Undercover in Copper Lake. Marilyn Pappano

you don’t want to see Daisy lording anything over Dahlia. About six? We eat early so they can have a little downtime before I have to wrestle them into the bathtub and pajamas and bed.” She made a wry face. “They never had a regular bedtime before, and they’re not loving it.”

      If he said yes, it would be one more stupid, dangerous agreement he’d made in the past day and a half. He hadn’t had much chance at saying no to Special Agent Baker or Craig, but he could turn down Sophy. He could suggest coming after school to meet Dahlia, who wasn’t likely to be any more welcoming than Daisy. He could even suggest they go out to dinner instead—somewhere about twenty miles away from town. He had a reputation to live down. She had one to protect.

      But he didn’t try to get the words no, thanks out of his mouth. He knew a losing battle when he saw it. All he could do was be on guard. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll see you at six.”

       Chapter 4

      Sophy and Daisy were waiting on the porch when the school bus rumbled to a stop out front and Dahlia climbed off. Bouncing in place, Daisy waited until her sister had come through the gate, then raced to her. “Guess who I saw, Dahlia? Mama’s brother Sean.”

      Shifting her backpack to the other shoulder, Dahlia scowled at her. “No, you didn’t.”

      “Yes, I did. I saw him at Cuppa Joe, and then he come here. His name is Sean, and he’s Mama’s brother.”

      Leaning against the post at the top of the steps, Sophy wondered how she could have missed Sean at the coffee shop that morning. Oh, yes, because she’d had a whiny five-year-old in meltdown mode.

      “No, you didn’t. You’re just makin’ that up. He’s locked up somewhere, just like Declan and Ian.”

      The set of her mouth smug, Daisy shook her head. “Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

      Dahlia’s gaze flickered to Sophy, then away again before she sullenly climbed the steps and went inside the shop.

      “How was school?” Sophy asked as she and Daisy followed.

      Dahlia shrugged her thin shoulders, continuing to the back, the refrigerator and the treats. Her uniform of khaki shorts and blue polo shirt was surprisingly clean and neat—Daisy wore milk, juice, grime and the oops of lunch on her clothes—and her ponytail was still in good shape. Because she hadn’t met anyone to play with?

      “I wanted to go to school, too,” Daisy said, dogging her footsteps, “but I’m glad she didn’t let me because then I wouldn’t have met Sean. Mama’s brother. Our uncle.”

      After getting a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, Dahlia dropped her backpack on the table, turned to Sophy and gave up resisting. “Really?”

      “Really. He’s coming to dinner tonight to meet you.”

      She considered that a moment, then shrugged again. “I don’t care. Mama says he’s bad and we don’t need him.”

      “That’s what I told her!” Daisy exclaimed.

      Mama says. Sophy wished Maggie had kept at least a few thoughts to herself. Who was she, anyway, to judge anyone else? Given the life she’d chosen, odds were good that her daughters might have to turn to one of their uncles one day, but loving-mom Maggie had tried to poison the girls against them.

      “He’s not bad, Dahlia, and he hasn’t been locked up somewhere.” Belatedly, Sophy hoped that was true. “He lives in Virginia. He just found out your mom was in trouble yesterday, and he came straight here.”

      “Is he gonna get her out of jail?”

      “Um, I don’t know.” Ty had told Sophy that Maggie wasn’t likely to get out on her hundred-thousand-dollar bond. She didn’t have money like that, her boyfriend wouldn’t spend it on her if he did and her local family—a couple of teenage nephews and two ex-sisters-in-law—couldn’t afford it. Could Sean? If he could, would he?

      Sophy wouldn’t. She loved her sisters and her brother, but she wouldn’t risk ten thousand dollars to get them out of jail, especially if they had a track record like Maggie’s. But then, her sisters and brother wouldn’t be in jail in the first place...well, except for Miri’s one arrest. But Miri hadn’t been selfish enough to get involved with drugs. She’d tracked down their birth father, gotten a job with his company and, um, relieved him only of the child support he’d failed to pay for all those years after abandoning them with their mentally ill mother.

      Miri also hadn’t expected to slide on it. She’d pleaded guilty, gone to prison and served her sentence...then delivered a share of the money to each of her siblings—Sophy, Chloe and Oliver. The payback was nice. Knowing how hard Miri had worked to recover what their bastard father had hidden from them was precious. Reconnecting with the siblings she’d been separated from more than twenty years ago had been priceless.

      “If he’s not gettin’ Mama out of jail, I don’t wanna meet him.”

      Dahlia got her work bin and settled at the table. She had a great eye for putting fabric colors and patterns together. That had been the hardest part about quilting for Sophy, something she hadn’t mastered until she’d been in business a year or two. Even now, she sometimes questioned her choices until she cut out the shapes and laid them out together, but it came naturally to the six-year-old.

      “You have an artist’s soul,” she murmured.

      Though she pretended not to hear, the tips of Dahlia’s ears turned red.

      Sophy spent the next few hours waiting on customers and working on a baby quilt due next week. She’d already completed the rest of the order, all in light blue and tan and featuring a pudgy smiling elephant: a wall hanging, curtains, pillows, linens and, for future use, a tooth-fairy pillow, bearing the same elephant with a pouch beneath his back to hold the tooth and the money the fairy left behind. She planned to do something similar for her own babies’ nurseries. She didn’t have a dream wedding in mind, but she had already designed a couple of fairy-tale nurseries.