Faith, Hope and Family. GINA WILKINS

didn’t appear at all satisfied, but she finally nodded her head. “Okay.”

      Looking relieved now, Deborah reached down to take her little sister’s hand. “Let’s order our ice cream before the line gets too long.”

      “’Bye, Officer Smith.”

      “’Bye, princess. Nice to see you, as always, Deborah,” he added dryly.

      “Good afternoon, Officer,” she returned, her voice chilly enough to refreeze his melting ice cream.

      What kind of fool, he wondered as they moved away, carried a seven-year-old torch for a woman who could hardly stand to look at him?

      A chance glimpse at the decorative wall mirror across the room gave him his answer.

      He was that kind of fool.

      Going to the movie had seemed like such a good idea at the time, Deborah mused as she combed her tangled hair, scowling at the popcorn kernel that fell to the floor. How could she have known what an ordeal it would become?

      How could she have possibly predicted that they would run into Dylan?

      Isabelle hadn’t stopped chattering about him since they’d left the ice-cream parlor an hour ago. What a nice man he was. How kind he had been to Adrienne and Isabelle when they’d been involved in a minor traffic accident a couple of months ago. How strong he had been to carry Adrienne all the way to his patrol car when she hurt her ankle. How funny he was when he teased Isabelle and called her princess.

      Apparently, Deborah wasn’t the only McCloud woman to have succumbed to Dylan’s lazy charms. It had been all she could do to prevent herself from warning Isabelle not to give her heart to the man; he would only turn around and break it. Shatter it into so many pieces that she would never be able to find all the parts.

      The relationship between Deborah and Dylan had been too passionate, too complex and too volatile for her, as young and as sheltered as she’d been. At times, she had felt smothered, at others overwhelmed by the intensity of their feelings. Because of those factors, it had ended devastatingly—and perhaps inevitably, considering the differences between them. What few parts of Deborah’s heart had been left intact after her breakup with Dylan had crumbled beneath the weight of her father’s betrayal such a short time later.

      “Deborah?” Lenore appeared in the open bedroom door, her smile both weary and apologetic. “I’m home. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

      Because Lenore looked so tired, Deborah didn’t have the heart to complain about being left in charge of Isabelle. “That’s okay. We managed.”

      “Yes, Isabelle told me you took her to a movie. That was nice of you.”

      Deborah shrugged and set the comb on the cherry dresser in her bedroom. “I didn’t know how else to entertain her. She seemed to enjoy the outing.”

      “Yes, she was just telling me all about it. She had a lovely time. Um…she mentioned that you saw Dylan Smith at the ice-cream parlor.”

      Deborah scowled. “Yes. We saw him. Why on earth has Nathan let her get so attached to that…to Dylan?”

      “I believe it all began while Nathan and Caitlin were on their honeymoon, when Isabelle was staying with Gideon and Adrienne. Dylan helped Adrienne when she was injured in a car accident, and the friendship grew from there. Adrienne seems to have grown almost as fond of Dylan as Isabelle—in a purely platonic way, of course,” she added unnecessarily.

      “I’m still surprised that Gideon doesn’t object to his wife being buddies with one of his oldest enemies.”

      “Obviously, Adrienne is free to choose her own friends. And, actually, I think Gideon and Dylan are getting along a little better these days, which is a good thing, since they’ll probably be interacting on occasion because of Adrienne. I wouldn’t call Gideon and Dylan friends, exactly….”

      “I would certainly hope not,” Deborah muttered, appalled by the very idea.

      “…but Gideon has become mature enough to put the past behind him. Gideon has probably realized how silly it is to carry a grudge for so long just because he and Dylan had a few confrontations in their schooldays. And Nathan was simply being the overprotective big brother when he objected to you being so intensely involved with Dylan at such a young and vulnerable age. But that all happened so long ago. I don’t know why you can’t let it go, as well—unless, of course, you still have feelings for—”

      “I don’t,” Deborah snapped to prevent her mother from even finishing that sentence. “As I have told you plenty of times, the only feeling I have for Dylan Smith is extreme dislike.”

      “Well, I like him!” Deborah hadn’t seen Isabelle appear in the doorway behind Lenore, but the angry outburst certainly got her attention. Isabelle was glaring at her, her little fists on her hips. “Officer Smith is my friend, and you should be nice to him like Nate and Gideon are.”

      “Isabelle.” Lenore spoke quite firmly, a tone Deborah remembered very well from her own childhood. “We don’t raise our voices like that. It isn’t polite.”

      “And, besides,” Deborah added when Isabelle subsided into a pout, “I was perfectly civil to your friend at the ice-cream parlor.”

      Almost nobly polite, in her own opinion. It hadn’t been easy to resist the impulse to snipe at him, but she hadn’t wanted to upset Isabelle. But she would be darned if she would answer to a four-year-old.

      “Go wash your hands, Isabelle,” Lenore instructed. “We’ll be having dinner soon.”

      “That child is in danger of becoming spoiled,” Deborah muttered when Isabelle shuffled away. “It seems that everyone in this family indulges her. Even Dylan.”

      Princess Isabelle, indeed.

      “We are going to have to be careful,” Lenore agreed. “She’s had a rough time in her short life, being orphaned so young and moved around so many times. I suppose we try to overcompensate for that. I’m sure she’s a bit unsettled today because Nathan and Caitlin have been called away, changing her routine again. Routines are important to four-year-olds, you know. And she really is very fond of Dylan.”

      “Fine. That’s between her and Nathan, I suppose. But don’t expect me to start cozying up to him just because the rest of the family doesn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings.”

      Lenore took a step nearer to lay a hand against her daughter’s cheek in a gesture that was as familiar as the no-nonsense tone she had used with Isabelle earlier. “You’ve never told me the details of your breakup with Dylan, but I know how badly it hurt you. And then your father broke your heart when he left us for Kimberly. He broke mine, too, you know.”

      Deborah swallowed a hard knot in her throat. “I don’t—”

      “You don’t want to talk about it. I know. You never do. But I need to say one more thing. Better than anyone else in the family, I understand how hard it is for you to accept Isabelle into this household. Into our lives. I know what you see when you look at her. Don’t you think I sometimes see it, too? I only agreed to accept her into our family when I realized that refusing to do so would place an insurmountable wall between Nathan and myself, something I simply couldn’t allow. His kind heart wouldn’t allow him to abandon his orphaned little sister when she had no one else to turn to, even if it cost him the rest of his family.”

      “Okay, Nathan’s a saint….”

      “Hardly,” Lenore murmured with a smile. “But he’s my son, and I love him. So I accepted the child he will raise as his own. And, in doing so, I found my life immeasurably enriched. As hard as it may be for you—or for others—to understand, I’ve grown to love Isabelle very much. The joy and laughter and affection she brought with her replaced the anger and bitterness and hurt that I had lived with for so long. And it isn’t just me. Nathan and Caitlin adore her, and even Gideon has learned