“Fred and I are forced to agree.”

Interested, Hunter lifted his wine. “Where does she want it?”

“On the curve of her right shoulder. She insists it’ll be very tasteful.”

“Dumb.” Sarah handed out the decree with a shrug. “Cassie’s thirteen,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Boy, is she a case.”

Lee choked back a laugh at both the facial and verbal expressions. “How will you handle it?”

Bonnie only smiled. “Oh, I think I’ll take her to the tattoo parlor.”

“But you wouldn’t—” Lee broke off, seeing Bonnie’s liberally streaked hair and shoulder-length earrings. Perhaps she would.

With a laugh, Bonnie patted Lee’s hand. “No, I wouldn’t. But it’ll be a lot more effective if Cassie makes the decision herself—which she will, the minute she gets a good look at all those nasty little needles.”

“Sneaky,” Sarah approved with a grin.

“Clever,” Bonnie corrected.

“Same thing.” With her mouth half-full, she turned to Lee. “There’s always a crisis at Aunt Bonnie’s house,” she said confidentially. “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

“No.” Was that wistfulness she saw in the child’s eyes? She’d often had the same wish herself. “There was only me.”

“I think it’s better to have them, even though it gets crowded.” She slanted her father a guileless smile. “Can I have another piece?”

The rest of the evening passed, not quietly but, for all the noise, peacefully. Sarah dragged her father outside for soccer practice, which Bonnie declined, grinning. Her condition, she claimed, was too delicate. Lee, over her protests, found herself drafted. She learned, though her aim was never very accurate, to kick a ball with the side of her foot and bounce it off her head. She enjoyed it, which surprised her, and didn’t feel like a fool, which surprised her more.

Dusk came quickly, then a dark that flickered with fireflies. Though her eyes were heavy, Sarah groaned about going to bed until Hunter agreed to carry her up on his back. Lee didn’t have to be told it was a nightly ritual; she only had to see them together.

He’d said Sarah was his life, and though she’d only seen them together for a matter of hours, Lee believed it.

She’d never have expected the man whose books she’d read to be a devoted father, content to spend his time with a ten-year-old girl. She’d never have imagined him here, in a house so far away from the excitement of the city. Even the man she’d grown to know over the past two weeks didn’t quite fit the structure of being parent, disciplinarian and mentor to a ten-year-old. Yet he was.

If she superimposed the image of Sarah’s father over those of her lover and the author of Silent Scream, they all seemed to meld into one. The problem was dealing with it.