“Rach…” Ben moved into the room and shocked Melanie by putting his hands on Rachel’s shoulders, one of which was in a sling supporting her casted left arm. “Come on, babe. Let’s go downstairs and grab some grub. Em made those disgusting healthy cookies, remember? You’ve got to eat them before she gets home in an hour or she’ll worry.”

“You eat them.”

“Well, darlin’, I would, except they taste like dirt. And I have to say, I’m not overly fond of dirt.”

Rachel laughed. Laughed. Ben laughed, too, that same soft, sexy sound that tickled over Mel’s good spots.

Ben smiled down at Rachel, then reached out and stroked her cheek.

She blushed.

And while Mel stared at them, Ben ran his hands lightly down her sister’s arms, up and down, meeting Rachel’s gaze with such warmth, such affection, such…heat and intensity, it completely stole Mel’s breath.

“My God,” she said with a laugh that sounded shrill to her own ears. “Times have changed. Last time I checked, the two of you couldn’t be in the same time zone, much less in the same room. Now look at you, so cozy.”

Rachel turned her face away and stepped clear of Ben so that his hands fell to his sides. “We’re merely cohabitating to appease Emily, Mel, so don’t go making any big deal out of it.”

“Cohabitating…or commingling?”

“Knock it off, Mel,” Ben said with more heat than she was used to from the king of laid-back city.

Well, didn’t he have some nerve! For years she’d been doing his bidding, taking Emily to the ends of the earth to meet him. Granted she always jumped when he called because she didn’t object to looking at him for a few days a couple of times a year, but where was the gratitude? “Okay, then,” she said lightly, when oddly enough, her throat burned. “But I can’t imagine why I risked my job to race down here. Oh, wait…yes, I remember…because Rachel called me in tears.”

Ben whipped his face toward Rachel, his eyes dark and intent. “You were crying?”

An irrational jealousy choked Melanie at the way he looked at Rachel. His silver earring gleamed, his hair fell over his forehead and nearly to his shoulders. His hard body hadn’t come from any gym, but from years of using his muscles the old-fashioned way. Everything about him screamed rebel, trouble seeker, black heart.

Didn’t Rachel get it? A man like that was tailor-made for a woman like…well, like Mel.

Not Rachel. She needed quiet, calm, sweet and kind. She needed stability and security.

Ben didn’t know the meaning of those words. Damn it, seeing the two of them standing there staring at each other was like a fingernail scraping down a chalkboard. Because whether they admitted it or not, there was such a shimmering connection between them, she could practically reach out and touch it.

She wanted to reach out and touch it, all right, but she wanted it for herself.

“I was not crying.” Rachel tipped her head back, stared at the ceiling. “I was just…I don’t know. Feeling sorry for myself. End of story. And anyway, it was weeks ago. You know what? I’m ready for those dirt-flavored cookies.”

Ben shook his head. “You should have come to me.”

“You playing the hero now?” Melanie laughed into the silence. “That’s my job this weekend, bud. So…” She clapped her hands together and tried to look hungry. “Let’s go get the cookies and see if we can’t doctor them up. Say with chocolate syrup. Something fattening.”

She’d need something fattening to get over the hot, intensive looks Ben kept shooting Rachel. She’d need an entire bakery.


EMILY PLOPPED DOWN on the crowded school bus. As other kids walked by, she clutched her backpack in her lap and stared straight ahead, deciding she didn’t care if anyone sat down next to her. She didn’t care one little bit.

She hated school. She hated her teachers, though they’d be shocked to hear it. They loved her because she knew the material, because she was quiet and never gave them any trouble.

But they didn’t see her. No one at school did. She’d thought it wouldn’t matter, that this year she was old enough, mature enough, not to care that she was different. Turns out she could be wrong.

“Can I sit here?”

She looked up. And up. It was the tall, skinny kid from her history class. He kept to himself and was a brainiac, too. She’d wanted to ask him about that, ask him if he felt as out of place in this school that seemed to favor athletes over scholars, but she’d never had the nerve.

“Emily? Can I sit here?”

He knew her name. “Uh…” Tongue-tied? She was tongue-tied? How new and awful was that? She settled for lifting a negligent shoulder, biting her lip when he sat.

“I’m Van,” he said, tossing his backpack to the floor at his feet. “We have history together.”

“Yeah.” Yeah? Was that all she could come up with? She clunked her head back on the seat and wondered if a thunderbolt could just strike her dead and get it over with.

Van had a disk in his hand, which meant he could operate a computer, and her heart started to pound. She started to sweat, too, which really grossed her out. Please, don’t notice. Trying to swipe at her upper lip without catching his eye, she managed to knock his disk out of his hand and onto the floor.

“Oh!” She dived for it. “I’m so sorry!”

He bent, too, and they clunked heads hard.

“Ouch,” he said, rubbing his forehead, but he was smiling.

She wasn’t; she wanted to die. She brushed the disk off on her jeans, going beet red as the two girls behind them started to snicker.

It was official. She was a loser with a capital L.

“It’s no biggie.” In spite of the red spot over his eye, he kept smiling. “It’s just a copy.”

Just then the bus made a sharp turn, and she plowed into him. Her shoulder to his chest this time. Ohmigod, could it get worse? Mortified, she looked up into his face, but his smile turned into a grin.

She found herself grinning, too. Helplessly. Talk to him. Ask him about the disk. Mention your computer. Say something, say anything!

It took her five minutes to figure out what to say. She’d decided to ask him if he ever went to the computer lab after school, but the bus stopped and he got off.

Loser.

Double loser.

She had three more stops before she could drown her sorrows in chocolate milk with Patches. Unzipping her backpack, she reached in and cracked her laptop open enough so that she could just barely read the screen. She couldn’t get e-mail yet, but she could reread what she’d downloaded this morning.

Alicia had written her, lamenting that her parents sucked, school sucked, life sucked.

Amen to that. She hit reply, and glancing around to make sure no one was looking at her-as if!-she began to type: “Alicia, Yeah, everything sucks here, too.”

She didn’t want Alicia to feel left out. Besides, school did still suck, but at home, things were…interesting. She’d been working on her parents, who still hadn’t figured out they were supposed to be together. Jeez, talk about two stubborn people! They were circling each other like caged bears, but there did seem to be a lot less snarling.

And her dad did get really grumpy whenever Adam-the-accountant showed up, which always made Emily want to laugh and hug him at the same time. Her mom, though…she wasn’t trying as hard as her dad to get along. Emily was really mad at her for that.

But it just didn’t feel cool to admit such things. Emily didn’t want to get ditched for being such a wimp as to want her parents married.

But God, she wanted that, so much. She’d done everything she could, including not going to her mom in the mornings when she’d called out for help, biting her fingernails to the stubs in guilt, but relaxing when she’d hear her dad go running instead. Twice she’d “accidentally” hung up on Adam when he’d called rather than bring the phone to her mom. Best yet, she’d managed to convince her aunt Mel, who was coming down today for the weekend, to take her out to the latest DiCaprio movie tonight, which would leave her parents alone.

What she’d planned would add to her crimes, but she didn’t care. If it worked, it’d be perfect.

She hoped.

The bus pulled up on her street. Excited, she shut the computer, zipped up her backpack and got off the bus, and didn’t even stop to glower at a single kid.


RACHEL LEANED AWAY from the easel and drew out a careful breath. The paper was still blank, pathetically blank. Ironic, given that today she actually felt good enough to skip all her pain meds.

Which meant she was on the road to recovery.

Good.

But she’d apparently lost her ability to come up with a Gracie cartoon to save her sorry life.

Bad.

It wasn’t just work, she had to admit. It’d been a rough day all around, starting with this morning when Emily hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. Rachel knew she’d stayed up too late on her damn computer, but pointing that out had only started a feud.

Ben had stepped in, sweetly coaxing his daughter out of bed with the promise of McDonald’s on the way to school. When Rachel had suggested that maybe he could try something other than bribery, as in her opinion, Emily needed to learn responsibility, the feud had turned to all-out war.

Ben’s eyes had gone a little hard as he’d backed off, and she could mentally smack herself now, because she understood she’d inadvertently undermined his authority in front of Emily, but damn it, she wasn’t used to sharing the day-to-day responsibility of raising their daughter.

Wasn’t used to anything when it came to Ben, including the way he always seemed to touch her, look at her.

Kiss her.

Naturally, Emily had leaped to her father’s defense and, between the dog yelping for attention and Emily yelling and Ben’s extremely loud silence, Rachel had ended up with a headache.

She was getting tired of wondering when Ben’s wanderlust would get the best of him. She’d seen him writing, muttering, playing with his camera. She’d seen him reading the world events in the newspaper, seen the wheels turning in his head. She’d heard him on the phone just yesterday, talking about some future job in Siberia or somewhere. And he’d been pacing in his bedroom at night like a caged mountain cat.

Always when she woke up, she figured this would be the day he’d be gone.

But he hadn’t left.

Soon, though, she had no doubt. Soon he’d leave and she’d take her first deep breath since he’d shown up on their doorstep. Yep, he’d be gone, and she’d be glad. Just a matter of time now.

She’d go on with her life, maybe take it in a new direction…

The phone rang, drawing her out of the reverie and firmly into the present.

“Doll!” Gwen Ariani, her agent, spoke in her rough voice that was the result of smoking for thirty years. “How’s it going?”

Her blank easel mocked her. “It’s not.”

“No? Well, it’s soon yet. You still have an entire month before you have to start cranking out again. Thank God you’d worked so far ahead of yourself, huh?”

“Gwen…” Rachel closed her eyes and admitted what she’d been wanting to admit for a good long time now. “I don’t know if I want to ‘crank’ out the strip again. I’m thinking about ending Gracie.”

“Hold on, doll. Clearly, I’m losing my hearing.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then I’m having a heart attack.”

“I just wanted to start something new.”

“Another strip?”

“No.” Rachel ran a finger over the new laptop she’d had delivered. “I’m thinking of starting over. Completely over. And writing instead of drawing.”

Dead silence for a long beat. “You mean, walk away from the biggest cash cow of your life? Can’t you just write a little on the side now and then?”

Rachel had expected resistance. Gracie made them all a lot of money. “I’m not talking a little hobby, Gwen. I’m thinking of writing a book.”

“You’re still on meds, right?”

“No.”

“Come on, Rachel, people don’t walk away from a gig like this. You only draw one strip a week, for God’s sake. Hello! Cakewalk!”

From under the closed studio door came a slip of paper. Eyes narrowed, Rachel moved slowly, using her cane. “I’m sorry you don’t understand, Gwen, but-” She unfolded the typed sheet of paper and silently read the note. “It’s time for a truce, past time. Meet me in the gardens at eight. Dinner on me.”

Rachel frowned. Ben wanted a truce? What did that mean, exactly? That he’d go away? She hadn’t known the man to give in on anything in his life.

But a truce…

“Rachel?”

She fingered the note. “Gwen, I’ve got to go.”