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left the DEA, making improvements to the property had seemed pointless. Why bother to put money into something he didn’t give a rat’s ass about? Why bother when he had nobody to share it with? For most ofthe last fourteen months, he’d been so apathetic that his car could have disappeared completely into one of those potholes and he wouldn’t have even noticed.
    Maybe, now that Jessie was here, that would change.
    Davy pulled up beside Jessie’s car, parked in front of the ugly little green trailer he called home. The thought of her behind the wheel at sixteen was almost enough to give him a coronary. At least Ty had bought her a car that was a tank, and easy to maneuver on snowy back roads. The four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee might not be the most fashionable vehicle in the student parking lot at Serenity High, but it was one of the safest.
    Having her here for the summer was worth whatever bull-shit he had to wade through as interim police chief. She could have gone with Ty and Faith to New York. Hell, she probably should have. Broaden her horizons. Get out of this one-horse town where nothing ever happened. But her friends were here, and her job was here, and she’d opted to stay.
    By some miracle, she’d opted to stay with him.
    Buddy, Jessie’s enthusiastic mixed-breed mutt, greeted him at the door, and Davy patted the dog on the head. Technically, Buddy was Faith’s dog, but once he’d adopted Jessie as his human, there was no separating them. Taking him to NewYork for the summer hadn’t even been an option. It had simply been understood, by all parties involved, that wherever Jessie went, her dog went, too. It was going to take some adjusting all around, especially for Davy’s eight-year-old cat, Sir Lancelot, who’d been an only child until Buddy arrived on the scene. Even though Lance wasn’t familiar with dogs, instinct had taken over when he was greeted by a curious wet nose and a lolling tongue. He’d arched his back and hissed, and as far as Davy could tell, he’d been hiding under the couch ever since. At night, while his evil adversary was asleep, Lance came out to eat and drink and use the litter box before scurrying back to his hiding place.
    Jessiehad tried to coax him out, first with soft words and later with an open can of cat food, but Lance had refused to budge. Davy was secretly proud of him for holding out even when temptation, in the form of a particularly aromatic can of mackerel, was waved right under his nose. Lance was no weenie. He was a tough guy, a man’s man, a feline who’d rather starve than betray his principles.
    His stepdaughter, dressed in a conservative white T-shirt and jeans, was moving about Davy’s tiny kitchen, putting last-minute touches to dinner. At sixteen, Jessie was so cool, so self-assured, it was scary. He sure as hell hadn’t been that way at her age. As he recalled, at sixteen he’d been an unruly mess of stringy hair and raging hormones and as-yet-unrequited love for her mother. Dish towel in hand, Jessie bent to open the oven and check on the main dish. Whatever was in there smelled heavenly. “Hi,” she said. “How did your day go?”
    “Peachy. A laugh a minute. Listen, Skeets, I don’t expect you to cook for me.”
    “Are you kidding? I love to cook.” She left the oven door open a couple of inches, stretched to turn off the heat, then picked up a big spoon and stirred whatever was boiling on the back burner. Turning, she gave him a killer smile that nearly stopped his heart. “I’ll have you know that I’m a world-class cook. You just happen to be the lucky recipient of my talents.”
    Jessie had come a long way from the shy, mousy little girl she’d been when her mother died. She and Chelsea had been closer than Siamese twins, and he’d been fearful about how her mother’s death would affect Jess. But she’d gotten through it far better than he’d expected. Far better than he’d gotten through it himself. Over the course of the