New Year's Wedding. Muriel Jensen

without question. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”

      He stopped her with a shake of his head. “No need. Ben’s been my partner on the force for five years. He’s like a brother to me. Since his family adopted your brother, Jack, and Ben is about to marry your sister on New Year’s Day, I think it makes you and me family—sort of.”

      She had to agree. “True, but a thank-you is in order, anyway, because we were all having such a nice Christmas holiday.”

      “We were. I’d expected to have a grim Christmas until Ben invited me to Texas.”

      She smiled empathetically. “Yes, I heard about your girlfriend. You know, I really can’t believe she left you. Why did she?”

      “I guess I just wasn’t the right man for her, after all.” He shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk marriage with me, yet she ran off to marry someone else after knowing him three weeks.”

      “Well, then, who needs her? You tell me what you’re looking for in a woman and I will fix you up. I have friends all over the world. You want an heiress? An adventuress? An activist?”

      He laughed at her business-like approach to matchmaking. “Thanks, but I’m off women for the moment. Tell me more about you. Ben said you were in Ireland when your father called to tell you your siblings were looking for you.”

      She didn’t want to talk about Ireland.

      “We were shooting a perfume ad.”

      “Corie said you’ve been on every notable designer’s runway and you’re the face of six or seven major ad campaigns. And all that time she’d admired you, she didn’t realize you were her sister.”

      “She hadn’t seen me since I was two, except for a photo when I was about twelve. Besides, I go by Chapman, my father’s name, and I had dental surgery to cover a gap between my front teeth when I began to model. You knew our mother had three children from three different men?”

      “Ben told me a little about your situation. Must have been hard on everyone.”

      “Well, Corie and I were sent to our fathers when our mother went to prison. Jack’s father had died in a plane crash and Ben Palmer was his best friend, so he was adopted by Ben’s parents.”

      “That’s a nice note in a sad story.” He shifted in his seat with a sudden smile. “It seems to be turning out well, after all. Back to you. Are you spoiled and demanding? Like, only red M&M’s when you do interviews and only classical music on the sound system when you’re modeling?”

      “Of course.” She replied with a straight face. “Except yellow M&M’s rather than red, country-western rather than classical, and only dark-haired men in the shot with me.”

      “Because the contrast shows off your golden goddess looks?”

      Golden goddess. Was that a compliment, she wondered, or an accusation? She couldn’t tell. “No. Playing the diva is never in the interest of the work. It’s just my personal preference in men.”

      “Of course. I presume you have character and spirit standards, as well? Because, you know, hair color doesn’t really tell you anything.”

      She ran a smiling look over his old-gold hair and blue eyes. “You come closest to those.”

      * * *

      UH, OH. He realized it would be wise to withdraw even as he leaned toward her. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected of a fawned-over celebrity. And the moment she’d turned to him for help, he’d run away with her. It was unsettling to know she’d had such an effect on him. He was as fun-loving as the next bachelor, but he wasn’t a thrill-seeker as a rule, or particularly reckless. He’d had a sick father; had to quit school. Life had been hard, but that had made him a practical man. “Well, no man worth his salt—even one with the wrong hair color—can resist a beautiful woman in distress.”

      She stared at him an extra minute then pointed at the window to the heavy clouds around them. “I understand it rains all the time in Oregon.”

      “Not all the time,” he corrected. “Just October to April, but climate change has made every year less predictable than the one before. Of course, I have only five years of Beggar’s Bay weather history to go by. I’m a transplant from Idaho, and we lived in Europe until I was in high school. My parents taught at American schools there—mostly in Italy and Spain. We went to Paris once, though I don’t remember much about it. But I’ve never been to New York, except at the airport. I’m happy in Beggar’s Bay.”

      “I have seen many of the world’s most beautiful places—big cities, natural wonders, postcard views—and they’re a feast for the soul. But the heart needs something else.”

      He kept his surprise to himself. The heart? Of course, supermodels had heart. He’d seen her in Texas with her rediscovered family and the children at the foster home in Querida. But this observation seemed to be about something else; something very personal.

      “Your heart’s searching for something?”

      “Isn’t everyone’s?”

      She closed her eyes and turned her head to the side, away from him. Hmm. Interesting woman. Impulsive and trusting, but holding a few secrets?

      Well. Not his problem. After the wedding, she’d probably go back to Paris or New York or wherever the next shoot was and it would be as though their paths had never crossed. Just as well.

      It was dusk when the pilot’s voice came over the speaker to tell them they were beginning to descend and asking that they fasten their seat belts. She’d been fidgety and restless most of the flight and had just dozed off a few moments before. He reached out to fasten her belt rather than wake her. The small movement woke her. She looked into his eyes and said sleepily, “I didn’t dream this. You are here.” Her grateful look pinned and melted him.

      “I am,” he said easily, as though he ran off with supermodels every day.

      * * *

      DARKNESS HAD FALLEN when they began the drive home in a rented gray pickup he’d thought would handle the road better than the luxury car she’d suggested. It was raining hard, water from the winding, poorly lit road splashing around them.

      Cassie imagined tomorrow morning’s articles.

      Popular 25-year-old supermodel Cassiopeia, AKA Cassidy Jane Chapman, was killed on Highway 101 on the central Oregon coast when the car in which she was a passenger swerved off the wet road and into a tree. Before the scene in Ireland that might have ended her career, she was the face of Eterna Beauty, Belle Face Pharmaceuticals, Heart and Soul Perfume, as well as many other products. Clothing designer Josephine Bergerac of the award-winning Empress line of eveningwear wept as she told CNN, “There will never be another body like Cassie’s for my clothes. I am done.”

      All right, so maybe Josie wouldn’t give up her work if Cassie died, but her friends and family would miss her. Her father would be devastated.

      Grady slammed on the brakes as something large with four legs ran across the road just feet in front of them. Water flew around them as he skidded, and they finally came to a stop in the other lane. His bright lights illuminated a break in the trees through which the animal had disappeared. Cassie got a quick impression of a large brown body and a white rump.

      “You okay?” he asked, catching her shoulder until she turned toward him. He looked her over.

      “Yes.” Her voice was breathless, her heart hammering.

      He expelled a breath then checked his rearview mirror as she watched the road for oncoming traffic. They seemed to be alone. Then a smaller version of whatever had raced past them loped across the road and into that break in the trees. This time she saw the first buds of antlers on a beautiful young head.

      “I didn’t realize deer were so big,” she said as he turned back into their lane.

      “Those