He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped thinking of her as just one of the guys and starting seeing her as a girl. About the time she went through puberty and grew a set of perfect knockers. Man, how he’d wanted to see her boobs. Once-just once-he’d kissed her, at Lindsay Farrell’s thirteenth birthday party when they were playing some crazy kissing game. Being a good sport, Rachel had allowed the kiss, but when he’d copped a feel, she had slapped him. Their gazes had locked in a heated exchange. He had wanted to kiss her again but knew he’d blown his one chance to become more than just buddies.

By the time Jake Marcott showed up in their lives, when they were sixteen, he had already begun to pester the hell out of Rachel, doing everything he could to make her notice him. Why was it that all the other girls had paid attention to him, but not the one he’d wanted?

After Jake’s murder, nothing was ever the same for any of the old gang, least of all for Rachel and her family. She had moved back to Tennessee with her mother after her father’s death, and he’d lost track of her. Once in a blue moon, he’d run into Kristen and asked about Rachel, but she hadn’t known anything more than her address. Both of his serious girlfriends in college had been cute, petite blondes; when he’d married in his late twenties, his wife, Kellie, had fit the same description. He hadn’t been consciously aware of the fact that he had repeatedly tried to find a substitute for the one and only girl he had always wanted.

And here she was back in Portland, back in his life, and walking straight toward him. All he could say was she cleaned up damn good. Just looking at her took his breath away. Nothing flashy, just understated beauty. The kind of clean, wholesome, all-American beauty that turned Dean inside out.

They were both thirty-eight, both divorced and childless, and together again after twenty years. Was fate giving him a second chance with Rachel? Or was he a fool for letting himself believe in second chances?

Dean stared at Rachel, drinking in the sight of her. Her short blond curls framed her heart-shaped face. Her big blue eyes sparkled with mischief and curiosity just as they had when she’d been a kid. She had dressed casually, her outfit suitable for just about any place he might take her in Portland for dinner. White slacks in some gauzy fabric with a matching loose-fitting blouse that billowed out from a row of tiny beading directly under her breasts. Heaven help them both, but she looked good enough to eat.

“You have her home at a decent hour, young man,” Charlie Young said jokingly as he patted Dean on the back.

“Is two in the morning a decent hour?” Dean asked.

“I’ll be home before midnight,” Rachel informed both men.

“You two have a nice evening,” Laraine called after them as they left the house.

Once alone together in Dean’s white Thunderbird, he started the engine, then turned in his seat and looked directly at Rachel. “You look beautiful.”

The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly. An almost smile. “I’m not beautiful and I know it, so don’t waste your time with flattery because it will not get you laid tonight. Got that?”

Dean laughed. God, she hadn’t changed. At least not in the way she reacted to him. Hackles raised. Spitting fire. On the defensive.

“I really do think you’re beautiful.” I always have. “And to set the record straight, I don’t put out on a first date. A girl has to woo me a little before I let her have her way with me.”

“I can’t believe this-you act like you did when we were sixteen.” She glowered at him. “I’m cute, vivacious, spunky, and have a really nice rack, but I am not now nor have I ever been beautiful.”

He shifted gears, backed his Ford sports car out of the Youngs’ driveway, and gunned the engine, shooting the Thunderbird like a rocket down the residential street.

“You’ll get a speeding ticket driving so fast,” she told him.

He slowed down to just ten miles over the speed limit. “I have friends on the police force who can fix a ticket for me.”

Rachel gave him a real smile then, and his stomach knotted.

“Would you be interested in a movie before dinner?” he asked, already having a particular movie in mind.

“I guess so, if there’s something good showing.”

“Define good.”

She glanced his way. “Something that isn’t all blood and gore. Something that won’t give me nightmares and something where every other word isn’t MF.”

“Well, there goes my idea of seeing a movie.”

They both laughed.

That evening after leaving Emily with Mandy’s parents, Mandy and Jeff drove over to Ross Delmonico’s apartment. Mandy had called earlier and told Kristen they had to talk, that it was urgent. Now, after she’d had the entire afternoon to rationalize the eerie phone call she’d received, Mandy was able to tell Kristen about it without crying or freaking out.

“Is there anyone who might want to frighten you or even hurt you?” Kristen asked. “Someone not connected to St. Lizzy’s or the reunion”-she sighed heavily-“or to Jake?”

“No, no one,” Mandy said.

“I think Mandy needs to report the call to the police.” Jeff glanced from Kristen to her husband Ross.

“I agree,” Ross said. “When Kristen sensed she was being stalked-”

“Rachel Alsace is back in Portland,” Kristen blurted out. She’s a police officer in Alabama and Chief Young is allowing her to go through the old Cupid Killer files. She’s working with Dean McMichaels. You remember Dean, don’t you?”

Mandy stared at Kristen, trying to decipher any hidden message in what she’d said, doing her best to read between the lines. “Have you seen Rachel, talked to her?”

“We had lunch today.”

“And?”

“She thinks there might be a connection between Haylie’s and Aurora’s deaths, something the police here in Portland and in New York City weren’t aware of that would have made them look beyond the obvious.”

“What?” Ross and Jeff voiced the word simultaneously.

“She isn’t sure, but she feels certain there’s something,” Kristen said. “And if Rachel senses something isn’t right about their deaths, and we do, too, then we’d be fools to ignore our gut instincts, wouldn’t we?”

After deciding not to go to a movie, Dean had driven Rachel around Portland. When she suggested going by St. Elizabeth’s he had hesitated.

“Why spoil a perfectly lovely evening?” he had asked.

“We won’t get out,” she’d told him. “I’d just like to drive by and take a look.”

He had driven by, barely slowing down, as if the ghosts from the past were hot on his heels.

“You and Jake were buddies, but sometimes I thought maybe you didn’t always like him,” Rachel had said.

“He could be a jerk.” Once the old red-brick school that had originally been built in 1920 was out of sight, Dean added, “Jake could be a real son of a bitch. He kept his dark side well hidden.”

“It’s easy enough to defame his character now, when he can’t defend himself.”

After she had made that really stupid comment, silence hung between her and Dean for quite some time-until they arrived at their original destination. Bar Pastiche was an odd little restaurant on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Odd in that it was a small eatery where the updated-daily menu was written on the wall on butcher paper and where customers threw their paper napkins on the floor as people might do in a true tapas spot in Spain. The ambience was nonexistent, but the food was fabulous. They sat together at the small bar, sipped their drinks, and nibbled on mini-meatball sandwiches and Spanish deviled eggs.

After dinner, as they headed for Dean’s Thunderbird, he asked, “It’s too early to take you home. Want to go dancing? Pick up some ice cream? Run by my place and let me introduce you to my cat?”