E NICE TO him, Lucy,” Kate murmured sleepily. “Max doesn’t know the bed is for cats only.” Reaching out, she pulled the hissing cat away from Max, who’d unknowingly violated Lucy’s territory by resting his head on the comforter. She settled the gray cat on the pillow next to hers and turned her face toward the nightstand. The clock stared back at her. It was eight-thirty.

Kate closed her eyes, trying to return to the peaceful amnesia of sleep, but a few minutes later she gave up, shoved back the covers, and climbed wearily out of bed. “How did you sleep?” she asked Max. He wagged his tail in response, and she smiled, ruffling his fur. “You have to learn to get along with Lucy and Ethel,” she said as she paused to scoop Ethel off her dresser and give the tabby a hug.

Max followed her into the kitchen, and she let him out into the fenced yard of the little house she rented in an old, partially restored Chicago neighborhood near where she used to work. He trotted outside onto the frozen ground and sniffed the snow; then the unfamiliar cold penetrated beneath his fur and he beat a hasty retreat back to the house.

Kate pretended to ignore him as she made coffee. “Please let him be easy to housebreak,” she prayed to no one in particular. Her belief in the power of prayer, which had undergone fairly wide swings throughout her life, was at a record low after her night on the beach with Mitchell Wyatt.

Watching him swimming toward her under a blanket of bright stars and sensing her father’s presence so close to her had been the most moving, mystical experience of Kate’s life—proof at last that there really was a Divine Presence, a Grand Plan, just as her uncle, the priest, had always insisted. Maybe he was right, Kate decided as she listlessly spooned coffee into a filter. If so, then based on her own recent experience, the Divine Presence had a cruelly perverse sense of humor and His Grand Plan needed drastic revision.

While she contemplated those weighty matters, coffee brewed and Max went out into the yard again, where he made use of all three catalpa trees. Kate let him back inside and congratulated him on a job well done with as much enthusiasm as she could muster; then she poured herself a cup of coffee.

A very early riser as a rule, she usually took her coffee into her tiny living room, opened the drapes, and curled up in a chair beside the front window to watch the neighborhood slowly come to life. This morning, however, she was three hours too late to watch the “show” and she was in no mood to do anything except go back to bed, crawl under the covers, and try to get warm.

After stopping in the hallway to turn up the thermostat, she carried her coffee into the bedroom, put it on the nightstand, and got back into bed. Trying to encase herself in a safe cocoon of sheets and down-filled comforter, she propped pillows against her headboard, drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Ethel hopped off the dresser and curled up at her feet; Lucy settled deeper into the pillow near her hip.

By nine o’clock, she’d already drunk the hot coffee, but she was still shivering inside from the aftermath of everything that had happened in Anguilla and St. Maarten. She decided to call Holly and tell her she was back, and engaged to Evan, and maybe ease into the story about Mitchell after that. Holly’s hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays were from noon to nine PM, and since Holly lived only twenty minutes away, they might even be able to get together.

She was already reaching for the phone when it began to ring.

“Kate,” a cordial, but unfamiliar, male voice said, “this is Gray Elliott. You probably don’t remember me, but we’ve met a few times when you’ve been with Evan.”

“Yes, of course I remember you,” Kate said, wondering if “Chicago’s most eligible bachelor” was actually that unassuming, or just pretending to be.

“I phoned Evan this morning, and he told me how to reach you and that you’re engaged now. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

“Thank you.”

“I know this is short notice, but I was wondering if you could drop by my office at ten-thirty this morning.”

Kate sat up abruptly and swung her legs over the side of the bed, dislodging Ethel in the process. Apparently, being engaged to a successful young attorney with the right social connections had some definite perks. Before this, she could barely get the detectives handling her father’s case to call her back. Now, the state’s attorney himself was calling her voluntarily. “Is this about my father’s case?”

“Indirectly.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’d rather explain that in person.”

There was something about his voice that unsettled her. At first his tone had been affable, but the invitation to his office sounded businesslike. “Should I bring a lawyer along?” she asked, trying to joke.

“You may bring anyone you wish,” he said warmly, and just as Kate began to chide herself for being edgy about his call, he added, “However, I don’t think you’ll want Evan to be present.”

Kate hung up the phone and immediately dialed Holly. “Hi,” she said when Holly answered. “I got back late last night. Gray Elliott—the state’s attorney—just called me and asked me to come to his office at ten-thirty. It has something to do with my father’s case. I could use a little moral support if you have the time.”

“I’ll make the time,” Holly said. “I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes, and you can tell me about your trip on the way there.”

Exactly forty-five minutes later, Holly stopped in front of the house in her sporty SUV. She smiled as Kate got inside, then she sobered. “You look awful. What happened down there?” she asked as she pulled away from the curb.

Kate was so glad to see her that she immediately fell into their time-honored habit of turning even bad events into material for lighthearted banter. “Let’s see, what happened down there? I fell in love with a new guy and got engaged.”

“To Evan, or the new guy?”

“I got engaged to Evan. Max is my new love.”

“Then everything is perfect, right?”

“Right.”

“Then why do you look so... unhappy?”

“Because I also took your advice and went to bed with someone.”

Holly shot her a long, amazed glance and had to slam on the brakes to avoid running a stop sign. “How did that go?”

Kate leaned her head back and closed her eyes, trying to force her lips into a smile. “Not very well,” she whispered.

“It couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of days. How bad could a thing like that go in a couple of days?”

“It could go really bad. Really, really, really bad.”

“Let’s hear the details,” Holly persisted.

“Later—on the way back. Evan was wonderful about it, though.”

“You told him about it?”

“He’d brought a ring with him,” Kate said, opening her eyes and smiling more naturally. “Look—”

Holly reached out and took Kate’s outstretched fingers. Holly was wearing faded jeans, scuffed boots, a white turtleneck, and a bulky navy pea coat that had seen better days. Her long blond hair was scrunched into a big tortoiseshell claw clip at the crown to keep it from falling into her face, and she was wearing no makeup. “Very impressive,” she said sincerely. “A little over four carats, E in color, nice proportions.” Holly was the errant daughter of wealthy New York socialites. She knew her jewels. She had a trust fund, which she refused to touch, and which she said was obscenely large. She also had the knack of looking delicate and feminine when she was dressed like a lumberjack and the extraordinary ability to morph herself into a haughty former debutante on a moment’s notice and hold her own in any social situation.

She rarely talked about her family in New York except to say laughingly that she and her sister both felt honor bound to atone for their robber-baron ancestors by serving the less fortunate. Holly took care of animals; her sister, Laurel, was a lawyer who worked pro bono on cases involving women and children.