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"I'm going to wring her pretty ballerina neck," Ben Palmer told himself as he drove from the airport in McAllen, Texas, to Querida, where his quarry lived. He studied the side of the road for the break in the dry brush he remembered from a couple of weeks ago when he and his brother, Jack, had been here together in search of Jack's sister. He was glad Elizabeth Corazon Manning Ochoa wasn't his sister—the little thief! As if her full name wasn't enough to deal with, her given name was the Spanish word for heart. It should have been whatever the Spanish word was for trouble. "There it is."

He turned right onto the narrow, bumpy lane, watching for the Rio Road sign. High weeds lined the path that led to the impoverished little two-block-long downtown. The side with city hall, the post office and the library, all built in traditional Spanish style with arches and red-tiled roofs, looked tidy and well-kept in contrast to the stores and services opposite them and the run-down bed-and-breakfast at the very end. Fall flowers lined the street on the city hall side but the commercial businesses looked as though they struggled to stay alive.

He slowed as he passed the Grill, the café where Corie waitressed. It was the only structure on the block that looked even mildly prosperous. He noticed that her black Ford truck was not in the parking lot. She must have the day off.

Remembering the directions to her home from the last visit, he turned onto Hidalgo Road just beyond downtown.

Two minutes later he pulled the SUV to a stop across from the little house she rented and saw immediately that her truck wasn't there, either. Maybe she was at Teresa Mc-Ginnis's foster home.

He drove to the property and pulled up to the chain-link fence. A crowd of children played in the front yard. Behind them stood the large hacienda-style home, its faded pink stone a picture of Old West glory.

He knew Corie spent much of her free time helping Teresa, who'd brought her here when she was twelve. He could see the backyard where Corie usually parked but the only vehicle there today was Teresa's old dark blue Safari van. He hoped she knew where Corie was.

He parked then took a moment to stretch after climbing out of his rental car. The temperature was in the low seventies in this eastern reach of the Rio Grande Valley and he soaked up the sunshine while his usually active muscles protested the long confinement on the plane. When he'd left Oregon this morning it had been thirty-seven degrees. He told himself to relax but he was wound tighter than a spool of cable.

He pushed open the gate and walked up to the house, ignored by all the children but two boys he guessed to be about nine and ten. The younger one was short, sturdily built and appeared to be Hispanic, while the older, taller boy had shaggy, carrot-red hair and blue eyes. He was scrawny but smiling. The boys flanked Ben as he strode up the walk to the house.

"Who are you?" the older boy asked as he ran alongside Ben to keep up. He offered his hand. "I'm Soren."

Ben stopped to shake hands. "Hi, Soren.

I'm Ben."

Soren indicated his friend. "This is Carlos."

The boy shook Ben's hand but didn't smile. He pointed to three little boys playing with a tether ball. "Those are my brothers."

"Hi, Carlos. Good to meet you." Ben started toward the house. "Excuse me, guys. I came to see Teresa."

Both boys stopped. Soren's smile faded. "Are you from Corpus Christi?"

Ben stopped, too. "No. I'm from Oregon. Why? Are you expecting someone from Corpus Christi?" Cyrus Tyree of Corpus Christi, Teresa's landlord, was part of the reason Ben was here.

"No, but somebody came from there and he made Teresa cry," Soren said. He and Carlos exchanged an angry look. "We're going to have to go."

"Go?"

"Live somewhere else. We don't want to. We want to stay right here."

Suddenly they were surrounded by the other kids, girls and boys who looked younger than Soren and Carlos. One little girl held a large purse over her arm. Ben guessed they'd overheard the conversation about leaving. They ran along with Ben and his two new friends as they climbed the step to the broken-down veranda. He wished the kids would go back to their play. He liked kids as a rule. Many of his friends had them and he found them amazing. But this trip was about saving Jack's sister, himself, Jack and his new bride from jail. He didn't have time for the distraction of soulful eyes and needy little faces.

"Do we have to go now?" a little boy asked. He stood with the group of three Carlos had identified as his brothers. They looked remarkably alike.

Before Ben could reply, a pudgy little girl about eight in glossy black braids said authoritatively, "I think it's against the law to make us go. Families get to stay together."

"Oh, yeah?" Soren turned on her. "Where's your dad?"

The little girl folded her arms, the question apparently compromising her confidence. She answered more quietly, "He's coming to get me."

"When, Rosie? You've been here six months. Families don't always get to stay together."

One of the little boys said, "Maybe he died. Our mom died."

"He's not dead!" Rosie's voice cracked, her eyes a heartbreaking mixture of anger and sorrow. "He's coming for me."

Ben stood in the middle of the turbulent little group. He stretched both arms out, prepared to explain that he needed time to talk to Teresa. But the children crowded around him as though his open arms offered shelter. He was speechless for an instant.

"Ah, well…when families don't get to stay together," he heard himself say, "you can sometimes make your own family with friends. That happened to my brother, Jack. His mom had to go away for a long time, so he came to live with my parents and me. He's part of our family now."

"That's being adopted," Rosie said knowl-edgeably. "But my dad's coming to get me, so I don't want to get another family. I want to stay with Teresa until he comes."

"The man said Teresa can't stay here." Car-los's voice was gentle. If Soren was the leader of this group, Carlos was its chaplain. "We…"

The front door opened and Teresa stood there, a plump toddler in her arms. Roberto, Ben remembered, seemed permanently attached to her. As he had the last time Ben was here, the baby reached for him.

"Hey. You remember me." He laughed and took the little guy from Teresa, flattered and distracted by his wide smile and eager reach.

"We're staying right here for now," Teresa told the children firmly. "And I don't want anyone talking about going away until we know what's going to happen." She focused on one child, then the next, until she'd looked into each of their faces with the determination in hers. It was a matter of presence. As a cop, Ben knew all about that. You had to believe you were invincible so that whoever you were trying to convince believed it, too. She was good.

The kids looked at each other with clear suspicion, but they didn't seem quite as worried anymore. Soren and Carlos, older and possibly more experienced in such situations, simply walked away, more in the spirit of doing as she asked rather than believing what she said.

Teresa refocused on Ben. She was average in height, in her forties, had short, rough-cut dark hair, wore little makeup and was blessed with good bone structure. The strong, caring woman inside showed through in her dark eyes and her warm smile, making her attractive.

"Ben," she said, offering her free hand. "How are you? Corie tells me Jack got married and you and she stood up for him and his bride when you took her back with you for Thanksgiving."

"He did." Ben smiled at the memory of that morning while Roberto chewed on the collar of his shirt. "He was so happy that Corie was there. I don't know if anyone else will ever understand how he's longed to put his family back together."

Teresa nodded. "I think I do. I deal with broken families on a daily basis. Would you like to come inside? You look angry under that smile and that worries me. Your being here has to have something to do with Corie."

"Thank you. It does. Do you know where she is?" He didn't want to bring up what he thought Corie had done. He was pretty sure Teresa didn't know Corie had stolen Delia Tyree's jewelry in the first place, much less sabotaged the return of the jewelry he and Jack had orchestrated. "Her truck isn't at the restaurant or her home."

"She went to get a tree," Teresa said.

"A tree?"

"A Christmas tree."

He frowned. "It's still November."

"It's November 28 and this is a house filled with children. They've talked of nothing but Christmas since Halloween." She laughed at his confusion then turned her head toward the back of the house and the sound of an engine.

"There she is now, Ben. What did you want to see her about?"

"I just want to talk to her." He followed Teresa through the house to the kitchen and the back door.

She stopped there and smiled inquisitively as she reclaimed the toddler. "Something that couldn't be done by phone? Or email?"

The real answer to that was complicated, so he took the simple approach. "Yes," he said.

"Okay. Well, if we can clear a path through the children, and you help us unload the tree, we'll find a quiet place for you to talk."

Every child who'd been playing in the front yard was now part of a shouting, excited crowd gathered at the back of Corie's truck. From where Ben stood, it looked as though Jack's sister had brought back a sequoia. Part of the tree stuck out past the lowered tailgate, a red flag attached, and the main body, branches swept upward, spilled over the sides. The children squealed in excitement.

Wondering how Corie intended to get the giant thing out, he started around Teresa to lend a hand. The tree had been loaded top-first onto a tarp, he noticed, so that its weight would be coming right at her. Corie made a broad gesture with both arms and shouted orders he couldn't hear over the din of the children's voices. They all backed out of the way.

She pushed up the long sleeves of her plain blue T-shirt and stood still for a moment, studying the tree. It occurred to him later that he should have acted then, but he was momentarily paralyzed by the sight of her small, shapely body and what seemed like a foot and a half of glossy black hair shifting sinuously, seductively, over her shoulder, thin bangs above a dark, thoughtful stare. Then she firmed her expressive mouth and reached for the tree.

She pulled hard and the tree slid toward her. As he hurried forward, hoping he wasn't going to have to explain to Jack why he'd allowed his long-lost little sister to be crushed by a Christmas tree, he saw that Corie was using the tarp to move the tree. He gave her points for smarts, but strode toward her as she leaned it against the tailgate, suspecting she was still in danger. Was she really going to try to lift it?

Of course, she was. She leaned into the tree, wrapped her arms around it about a third of the way up from the bottom and pulled.

He shouted her name and picked up his pace.

As she tried to hold the tree upright, presumably so the children could see it better, she turned toward the sound of his voice. Both her arms were lost in the tree, which was much more than twice her height. Her eyes and mouth widened in complete surprise when she saw him.

She lost control of the tree.

At the sound of that male voice, Corie Ochoa's hard-to-muster Christmas spirit seized and cramped. Ben Palmer? It couldn't be.

In complete disbelief, she saw him coming toward her, picking up speed, six feet and a couple of inches of darkly gorgeous but self-righteous, self-satisfied male who disliked and distrusted her. What was he doing here? He…

And then she remembered she was holding a tree. A big one. She felt the weight of it push against her as that momentary distraction caused her to lose her grip. The weight of the tipping tree drove her backward and she struggled futilely to disentangle her arms.

She heard the children screaming as she and the tree went down. Just before she hit the grass, a steely grip on her arm yanked her sideways, pulling her body away from the trunk and probably her arm out of its socket. A branch thwacked her in the face.

Dislocated arm beats crushed sternum, she thought as she landed on her back on the lawn, buried beneath twelve feet of Leyland Spruce. And something else. Curiously the branches weren't crushing her as much as she'd expected. Then she realized she was not alone in her bowery tomb. Ben Palmer was lying on top of her.

"Great," she said, pushing on him. "You're just what I need right now. Who sent you? The Grinch? The Ghost of Christmas Past?"

He didn't reply.

She pushed again but the tree was heavy and so was he. "Ben! Would you please move?" she demanded. She wasn't sure how he'd accomplish that, but she was sure he was as uncomfortable being body to body with her as she was with him.

He groaned.

"Ben?" she asked worriedly, then said his name louder when his reply was another groan.

"Are you hurt?"

"Corie?" Teresa lay on her stomach, looking at Corie through the lacy pattern of needles and branches. "Are you all right? You got smacked by a branch and I think the trunk might have hit Ben hard."

"I'm okay. I just can't move," Corie replied. "Call 9-1-1."

"No." The single word came firmly if a little quietly from Ben, followed by a small gasp of pain. "No. Just…give me a minute."

Relieved to hear his voice, though the words he spoke usually annoyed her, she said, "I don't have a minute, Ben. You weigh a ton. I think my stomach is coming out my ears."

"I believe that's physically impossible. But there seems to be a lot coming out of your mouth."

There. Annoying. "Hey!" she complained.

"Relax. Maybe we can roll out of here." He sighed and wrapped his arms around her. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Apart from the fact that I have twelve feet of tree on me and six feet of hateful man?"

He muttered something unintelligible then it felt as though he tried to boost himself off her and couldn't. He tried again. No luck. It alarmed her that she was very aware of every muscle in his body pressed into every soft surface of hers.

"Don't panic," he said. "I can't lift up, so we're going sideways. Okay?"

"Please hurry. Before we start growing moss."

"Keep your hands tucked in," he said sharply.