This Heart Of Mine

by Susan Elizabeth Philips

  Late the next afternoon Molly lowered one hand from the steering wheel and ran her fingers through Roo’s topknot. Earlier she’d returned Hannah to her parents, and now she was on her way to the Calebows’ Door County, Wisconsin, vacation home. It would be late when she got there, but the roads were clear and she didn’t mind driving at night.

  She’d made the decision to travel north impulsively. Her conversation with Phoebe yesterday had exposed something she’d been doing her best to deny. Her sister was right. Having her hair dyed red was a symptom of a bigger problem. Her old restlessness was back.

  True, she wasn’t experiencing any compulsion to pull a fire alarm, and giving away her money was no longer an option. But that didn’t mean that her subconscious couldn’t find some new way to commit mayhem. She had the uneasy sensation she was being drawn back to a place she thought she’d left behind.

  She remembered what the counselor had told her all those years ago at Northwestern.

  “As a child, you believed you could make your father love you if you did everything you were supposed to. If you got the best grades, minded your manners, followed all the rules, then he’d give you the approval every child needs. But your father was incapable of that kind of love. Eventually something inside you snapped, and you did the worst thing you could think of. Your rebellion was actually healthy. It kept you functioning.”

  “That doesn’t explain what I did in high school,” she’d told him. “Bert was dead by then, and I was living with Phoebe and Dan. They both love me. And what about the shoplifting incident?”

  “Maybe you needed to test Phoebe and Dan’s love.”

  Something odd had fluttered inside her. “What do you mean?”

  “The only way you can make certain their love is unconditional is to do something terrible and then see if they’re still around for you.”

  And they had been.

  So why was her old problem coming back to haunt her?

  She didn’t want mayhem in her life anymore. She wanted to write her books, enjoy her friends, walk her dog, and play with her nieces and nephew. But she’d been feeling restless for weeks, and one look at her red hair, which really was awful, told her she might be on the verge of going off the deep end again.

  Until that urge faded, she’d do the sensible thing and hide away in Door County for a week or so. After all, what possible trouble could she get into there?

  Kevin Tucker had been dreaming about Red Jack Express, a quarterback delayed sneak, when something woke him up. He rolled over, groaned, and tried to figure out where he was, but the bottle of scotch he’d befriended before he’d fallen asleep made that tough. Normally adrenaline was his drug of choice, but tonight alcohol had seemed like a good alternative.

  He heard the sound again, a scratching at the door, and it all came back to him. He was in Door County, Wisconsin, the Stars weren’t playing this week, and Dan had slapped him with a ten-thousand-dollar fine. After he’d done that, the son of a bitch had ordered him to go up to their vacation house and stay there till he got his head together.

  There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his head, but there was definitely a problem with the Calebows’ high-tech security system—because somebody was trying to break in.

  Chapter 2

  So what if he is the hottest guy at your school? It’s the way he treats you that counts.

  “Is He Too Hot To Handle?”

  Molly Somerville for Chik

  Kevin suddenly remembered that he’d been too preoccupied with his scotch to set the house’s security system, A lucky break. Now he had a shot at a little entertainment.

  The house was cold and dark as sin. He threw his bare feet over the edge of the couch and bumped into the coffee table. Cursing, he rubbed his shin, then hopped toward the door. What did it say about his life that tangling with a burglar would be this week’s bright spot? He just hoped the son of a bitch was armed.

  He dodged a chunky shape that he thought might be an armchair and stepped on something small and sharp, probably one of the Legos he’d seen scattered around. The house was big and luxurious, set deep into the Wisconsin woods, with trees on three sides and the icy waters of Lake Michigan at the rear.

  Damn, it was dark. He headed toward the scratching sound, and just as he reached it, heard the click of the latch. The door began to open.

  He felt that adrenaline rush he loved, and in one smooth motion he shoved the door against the wall and grabbed the person on the other side.

  The guy was a lightweight, and he came flying.

  He was a pansy, too, from the sound of that scream as he hit the floor.

  Unfortunately, he had a dog. A big dog.

  The hair stood on the back of Kevin’s neck as he heard the low, bloodcurdling growl of an attack dog. He had no time to brace himself before the animal clamped down on his ankle.

  With the reflexes that were making him a legend, he lunged toward the switch, at the same time steeling himself for the crunch of his anklebones. Light flooded the foyer, and he realized two things.

  He wasn’t being attacked by a rottweiler. And those panicked sounds weren’t coming from a guy.

  “Aw, shit…”

  Lying on the slate floor at his feet was a small, screaming woman with hair the color of a 49ers jersey. And clamped to his ankle, ripping holes in his favorite jeans, was a small, gray…

  His brain skidded away from the word.

  The stuff she’d been carrying when he’d grabbed her lay strewn all around. As he tried to shake off the dog, he spotted lots of books, drawing supplies, two boxes of Nutter Butter cookies, and bedroom slippers with big pink rabbits’ heads on the toes.

  He finally shook off the snarling dog. The woman scrambled to her feet and assumed some kind of martial arts pose. He opened his mouth to explain, only to have her foot come up and catch him behind the knee. The next thing he knew, he’d been sacked.

  “Damn… It took the Giants a good three quarters to do that.”

  She’d been wearing a coat when she hit the floor, but the only thing between him and the slate was a layer of denim. He winced and rolled to his back. The animal pounced on his chest, barking dog breath into his face and slapping him in the nose with the tails of the blue bandanna fastened around his neck.

  “You tried to kill me!” she screamed, the fiery little wisps of 49er hair flashing around her face.

  “Not on purpose.” He knew he’d met her before, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember who she was. “Could you call off your pit bull?”

  Her panicked look was giving way to fury, and she bared her teeth just like the dog. “Come here, Roo.”

  The animal snarled and crawled off Kevin’s chest. It finally hit him. Oh, shit… “You’re, uh, Phoebe’s sister. Are you okay”—he searched for a name—”Miss Somerville?” Since he was the one lying on the slate floor with a bruised hip and puncture wounds in his ankle, he considered the question something of a courtesy.

  “This is the second time in two days!” she exclaimed.

  “I don’t remember—”

  “The second time! Are you demented, you stupid badger? Is that your problem? Or are you just an idiot!”

  “As to that, I—Did you just call me a badger?”

  She blinked. “A bastard. I called you a bastard.”

  “That’s all right then.” Unfortunately, his lame attempt at humor didn’t make her smile.

  The pit bull retreated to his mistress’s side. Kevin pushed himself up off the slate and rubbed his ankle, trying to recall what he knew about his employer’s sister, but he remembered only that she was an egghead. He’d seen her a few times at Stars headquarters with her head buried in a book, but her hair sure hadn’t been this color.

  It was hard to believe that she and Phoebe were related, because she wasn’t even close to being a fox. Not that she was a dog either. She was just sort of ordinary—flat where Phoebe was curvy, small where Phoebe was large. Unlike her sister’s, this o
ne’s mouth didn’t look as if it had been designed to whisper dirty words under the sheets. Instead, Little Sis’s mouth looked as if it spent its days shushing people in the library.

  He didn’t need the evidence of all those scattered books to tell him she was the kind of woman he least liked—brainy and way too serious. She was probably going to be a talker, too, an even bigger strike against her. In the spirit of fairness, though, he had to give Little Sis high marks for eye power. They were an unusual color, somewhere between blue and gray, and they had a sexy slant to them, just like her eyebrows, which he realized were almost meeting in the middle as she scowled at him. Damn it. Phoebe’s sister! And he’d thought this week couldn’t get any worse.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Those blue-gray irises turned the exact color of an Illinois summer afternoon right before the tornado siren went off. He’d now managed to piss off every member of the Stars’ ruling family, except maybe the kids. It was a gift.

  He’d better mend his fences, and since charm was his long suit, he flashed a smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you were a burglar.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Even before her screech, he could see that the charm thing wasn’t working.

  He kept an eye on that kung fu leg of hers. “Dan suggested I come up here for a few days, to think things over…” He paused. “Which I didn’t need to do.”

  She slapped the switch, and two sets of rustic iron wall sconces came on, filling the far corners with light.

  The house was built of logs, but with six bedrooms and ceilings that soared up two stories to the exposed roof beams, the place didn’t bear any resemblance to a frontier log cabin. Big windows made the woods seem part of the interior, and the huge stone fireplace that dominated one end of the room could have roasted a buffalo. All the furniture was big, overstuffed, and comfortable, designed to take the abuse of a large family. Off to the side a wide staircase led to a second floor complete with a small loft at one end.

  Kevin bent over to pick up her things. He examined the rabbit slippers. “Don’t you get nervous wearing these during hunting season?”

  She snatched them from his hand. “Give them to me.”

  “I wasn’t planning on wearing them. It’d be a little hard to keep the guys’ respect.”

  She didn’t smile as he handed them over. “There’s a lodge not too far from here,” she said. “I’m sure you can find a room for the night.”

  “It’s too late to throw me out. Besides, I was invited.”

  “It’s my house. You’re uninvited.” She tossed her coat on one of the couches and headed for the kitchen. The pit bull curled his lip, then stuck his pompon straight up, just as if he were giving Kevin the finger. Only when the dog was certain his message had been delivered did he trot after her.

  Kevin followed them. The kitchen was roomy and comfortable, with Craftsman cabinets and a daylight view of Lake Michigan through every window. She dropped her packages on a pentagon-shaped center island surrounded by six stools.

  She had an eye for fashion, he’d give her that. She wore close-fitting charcoal pants and a funky, oversize metallic-gray sweater that put him in mind of a suit of armor. With that short flaming hair, she could be Joan of Arc right after the match had been struck. Her clothes looked expensive but not new, which was odd, since he remembered hearing that she’d inherited Bert Somerville’s fortune. Even though Kevin was wealthy himself, he’d come into his money long after his character had been formed. In his experience, people who’d grown up wealthy didn’t understand hard work, and he hadn’t met many of them he liked. This snobby rich girl was no exception.

  “Uh, Miss Somerville? Before you kick me out… I’ll bet you didn’t let the Calebows know you were coming up here, or they’d have told you the place was already occupied.”

  “I have dibs. It’s understood.” She threw the cookies in a drawer and slammed it shut. Then she studied him, all uptight and mad as hell. “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

  “Sure I know your name.” He searched his mind and couldn’t come up with a thing.

  “We’ve been introduced at least three times.”

  “Which was totally unnecessary, since I’ve got a great memory for names.”

  “Not mine. You’ve forgotten.”

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, but he was used to operating under pressure, and he didn’t have any trouble waiting her out.

  “It’s Daphne,” she said.

  “Why are you telling me something I already know? Are you this paranoid with everyone, Daphne?”

  She pursed her lips and muttered something under her breath. He could swear he heard the word “badger” again.

  Kevin Tucker didn’t even know her name! Let this be a lesson, Molly thought as she gazed at all that dangerous gorgeousness.

  Right then she knew she had to find a way to protect herself from him. Okay, so he was drop-dead good-looking. So were a lot of men. Granted, not many of them had that particular combination of dark blond hair and brilliant green eyes. And not many had a body like his, which was trim and sculpted rather than bulky. Still, she wasn’t stupid enough to be taken in by a man who was nothing more than a great body, a pretty face, and an on/off charm switch.

  Well, she was stupid enough—witness her late, unlamented crush on him—but at least she’d known she was being stupid.

  One thing she wouldn’t do was come across as a fawning groupie. He was going to see her at her absolute snottiest! She conjured up Goldie Hawn in Overboard for inspiration. “You’re going to have to leave, Ken. Oh, excuse me, I mean Kevin. It is Kevin, right?”

  She must have gone too far because the corner of his mouth kicked up. “We’ve been introduced at least three times. I’d think you’d remember.”

  “There are just so many football players, and you all look alike.”

  One of his eyebrows arched.

  She’d made her point, and it was late, so she could afford to be generous, but only in the most condescending way. “You can stay tonight, but I came here to work, so you’ll have to vacate tomorrow morning.” A glance out the back windows showed his Ferrari parked by the garage, which was why she hadn’t seen it when she’d pulled up in front.

  He deliberately settled on a stool, as if to show her he wasn’t going anywhere. “What kind of work do you do?” He sounded patronizing, which told her he didn’t believe it was anything too arduous.

  “Je suis auteur.”

  “An author?”

  “Soy autora,” she added in Spanish.

  “Any reason you’ve given up English?”

  “I thought you might be more comfortable with a foreign language.” A vague wave of her hand. “Something I read…”

  Kevin might be shallow, but he wasn’t stupid, and she wondered if she’d crossed the line. Unfortunately, she was on a roll. “I’m almost certain Roo has recovered from his little problem with rabies, but you might want to get some shots, just to be on the safe side.”

  “You’re still mad about the burglar thing, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Probably a concussion from the fall.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “So you did.” She moved aside a pile of crayons the kids had left on the counter.

  “I think I’ll head upstairs to bed.” He rose and started toward the door, then paused for another look at her awful hair. “Tell me the truth. Was it some kind of football bet?”

  “Good night, Kirk.”

  As Molly entered her bedroom, she realized she was breathing hard. Only a thin wall separated her from the guest room where Kevin would be sleeping. Her skin tingled, and she felt an almost uncontrollable urge to take the scissors to her hair, even though there wasn’t much left to cut. Maybe she should dye it back to its natural color tomorrow, except she couldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  She’d c
ome here to hide out, not sleep next to the lion’s den, and she grabbed her things. With Roo following, she hurried down the hall to the big, dormitory-style corner room the three girls shared and locked the door.

  She sagged against the jamb and tried to settle down by taking in the room’s sloping ceiling and the cozy dormers designed for daydreaming. Two of the walls displayed a Nightingale Woods mural that she’d painted while everyone in the family got in her way. She’d be all right, and in the morning he’d be gone.

  Sleep, however, was impossible. Why hadn’t she let Phoebe know she was driving up here, as she usually did? Because she hadn’t wanted more lectures about her hair or warnings about “incidents.”

  She tossed and turned, watched the clock, and finally flicked on the light to sketch some ideas for her new book. Nothing worked. Usually the sound of the winter wind battering the solid log house soothed her, but tonight that wind urged her to throw off her clothes and dance, to leave the studious, good girl behind and cross over to the wild side.

  She tossed back the covers and jumped out of bed. The room was chilly, but she felt flushed and feverish. She wished she were home. Roo lifted one sleepy eyelid, then closed it again as she made her way to the padded bench in the nearest dormer.

  Frost feathers decorated the windowpanes, and snow swirled in thin, dancing ribbons through the trees. She tried to concentrate on the night beauty, but she kept seeing Kevin Tucker. Her skin prickled, and her breasts tingled. It was so demeaning! She was a bright woman—brilliant, even—but, despite her denial, she was as obsessed as a sex-starved groupie.

  Maybe this was a perverse form of personal growth. At least she was obsessing over sex instead of the Great Love Story she wouldn’t ever have.

  She decided it was safer to obsess over the Great Love Story. Dan had saved Phoebe’s life! It was the most romantic thing Molly could imagine, but she supposed it had also given her unrealistic expectations.