into the basement. Her hair had begun to curl in ringlets that pressed against her temples and straggled over her forehead, and her face was alive with a sense of accomplishment. Matt watched her push the hair back from her face, and felt himself go breathless. Every movement she made excited him, every part of her seemed perfect, exquisite. He wanted to reach out and tangle his hand in her hair. He wanted to kiss the spot of downy-soft skin in front of her earlobe. He wanted to hear the little catch in her throat that meant passion had caught her by surprise, had overwhelmed her, had rushed through her like a flash fire. Another time, he told himself. He wasn't in the mood to start something he couldn't finish. Three hours of sleep had left him with a short fuse. He was trying to impress the lady with his compassion and sensitivity. So he struggled to keep up the casual attitude they normally fell into during work hours.

She was the sort of woman who always rose to a challenge, he thought. And she took pride in a job well done. He liked that in a person. He didn't have a bunch of fancy degrees behind his name, but he knew everything there was to know about building houses. He could figure out a mortgage payment faster than a calculator. And he knew about people. He knew talent when he saw it, and he knew he needed Lizabeth in the office almost as badly as he needed her in his life. "Lizabeth, you've just been promoted to General Office Manager. You're going to like this job. It pays twice as much as your old one."

"Can you afford to do that?"

Matt glanced down at the wrinkled forms on the desk. "I can't afford not to. I'm sinking. I build beautiful houses, but I'm an unorganized slob."

It was the truth, Lizabeth thought. He was a slob, and he was sinking. From what she'd seen this morning, bills were going unpaid through negligence, several bids had expired, and food poisoning had to be a constant danger. "Do I work the same hours?"

"You work whatever hours you want. If you can get the job done in three hours and want to go home, that's fine by me. Ill pay you for a full day anyway." And she would be rested by evening, he thought. He had plans for her evenings.

She was still working at five-thirty. "I'm almost done," she said, running her finger down a column of numbers. "I've made out tomorrow's payroll checks, and I think I've got your accounting system figured out. It's no wonder you couldn't run this office while you were building houses. Five years ago, when you and Frank went into business for yourselves, you were building one house at a time, and the paperwork was manageable. You're now building three houses on this site, and you have a fifteen-acre parcel of land seven miles south of here that you're having partially cleared for future development. You've expanded your business, but you haven't expanded your support staff. For starters, I think you need a professional accountant. And I think you need to upgrade your office equipment."

"I know. Frank and I had been talking about it, and then he broke his hip, and I didn't have time to look into any of that stuff. Maybe you could do it for me. Find us an accountant, and buy whatever you think we need." He closed the ledger she was studying. "Right now, we need to go home. You know how Elsie hates people being late for dinner. If I don't get you home by six she won't feed me."

Lizabeth stood and stretched and realized they'd driven to work on the Harley. That meant they were going to have to go home on the Harley. Unless she chickened out and walked. The thought prompted a small groan that was caught and squelched midway in her throat. She wasn't sure what the groan represented. Fear? Excitement? Embarrassment? She followed Matt up the stairs and said a silent prayer that a miracle would happen and they could sneak into her driveway without anyone noticing. If she was going to hyperventilate, she'd prefer to do it with some privacy.

"Lord, Lizabeth," Matt said, "you look like you're going to keel over, and you haven't even gotten on the bike yet." He massaged the back of her neck. "You have to relax."

"I'm relaxed," Lizabeth said.

"Honey, you're not breathing. Listen, we could walk. Or I could zip on home and come back for you in the truck." He felt her spine stiffen, felt determination push aside fear. She was a fighter. She wasn't a woman who gave in to weakness. Hawkins blood, Elsie would say. And she might be right. The thought brought a smile to his lips.

"What's so funny?"

"I was just thinking that you and Elsie are a lot alike."

"Omigod."

Ten minutes later they pulled into Lizabeth's driveway, and a silver Lincoln pulled up behind them. Matt and Lizabeth got off the bike, removed their helmets and watched Paul Kane emerge from his air-conditioned car. His hair was dark, peppered with gray at the temples. His features were classic all-American and as bland as white bread. He was wearing a gray pin-striped, summer-wool, custom-tailored suit, starched pinpoint oxford-cloth cotton shirt, burgundy silk foulard tie. The first expression to register on his face was surprise, quickly followed by undisguised disgust.

"My ex-husband," Lizabeth said.

Matt squinted at him. "It's eighty-five in the shade. How does he manage to look like that?"

"Paul Kane's pants wouldn't dare wrinkle."

So far Matt hadn't liked anything he'd heard about Paul Kane, and now that he saw him he liked him even less. He especially didn't like the way he was looking at Lizabeth. "Suppose I punch him in the nose."