The Substitute Sister. Lisa Childs

with shoulders so broad she was tempted to lay her weary head on one and weep the tears burning inside her for her sister’s loss. The temptation surprised her, as did the quick flare of attraction she felt for him. For five years she hadn’t allowed herself either weakness.

      Then she saw the child in his arms, the little girl pressed close to his chest. She looked exactly the way Sasha and Nadine had looked as curly-haired toddlers.

      Crystal-blue eyes widened as Annie stared at her, then a soft voice called out, “Mommy!”

      Little arms reached for her, but Sasha froze, her reaction having nothing to do with the chill wind whipping around the open dock. Fear paralyzed her, holding her feet to the planks. She hadn’t been able to save Nadine from the life she’d chosen, a life that had led to her death. How could she accept the responsibility of raising Nadine’s child? What if she let them both down?

      The sheriff walked toward her. His long, jeans-clad legs carrying him to her in a couple of strides. Despite the cold, he wore only a denim shirt with his faded jeans, the cuffs rolled to his elbows. His forearms, thick with muscle, cradled the little girl with no effort. His jaw, lightly stubbled with hair as dark as that brushing the collar of his shirt, was hard and clenched as he stared down at her. The gloom of the dark clouds shadowed his eyes, but the green gleamed vividly.

      She shivered, not from the cold but from the awareness tingling across her skin. Last night his voice had rasped along her nerves, but today his stare was so intense, so intimate, it weakened her knees.

      Despite the howl of the wind whipping up and the resumed conversation of the small, milling crowd, she caught the emotional rumble of his deep voice as he whispered, “Nadine?”

      Chills chased away the nerves. Nadine? Although he stared at her, she wasn’t the woman he very obviously wanted to see.

      Nadine.

      He must have loved her sister.

      She had come to Sunset Island to collect Annie, to serve as her niece’s substitute mother. And that was the only substitute she would ever serve for her sister. As much as she lacked confidence in her parenting abilities, she lacked even more in the bedroom. She knew she could never replace her sister there.

      Chapter Two

      He had known she was dead even before the crime-scene techs had verified that nobody could live with that much blood loss, which could have only been caused by the severing of a main artery. With DNA testing they had also verified that the blood was Nadine’s.

      The woman standing before him now didn’t bear a single scratch that he could see, but he was tempted to pull back her collar to check. She was pale, her eyes the same vivid crystal blue of Annie’s, the only color in her face. The wind tousled her long, black hair, swirling it in an ebony cloud around the shoulders of her blue jacket.

      God, she was beautiful. He sucked in a quick breath of crisp air.

      And she wasn’t just a sister. She was Nadine’s identical twin. “Sasha Michaelson.”

      She nodded. “Yes, and you’re Sheriff Blakeslee? And this is Annie?”

      The little girl reached for her, again calling out, “Mommy.”

      The woman didn’t extend her arms to the child. Didn’t she have any compassion? How could a woman this cold nurture a baby? “You look exactly like your sister.” Beautiful and unapproachable. “She’s confused.”

      “Annie, I’m your aunt. Your Aunt Sasha,” she said to the child, her voice soft as she tried to explain.

      Annie snuggled her head into his shoulder again; she must have recognized the difference. Despite identical faces, they didn’t sound alike. Sasha’s voice wasn’t as husky as her sister’s.

      Reed patted the little girl’s back, trying to soothe her the way he would a distraught crime victim, which in a way Annie was. Her mother’s murder had affected her, too. It didn’t matter how much this woman looked like Nadine, to Annie she was still a stranger. How could he turn the child over to her? “Ms. Michaelson—”

      “Did I—should I have let her think…” Her voice cracked, and she shivered.

      “Come on, let’s get out of the wind,” he said, leading her away from the dock. When his deputy moved to follow, he turned back toward him. “Tommy, I’ve got it from here. You can take the ferry back to Whiskey Bay. I need you to help Bruce at the office.”

      “But, Sheriff Blakeslee…”

      The kid wanted to be where the excitement was. The biggest thing to have ever happened in the far-reaching area that was Reed’s jurisdiction was Nadine’s murder. But it was so much more to Reed, so much more personal. Maybe he’d thought he’d been acting as her friend by not digging into her past, but she might be alive if he had. And now, because she was dead, he had to dig. “I need you there.”

      “Yes…yes, sir,” the young man stammered. While he didn’t immediately head back to the ferry, he didn’t follow when Reed started walking again.

      Sasha Michaelson glanced back toward the deputy, probably wishing she could take the next ferry away from Sunset Island, too. “There are no cars?”

      “Nope. We could take a horse-drawn carriage, but my house isn’t far from here.”

      “House?”

      “I don’t have an office on the island. Nothing’s ever really happened here.” Until now. “A drunken brawl or two at one of the bars. And then I take them to the jail and office on the mainland.”

      “By ferry?”

      “There’s a sheriff’s boat.” He could have sent it for her, but he’d wanted it close…in case of emergency.

      From the dock a cobblestone lane headed into the little town where the shops, restaurants and inns were. Reed led her the opposite direction, down a gravel path toward the houses. His cottage wasn’t much closer than the Scott Mansion, but he wasn’t ready to take her, or Annie, to the big house where Nadine had been savagely murdered, where her blood still stained the foyer.

      Annie hadn’t been home when her mother was killed. The nanny had taken her for a walk, so she hadn’t seen anything. For that, but not much else, Reed could be grateful.

      The problem was no one else had seen anything, either. No witnesses and no body made Nadine’s murder tough to solve. But he would. He owed both Nadine and her daughter justice. He would find the killer, whether he’d left the island or still lived among them.

      He touched Sasha Michaelson’s back, turning her down the path toward his small, fieldstone cottage. She wasn’t very tall, her head barely as high as his shoulder. And despite the bulky jacket and heavy pants, he could tell her frame was delicate. Like Nadine’s.

      He’d felt protective of Nadine and Annie. And it tore him apart that he hadn’t been able to protect Nadine from death or Annie from the loss of her mother.

      But he didn’t feel protective of Sasha Michaelson. It was something else that flared inside him, something he hadn’t felt in so long that he barely recognized it as the hot sting of desire.

      “Nice,” she murmured as she passed through the door he held open for her.

      His ex-wife had hated the place for being too cramped, too primitive. A fire still burned in the grate, casting a warm glow over the hardwood floor. Sasha walked toward it, her hands out. “I forgot gloves,” she said. “I thought I’d thought of everything, but I forgot gloves.”

      Reed caught the rising note of hysteria in her voice. Maybe she wasn’t cold and unemotional. Maybe she was just scared. He glanced down at Annie’s face. The child had fallen asleep in his arms, not a surprise after her restless night. He shouldered open the door to the spare bedroom and laid her on the mattress on the floor. Because of the chill in the room, he didn’t bother removing her coat and just pulled the comforter over