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airstrip. You’ll have to drive. I’m being arraigned at ten in the morning.”
    Her friend hesitated but only for a fraction of a second. “I’ll have to rearrange my schedule, but I’ll be there. It sounds like you could use a good lawyer.” Jillian was an ace Houston prosecutor. She’d rip the mayor’s case to shreds and have Rachael out of there in no time.
    “Thank you so much; you have no idea how much I appreciate this. I know what an imposition it —”
    “Hush. What are friends for?”
    “You’re the best,” she whispered.
    “Now, are you sure you don’t want me to let your parents at least know you’re okay?”
    Rachael paused, guilt warring with anger. “You can tell them you heard from me and that I’m all right, but please, Jilly, whatever you do, don’t tell them I’m in Valentine. Don’t tell them I got arrested. I need time to think this all through and figure out what I’m going to do next.”
    “I can respect that.”
    “Thank you,” Rachael whispered.
    “I’ll be there in time for your court appearance,” Jillian replied, then said good-bye and hung up.
    Rachael cradled the telephone receiver then turned in the swivel chair to meet Brody’s eyes. He was watching her the way a cat would watch a caged bird. Did they teach those unnerving looks in sheriff school? Or was this something he’d picked up on his own? A dubious gift from Baghdad, perhaps?
    His gaze drilled into hers and a radiant wave of energy zapped from him to her. Fanciful, she told herself, struggling to deny the heat simmering inside her. She’d had these feelings before, mistaken them for something more than sexual attraction. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She would admit it. She was sexually attracted to him.
    Big deal. That’s all it was. Hormones. Chemistry. It meant absolutely nothing. She was not going to start imagining the cute little cottage and the white picket fence and two kids in the yard.
    She’d be much better served to imagine them naked, rolling around in his bed, having hot, sweaty sex. After that, she’d visualize herself getting up, getting dressed, and walking away without a backward glance.
    W HILE R ACHAEL WAS cooling her heels in the Jeff Davis County Jail, Selina Henderson paced her hotel room at the Houston Four Seasons, trying for the fiftieth time to contact her daughter’s cell phone. But just as it had the other forty-nine times, the call went to voice mail. Instead of issuing yet another plea for Rachael to call her back, Selina hung up and threw the phone across the room.
    “Dammit all,” she screamed and knotted her fingernails into her palms.
    Anger had replaced guilt and concern. She was mad. Furious, in fact. Yes, Rachael had been hurt. She understood that. But this refusal to answer her phone or call her mother back was bordering on childishness.
    However, the real object of Selina’s fury wasn’t her erstwhile daughter, but rather her soon-to-be ex-husband. She gritted her teeth. How could Michael have let it slip that they were getting divorced not ten minutes before that ridiculous Trace Hoolihan ran out on his wedding to Rachael?
    She and Michael had driven to Houston together, agreeing not to tell Rachael about their split until she’d returned from her honeymoon. Agreeing for this one day to put up a united front. Selina had been so disgusted with Michael for going back on their agreement that she hadn’t even been able to talk to him about their daughter.
    So here she was on the verge of ending a twenty-seven-year marriage. All alone in a hotel room in a big city where she knew no one, and she had absolutely no idea where her daughter might have gone after being dumped at the altar on her wedding day.
    Love, romance, marriage. Bah —
fucking
— humbug.
    She flung herself across the bed she hadn’t slept in. She’d been awake all night, thinking, planning, worrying, regretting, hating, loving, and hurting. The urge to cry was there, but