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“Hey, the guy deserved it. There was this kid, Kenny Woods, who was packing a few too many pounds. The damn jock counselor wouldn’t let up on him. Not even after Kenny almost passed out from heat exhaustion on a five-mile hike. Someone had to do something.”

“And that someone was you?”

“I was the one who was there at the time.”

“What about other counselors? Parents? Camp authorities?”

He laughed at that. “I would have thought all those years in the city would have made you a realist. In the undemocratic world of kids and counselors, the counselors reign supreme. Which means the kid was on his own.”

“So you took the law into your own hands.”

“Yeah. And before you tell me that you can’t condone that, as sheriff, I’ll admit I don’t recommend the policy as a habit. But I’d do it again. In a New York minute.”

Raine thought about that. “I have to admire you for sticking up for that boy. Even if I don’t approve of your solution.”

“Hey, it worked. The guy was a pariah for days. You can’t imagine the cans of tomato juice he went through trying to bathe out the eau de skunk.

“And getting back to our little survivalist game, while I’m impressing you with my manly food-acquiring skills, you can play domestic by gathering up wild berries for our dessert.”

“In the little basket I’ve woven from reeds while you’ve been spearing poor unsuspecting fish,” she guessed.

“Nah. I figure you can gather them up in that skirt you insisted on sewing out of leaves.”

“Giving you a look at my legs.”

He let go of her hand and ruffled her hair. “I knew you were a perceptive woman.”

Moments later, he pulled off into a secluded glen that could have served as a model for paradise. A crystal waterfall tumbled over moss-covered rocks into a sapphire blue pool at one end of the lush green chamber; in the far distance, the sun glinted off the waters of Lake Crescent.

“Oh!” Raine drew in a breath as she climbed out of the truck and surveyed the pristine scene. “It’s lovely. Like a secret garden.”

“Dan and I used to come here when we were kids to play Tarzan.” He touched his canted nose. “I broke this when he dared me to ride the waterfall face first while we were searching for the jewels of Opar.”

“You could have died. That was foolishly reckless.” A wayward breeze fluttered her hair across her eyes. She brushed it away.

“Yeah.” Another whispery gust blew the hair back; this time Jack pushed it away. His hand stayed on her cheek. “But I’ve always had a tendency for recklessness.”

They both knew that he was no longer talking about some childhood accident. Electricity sparked in the air like heat lightning and Raine found herself holding her breath, waiting for the kiss she kept insisting she didn’t want.

“I promised you lunch.”

“Yes.” If she were to make a list of needs and desires right now, food wouldn’t even make the top ten.

He gave her another of those long enigmatic looks that gave Raine the uncomfortable feeling that he could see inside her heart. Then he dropped his hand and backed away. “I’d better get the basket out of the truck.”

Unable to respond, with her words clogged in her throat, Raine merely nodded.

Savannah had outdone herself, preparing crudités shaped like flowers, a grilled-chicken salad with goat cheese and fresh raspberries, a loaf of crunchy, homemade sourdough bread, a key lime cheesecake so light it seemed to melt in Raine’s mouth, and iced tea sprigged with mint.

The conversation stayed light during lunch. As if by mutual agreement, they stuck to family anecdotes and career stories before somehow moving on to all the places around the world they’d visited, or wanted to.

“I’ve been planning to go to the islands,” Raine admitted.

“Which ones?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. Any one with tropical breezes, lagoons as clear as aquamarines, and white sugar beaches. Oh, and a steel band and mai tais would be nice, too.”

“Maybe we should take a trip to one for our second date.”

Even knowing he was kidding, Raine felt her nerves tangle at his casual mention of a future when she hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond today. Which, given her penchant for planning every last detail of her life just went to show how crazy the man made her.

“This isn’t a date. Not really.”

“Okay.” He leaned back on his elbows and crossed his long legs at the ankles. “What would you call it, then?”

Good point. “I suppose”—she shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant—“two friends having lunch.”

His smile was slow, seductive, and openly skeptical. Raine wasn’t surprised he didn’t believe her. She didn’t believe her flimsy definition either. He looked at her again, hard and deep, then, apparently deciding not to push, reached out and snagged another piece of cheesecake. “Your sister’s a dynamite cook.”

“She’s always had a magic touch in the kitchen.” Raine couldn’t decide whether or not to be relieved that he was backing away yet again, allowing—no, forcing—her to be the one to make the decision how serious this would get. “She’s also the only woman in our family who can do more than boil water or nuke a frozen dinner in the microwave.”

“There’s always Ida’s meatloaf.”

They shared a laugh over that. Then sat in comfortable silence for a time. Clouds continued to gather over the mountaintops and the air was growing cooler, but Raine was in no hurry to leave. A bright blue jay fluttered down from an overhead branch, stole a bit of crumb crust that had dropped onto the blanket, and disappeared back into the trees again.

Raine realized, with some surprise, that she was beginning to get used to the quiet. That first morning, alone in the kitchen, the lack of noise had made her edgy. Now, as she drank in a landscape created to soothe the soul, she reveled in the exquisite serenity. She also realized that it had been nearly a day since she’d worried about what was happening at work. Which had to be a record.

“Your mother looks as if she’d be a good cook,” she said.

“Mom’s real good, but she doesn’t fix fancy stuff like Savannah. Dad was more of a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.”

There was no mistaking the warmth in his voice at the mention of his father. “You must miss him.”

“A bunch. It’s been six months and there are times when I walk into the office and am surprised not to see him sitting behind the desk. He always seemed larger than life to me, not just when I was a kid, but even after I’d grown up. It wasn’t just because he was a big man, but because he was strong in a way that made people trust him.”

“I’d imagine that would be important in his line of work, especially since it’s an elected position.”

“He won eight straight elections,” Jack divulged. “The last two no one even bothered to run against him. I always figured that wasn’t so much that a would-be opponent was afraid of losing, as much as the fact that no one in the county could think of a better man for the job.”

“That’s quite a legacy.”

“You can say that again. And one that’s not always easy to live up to.”

“Actually, I think you’re doing a very good job. If it hadn’t been for you, I’m afraid to think what could have happened the night the girls locked themselves in the house.”

His lips curved a bit. “Is that a compliment I hear coming from those delectable lips, Harvard?”

Delectable. Even as her nerves skittered at him bringing an intimacy back into the conversation, a lovely warmth flowed through Raine. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had described her lips as delectable. Probably because none ever had.

She moved her shoulders, pretended vast interest in a chipmunk gathering berries at the edge of the blue pool, and avoided what she knew would be a teasing look. “I’ve always believed in giving credit where credit is due.”

“Me too.” He skimmed a hand down her hair. When his arm settled casually around her shoulder, she did not shrug it away. “Who would have thought a big city lawyer and a country sheriff would have anything in common?”

Because his touch was so inviting, his smile so seductive, because once again she was finding herself on a steep precipice that she was struggling not to fall over, Raine decided to turn the subject back to something safer.

“When I was in the eighth grade, my class took a tour of your dad’s jail. Everyone else had a great time. I had nightmares of being locked away in one of those cells for weeks.”

“He caught me playing chicken with log trucks in my Trans Am when I was sixteen,” Jack divulged. “Locked me up for twenty-four horrible hours. Fortunately, the jail was empty that weekend, so I didn’t have a roommate.”

“He sounds strict.”

“He was. But fair. He made sure I knew what the rules were, and the penalty for breaking them. Then nothing on God’s green earth would get him to give in.” He shook his head, but his expression was one of affection. “He was a man of his word. A man who could be trusted….

“Another time, when I was eight, I got a bellyache while we were backpacking deep in the Olympics, in a wilderness area. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to think he had a sissy for a son. But finally he noticed that I was sweating more than I should be, even for a kid who was carrying a twenty-five pound pack up a mountainside. He immediately dumped both our packs, put me on his back, and carried me out, ten miles to the trailhead where we’d parked the truck.

“The entire time he kept assuring me that I was going to be all right. And I believed him. Because he was my pop.”

“What was wrong with you?”

“Appendicitis. They had me in the operating room five minutes after we got to the hospital. Afterwards, they told my dad that I was minutes away from having it burst.”

“That was lucky. That he got you there when he did.”

“Real lucky,” he agreed. “The doc gave me the appendix. I kept it in a jar of formaldehyde in my room until I went off to college.”

“You realize that’s gross.”

“Not to an eight-year-old boy. I kept it for a trophy, but also because it reminded me of one of the more eventful trips Pop and I took together.”

Compared to these stories of his childhood, Raine could have grown up on Jupiter. “It must have been wonderful,” she murmured wistfully. “Knowing that you could always count on someone like that.”

“Like I said, Pop was special. I always knew that, on some abstract level. It was only after Peg and I adopted Amy that I realized how he’d been the rock of the family, while Mom has always been the heart.”

“I envy you such a strong family bond.”

His arm tightened around her shoulder, pulling her a little closer. He skimmed his lips against the top of her head. “You have that, too. With Ida and Savannah. And Lilith.”

She thought about that for a moment. “With Ida and Savannah. But Lilith…” Not wanting to ruin a lovely afternoon with negative thoughts about her mother, Raine’s voice drifted off.

“You know, when I was still toddling around in diapers, my folks figured every boy should have a dog,” he said conversationally. “So, they went to the animal shelter and adopted a springer spaniel-sheltie mix, figuring we could grow up together.

“That’s sweet.”

“I’ve always thought so. She was a dynamite dog. And loyal to a fault. She loved to go duck hunting with Dan and me, but we’d have to take her home at lunchtime, because the damn mutt would’ve kept diving into that icy water all day long. Partly because she loved fetching ducks. But mostly because she wanted, more than anything, to please me. She died when I was fifteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I. Even if she did live a helluva long time for a dog. After a couple days, Dad took me down to the animal shelter and I suppose there were some pretty good candidates, but I was determined to get a dog exactly like Cleo.”

“Cleo?”

“Because she had these dark lines around her eyes, kinda like Elizabeth Taylor when she played Cleopatra…. Hey”—he complained when she grinned—“I didn’t name her. My mother did. If you’ll recall, I was too young to be making such weighty decisions.”

“Point taken.”

“Okay. So, bein’ a stubborn sort of kid, I kept trying to find a replacement for Cleo. It took six months, but I finally found a dead ringer. Right down to her crazy, brown nose with its black racing stripe down the center. I took her down to the beach to start training her for hunting season and must’ve thrown a hundred pieces of driftwood, but this new Cleo just sat there, looking up at me with a cockeyed adoring dog look, wagging her stub of a tail.

“After about a month, I finally got her to chase the damn sticks, but she never did figure out that she was supposed to bring them back. For a while I was so ticked off at the dog, I didn’t even want to look at her. Because she didn’t live up to my expectations.”

Raine was silent for a moment, taking in the parable that was so similar to what Cooper had said earlier. “You think I’m too hard on Lilith.”

“I think you’re trying to make her into something she isn’t,” he said gently. “Because you’ve got some idealized beliefs about what a mother should be and anyone who doesn’t live up to your high standard is bound to prove a failure in your eyes.”