Money can buy a lot of things….groceries, gas for my Envoy, a college education for my kids, Starbucks coffee, and Hershey's Chocolate Kisses. On the right occasion, it can help buy the people I love the things they need and want.

However, it hasn't bought me Crossing Jordan. Darn that Tim Kring, he just refuses to sell.

So I don't own CJ, nor the rights to the song Can't Buy Me Love by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I love the early Beatles, but after the White Album, they just got too weird for me.

However, the Stones still rock, but are getting a little old for touring….in my opinion, anyway. But did you know Keith Richards is playing Johnny Depp's father in the next Pirates movie? Cool, huh? As many drugs as he's done and he can still read a script...

However, I digress….

Chapter One

Money Can't Buy Me Love

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
'cause I don't care too much for money, and money can't buy me love

The lyrics to the Beatles song drifted out over the oldies station in Jordan's office. Absent-mindedly, she hummed along

I'll give you all I got to give if you say you'll love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

"Can't buy me loo-vveee," she sang along as she glanced over the paperwork before she started an autopsy on a Mr. Charles Van Guard. "Everybody tells me so…Can't buy me loooveee, no, no, no, no……"

Then grimaced at the reality of the words.

Money. Money could buy her a lot of things….better car, better apartment, better clothes. Jewelry. A good retirement plan. The resources to travel. Things she had dreamed always dreamed about.

But it couldn't buy her love. More specifically, it couldn't buy her Woody's love. He could care less if she had money or was flat-assed broke. At one time, the man seemed to have wanted her more than he did his next breath. Now he simply no longer cared. Just when she was comfortable with him again…healed from his initial rejection of her at the hospital after he was shot, trusted him with her heart, he decides to slow the relationship down.

Okay, he had his reasons. One night of unbridled, passionate sex at the Lucy Carver Inn…the event that sent sensuous shock waves through them that reverberated for days afterwards….days when all he had to do was simply walk in the room and she was ready to melt into him…Maybe he had the right to ask her to slow things down as they sorted out their respected feelings…especially hers concerning JD.

But, convinced he was the rebound man, Woody had not only slowed the relationship down, he had stopped it, handing her the "friends" line once again. "Let's be friends…still see each other, but leave our options open….just to be sure."

The fact was, Jordan didn't want any other options. She wanted him. On both the emotional level and in the most basic way. She. Wanted. Him. Period.

A want that seemed to be doomed to go unmet. Due to a chain of events that Jordan had no control over, she now seemed even less desirable to him than ever. She had argued with him that it hadn't changed her…she was still the same Jordan she always was, but it didn't do any good. He didn't believe her. She sighed as she got up to change into her scrubs to perform Mr. Van Guard's autopsy.

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Jordan turned the radio off with a firm click.

Woody flipped open the file on Charles Van Guard. It seemed to be pretty open and shut…man slips on patch of ice at train platform. Man falls on rails. Man has lousy sense of timing…man gets splattered by train.

Open and shut…in and out. Only Jordan was the answering ME and nothing was ever that simple with her. She'd run tox screens for days, convinced that the man was drugged and then pushed in front of the midnight train out of Boston to Springfield. Woody pinched the bridge of his nose in aggravation.

Space wasn't doing them a favor. After the night at the Lucy Carver Inn, he was adult enough to realize they needed time as well as space to let their actions filter out…what did it mean…did it mean anything?

However, he was man enough to recall every curve of her body…the most sensitive spots…the ones that made her catch her breath and arch her back, moan softly and cling to him like there was no tomorrow. He remembered the way her voice caught in the back of her throat right before she came and how afterwards she didn't want to let him go, content for them to stay wrapped in each other's arms until morning.

Ah, morning. The cold, harsh light coupled with the cold, harsh truth. They had waffled around it for weeks, but then Woody had pulled out his well-worn "let's-be-friends" card, hoping she would trump it.

She didn't. She folded hercards and went back to her office.

So much for gambling on love.

Things had gone downhill from there…even with him playing the flop … "Let's keep our options open…just to make sure…"

The hurt look in her eyes had bothered and elated him. No man likes to hurt the woman he loves…but the fact that she registered a negative emotion about him possibly seeing other women gave him hope that she would step up to the plate and tell him, "No way."

Instead she had slid back into her office and shut the door….and him out of her life. They still saw each other, even went out occasionally, but it wasn't the same. She had pushed him away.

In desperation, he had begun dating again. Lu. Annie. Santana. No one steady or special, but it sure beat the hell out of staying home on the weekend or spending all day Saturday in the gym.

And then it happened…the event that propelled Jordan into a realm where he could never reach her and where she would never reach out to him. He knew that now. Such things….and events … were life altering, even though she had spent an entire evening trying to convince him that she would never change…she would remain Jordan.

He didn't believe her for a minute. What was now placed on her was both the thing that dreams and nightmares were made of. What Jordan chose to do with it was her business. He just knew that most likely he could never fit into her life again.

Which was for the best, he kept telling himself. Jordan wasn't the type of woman who could settle down, even if she wanted to. She'd always be after that next adventure…that next unsolved mystery…that next open case. Her work was her life and her life was the morgue.

And most like he would never find a permanent place in either.

"So….how are you doing?" asked Lily, from the doorway of Jordan's office.

"Are you asking me as a friend or as a counselor-type-person?" Jordan answered back, a smile playing at her lips.

Lily smiled in response. "As your friend. Howard's your shrink."

"And how do you feel about that?" Jordan deadpanned back, imitating the state psychologist to the best of her ability. Both the women laughed before Lily came in and shut the door. Then she plopped herself down on the corner of Jordan's desk.

"Has it sunk in yet?" Lily asked.

"That my grandmother died?"

"Well…that's part of it."

Jordan sat back in her chair and carefully studied her nails for a moment. With her father gone, her grandmother had been her only link left to her mother and the only other living relative she had in Boston…and nearly anywhere else. "I don't know," she replied softly and honestly. "I have only had sporadic contact with her since she tried to take me away from Dad when I was about twelve. I'm sad…I guess. She died alone…with only her servants. I didn't even know she was sick."

"Would you have gone to her if you did know?"

Jordan nodded. "No one deserves to be alone when they're sick, much less when they're dying, Lils."

Lily thought for a moment. "Have you decided what you're going to do with all that money?"

Jordan buried her head in her hands for a moment. Money. The same issue that had bothered her since this morning when the Beatles song invaded her office. Money can't buy me love…

It might not be able to do that, but it had raised all kinds of issues in Jordan's life that she never anticipating dealing with. At Margaret's death, Jordan had become her sole surviving heir, receiving not only her own trust fund, but her mother's…and except for a few charitable donations, Margaret's entire Beacon Hill estate. The family home. Money. Investments. Jewelry. The house at Martha's Vineyard.

In short, Jordan was set for life. She not only now did not have to work, overnight she had become one of Boston's most eligible, single women. "I'm not sure yet," she countered to Lily. Lily had been genuinely concerned about this new facet of Jordan's life and how she was going to deal with it. "I know I won't quit work…the thought of spending my days attending teas and luncheons completely terrifies me."

Lily chuckled. Somehow she couldn't ever see her friend at a white-gloved tea party discussing her last bridge game. "I didn't think you would. But are you going to move into your grandmother's house?"

Jordan nodded. "I think so. It's a great house…Grandma had a spa put in a couple of years ago…sauna, hot tub…and it has a swimming pool. So you'll have to come and stay with me."

"A vacation without leaving Boston…"

"And you won't have to pay for a hotel…"

Lily grinned. "I could get into that. What about everything else?"

"Grandma had a financial guy that managed most of her money. A Mr. Trent Acker. He did a really good job for Grandma, so right now, I'm letting him handle things until I can get a firm grip on it, but I'm having my financial planner review what Acker's doing just to be sure."

"Good idea. What about the other things?"

"Other things? Lily, what else is there….the house, the money…what else have I overlooked?"

"These." Lily shoved six pieces of pink paper into her hands. Phone messages Emmy had intercepted while Jordan was in autopsy.

Jordan fanned through the messages…the names were familiar…but she knew none of these people. "What…." she begin to question.

"Four of the most eligible men in Boston called to talk to you while you were in autopsy with Nigel. Four. One called three times. They all want to take you out this weekend…seems you've become Miss Popular now that your bank account has been pumped up by several….million."

Jordan groaned. This was a side effect of becoming a heiress she hadn't imagined. "I don't want to go out with any of these guys…I mean I don't even know them…"

"But they want to get to know you."

"And that's because suddenly I have money..."

Lily carefully regarded her friend for a moment. "Or it could be because they didn't know about you before…and now that your name's been bandied about the social register in the Boston Herald, they'd like a chance to get to know you."

"But…"

Lily sighed and looked at Jordan with concern. "But they're not Woody. I know, Jordan. They're not. But in case you haven't noticed, Woody's not giving you the time of day now, much less filling any of your long and lonesome nights. And I'm not saying these guys will, either. I'm just saying, give them a fair chance. One date isn't going to hurt anything. It's not going to end the world and bring on an apocalypse."

Jordan flipped through the messages one more time. "I guess you're right."

"I know I am."

"Alright. I'll start with the guy that called first…and see where that takes me."

Lily stood up and grinned. "And hopefully that is out to dinner and maybe some dancing. You need some fun, Jordan."

Money can't buy me love, but maybe it can buy me a little happiness, Jordan thought as she dialed the first number. "Hello…this is Jordan Cavanaugh. I'm returning a Mr. Steve Asbury's phone call…."