ELLIE HATCHER NEVER THOUGHT SHE’D BE A COP. SURE, LIKE ANY little kid modeling herself after a parent, she’d thrown around the idea. But police officer had fallen somewhere on the list between fashion designer and astronaut. Then, after her father died, she believed she’d lost every positive feeling she had about law enforcement. Her father literally gave his life to the job, and it left his family with nothing. No money. No support. Not even answers about his death.

It also left her without the luxury of dreams about her future. When her older brother, Jess, ran off to New York to become a rock star, Ellie and her mother had been on their own. Even if Ellie had been willing to leave as well, the scholarship money she earned in B-level beauty pageants fell far short of out-of-state tuition. That left Ellie as a part-time waitress and a part-time prelaw student at Wichita State University.

She’d probably be a lawyer in Kansas now if it weren’t for Jess – or at least for her mother’s inability not to worry about his pattern of mixing alcohol (and most likely other substances) with a general penchant for recklessness. After two years of watching her mother age ten, Ellie realized the best thing she could do for her mother – and herself – was to leave Wichita to look after her brother.

Then a strange thing happened. She fell in love – not with a man, but with New York City.