We made it across the bridge. I hopped down from the handlebars, and Sinclair and I received our official certificates, Xeroxed copies of a form signed by the mayors of both Pemkowet and East Pemkowet.

“I’ll cherish it forever,” Sinclair teased me, stuffing his in the saddlebags of his bike. “Maybe I’ll start a scrapbook.”

“You do that.” I was distracted by the sight of Cody Fairfax standing beside a squad car at the east end of the bridge, where a line of vehicles was waiting for the barricade to be lifted. The sunlight brought out goldish glints in his bronze hair. My stomach tightened a bit. Cody didn’t usually work day shifts, but Chief Bryant liked to schedule an additional officer on duty during the holidays and Cody tried to pick up an extra shift around the full moon to compensate for lost time.

He was talking to a young woman in an impeccably tailored off-white linen business-casual suit, a short jacket nipped in at the waist, a hint of flair to the pant legs. Hey, as my mother’s daughter, I notice these things. Under the jacket she wore a silk camisole in a vivid hue of yellow that contrasted perfectly with her rich cocoa-brown skin—it was one of those colors I could never wear without looking jaundiced.

She had short, almost shorn hair that clung to her skull, and high, rounded cheekbones. She looked familiar, and I’m embarrassed to say that for one fleeting moment as I tried to place her, I thought she looked like a contestant I remembered from one of the earlier seasons of America’s Next Top Model.

Annnd . . . then I realized that Sinclair had gone stock-still beside me, and the reason she looked familiar is that she looked a hell of a freaking lot like him.

As though he’d called her name, she glanced over at him. Something intangible passed between them, and then her face broke into a wide, bright smile. “Sinny!”

Sinny?

“Emmy,” he murmured half under his breath, and I realized that although we’d spent the past night and day playing boyfriend and girlfriend, I definitely didn’t know him well enough to read his reaction. That was pretty well confirmed when he walked away from me and toward her without another word.

Not knowing what else to do, I hung back.

Cody ambled over, a studiedly neutral look on his face. “Looks like your boyfriend’s sister’s in town.”

Sister, huh? “Looks like it,” I agreed.

“Must be a surprise visit,” Cody said. “She was asking directions to the tour bus pickup stop.”

“What a nice surprise.” Damned if I was going to give anything away to Officer Down-low. If he didn’t want to be a part of my personal life, he didn’t have the right to pry into it.