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 nephews. 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.

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.