Chase's Promise. Lois Dyer Faye

spent in jail after Mike died?

      She was no nearer to the answer now than she’d been fifteen years ago. And she still wanted to know, needed to know if the boy she’d adored as a little girl still existed, deep inside the complicated, dangerous man walking by her side.

       Chapter Four

       C hase didn’t wake Raine during the night. His computer search turned up nothing of interest on Trey Harper—no activity on his credit card or bank accounts and no new information on the whereabouts of his vehicle. Chase sent an e-mail to Ren Colter at the Seattle office of Colter & McCloud Investigations and asked his partner to run national searches for Trey through the usual resources. Finally, at 2:00 a.m., he shut down his laptop and went to bed. Given the nature of his job, he’d developed the ability to fall asleep instantly and wake just as quickly but tonight, thoughts of Raine kept him awake.

      He remembered the little girl she’d once been. He was five years older than her and Trey but the much younger twins had followed him and Mike on occasion, wanting to join in their adventures. One hot summer day, Raine had fallen out of a tree house they’d built in Mike’s backyard and broken her arm; afterward, Mr. Harper and his own dad had lectured them at length about looking after her and Trey. When her exasperated mother had caught Raine trying to climb the tree with her arm in a cast, Chase and Mike had dismantled the aerie and built one in the McCloud yard.

      It was hard to equate the adult Raine with that little girl. Except for the dark hair and the gray eyes with their thick black lashes, nothing about her was familiar. Those gray eyes held a woman’s secrets, the dark brown hair a sexy, sleek fall that called attention to the delicate shells of her ears and shape of her face. High cheekbones framed the classic line of her small nose and the lush fullness of her mouth. Raine’s very adult, very feminine curves and long legs were nothing like the angular body and coltish limbs of the child that had tagged after her brothers and Chase.