TRAVIS AWAKENED to the sound of cru

TRAVIS AWAKENED to the sound of crunching gravel, of car wheels rolling slowly past the barns and continuing up toward the house. He shifted, propping himself on his elbow, his other arm wrapped possessively about a sleeping Margot. The windows were inky black, dawn still hours away. No one should be driving around Rosewood at this hour. Then he saw the pulsing blue and red lights splashing eerily onto the apartment’s walls, a nightmare vision from his past. He sat up fully and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
Cold air struck Margot’s skin where once she’d been cocooned in the delicious heat of Travis’s body curled about hers. She came awake instantly. “Travis?”
“I’m here, by the window. We’d better get dressed. The cops are up at your house.”
“The police?” Panic had her scrambling out of the bed.
“Yeah.” He turned from the window to find her already grabbing her panties and jeans off the floor and strode across the loft’s roughly hewn planks to his own pile of clothes and began yanking them on. He shoved his feet in his shoes.
“You ready?” he said, extending his hand. Together they hurried toward the stairs. “Too bad it’s still so dark outside. Otherwise I might have been able to see who was in the cruiser.”
“You could have identified a police officer driving by?” Margot’s tone was incredulous.
“I know just about everyone on the force.”
“Why’s that?”
“A legacy of my dad.”
The patrol car was in front of the house, its flashing lights as well as its headlights illuminated, the driver’s door left ajar. Margot saw a uniformed officer standing on the porch, his finger pressed to the doorbell.
“No, wait! I’m here. Please don’t ring the bell,” she called out, sprinting up the last stretch of the drive.
At the sound of her voice the officer turned and then waited for her and Travis to clamber up the steps.
“Thanks,” she said, panting lightly. “I apologize for shouting like that, but I didn’t want the doorbell to disturb my sister. She’s got school tomorrow.”
The police officer removed his cap and tucked it under his arm, revealing a shock of bluish-black hair and intense, electric-blue eyes set in a chiseled face. He was young—at least three or four years younger than she. But his bright gaze regarded her steadily before shifting over to Travis, doubtless sizing up the situation.
Margot could only imagine how she looked: flushed and heavy-lidded from the hours spent in Travis’s arms, her lips swollen from his kisses. The tangles in her hair probably looked as wildly scary as Medusa’s. Her chin rose.
“Are you Margot Radcliffe?”
“Yeah, this is Margot,” Travis answered for her, stepping closer so his sleeve brushed hers, the tacit protectiveness of his gesture wondrous. “Margot, this is Officer Rob Cooper. Rob’s dad is Warburg’s chief of police. His uncle’s on the force, too. They and my dad had what you might call a real hate-hate relationship. How are you, Rob?”
“Doing well, Travis. Thanks. And your mom?”
“She’s fine. Moved to New Mexico after the funeral. She has some relatives there. What’s up?”
“I’m here because of Ms. Radcliffe’s sister Jade.”
“Jade?” Margot echoed. “Excuse me, but what could you want with her at this hour? She’s upstairs, asleep.”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid she’s passed out in the back of my patrol car.”
Margot swayed. Travis’s strong arm circled her waist, supporting her.
“She was writing an English paper and going to bed,” she said, feeling like the biggest fool on earth the second the words were out. Of course. Jade had pulled a first-rate con. “Okay, let me rephrase that. She was supposed to be writing her English paper and then going to bed. Wait!” Her voice rose in horror as Rob Cooper’s words truly registered. “Did you say she’s passed out? What happened—”
Travis squeezed her waist, checking her panic. “Let’s get Jade inside and then we find out exactly what she’s been up to,” he suggested. “Rob, you mind if I carry her up to her room?”
“I’ll give you a hand getting her out of the car. The back’s a little messy.”
“Ahh.” Travis gave a knowing nod.
“She’ll need a shower,” he added.
“Right. Too bad about the car, though. Sorry.”
Cooper shrugged. “At least she was sick.”
Margot felt as if she’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. “Wait, why would Jade’s being sick be a good thing?”
“Because given your sister’s condition and the amount of alcohol and drugs we found at the Mayhews’ house, I’d have had to call for an ambulance to take your sister to the hospital and get her stomach pumped.”
“And once a person’s admitted to the ER, things get official,” Travis said.
She understood what “official” meant. Forms and reports and court appearances and juvenile records and social workers and maybe having Jade placed under someone else’s guardianship. The prospect of having failed to do right by Jade was terrifying.
“Luckily your sister’s body rejected the alcohol she ingested. She’s also fortunate a neighbor heard the noise from the party and put in a call. We managed to break things up before anyone got hurt. Some of the kids we rounded up were already high as kites. We’ve had run-ins with a number of them before. They play rough.”
Margot felt the blood drain from her face. “I’ll go turn on the shower,” she said faintly.
Travis came into the bathroom a few minutes later with a limp Jade in his arms. Her little sister looked so frail, her pallid face disturbingly slack, the deep violet smudges beneath her closed eyes stark. She looked impossibly young … and God, she stank, positively reeked of a noxious mix of alcohol, pot, sweat, and vomit. The vomit was splattered in drying clumps on her clothes—no, make that on her clothes, Margot amended, recognizing her Missoni knit tank, her favorite embroidered jeans, and her knee-high suede stiletto-heeled boots. Jade had obviously raided her closet before sneaking out.
The boots were certainly ruined, the knit top probably, too. But there was no point in crying over spilled vomit. The only thing that mattered was that Jade wasn’t in the hospital or worse.
Travis lowered her onto the toilet and held her there. “She’s beginning to respond a little. But if you need help getting her into the shower, I’ll lend a hand.”
“Thanks, I think I can manage.”
He nodded. “Okay. And how about you? You all right?”
She shrugged. “I guess I should be used to Jade’s special brand of self-destructive mischief by now. I feel like kicking myself all the way to California for not realizing something was up earlier this evening, but the fact is that she and I don’t know each other very well. It’s difficult to read her.” She knelt on the tiled floor and tugged at one of the ruined boots, tossing it aside. “But this definitely isn’t how I pictured spending the final hours before dawn. On the other hand, this entire evening’s been pretty unusual,” and she could have bit her tongue for letting this last remark slip out. She should be acting cool and nonchalant, as if she had earth-shattering love made to her on a nightly basis back in New York.
She grabbed hold of the other boot, yanking it for all she was worth.
“Margot—”
Consumed by the sudden fear that Travis was having second thoughts and more than half-convinced she’d embarrass herself by bursting into tears again if he tried to feed her some line about not being ready for a relationship, she began peeling the ruined knit top up Jade’s hunched form. “I really better get these clothes off and clean her up. Would you mind going down to the kitchen and making a pot of coffee? I filled the coffeemaker earlier, so it’s all set to go. And Ellie’s cookies are in the jar by the fridge. Jordan would be horrified if I didn’t give Officer Cooper something for all his troubles.”
She felt his gaze bore into her, but refused to look up lest she betray herself.
“Yeah, I’ll go down. We could all use some coffee. But as troubles go, I’m sure Cooper would be the first to tell you that vomit’s better than blood any day.”
After toweling off a dripping Jade and managing to shove her arms through the sleeves of an oversized T-shirt, Margot was sopping wet and exhausted—in addition to being angry, afraid, and sick at heart. But none of these feelings prevented her elation when Jade began whining feebly in protest at being made to walk down the hall to her room. She would never have believed the sound of Jade complaining would be music to her ears, but there it was.
Supporting her, Margot negotiated the minefield of Jade’s room and got her seated on the bed. Immediately she flopped over on her side, her head landing with a thump on the pillows. Margot stared at her freshly scrubbed sleeping face. She looked impossibly young and innocent. Then she recalled how her sister looked awake: scared, angry, and defiant.