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tennis shoes. Not exactly regulation, steel-toed work boots, but it was a start. Her shirt was turquoise blue with some sort of saying on it, but he couldn’t quite make out the words without staring at her breasts. That curiosity would have to go unsatisfied.
    Then she leaned forward, and her long, silky hair brushed over his forearm like a caress. An innocent thing, bound to happen in such close quarters, but it sent a jolt of electricity through him. He knew right then—Liberty Belle Hamilton was going to be a hazard.



CHAPTER
four
    T om’s old truck shimmied as he shifted to idle. He was late. Rachel would be annoyed. Then again, when
wasn’t
she? His fifteen-year-old daughter was in a perpetual state of exasperation, at least around him.
    Sure enough, her pink-cheeked face was marred by a scowl as she pushed through the double doors of Monroe High School and made her way toward him. She dipped her head, hiding behind a swish of wavy blond hair, and climbed into the cab. She was dressed in various shades of gray and black, like a dismal little sparrow.
    “God, Dad, will you ever fix this truck? Your muffler is, like, sonically loud.”
    “Nice to see you, too. How’s your day?” He waited for her to buckle her seat belt before shifting into gear.
    Rachel wedged her backpack between them. “Fine. So far. What’s this shrink’s name again?”
    His daughter was thin, all arms and legs and elbows and knees. She looked more like her mother every time he saw her. It was hard to get used to. It made him miss Connie even more. He turned his eyes back to the road and began to drive.
    “Dr. Brandt. She’s a friend of your aunt Kristy’s.” At Rachel’s elongated sigh, he added, “She sounded very nice on the phone.”
    Rachel’s head fell back against the seat with a soft
thud
. “So do pedophiles.”
    He pressed his lips together. What was the correct parenting technique for chronic sarcasm?
    Rachel continued to glower at the ceiling as if it had insulted her, and another sigh escaped.
    Tom gripped the steering wheel. He wished it was his daughter’s hand so he could squeeze it with reassurance, but he had none to offer. The inches between them yawned like a canyon. He drove on, letting silence fill the space.
    “Do we really have to do this?” Rachel finally asked, her voice small, the question directed to the window.
    “Yes, Rachel, we do. Didn’t Kristy talk to you about this?”
    “She did. But the whole deal is creepy. It’s like I’m going to couples therapy with my dad.”
    It was, a little, and he chuckled. “It’s not couples therapy. It’s grief counseling. To help us, well… you know.”
    “Grieve?”
    “Yes.”
    She slumped down farther on the seat. “I’m pretty good at missing Mom, you know. I don’t think I need a professional coach to tell me how.”
    His chuckle evaporated. “It’s not to help you miss her. It’s to teach us how to live… harmoniously together without her.”
    Rachel turned her face toward him, her pale blue eyes flashing. “I live harmoniously at Grandma and Grandpa’s house just fine. If you’d let me stay there, everything else would be fine, too.”
    His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. His stomach felt full of rocks. Rachel had been living with her grandparents for more than a year, ever since the car accident, but he wanted his daughter back in his house. He missed her. He missed her constant singing, and the smell of her waffles toasting before school. He missed her soft kiss on his cheek, and the way she’d giggle when they’d watched television together.
    “Sweetheart, I want you to come home and live with me. Is that so hard to understand?”
    “But I want to stay where I am. Is
that
so hard to understand?” Her voice broke, and she twisted back toward the window, letting her hair once again shield her expression.
    She didn’t want to live with him. She’d made that fact abundantly clear, and so had her grandparents.
    Rachel