She remembered what the counselor had told her all those years ago at Northwestern.

"As a child, you believed you could make your father love you if you did everything you were supposed to. If you got the best grades, minded your manners, followed all the rules, then he'd give you the approval every child needs. But your father was incapable of that kind of love. Eventually something inside you snapped, and you did the worst thing you could think of. Your rebellion was actually healthy. It kept you functioning."

"That doesn't explain what I did in high school," she'd told him. "Bert was dead by then, and I was living with Phoebe and Dan. They both love me. And what about the shoplifting incident?"

"Maybe you needed to test Phoebe and Dan's love."

Something odd had fluttered inside her. "What do you mean?"

"The only way you can make certain their love is unconditional is to do something terrible and then see if they're still around for you."

And they had been.

So why was her old problem coming back to haunt her?

She didn't want mayhem in her life anymore. She wanted to write her books, enjoy her friends, walk her dog, and play with her nieces and nephew. But she'd been feeling restless for weeks, and one look at her red hair, which really was awful, told her she might be on the verge of going off the deep end again.

Until that urge faded, she'd do the sensible thing and hide away in Door County for a week or so. After all, what possible trouble could she get into there?

Kevin Tucker had been dreaming about Red Jack Express, a quarterback delayed sneak, when something woke him up. He rolled over, groaned, and tried to figure out where he was, but the bottle of scotch he'd befriended before he'd fallen asleep made that tough. Normally adrenaline was his drug of choice, but tonight alcohol had seemed like a good alternative.