"Emergency rooms aren't my favorite place. How're you doing?"

"Okay, I guess." She gulped in air, trying not to shake.

"I need to see about Sig."

"Go ahead."

But as she got to her feet, Caroline arrived, with Abigail and Henry right behind her. "Oh, Riley my God! Are you all right? We couldn't just sit out there and wait." Caroline took in Riley's soot and scrapes, her tear-streaked face. "We had to come. Is there anything we can do?"

Riley shook her head.

"Thanks for being here."

"No thanks are necessary." She dipped into her expensive handbag and pulled out a handful of individually wrapped, lemon-scented wipes, which she tucked into Riley's palm. She gave a comforting smile.

"You look as if you've stepped out of the pages of a Dickens novel."

Abigail was fighting off tears. She asked about Sig, and Henry promised to find out what was going on. Straker, on his feet, started to pace. Riley knew the inaction was getting to him, just being in a hospital again after his ordeal six months ago.

"I'm sorry. Henry," she said.

"I know you wanted me to get far away from trouble, and here I've just jumped from a burning building."

"We'll worry about that later," he said.

"The important thing is that you and your sister are all right."

Facing Henry Armistead, however, was nothing compared to facing Mara Labreque St. Joe. She burst into the waiting room with the air of a woman who'd flown up the coast on a broomstick. She was disheveled, frantic, refused to wait for anyone to tell her where to find her daughter. She grabbed Riley and took off into the treatment rooms, muttering, "Damn Emile, damn him."

"Mom, I should warn you. Sig's pregnant."

"Damn it, I know she's pregnant! I have eyes in my head!"

"She's having twins," Riley added.

Her mother faltered. Her dark eyes shone. Her lower lip trembled, but she rallied. She turned on Riley as if she were Emile's clone.

"And you let her come up here with you? The least you could have done was stay in a motel. You didn't have to stay at the cottage. Damn it, Riley, what were you thinking?"

"Mara." Richard St. Joe eased in behind them.

"Riley's been through a rough time tonight, too."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry...." She put a hand on Riley's cheek, tried to smile through her tears.

"You're okay?"

"I'm fine. Mom."

"I spoke to a doctor," her father said.

"She said Sig's doing well.

She sprained an ankle and had some smoke inhalation, and she's dehydrated. "" Can we see her? " Mara asked.

"Yes, but she's asleep right now. They want to get her into a regular room and keep her at least until morning."

"I want to see her," Mara insisted.

Richard nodded.

"I know. Me, too."

A nurse escorted the three of them to Sig's treatment room. She was asleep on her side under a thin blanket, her pregnancy obvious even to someone who wasn't looking for it. She was still hooked up to an IV but had been taken off oxygen. Riley stood back while her parents came to terms with the reality of how close they'd come to losing not one daughter this time, but two.

"Come on," Richard said, putting an arm around his wife, "I'll buy you a cup of coffee. I'm not going anywhere until she wakes up and I hear her voice. Riley?" He attempted a smile.

"You look like you could use a whole pot of coffee."

"I'll be along."

"You're sure?"

She nodded.

"Tell the rest of the crowd Sig's okay, will you? Then send them home.

Henry's ready to fire me as it is." She breathed in.

"Forget Straker. It won't matter what you tell him. He's going to do what he's going to do."

"He's always been that way," her mother said.

After they left, Riley moved next to her sister and tried to let the relief she knew she should be feeling register. Her mind was all set: Sig was okay. She hadn't died. She hadn't lost her babies.

Intellectually, Riley could grasp those basic facts.

But the rest of her was still in battle mode. She was tense and shaken, her guard up. This was her sister, and she'd nearly lost her tonight. She remembered Sig after the Encounter, the mix of horror and relief as she'd faced her father-in-law's death and the accusations over Emile's culpability.

Her mother was right, Riley thought. She was guilty as charged. She never should have come up here with Sig, despite the fact that her sister had a mind of her own and preferred to make her own decisions.

"Jesus."

She spun around. Matt was frozen in the doorway, white-faced. He stared at his wife. Riley shot over to him, put a palm on his chest.

"Don't you dare go berserk on her. Do you understand? If you do, I swear I'll get the sheriff in here and have him haul you off."

His very blue eyes settled on Riley in confusion. The fury of earlier in the evening was gone. "Riley-my God, what happened? I saw Abigail.

She said Sig's okay, you two were in Emile's cottage when it caught fire."

"We had to bail out the loft window. It was rougher on Sig than me."

He tried to take another step toward her bed, but Riley still had her palm on his chest and moved with him. He looked at her.

"What? For God's sake, I'm not a maniac. Sig and I have our problems, but she's my wife."

"And she's my sister. If you do anything to upset her. Granger, you'll have me to answer to. I don't care if I'm a foot shorter and a gazillion dollars poorer. I will strike you down. No matter what.

Understood? " '" Riley, what the hell are you talking about? I know you've had a shock, but"-He stopped. He went still, his gaze riveted on his wife. Riley held her breath, waiting. If possible, he turned even paler. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes stood out, his mouth was drawn, and she saw touches of gray in the stubble of beard on his patrician jaw.

She let her hand drop away. He moved forward, slowly, and as much as Riley knew this wasn't any of her business, she couldn't leave. Her brother-in law had behaved miserably, even bizarrely, for the better part of a year. A man was dead, two fires unexplained. She couldn't rely on Matt's good sense, his love of her sister. She had to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.

"Sig." He spoke in a croaking whisper, placed a hand gently on her swollen abdomen.

"Jesus, Sig."

Riley shrank back to the door. She felt like a voyeur.

"You really didn't know?"

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off his wife.

"She hasn't told anyone. She didn't even tell me, but I figured it out. She went to great lengths to keep you from finding out."

"Why?"

He really didn't get it. Riley decided this wasn't the time to point out what a jackass he'd been for months on end.

"Would it have changed anything?"

"I love Sig. I'd die for her."

"Yeah, well, tonight she almost died for you."

It was a damned, stupid, inconsiderate thing to say, but it had been a hell of a night and Riley instantly forgave herself. Matt, however, wasn't in a similar frame of mind. He shot her a black look.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Straker said behind her, "that sucking in a couple of lung fulls of smoke didn't do anything for her big mouth. Come on, Granger.

You and I need to talk. "

"I want to stay with my wife."

Riley gritted her teeth. As if Matt had any damned right. And who was Straker to barge in and take over?

She could feel her knees starting to shake again. She wanted to slap them both. She was indignant, furious. Yet some part of her warned her she was done in, getting more unreasonable by the minute, that stress and fear and all the damned smoke she'd sucked in were making her irrational.

"They've got a room for her," Straker said.

"Let them get her settled."

Reluctantly, Matt nodded. He leaned over and kissed Sig gently, touched her hair, her stomach once more. And he went quietly, without a parting glance at Riley.

Straker hung back a moment and thrust a finger at her.

"You. Sit down before you collapse. I'll be back."

He left. She pulled up a chair to her sister's bed and plopped down, and not because Straker had told her to. Another minute on her feet and she'd collapse and end up on an IV herself.

Sig opened an eye.

"He's gone?"

"Sig!"

She propped herself up on one elbow, no color in her elegant, angular face.

"Bastard. I hope he feels as rotten as he sounded."

"Sig, you scared him half to death." "Then it was almost worth having to jump out that damned window.

God, my ankle's killing me. Did you push me off the roof? "

"Not really."

She fell back against her pillow, managed a feeble smile.

"He hasn't touched me in months. When I felt his hand on my stomach...! was ready to forgive him everything." Her eyes closed; she was deathly pale.

"Go tell him I hate him, will you?"

"Sure, Sig. Before or after I tell him you love him?"

"Turncoat."

"Well, at least you don't have the burden of keeping your pregnancy a secret anymore. Now everyone knows."

"Lucky me."

A nurse ran Riley out, but not before Sig warned her to watch herself.

"We cut it close tonight. Too close."

Riley nodded.

"I know."