Sam didn’t really want to raise his children alone.

And T.J., he knew, had their best interests at heart. His little Jenny was definitely getting attached to her. And young Jason had opened up to her far more than he had to any other woman.

Still, his kids needed more than for T.J. to be there for them as a neighbor, a friend, a baby-sitter. They needed a mom.

Unfortunately, T.J. just wasn’t someone Sam could look to for a relationship. He doubted she’d ever let a man get that close again. He figured the only reason she hadn’t backed away from him by now was because of their kids.

As much as he found himself thinking of her…wanting her…Sam had the feeling that if he made a move, T.J. would freeze up like a shallow pond in winter.

Dear Reader,

A rewarding part of any woman’s life is talking with friends about important issues. Because of this, we’ve developed the Readers’ Ring, a book club that facilitates discussions of love, life and family. Of course, you’ll find all of these topics wrapped up in each Silhouette Special Edition novel! Our featured author for this month’s Readers’ Ring is newcomer Elissa Ambrose. Journey of the Heart (#1506) is a poignant story of true love and survival when the odds are against you. This is a five-tissue story you won’t be able to put down!

Susan Mallery delights us with another tale from her HOMETOWN HEARTBREAKERS series. Good Husband Material (#1501) begins with two star-crossed lovers and an ill-fated wedding. Years later, they realize their love is as strong as ever! Don’t wait to pick up Cattleman’s Honor (#1502), the second book in Pamela Toth’s WINCHESTER BRIDES series. In this book, a divorced single mom comes to Colorado to start a new life—and winds up falling into the arms of a rugged rancher. What a way to go!

Victoria Pade begins her new series, BABY TIMES THREE, with a heartfelt look at unexpected romance, in Her Baby Secret (#1503)—in which an independent woman wants to have a child, and after a night of wicked passion with a handsome businessman, her wish comes true! You’ll see that there’s more than one way to start a family in Christine Flynn’s Suddenly Family (#1504), in which two single parents who are wary of love find it—with each other! And you’ll want to learn the facts in What a Woman Wants (#1505), by Tori Carrington. In this tantalizing tale, a beautiful widow discovers she’s pregnant with her late husband’s best friend’s baby!

As you can see, we have nights of passion, reunion romances, babies and heart-thumping emotion packed into each of these special stories from Silhouette Special Edition.

Happy reading!

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Suddenly Family
Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Evelyn Pillinger,

a true friend in every sense of the word.

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

CLASSIFIEDS

Second Week of August

WANTED: Live-in housekeeper/cook/nanny for single father and 2 children, ages 4 & 6. Harbor Island. Excellent salary. Ask for Sam. 360-555-1212.

Third Week of August

WANTED: Live-in housekeeper/cook/nanny for single father and 2 children, ages 4 & 6. Nice location on Harbor Island. Own room and private bath. Excellent salary. Ask for Sam. 360-555-1212.

Last Sunday

WANTED: Live-in housekeeper/cook/nanny for single father and 2 children, ages 4 & 6. Children well mannered. Father tries to be. Beautiful location on Harbor Island. Own room and private bath. Free air transportation to and from interview. Excellent salary plus bonus. Ask for Sam. 360-555-1212.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Something about her seemed familiar.

The thought distracted Sam Edwards from his phone call as the slender, almost waif-like woman in baggy bib overalls walked through the flight office door. Maybe it was the hair, he thought. A riot of deep-auburn curls tumbled down her back, practically begging to be free of their restraining clip. Or maybe it was the delicate line of her profile.

Definitely familiar, he thought, giving her a nod to let her know he’d be right with her. He just didn’t have time to figure out where he’d seen her before with his mother’s voice buzzing in his ear.

“You don’t need another housekeeper,” Beth Edwards informed him over 130 miles of telephone line. “You need a mother for these babies. If you won’t move back to Seattle so your father and I can help you, then at least think about finding a nice young lady to marry and help you raise them.”

His hand tightened on the phone. Turning his back to the woman who was glancing from her watch to the large aerial map on the wall, he kept his voice calm. “I don’t want another wife. I just need another baby-sitter. Preferably one who can clean house and cook.”

“Children need stability, Sam.”

“That’s what I’m trying to give them.”

“Well, I don’t see how hiring another stranger to take care of them is going to do that,” she returned with a sigh. “Jason is far too quiet for a six-year-old. I don’t think he’s said more than a dozen words to me and your dad since you dropped him and Jenny off here last night. And Jenny,” she continued, speaking of her four-year-old granddaughter, “that precious child is going to need braces if she doesn’t stop sucking her thumb. She should have been broken of that habit long before now.”

Sam didn’t for a moment doubt his mom’s concern or her caring. He knew she meant well. He knew she had only her grandchildren’s best interests at heart. But the last thing he needed from her or anyone else was to be told what his kids’ problems were. There wasn’t a soul on the planet more aware of those problems than he was.

He also knew that in another ten seconds his mom would launch into her lecture about how he spent too many hours away from his children, especially in the summer when the demands of the air charter business he and his partner owned claimed so much of his time.

He was doing the best he could. His best was all he could do.

Swallowing his frustration with life in general and his mother in particular, he lowered his voice another notch. “I can’t talk about this right now.” He wasn’t about to respond to her suggestions with a stranger pacing the polish off the floor behind him. “I have four fishermen outside waiting for me to fly them to Ketchikan and someone else just came in.

“No, I’m not avoiding the subject,” he insisted, forcing calm. “I’m just going to do what I said I’d do and find another housekeeper. Give the kids a hug for me, okay? I’ll call them when I get back tonight.”

He swore he could feel his mother’s displeasure vibrate through the line when she said she’d be glad to give the kids a hug and reluctantly said goodbye. Trying to get Beth Edwards to let go of an idea was like trying to part a rat terrier from a fresh bone. She simply refused to let go. Especially when she thought she knew what was best for those she cared about. His mom had been at him to move back to Seattle since his wife died three years ago. The suggestion that he marry again, however, was one she hadn’t sprung on him before.

The thought of moving his kids from the only home they’d ever known put a knot the size of a fist in his gut. As for finding another wife, the idea was incomprehensible. He couldn’t imagine ever again having what he and Tina had shared.

He dropped the receiver in its cradle. Masking a wealth of frustration, he glanced at the woman studying the huge map of the northwestern U.S. and Canada covering the wall. Her anxious glance focused on the red You Are Here arrow in the middle of Puget Sound.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

T.J. Walker took another cautious glance at the gaping expanses of water between the dots of land on the map and stepped closer to the long counter that bisected the small, utilitarian room. Mail and packages formed small towers inside the open door to the airplane hangar. The scent of industrial-strength coffee mingled with a hint of aviation fuel and the fresh sea air that filtered in from outside.

Her attention narrowed on the man behind the long expanse of gray Formica.

Sam Edwards was tall, remarkably built and undeniably impressive—in a rugged, commanding sort of way. His hair was short and dark, a color the same rich shade as that of the sables that had terrorized her baby deer until she’d trapped and moved them to the other end of the island. But it was the eyes beneath the dark slash of brow that caused her a split second of hesitation. They were a sharp, biting blue, as intense and clear as an Arctic summer sky.

From what she had heard, she was probably the only single female on Harbor Island who hadn’t shown up at his door at one time or another with a casserole and an invitation to call her sometime. Not that she would ever do such a thing. Even if she were in the market for a man—which she definitely was not—she’d been brushed aside too many times in her life to willingly seek rejection.

“I think so,” she finally replied. “Hope so,” she was quick to amend.

“I know you.” Those incredible eyes narrowed on her face. “You’re from around here.”

“From down the road a couple of miles, actually.” Anxious to get to the reason she was there, she offered a quick, easy smile. “I ship my pottery from here, and we’ve seen each other at the preschool. My son is the same age as yours. Andy Walker?” she prompted. “And I work part-time at Bert and Libby Bender’s bookstore.”

Everyone knew the elderly Bert and Libby Bender. Everyone but this guy, it seemed. The nod he gave her was vague, more expected response than actual recognition.

It was apparently her pottery that nudged his memory. “I didn’t recognize you without your packages. So,” he prompted, his smile polite, his manner all business, “what do you need?”

“Flying lessons,” she replied, voicing the idea that had occurred to her less than an hour ago. “Actually, I need to know what you charge for them, first. And how long they take. If I can’t learn in a few weeks, or if they’re too expensive, my idea won’t work.”

The lady had a plan. One that had her looking both uncertain and more than a little animated. Still trying to shift gears between the call from his mom and needing to hurry because he had paying passengers outside, Sam didn’t bother to ask what that plan was. It was none of his business, anyway.

“Sorry,” he murmured, prioritizing. He needed his flight log, flight map and his sunglasses. He figured he should grab the bag of chips off the desk, too. He hadn’t had time for lunch. “We don’t give flying lessons here. To learn to fly you have to take ground school first.”

“Ground school?”

“Classroom instruction,” he clarified, rolling his flight map and stuffing it into a tube. “There isn’t a ground school on Harbor, but you might try the community college in Bellingham. I can look up the number for you, but that’s the best I can do to help.”

The man’s expression was one of total preoccupation. His tone remained polite but utterly final.

Undaunted by the fact that she barely had his attention, T.J. snagged the cap of his tube from the near end of the counter.

“I don’t want to take ground school. Not yet, anyway. All I want is to see if I can get a plane off the ground, fly it around and land it. There’s no sense wasting time taking ground school if I can’t do that, is there?”

Her odd logic had him looking up from his search. Taking advantage of his silence, she held out the cap. “Your sister said you’re a very patient man. That’s what I need. Someone with patience who can help me figure out if what I want is even possible.”

Sam’s forehead lowered, his eyebrows forming a single slash. The mention of his sister immediately canceled his concern about waiting passengers. “You know Lauren?”

“Sure. I run into her at my mom’s shop at least once a week.”

“Your mom’s shop?”

“The Herb Shoppe and Video Store,” she clarified. “My mom is Crystal Walker. She owns it.”

He knew the place. He and his kids were in there at least twice a week. “And she told you I was patient?”

“No. Lauren did.”

“That’s what I meant,” he muttered.

“Aren’t you?”

Patient? he thought. Once, maybe. Anymore, he wasn’t so sure. “What I mean,” he said, forcing the patience he was beginning to doubt, “is why would Lauren tell you something like that?”

“Because I called her as soon as I left Doc Jackson’s office to see if her husband could help me with the flying thing. She said Zach is really strapped for time right now because they’ve started Lamaze classes, but I should talk to you. She thought you’d make a better instructor, anyway, because you’re so…patient.”

Sam purposefully ignored what he considered extraneous information—the woman’s references to Doc Jackson, the local vet, and Zach McKendrick, his business partner and brother-in-law—and focused on the uncomfortable sensation brewing in his gut. For the past year, his little sister had been after him to get involved in something other than his children and his work. With the conversation with his mother still fresh in his mind, he had the sudden and uneasy feeling that his female relatives might have begun a campaign to find him a mate.

The thought had him taking a closer look at the woman he now recalled having seen at the preschool with her small son.

Her long, wildly curling hair was the color of mahogany licked by firelight. Hints of ruby and topaz shimmered in its depths. The green of her eyes was more a smoky moss than emerald. She wore no makeup on her flawless skin, and there was a willowy look about her slenderness that struck him as rather graceful in a coltish sort of way.

Yet there was nothing immediately striking about her—not with her natural and well-scrubbed looks. And definitely not dressed as she was in the loose overalls that hid nearly every potential curve. She downplayed every asset she had. But he didn’t doubt for a moment that any number of men would find her attractive. Beautiful, he supposed, his glance slipping over the ripe curve of her unadorned mouth. She just wasn’t the sort of petite blonde he’d always been attracted to himself. The delicate type his wife had been.

Not that he was looking for a woman, he reminded himself. Blond or otherwise.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“I’ll pay you double.”

“Money isn’t the issue. I’m really not the man you’re looking for.”

Desperate for something to bargain with, she looked toward the telephone. “I’ll baby-sit your children.”

He opened his mouth, automatically prepared to decline. What came out was a disbelieving huff of air and a flat “You’re kidding.”

“No. No, I’m not,” she insisted, utterly determined to get him to agree. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation when I first came in. I wasn’t trying to listen,” she explained, looking as if she felt guilty, anyway. “But I heard you say you need to get another housekeeper. And I know how hard it’s been for you to keep help.”

“It hasn’t been that hard,” he muttered. Having gone through five housekeepers in the past three years might sound as if the problem rested with him, but that wasn’t the case at all. “There were reasons those women didn’t work out.”

“Oh, I know,” she assured him easily. “Your first one moved to be near her children, and I think you fired one because the kids didn’t like her. Two quit because your house is so remote, and they didn’t like being isolated all week. And I heard that the last one left because you weren’t interested in having her warm your bed. You wouldn’t have to worry about any of that with me,” she assured him, her beguiling eyes utterly sincere and steady on his. “Especially the sex part. I’m not going to bed with you.”

Sam wasn’t sure which threw him more. The way his stomach tightened as their eyes remained locked, the blunt way she’d just told him she wasn’t going to get naked with him or the casual way she proceeded to lay down her rules before he could even tell her he wasn’t interested.

“I know you’re looking for a live-in,” she told him, pushing her hands into the deep pockets of her pants. The tank top she wore was the same brown as the buttons on the sides of her overalls. It exposed the delicate line of her collarbone, the elegant line of taut, smoothly muscled arms. “I wouldn’t be able stay at your place, though. Or do your housework. I have other obligations during the day,” she explained, apparently referring to her son and her job at the bookstore. “But you can drop the children off at my house in the morning and they can come to mine after school until you find someone else.”

She tipped her head, a lock of her impossibly curly hair falling over her shoulder and curving against her small firm breast. “When are they coming back from your parents’ house?”

It wasn’t like Sam to be caught so completely off guard. As with any parent of two small children, his days inevitably unfolded around the unexpected. Then there was his job. Flying cargo and passengers in the unpredictable weather and rough geography of the San Juan Islands and the Alaskan panhandle pretty much demanded that he immediately adapt to the unforeseen. He was usually pretty good at it, too. The juggling aspects of it, anyway.

“Next week. The day after Labor Day,” he expanded, mentally shaking his head at both her proposal and her persistence.

“That’s when school starts.”

“Right. Look,” he muttered, needing to get a grip on the situation. “Thanks for your offer, but I really need a live-in. And I need her now. There are times when I’m late or when I can’t get back because of the weather. I never know when that might be.”

“It’s not an offer. It’s a proposition. Child care for flying lessons.”

Sam blinked at her undaunted expression. The woman was as tenacious as the barnacles clinging to the pilings of the float plane pier. “I said I don’t give them.”

“You could always make an exception,” she suggested ever so reasonably. “Besides, you don’t need to make up your mind right now. I’m sure you’ll want to check me out since you don’t really know me. I know your children, though. Your wife used to bring them to the bookstore. Your sister still does. Jason has always liked stories about anything with big teeth and claws. Jenny adores any cover with glitter on it, but The Little Mermaid is her favorite.”

Sam thought of the book atop the stack on his little girl’s nightstand. His sister had bought that very book for Jenny months ago and several other books since. But the story of the mermaid was what Jenny insisted he read to her nearly every night.

This woman knew his kids. She even remembered what they liked.

The breath he drew was long, low and vaguely reluctant. He wasn’t at all prepared to accept her impulsive proposal. He was, however, a practical, logical man who was somewhat desperately in need of child care.

Conceding that he might have been a little hasty in his dismissal, he made a mental note to ask around about her, stuffed his map tube under his arm and slipped his sunglasses in his pocket. “Let me think about it.”

Having everything but his lunch, he glanced at her across the counter. As dogged as she’d been, he expected her to be pleased. What he didn’t expect was the impact of her bright, easy smile.

“That’s fair enough,” she said and held out her hand across the beige Formica.

He automatically took it.

Her skin was soft, her nails short and unpolished. In his big hand hers looked as small and feminine as his daughter’s. But what struck him most was the warmth of her flesh against his as the pressure of their fingers increased in the businesslike handshake and the faintly erotic scent of wildflowers that lingered in the air when she turned a moment later and walked away.

With his focus on the baggy denim covering her hips, he heard the jingle of the bell and watched her slip out the door. Through the multipaned window, he saw her climb into the battered olive-green Jeep parked just outside.

Sam’s glance jerked to the black-rimmed clock above the water cooler. Realizing that he was now even later than he’d been five minutes ago, he headed for the door himself. He had no idea what to make of T.J. Walker’s energy, her off-the-wall proposition or the jolt of sensual heat he’d just felt. It had been over three years since he’d known the comfort of a woman’s body. He missed the softness. The feminine scents. He missed the feel of gentle curves and silken hair.

He didn’t at all appreciate T.J. Walker reminding him of that. The last thing he needed was to add that particular brand of frustration to all the rest.

Ruthlessly shoving aside the thought, he grabbed the mail sack and the bag of chips and strode toward the gleaming white Cessna parked near the hangar. Spotting their pilot, four fishermen rose from their coolers and hauled up their heavy backpacks.

He had a flight to concentrate on. He had people to tend to who were relying on him to get them safely to their destination. He wasn’t about to jeopardize anyone’s safety by being preoccupied.

Chapter Two

Two days, Sam thought. His kids had only been gone for two days, and he was already going stir-crazy in the too-quiet house.

Plowing his fingers through his hair, he turned his back on the fading view of the ocean and massive boulders beyond his lawn and leaned against the railing of the long redwood porch. He’d once loved this time of day, the peaceful moments between dusk and nightfall when people and creatures started settling down, settling in. Now he faced his evenings trying not to think too much about the night ahead and occupied himself with his children’s routine and whatever chore or task demanded to be done.

The problem tonight was that without the kids there had been no routine. There had been no coloring with Jenny, or roughhousing with Jason or cuddling with both of them on the couch while they watched the Disney Channel or some animated video for the hundredth time. There had been no cajoling to get them to brush their teeth. No bedtime stories. There had been nothing to claim his attention or to take the emptiness out of the rambling log home he’d had built for Tina and their family.

He needed his children back. He knew they were perfectly safe with his parents. They were undoubtedly being spoiled rotten at that very moment, too. But they belonged here. On Harbor. With him.

He just needed someone responsible to be with them while he worked.

He also had no idea who that someone could be.

He couldn’t ask his sister for help. Lauren had enough on her plate being pregnant and still putting in fifty hours a week managing a department store in Bellingham. Taking them to the day-care center in town wasn’t a viable option because his hours often extended beyond theirs. If the week before Labor Day hadn’t been one of the busiest times of the year for his business, he might have been able to cut back on his flight time and stayed with them himself until he found another housekeeper. But he and his partner were shorthanded even with the other two pilots in their hire.

It wasn’t helping matters that he hadn’t had a single useful response to any of the ads he’d placed under Domestic Help Wanted in either the local or the mainland newspapers.

The haunting hoot of an owl filtered toward him from the forest of pine trees behind the house. Crickets chirped from the bushes in response.

Preferring to drown out the melancholy sounds, he picked up the hammer he’d used to repair a loose board and tossed it with a clank into his toolbox. With the thud of his boots on now-sturdy planks, he headed for the door before he could think too much more about why he’d put off going inside.

It took him all of a minute to return the toolbox to its place under the workbench in the basement. Less than that to climb back up the stairs, head through the big country kitchen and find himself back in his living room.

The spacious area was bright with the glow from the massive brass lamps on the pine end tables. Noisy audio from the big-screen TV filled the room with canned laughter. But the vitality in the comfortable, once-inviting space was only an illusion.

No matter how bright the lights, how loud the television, radio or CD player, there was still something—someone—missing. He noticed her absence even when the children were there.

Hating the emptiness, wondering if it would ever go away, he picked up the portable telephone from the table by the butterscotch-colored leather sofa. He needed to call his kids and say good-night. But he had another call to make first.

He’d paced two laps around the braided burgundy throw rug when his sister answered on the third ring.

“Hey, sis.”

“Sam.” Lauren Edwards McKendrick sounded as if she were smiling. “We were just talking about you.”

“You and Zach?”

“Me and Mom. We just hung up a couple of minutes ago.”

Two women discussing a man was seldom good news for the latter. Especially when they were all related.

“Are the kids okay?” he asked, not about to ask for details of that conversation. Picking up a red thread from the rug, he balled it between his fingers. “I tried to call them about an hour ago, but there was no answer.”

“They went out for pizza. And she said the kids are fine. I’m sure Jason will tell you, but he has a loose tooth. He wants a dollar for it. Mom says the Tooth Fairy won’t go past a quarter.”

He frowned, wondering which tooth it was. “She needs to account for inflation. She’s still thinking of when we were kids.”

“Probably. So,” Lauren said, her tone softening, “how are you doing over there?”

The piece of lint went sailing into the dark fireplace. Lousy, he thought. “Fine,” he replied. “I just need some background on someone. Do you know T.J. Walker?”

“T.J.? Sure. Everybody does.”

“I mean really know her. I’ve seen her before myself when she’s brought packages in to ship, but I need something more than nodding acquaintance information. She offered to watch the kids for me until I can find a live-in.”

Puzzlement entered his sister’s voice. “I thought she was going to talk to you about flying lessons.”

“She did. The other just sort of came up.”

“How do you get from flying lessons to baby-sitting?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, but it does sound a little odd.”

He couldn’t tell if it was a smile or curiosity in his sister’s tone. Either way, he wasn’t interested in explaining how T.J.’s proposition had come about. He wasn’t completely sure himself, other than that the woman had simply refused to take no for an answer.

“It probably does,” he agreed, letting it go at that. “So is she someone I can trust with my kids?”

“I don’t know why you couldn’t,” came her thoughtful reply. “From what I understand, she’s lived most of her life on the island, and you know everyone around here knows, or knows of, everyone else. You even know her mother,” she reminded him. “I’ll admit Crystal is a little…different,” she said, diplomatically describing T.J.’s mom, “but I’ve never heard anything negative about either her or her daughter. If there were reasons not to trust T.J., someone would have mentioned them by now.”

Sam continued pacing as he weighed his sister’s logic. In summer, tourists and summer residents overran the island, and most of the faces were unfamiliar. The permanent population of Harbor was just over 1,200 and spread out at that. But the locals did tend to keep track of those who truly belonged there.

Thinking about it, even he knew people who knew T.J. His sister, for one. And, as his sister had just mentioned, T.J.’s mother. But, then, there wasn’t anyone on Harbor who owned a VCR who didn’t know the outgoing, middle-aged hippie who still wore love beads and tie-dye with her flowing gauze skirts. Her store was probably the only one in the San Juans where a person could get a free astrological reading along with the latest video release and an herbal cure for whatever ailed him.

“Oh, and I saw T.J. once myself with children during story hour at the bookstore,” Lauren continued helpfully. “She seemed great with them. Nurturing, I guess you’d say. Anyway, the place I usually run into her is at her mom’s shop. All we’ve ever really talked about is books, videos and herbs. But as far as I’m concerned, she’s one of the nicest people in town. Very sweet. Very generous.” She paused. “I heard she does something with animals, too.”

The wary feeling Sam had experienced when his sister’s name had first come up with T.J. slithered up his back again. His sibling’s description of the woman was beginning to sound like a sales pitch.

“Sam? Are you still there? You’re not saying anything.”

He paced to a stop in the middle of the deserted room. “You’re not trying to set me up with her, are you?”

A choke of disbelief filtered across the line. “You asked what I know about her. All I did was tell you what I’d heard and give you my impressions.”

“Yeah, but you were the one who suggested she talk to me about flying lessons. And Mom’s latest solution to my life is for me to find myself someone to marry so I’ll have help raising the kids.”

“Oh, good grief,” Lauren muttered. “I suggested you because I think you’d be a good teacher. And our mother is making you paranoid. I know as well as you do that you don’t just go out and find someone to spend the rest of your life with. Besides,” she continued, ever so reasonably, “if I were to set you up with someone, it wouldn’t be T.J. From what I’ve heard from Maddy, she’s far too independent for marriage. Maddy should know, too. She told me she’s tried to fix T.J. up for years. She even tried to get her and Zach together before I met him.” A shrug entered her voice. “T.J.’s not interested in a relationship.”

For a moment Sam said nothing. Maddy O’Toole owned the Road’s End Café, which happened to be the place for gossip on Harbor Island. Sam didn’t frequent the establishment himself. Between his work and his children, he took little time for socializing, and any meals out were usually at Hamburger Heaven, Jason’s favorite. He remembered his wife talking about Maddy, though. And he knew from Zach that anything that happened on Harbor usually filtered through the Road’s End. Word was that gossip obtained from Maddy was pretty much gospel.

“You know, brother dear,” his sister gently chided, “you would know these things if you’d get out and get a little more involved in what’s going on around you. All you do is work. You’re not doing yourself any favors turning into a recluse.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He dearly loved Lauren. There had even been a time after his wife’s death when he hadn’t known how he would have survived without his sister. But the last thing he wanted was for her to get started on her favorite theme. He wasn’t being reclusive. He just didn’t have the time or the inclination to add anything—or anyone—else to his life.

“I’m involved with you and Zach and my kids,” he defended, forcing a smile into his voice. “That keeps me crazy enough.”

Taking the hint, Lauren chuckled. “We keep you sane. It’s Mom who makes you crazy. Just remember that she means well. And that she loves you. And, Sam,” she concluded, “T.J. is probably just the person you need. From what I’ve heard, she can deal with practically anything.”

T.J. wasn’t dealing well at all with what she’d just heard.

“Brad was here?” Her voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. “On Harbor?”

Maddy O’Toole stood next to her in the cramped bookstore aisle between self-help and romance and lowered her voice another notch.

“I thought for sure he had come by to see you,” the forty-something redhead quietly declared. The he she referred to was Brad Colwood, the man who had fathered T.J.’s six-year-old son, then disappeared like smoke in a stiff breeze. “I mean, he was asking everyone around here about you. Edna at the ferry office. Linc over at the aquarium. Me and Mary and Alice,” she enumerated, adding herself and her waitresses to the list.

“I was here all day, Maddy. Libby didn’t work yesterday because Bert’s arthritis was acting up. I couldn’t even leave for lunch.”

“Your mom didn’t hear about him being here?”

“I didn’t see her yesterday. But she would have called if she had.” Crystal had about as much use for Brad as she did another bunion. “I’m sure she would have.”

“Well, I don’t have a clue what to make of his coming here, then. Actually, I wasn’t even sure what to make of him,” the puzzled woman confided. “I barely recognized him when he came into the café. His ponytail was gone, and the clothes he was wearing were straight out of GQ. I swear the watch he wore cost as much as Alice’s divorce. And his car—”

Canceling any further inventory, Maddy shook her head to get herself back on track.

“Anyway,” she murmured, “he spent a good twenty minutes working his way through his chowder and asking about everybody else he’d known here before he finally got around to asking about you. He said he’d heard you’d had a child and started asking questions about Andy.”

“He knew his name?”

Maddy hesitated. “I can’t remember if he mentioned it first. Or if someone else did.”

A sense of unease had hit T.J. in the stomach the moment Maddy said she’d seen Andy’s father. Now it balled into a knot of pure apprehension.

Grabbing Maddy by the wide pocket of her green Road’s End apron, T.J. tugged her friend farther down the aisle. Two teenage girls were giggling over a hottie on the cover of People magazine. Wanting to get out of earshot, T.J. came to a halt by a postcard carousel and cast a furtive glance toward the service counter angled against the back wall. Her son had flopped on the floor behind the counter and was coloring in his coloring book next to his pet de jour.

“What kind of questions did he ask?” she insisted.

“Mostly he wanted to know what kind of child Andy is. If he’s bright. What he’s interested in. That sort of thing. And he wanted to know if you’d ever married.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you worked here at the bookstore and that he should ask those questions of you.” Maddy’s protective concern turned to compassion. “He really sounded interested, T.J. When I told him to come see you, he said he wouldn’t know what to say. It was almost like he was trying to get the courage to see you again. Maybe he didn’t come here because he never got that courage,” she suggested. “It could be that he heard how well you were doing without him and he decided he didn’t have the nerve to face you after all.”

At Maddy’s hypothetical conclusion, T.J. shot another quick glance toward her son. “Is he still on the island?”

The café owner quickly shook her head. “He left yesterday afternoon. I saw him drive his red Jaguar onto the ferry myself. Hard to miss that car,” she explained, impressed despite herself. It wasn’t often that a luxury car showed up on the island with its gravel roads and rugged terrain. Even the newly monied who’d built million-dollar summer homes in the more remote areas drove modest SUVs or trucks. On Harbor it was considered bad form to be too ostentatious. “The 3:10 ferry,” she added, wanting to be as accurate in her account as possible.

Brad was no longer on the island. He’d come. Asked his questions. And gone.

T.J. should have felt relief knowing he was no longer there. And she supposed she did. She just didn’t feel enough to relieve the uneasiness still knotting her stomach.

“Take it from me,” Maddy said, all friendship and sympathy. “It’s never easy when your past turns up. Especially in the form of a man. The good news is that once they’ve satisfied their curiosity about whatever brought them back, they’re usually gone.”

T.J. forced a faint smile, as much for Maddy’s benefit as her own. “Do you think that’s it? That he was just curious about us?”

“It makes perfect sense that he would be. Any man with a soul doesn’t forget that he ran out on a woman who was going to have his child. Maybe something happened to make him turn philosophical, and he’s looking at where he messed up his life. Maybe he’s just come out of a relationship and wants to go back to something familiar. Or,” she suggested, brightening, “it could be that he finally smartened up, realized what a jerk he’d been and he’s finally wanting to make things right.”

It was clear enough to T.J. that Maddy, the ever-hopeful romantic, was seeing a hint of potential in the man. T.J. could practically hear the local matchmaker’s mental wheels grinding out her argument now. She would insist that Brad needed to do his share of groveling to properly prove how sorry he was. But, like the prodigal son, if he was sorry enough, he could be welcomed back into the fold. After all, he was the child’s father. And T.J. really had cared a great deal about him.

The thought that Brad Colwood might want to make up for abandoning her and her son would never have occurred to T.J. on her own. In all her twenty-seven years, she had never once known any man who returned to repair the damage he’d left behind. If a man came back at all, it was only to collect something he had forgotten, then move on again leaving a little more pain in his wake.

Reminding herself of that hard-learned bit of reality, hating the sense of foreboding it gave her, T.J. did her best to mask her growing trepidation. There was something Maddy didn’t know. Something T.J. had mentioned to no one.

Brad’s appearance yesterday wasn’t his first attempt to get information about her and her son. He had written to her three months ago asking how she was doing and if she would please tell him about their child. He’d wanted a picture.

That letter had been the first communication she’d received from him since he’d bailed out on her after learning she was pregnant. She’d ignored it, along with the sense of unease it gave her. Just as she had ignored a second letter that had come two weeks ago.

As far as she was concerned, Andy was hers and no one else’s. Brad had no right to information about him. Not now. Not after so long. She didn’t care if he had faced some sort of epiphany about himself or if his heart had been broken and he was seeking solace in an old relationship. She especially didn’t care if he was simply curious. She wanted nothing to do with the man who had refused to acknowledge his child and left her to have her baby alone.

“He can’t make things right,” she finally replied to Maddy. “Things are right just the way they are. I’m just going to hope he’s dropped off the planet again.”

The middle-aged Irish woman opened her mouth, undoubtedly to ask T.J. what she would do if he came back, but the bell over the door gave a melodic tinkle. Two ladies in cargo shorts and tank tops strolled in, their pale skin pink from a morning in the sun.

The women gave the bestseller display a desultory once-over. Seeing nothing they were interested in, the blonde in the black baseball cap turned to the brunette in the red one and they left to join the stream of summer people clogging Harbor’s main street. The door had yet to swing closed when three more potential patrons wandered in.

The long, low moan of a ferry whistle filtered inside.

“This obviously isn’t a good time to talk. Look,” Maddy continued, her voice low as she backed up the aisle with T.J., “I didn’t mean to hit you with this out of the blue. I really thought you’d seen him. I just wondered what had happened.”

T.J.’s smile was soft, forgiving. She liked Maddy, but she wouldn’t have told the woman what had happened even if Brad had shown up. There wasn’t a malicious bone in the older woman’s body, but Maddy was notorious for trying to fix peoples lives. She also never failed to solicit everyone else’s opinion about how that could be accomplished—which meant anything she said to Maddy would be all over town in under an hour.

“Don’t worry about it, okay?” she asked, truly hoping she wasn’t about to become a staple on the local grapevine. “I’m glad you let me know he was here.”

“Miss?” An elderly woman in an orange T-shirt and pea-green sun visor had stopped near the wildlife section. She waved to T.J. over the shoulder-high bookshelves. The older gentleman in baggy safari shorts, dark dress socks and sandals had to be her companion. He wore orange and pea green, too. “Can you help us?”

Eyeing the couple as she and T.J. returned to the counter, Maddy whispered, “If anyone asks, the pies today are apple and fresh blueberry.”

“What about your cobblers?”

“Peach and cherry.”

“Chowder of the day?”

“Fresh corn.”

“Got it.”

The bell over the door sounded again, the call of seagulls drifting inside along with the fresh salt air and an eclectic blend of buyers and lookers. T.J. loved the hustle of summer and the variety of people who visited the friendly little shop. Just as she loved the quiet solitude of the island when fall and winter came and the residents could reclaim their turf from those who had come to watch the whales, kayak in the coves and hike the lush forest. She liked belonging here.

At the moment, she was simply thankful she was busy. Busy was good. Busy meant she didn’t have time to obsess over what Brad’s reappearance might mean.

She soon discovered that she didn’t have to be consciously thinking about it for the development to affect her. What Maddy had told her silently preyed on her nerves as she went about her chores, helping customers, answering their inevitable questions about the history of the island, the best places to spot dolphins, where they could find rest rooms. The distractions helped. But she couldn’t shake the agitation that put her senses on alert and had her darting furtive glances toward the door every time it opened.

The sight of any tall blond male with angular features caused her stomach to drop.

She was overreacting. She knew she was. Maddy had said she’d seen Brad leave on the ferry, and as sure as rain in the northwest Maddy would let her know if he was back. Still, T.J. couldn’t help the prickling sensation at the back of her neck when, just before noon, the tinkle of the bell caught her kneeling behind the counter. Before she could rise from where she was restocking bags beneath it, her heart jumped when something heavy hit the long, gray surface above her head.

Still on her knees, she glanced up to see a large dog-eared volume in the space between the cash register and a display of novelty note cards. The book definitely wasn’t from the store’s stock. Not tattered as it was. The thought was lost, however, as her wary glance shot past the front of worn jeans to the tall, broad-shouldered male in a chambray work shirt.

Sam Edwards’ impossibly blue eyes met hers.

“Hi,” she said, unbelievably relieved to see that it was him.

A faint frown furrowed his brow as she rose and pushed back her hair.

“Hi,” he echoed, staring at her hand.

Realizing her hand was shaking, she shoved it into the pocket of the teal work apron she wore over her T-shirt and long khaki skirt. Benders’ Books arched across the bib in pale-yellow embroidery.

“I wondered if I would hear from you,” she admitted, forcing a smile. She glanced at the book. From upside down, she read Principles of Flight. “I take it you’ve reconsidered your stance on the lessons?”

Watching her curiously, Sam nudged the volume forward. The vitality that had so impressed him the other day was missing. So was the ease and brightness of her smile. Her lips were curved in greeting. But the light he’d noticed before in her eyes was nowhere in evidence.

“What can I say? I recognize a deal when I see one,” he admitted with a casual shrug. “That’s why I came by. To tell you I’ll take you up on your offer…if it still stands,” he qualified. “And to bring you this, if it does.”

Her glance fell back to the book.

“I thought it would help us both if you’re familiar with the instruments and parts of the plane we’ll be flying.” Aware of a teenage boy in black spandex shorts, a racing shirt and a crash helmet browsing the magazine racks a few yards away, he consciously lowered his voice. “Unless you’ve changed your mind,” he said, looking as if he thought she would be more enthused about his acceptance of her proposal.

“No. No,” she quickly repeated. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

She really hadn’t. Not about her part of the proposition, anyway. She was just feeling so uneasy about Brad at the moment that she wasn’t sure about going through with the rest of it. She couldn’t tell Sam that, though. Not without him asking questions she’d rather not answer—especially with a customer less than ten feet away and her very bright little boy playing underfoot.

“Flying lessons for child care,” he said, sounding as if he wanted to be sure they were actually on the same track.

“Flying lessons for child care,” she echoed and watched his eyes narrow on her face. His glance was thorough and assessing as it moved over the faint strain in her features.

Had any other man studied her so openly, she would have immediately drawn back. The mechanism was purely protective, an instinct that snapped into place when any male over the age of consent paid more than passing attention to her. But she knew for a fact that this big, attractive pilot was there only because of his children. Since she’d practically badgered him into cooperating with her, she didn’t doubt that his only interest was in trying to figure out why she didn’t seem more pleased.

“I really do appreciate you bringing the book,” she insisted over a faint churring near her feet.

He still looked skeptical. “Then give me a call after you’ve read the chapters I’ve marked. We’ll set something up.”

“How about I call you at the airport tomorrow?”

Skepticism turned to curiosity when the soft sound continued. His glance shifted to the space beside her. “If you think you can get through the material that fast, that’ll be fine.”

The churring turned to a squeak. The moment it did, his brow snapped low.

It was such a relief to have his scrutiny off her that some of the strain slipped from her smile. “That’s our newest guest,” she told him, wondering at the faint flutter he’d left in her stomach. “I think he’s hungry again.”

Sam watched her disappear beneath the counter, then rise a moment later holding a small wire animal carrier. As she set it on the yard-wide surface, a chestnut-haired little boy the same age as his Jason rose from the floor.

Crossing his arms on the counter, the slightly built child plopped his chin on his narrow wrists and smiled up at Sam.

“Hi,” the boy said easily.

A dimple winked by his perfect little mouth. His eyes were the same gray green as the woman’s beside him.

“Hi, yourself,” Sam replied, recognizing him instantly as her son.

“Winona Sykes brought him to me a few days ago,” T.J. continued, smiling at the tiny ball of fur in the cage. Reaching through the wires, she gently stroked one tiny hand-like paw. “He’s only a few weeks old and needs to be fed every couple of hours. That’s why we bring him to work with us.”

Sam recognized Winona as the mayor’s wife. He recognized the critter in the cage as a baby raccoon. The thing was so small its mask had barely begun to show. “Why did she bring it to you?”

“People often bring me wounded or orphaned animals.” She spoke with a shrug in her voice, as if there was nothing at all unusual about the occurrence. “Or I rescue them myself if I hear of one that needs help. We have about a dozen animals living at our place right now.” Softness entered her voice as she glanced at her son. “Isn’t that right, Andy?”

The child’s nose wrinkled as he cranked his neck back. “I forgot. How many is a dozen?”

“Twelve.”

The wrinkles remained long enough for him to equate the number with the word. Comprehension dawning, he gave his mom a nod. “Yeah. A dozen. ’Cept this makes thirteen.”

“The animals are why I wanted to see if I can fly,” she explained to Sam as she reached beneath the counter. “Doc Jackson has to move to the mainland because his heart is getting bad and there’s no one to take his place.”

With a metallic clink against the counter, she set a can of kitten formula on it, popped the top and poured an ounce into a medicine cup. After drawing some of the liquid into an eyedropper, she touched the end of the dropper to the tiny animal’s seeking mouth.

“Can I do it, Mom?”

Smiling at her son’s request, she handed over the dropper. “Just remember to keep him on his stomach. That’s the way these guys eat best.

“I suppose I can learn to do rabies checks and that sort of thing myself,” she continued to Sam while she watched her son dispense several drops into the hungry orphan’s waiting mouth. “I won’t risk having an infected animal around Andy or the other animals,” she explained. “But without a vet, I won’t be able to take care of the sicker or more severely injured ones.

“Unless,” she added, suddenly meeting his eyes across the cage and the counter, “you would be willing to fly them to the vet over on Orcas Island or to Bellingham yourself?”

For the first time since he’d walked in, Sam saw a flicker of spirit in her delicate features. That look was nothing less than pure hope.

He immediately felt himself take a mental step back. Despite the odd strain he’d sensed in her, there was an artlessness about this woman that tended to pull a person in, to put him at ease. He freely admitted he was drawn by the gentle way she soothed the little animal, by her concern for it, by her willingness to take it in. But her innocent request for his involvement clearly threatened the boundaries he’d drawn around his life.

He hadn’t realized how protective his instincts had become until he felt them kick into place.

“Sorry,” he muttered, refusing to consider why those instincts were there. He thought only of the hours involved transporting her and heaven-only-knew what sort of critters around the San Juans. “I’m not in a position to help you. I already spend too much time away from my kids.”

“Of course.” Hope died as quickly as it had arisen. “I didn’t really think you’d be interested.”

“It’s not that,” he insisted, feeling lousy for turning her down. Feeling a little defensive, too, for being put in that position. “I really can’t take more time from them than I do. How were you planning to get them to Orcas or Bellingham yourself, anyway? Do you have access to a plane?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted with an amazing lack of concern. “I only found out that Doc Jackson was leaving an hour or so before I talked to you about lessons. I figured I’d get through those, then worry about what I’d fly.”

He didn’t know which surprised him more, her candor or the quickness of her decision to approach him. “Had you ever thought about flying before?”

“Not really.” She hesitated. “Never, actually,” she admitted and edged down the counter to intercept the man approaching the cash register with a magazine and a handful of postcards.

The two-tone melody of the door’s bell announced more shoppers. Asking her son to set the cage on the floor and finish feeding the raccoon there, she stepped over his coloring book and took the copy of Cycling World the guy in the spandex handed her.

One of the women who’d just come in had two cranky toddlers in tow. She asked for children’s books.

A woman in a huge straw hat wanted to know if the store had free maps.

Since they really had nothing else to discuss, Sam gave the manual a pat and said, “Call me.”

She promised that she would, but Sam could swear the odd strain had slipped back into her smile.

Telling himself it was none of his business why that faint tension was there, he stepped out into the crowd of visitors eating ice-cream cones, window shopping and queuing up at the expedition office across the street for whale excursions.

He’d already completed two flights that morning. He had three more that afternoon. Two were short hauls of supplies to sportsmen’s camps on a couple of the more isolated islands. One was a passenger and mail pickup in Seattle. When he returned, there would be the usual maintenance on the planes, logs to fill in, manifests to file, tomorrow’s cargo to sort.

He headed around the corner and climbed into the midnight-blue pickup truck with E & M Air Carrier Service emblazoned on its door panels. As long as he was going to be on the mainland, he should be thinking about picking up office supplies and ordering a new seat bracket to replace the one he’d found cracked yesterday on their oldest Cessna. Instead, his thoughts crowded around a woman who made no sense to him at all.

He couldn’t believe she’d never given any thought to flying until an hour before she’d shown up at the airstrip.

She already had him wondering why she’d seemed so subdued compared to the other day. Now she had him flat-out baffled by her apparent tendency to leap first, then look. Considering that she’d decided to take flying lessons in less time than it took most women to pick out a dress—and that she’d come up with the offer to watch his children in mere seconds—it seemed that T.J. Walker simply took on whatever came her way and battled the consequences and details as she went along.

He didn’t know what to make of her. As a pilot he knew what it was to go with his gut, to rely on training and instinct to make split-second decisions. But he could back up those decisions with years of experience and advance preparation.

He had no idea what she based her decisions on.

The warm sea breeze blew through the truck’s open windows as he drove past the pier and the ferry dock and skirted the fourteen square blocks of businesses and weather-grayed buildings that comprised the town of Harbor. He would have thought that a woman who tended a small zoo of high-maintenance animals in addition to working part-time and raising a child on her own would need to be organized to survive. An organized person would think twice before committing herself to something that would eat up a hefty chunk of her time. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that her idea of preplanning was simply to take a deep breath before she plunged in.

His scowl of incomprehension was threatening to become permanent by the time he swung onto the long open road that edged the ocean and led to the airport. Logic told him he didn’t need to understand her. All he had to do was trust her. And there, he supposed, he really had no problem.

Her little boy had appeared well cared for. He’d been clean and healthy and had obviously been raised to be friendly and caring. Just meeting the child spoke well of his mother. Aside from that, anyone who rescued and cared for injured animals would have to have a very soft heart.

The arrangement was only temporary, anyway. Hopefully, it wouldn’t have to last more than a few weeks. Just that morning he’d received a promising response to one of his ads. He had an interview for a week from Saturday with a woman from Bellingham who was leaving her position as nanny. She’d be available as soon as the family moved east at the end of the month.

In the meantime, it seemed he was going to teach a woman with a soft heart and no apparent sense of logic how to fly.

Chapter Three

T.J. was intimately familiar with nearly every square mile of Harbor Island. She knew the lush mountainous forest that filled its interior and the hiking trails, caves and clear creeks meandering through it. She knew its coves and tide pools and had introduced her son to all manner of seals, urchins and starfish. She knew who lived in the secluded cabins, houses, shacks and the occasional mansion tucked into the trees or overlooking the shore.

She disturbed little of it. Not the wildlife and not her neighbors. She regarded herself and her son simply as part of the ecology, custodians of their own small space in the woods and observers of all the rest.

She felt safe on Harbor now. Secure in a way that had eluded her all the years she’d been growing up. That was why she’d come back after only a year away at college. It was why she wanted to raise her child in Harbor. But that hard-won sense of security felt threatened at the moment. It had ever since Maddy had told her about Brad.

Try as she might, T.J. simply couldn’t shake the feeling that she hadn’t heard the last of him.

She wasn’t sure if she was simply being cautious or actually getting paranoid, but she checked her rearview mirror twice before she pulled her ancient Jeep off the shore road and headed for the blinding-white hangar at the edge of the airstrip. She had no idea what she expected Brad to do. Or if he would do anything at all. As she glanced at the child craning his neck from the seat beside her, she just knew she didn’t want Andy to know she was concerned.

Not that he was paying any attention to her. His focus was glued to the half dozen private airplanes parked away from E & M Air Carrier’s huge hangar.

He practically vibrated with excitement as he grappled with the latch on his seat belt. “Can I go look at a plane? I won’t get too close. I promise.”

“Jason’s dad is expecting us in the office, honey.”

“Is Jason here?”

“He’s visiting his grandma in Seattle right now.”

Seat belt unfastened, he reached for the rusting handle on the door. “Can I see a plane after, then?”

“If it’s not too dark.”

Her son grinned. “’Kay,” he murmured, not bothering to press.

He was such a good little boy. Affectionate. Obedient. He never demanded anything the way she often heard children do in the bookstore when they would beg, cajole or cry for just one more toy or treat. He simply accepted what she said and moved on to whatever next claimed his interest.

Tugging her heavy denim bag over her shoulder, she climbed out of the battered, but blessedly reliable, old vehicle and automatically took Andy’s hand. She didn’t know why he was always so agreeable. It could have been because he knew there wasn’t money for extras. Or because he instinctively understood that she already gave him everything she could and that it all came from her heart. Maybe it was because, even with Crystal living nearby, he knew it was really just the two of them and that they had to take care of each other because there wasn’t anyone else who would.

Whatever it was, she told herself, pushing open the door next to the black letters indicating Office, she was simply grateful he was hers.

Andy looked up at her, confused. “There’s nobody here.”

“I see that.”

The small waiting room with its huge map on the wall was empty. So was the space across the long counter where filing cabinets and two gray metal desks—one cluttered, one painfully neat—occupied the area.

Sam had said he would be available that evening. He’d told her that yesterday when he’d brought her the book weighing down her bag. Though she hadn’t talked to him since then, she had left a message with one of his employees that she would be by after she got off work at eight and asked that he call if the time wasn’t convenient. Since she hadn’t heard from him, she’d assumed the timing was fine.

Still clutching Andy’s hand, she moved to the end of the counter to peek through the open door behind it. The door opened directly into the hangar. Wondering if the guy named Chuck who had taken her message had forgotten to pass it on, she glanced into the cavernous space.

A white aircraft far larger than the tiny two-and four-passenger planes outside occupied the middle of the huge hangar. The cargo pods on its underbelly hung open.

While her son whispered a reverent “Wow,” T.J.’s attention settled on the big man in a khaki shirt and jeans.

Sam was shifting boxes from the underbelly of the plane to a low flat dolly—large boxes that he handled two at a time and that were heavy enough to make the dolly buck when he hefted them onto it.

He didn’t seem to notice her and Andy when they moved to stand in the doorway. Not sure if they should enter, she simply watched, unwillingly fascinated by his strength. She was intrigued, too, by the concentration etched in his features. No one could deny the sense of capability surrounding him, or the masculine beauty in his sculpted profile.

Sam Edwards was an incredibly virile and handsome man. T.J. had always thought him so—much as she had always thought redwoods mighty and the ocean vast. It was simply a fact of nature, and she appreciated beauty in nature wherever she found it. She had just never before considered exactly how broad his shoulders were. Or how strong the muscles in his back and thighs had to be to raise him up so easily as he hefted the heavy loads. His arms had to feel as solid as stone.

She imagined his arms felt rather empty, too.

Her grip tightened slightly on her son’s little hand. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for him to be left alone to raise his children, or how hard it had to be for his children to have lost their loving mother. She had known Tina. T.J. had even helped her out on occasion at the preschool where Tina had worked by bringing animals for the children to learn about and helping when the aide wasn’t available. She had been on school field trips with Tina, too, where they had talked about measles and how to get their offspring to eat vegetables. When Tina had brought Jason and Jenny into the bookstore, they had talked about children’s books.

The beautiful, bubbly ex-cheerleader had doted on her children and adored her husband. They had clearly cared for her, too. The few times T.J. had seen Sam with them at community functions, it had been clear that their family had been as happy as any around.

Watching him now, when she was so aware of his physical strength, she couldn’t help but wonder at the fortitude and tenacity he had to possess. Rumor had it that he seemed to be doing well now, though he stuck close to work and his family. But she remembered hearing early on that he’d taken his wife’s death as hard as any man could.

As if he had finally become aware of how intently he was being watched, Sam’s motions began to slow. With his last box unloaded, he straightened like a pinnacle rising from the sea, plowed his fingers through his hair and turned toward the doorway.

The bright fluorescent lights illuminated the sculpted lines of his face when his glance jerked from them to his watch. “I didn’t realize how late it was,” he called to her. “How long have you been standing there?”

Longer than I probably should have, she thought. “Only a couple of minutes,” she called back. “I hope you don’t mind us coming through the office.”

“Not a problem. Come on over.”

Since he stayed where he was, near the plane, she gently tugged Andy forward. She was halfway across the gray concrete floor when she noticed the lines of fatigue fanning from the corners of Sam’s eyes. Deep creases bracketed his mouth. She’d noticed the lines before, but thought only that they added interest to a face that would have been too perfect otherwise.

With his loss fresh on her mind, she realized now that what had carved the furrows so deeply could very well have been grief—and a kind of weariness that ran soul deep.

She stopped a couple of yards away. “I didn’t know if you got my message.”

Looking very competent, very capable and very…big, he ran an impersonal glance from her short T-shirt to the hem of her baggy linen pants, then smiled at the child clinging to her hand.

“I got it about an hour ago.” Turning, he reached inside the open door of the plane’s cabin and pulled a clipboard from the pilot’s seat. “I just wanted to get the cargo unloaded before we got started. We can talk while I work on the plane.”

Concentration sharpened his features as he dropped the clipboard atop the stacked boxes and made a note on an attached form. His manner was as brisk and businesslike as his tone. She had no idea what time he’d started work that morning or how many places he’d flown over the course of the day. But from the fatigue he dutifully ignored, she had the impression of a man running on nothing but reserves.

Still, he offered another easy smile to the little boy who peered past him to the plane. Andy hadn’t budged from beside her. Sheer awe rooted him to the concrete.

Sam’s preoccupation lifted when he noticed where her son was staring. “Have you ever seen a plane up close before?” he asked the silent child.

Solemnly, Andy shook his head to indicate that he hadn’t.

“Then, you’ve never been inside a plane before, either?”

Without a blink, the little boy shook his head once more.

“Do you want to sit inside this one?”

The awe in Andy’s expression moved into his voice. “Inside it? Can I? Really?”

“Promise not to touch anything?”

Andy nodded so fast that his bangs bobbed.

“Wait a minute.” T.J.’s wary glance darted past the open cockpit door to the complex array of gauges and gadgets on the control panel. “Is it safe for him to be in there?”

Looking intimately familiar with the workings of a worried mother’s mind, Sam paused. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if it weren’t,” he replied, reasonably. “Would you rather he didn’t?”

Andy’s eyes beseeched her. Eyes of startling blue met hers with calm patience.

“If you’re sure he’ll be okay…”

“I’m sure.” He arched one eyebrow. “Do you want to let go of his hand?”

Andy nodded, his expression still pleading. “You can come, too, Mom.”

At her son’s encouragement, she finally let go. She always kept a close eye on her son. Especially in unfamiliar places. That was why she was right behind them when Sam swung her child up in one arm, carried him to the plane and plopped him onto the pilot’s seat.

“Here you go,” he said to Andy. “You can sit in here while your mom and I talk. That’s the throttle and this is what steers the plane. And this,” he said, digging something out from the utility box by the seat, “is a Game Boy. Do you know how to work it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. Then you can play with that. Hands off everything else. Okay?”

“’Kay,” Andy murmured, obligingly. His nose wrinkled. “What’s a throttle?”

“It’s like the gas pedal in a car,” T.J. replied from behind Sam’s broad back.

“Oh.”

“Look,” she murmured, touching Sam’s arm to get his attention. The muscle beneath the soft khaki felt every bit as hard as she’d imagined. “You’re sure he’s okay in there?” she asked, feeling that heat move into her palm.

He turned, causing her hand to fall, then forced her to back up as he stepped toward her. “I’m positive. Even if he does touch something, it might mess up an instrument, but it won’t hurt him.” His big body towered over hers as he nodded toward the exposed engine. Its cowling lay on the ground. “You don’t have to worry about him starting it up, either,” he murmured, sounding as if he knew she was thinking just that. “I have the key, and the fuel line is disconnected.”

He was crowding her, though she didn’t think he was doing it on purpose. There was just nowhere else for him to go with the door open, the plane at his back and her blocking his path from the front.

Jerking her focus from his firm mouth to his wide chest, she curled her fingers over the odd heat lingering in her hand and backed to the middle of the long high wing.

“You’ve been reading.” He offered the observation as he followed her, obviously referring to her response about the throttle. “Did you get the chapters finished?”

Nothing about him made her think he was at all affected by her proximity. Uneasily aware that she was not unaffected by his, she thought about the book she carried and willed herself to relax.

“Some of them. Most of them,” she corrected, her glance automatically seeking her son.

She had been more anxious than usual about her little boy over the past couple of days. Every time she lost sight of him, which was never for more than a few moments, a bubble of panic rose in her chest, pumping adrenaline into her veins, making her heart lurch. But she could easily see Andy holding the Game Boy in a death grip as he stared, enthralled, at the complex instruments.

He was fine. Sam had even assured her that he was safe.

For the moment, with Sam there, she realized that Andy truly was.

The knot that had formed in her stomach yesterday morning actually began to loosen. Grateful for the respite, only now realizing how tense she had been, she pulled the book from her big denim bag and held it out with both hands. “I’m afraid I won’t be needing lessons, though. Thank you, anyway.”

The weathered creases in his forehead deepened as he reached for the bulky volume. Confusion colored his tone. “What changed your mind?”

“That book, for one thing. I had no idea until I started reading it how complicated it all would be. Even if you could teach me how to get a plane off the ground, I can’t afford the money or the time it would it take for real lessons and to get a license. Doc Jackson will be leaving in a couple of weeks. It would be a couple of years before I could fly a plane on my own.”

“It wouldn’t take that long.”

“It would for me. I wouldn’t want to leave Andy all those hours, either.” She didn’t want to leave him at all. “It’s like you with your children,” she explained, because there was no need to tell him why she didn’t want her child out of her sight. “You said you hated leaving them any more than you already have to. I feel the same way about Andy.

“I’ll still watch Jason and Jenny,” she hurried to assure him, “but I’ll have to find some other way to get veterinary care.”

Ratchets and wrenches rattled as Sam set the book atop the chest-high portable toolbox under the tip of the wing. The entire time she’d been backing down from flying lessons, he’d been waiting for her to back down from watching his kids. He’d felt it coming as surely as sunset over the Pacific. Since she had just unexpectedly eliminated that worry, he now was simply feeling mystified.

He had already told himself he didn’t have to understand this woman to work with her. He’d even expected her to throw him off guard. After all, it wasn’t every day a man encountered a woman who informed him out of the blue that she wasn’t going to sleep with him. Or who practically begged him to teach her to fly so she could rescue the local wildlife.

He’d been unwillingly impressed by that desire, too. Though he’d never considered himself particularly jaded, he had to admit there really wasn’t much that did impress him anymore.

He also had to admit that the idea of sex with her had crept into his thoughts with disquieting regularity.

The phenomenon was nothing more than a power-of-suggestion thing. He wouldn’t have thought of it if she hadn’t put the idea in his head. He felt certain of that. But thoughts of how soft her skin would feel, of burying his fingers in the wild tangle of her hair, of how shapely she was beneath the baggy clothes she wore, had crept into his mind, his sleep. The unwanted mental images had to be why his body had tightened when she’d touched him. And why the fresh wildflower scent of her had him feeling as taut as a trip wire every time he breathed it in.

“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

“That depends.” With his glance on her mouth, hesitation slipped over her face. “What do you want to know?”

“Why are these animals so important to you?”

The nature of his interest made her lips curve. “For some of the same reasons children are important. They need protection and care,” she explained. “Because I care, I do what I can for them.”

She looked as she sounded, as if she were certain he would understand something so basic.

He didn’t understand at all.

Not sure why it mattered, he ran a skeptical glance from the curls disappearing behind her back, over her clear, unembellished skin and paused at the hand-strung brown beads skimming her collarbone. His assessing glance narrowed on her shoulders.

He was unable to detect so much as a hint of a bra strap or cup beneath the soft fabric of her shirt, nothing to support or mold the high, gentle swells of her breasts. Making himself ignore the thought of how perfectly she would fit in his palms, he forced his glance to the loose linen drawstring pants riding her slender hips.

There was nothing artificial about the woman. Nothing made up, made over, restrained, restricted or enhanced. She was completely, unabashedly natural. He’d even bet her underwear was 100 percent pure cotton.

Not that he was ever going to find out. Since he was no more interested in a relationship than he’d heard she was, his thoughts were actually leaning more toward her beliefs than her bedroom. He now had the nagging feeling she was one of the vegan ilk who had refused to baby-sit at his house because he had leather furniture. “You’re a vegetarian.”

At the flat conclusion in his voice, T.J.’s expression mirrored his own.

“So?” she prompted.

“So are you into some esoteric philosophy that regards animals as gods or something?”

She had already struck him as being a little unconventional, which made her fit in perfectly on Harbor where eccentricities were the norm. The island was populated with a curious blend of kiwi farmers, entrepreneurs, loners and dot-com millionaires, each perfectly content to march to his own drummer. Considering who her mother was, he figured T.J.’s philosophies could be light-years away from his more traditional leanings.

“Do you mean, do I worship cows and that sort of thing?”

“Well…yeah,” he rather unintelligently concluded.

Her smile emerged, as warm as sunshine and faintly chiding. “My burgers are made of tofu,” she admitted, “but I’ve never confused something on four legs with anything other than what it is. I just happened to grow up with animals. They were always around the communes we stayed in when I was a child.”

One slender shoulder raised in a faint shrug. “They were my friends,” she explained, her voice softening as she thought of how much company and comfort those animals had given her. “It’s only natural that I should provide a safe environment for those who need it now.”

For a moment, Sam said nothing. He simply watched her study the wrenches on the cart before she glanced around the cavernous space. She seemed infinitely more at ease than she’d been when he’d first seen her standing in the office doorway, and terribly curious about what surrounded her.

He was feeling more than a little curious himself. Her comments about being raised in a commune had just summoned images of tie-dye and love beads.

He’d certainly heard of the communes of the sixties and seventies and their free-living lifestyle. He even knew several aging hippies himself, a few of whom ran the Mother Earth Spa on the north end of the island and whose faithful clientele flew in regularly on his airline. Then there was her mother.

“The animals lived in the commune with you?”

“I don’t remember any living with us. Except for this mangy yellow dog someone had. But he didn’t stay very long. The guy or the dog,” she mused. Having perused the wrenches on the cart, she looked back at him. “Metric, right?”

He nodded at her query and watched her glance swing to a spare propeller blade hanging above the long, brightly lit workbench. “For as far back as I can remember,” she continued, crossing her arms as if to keep from touching anything, “if I wanted company I headed for the woods.”

“How many people did you live with?”

“Anywhere from half a dozen to twenty or so.”

“Weren’t there any other children?”

“Sometimes. That depended on where we were. And on the weather. Winter tended to weed out the wannabes.” Tipping her head back, she studied the structure of the wing flap above her. “Even when there were other kids, they didn’t stay long enough to really get to know.” No one stayed long. Ever. Transience had always been part of the life. “But there were always animals. I’d find their dens and play with the babies.”

“You’re kidding.”

Her attention remained on the wing as she shook her head, her smile rueful. “I know. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a limb.”

“Or your life.”

“That, too,” she easily agreed. “Some babies’ mothers can be very protective. I think bears are the most aggressive,” she mused, still checking out the hardware. “But I ran into a beaver once that was a close second. She wasn’t happy at all about me playing with her kits.”

Without thinking about what he was doing, Sam let his glance slide over the long line of her throat as she followed the flap to the light on the wing tip. His first inclination was to ask where her mother had been while she had wandered the woods in search of playmates. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, though. Wasn’t sure he wanted it to matter.

What she’d just so artlessly told him conjured the uncomfortable image of a very isolated child.

“It sounds lonely.”

Her inspection of his plane came to an abrupt halt. Meeting his eyes, she tipped her head to study his.

“It was,” she admitted with compelling candor. Sympathy unexpectedly moved into her soft expression. Her voice, already quiet, quieted further as she searched his face. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Feeling alone like that, I mean.”

She had caught him off guard before. She’d just never caught him as unprepared as he felt at that moment. As it had the other day at the bookstore, her candid manner had pulled him past the protective wall he’d built around himself, caused him to be curious and left him without the distance he tended to keep between himself and nearly everyone else.

He had no idea what he’d done to give himself away, but she had somehow recognized the emptiness living inside him. As ruthlessly as he battled that feeling, as diligently as he tried to avoid thinking about why it was there, the last thing he wanted was to talk about it now.

He dealt with the feeling enough when he was alone.

Feeling exposed, hating it, he took a step back and nodded toward the plane. “I think I’d better check on your son.”

The understanding in her eyes flickered out like a candle in a draft. He could even feel her draw back from him as he moved past her, tension radiating from him in waves.

“Hey, buddy,” he called, forcing that tension down for the child’s sake. “How’s it going in there?”

“Do I hafta get out now?” came the little boy’s reply.

T.J. blinked at Sam’s back and tried to focus on what he was saying to Andy. Something about rudder flaps, she thought, but little registered. The way he’d so abruptly changed the subject made it feel as if he’d just slammed a door in her face.

Not at all sure what she had done, she was trying to figure it out when the distant drone of an airplane filtered in with the breeze. In a matter of seconds the sound intensified, reverberating through the building, then faded off as the plane passed, banked and set itself down on the runway.

“That’s Zach,” Sam said, appearing to note the tail numbers of the E & M craft taxiing off the runway. Wanting to see what was going on, Andy crawled to his knees on the seat. “I was sure Chuck would get here before him.”

Sam seemed to be talking more to himself than to the child who now asked if another plane was coming soon.

All T.J. cared about was getting out of there before they were joined by anyone else. Feeling awkward and uneasy, she moved to where Sam shadowed the cockpit door.

“Come on, Andy,” she murmured, edging in front of Sam’s solid-looking chest. “It’s time for us to go. Mr. Edwards has things he needs to do, and we don’t need to be in the way.”

Andy clearly didn’t want to leave. There were too many new things here for him to see. Though disappointment made him hesitate, he dutifully put the Game Boy back from where he’d seen Sam take it and held his arms out so she could lift him to the ground.

Andy’s tennies hit the concrete with a faint squeak. Turning, she automatically took her little boy’s hand before glancing up at the man towering over her. Something like caution shadowed his features, along with a fair amount of the reserve she was feeling herself.

“It’s Sam,” he corrected, frowning at her turn toward formality.

“Then thank Sam for letting you sit in the plane, Andy.”

“Thank you,” came the child’s sweet reply. He smiled then, the dimple in his cheek as deep as a cherry pit. “It was way cool.”

A smile involuntarily twitched at the corner of Sam’s mouth. “Way cool, huh?”

The child’s head bobbed, but Andy’s attention was already being diverted to the plane that had taxied to a stop near the hangar. The circular gray blur of the propellers slowed to reveal three still blades.

“Well, we’d better get going,” T.J. said quietly, heading around Sam with her son in tow. “I’ve kept you long enough.”

A muscle in Sam’s jaw jerked. “You haven’t kept me from anything.”

She shrugged, offering a smile that looked uncomfortable at best. “Your partner is here, and we need to get home and feed the animals.” With the graceful sweep of her hand, she motioned toward the open end of the hangar. Dusk had already robbed the sky of its color. “It will be dark soon.”

Sam’s only response was a nod. He hadn’t meant to be rude when he’d walked away from her moments ago. He knew he had been, though. He also knew he had offended her in the process, but he’d had no idea how else to handle her question. He had no intention of opening a vein for this woman. Or anyone else, for that matter. And that’s what it felt like he would be doing if he were to acknowledge to anyone else the void inside him. So he let her go with a wave to her kid and swore silently to himself as he watched them walk away. From her polite reserve after he’d killed the light in her eyes, it was as clear as rainwater that she’d crawled inside a shell.

He’d liked her a whole lot better when she was being feisty and straightforward. She seemed far less vulnerable that way.

The knowledge that he’d been the one who’d caused her to withdraw kicked him square in the conscience as his partner walked inside. All she had done was let him know she understood how lost and alone a person could sometimes feel. Just because he didn’t care to share that understanding didn’t mean he couldn’t have handled the situation with a little more finesse. After all, he still needed her to watch his kids.

“Hey, Sam. That was T.J. wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was.”

“That must have been one tough first lesson.”

His partner of thirteen years strode past the loaded cargo dolly with his log book in one hand and pure speculation carved in his face. Zach McKendrick was a regular guy. The best, as far as Sam was concerned. He was also an excellent business partner and one of the best bush pilots in the entire northwest. The strapping, ex-jet-jockey didn’t make a bad brother-in-law, either.

“What makes you think the lesson was tough?”

Scratching his jaw, Zach shrugged. “It’s not like her to ignore a person. I know she saw me, but she kept going anyway. She usually asks about Lauren. Makes small talk, you know?” His shrewd eyes narrowed. “She seemed awfully anxious to get out of here.”

“She has animals she needs to feed.” Later he might consider that he’d truly screwed up his best prospect for temporary child care. Now he just wanted to do something…physical. “Do you have anything to unload?”

“The mail from the outer islands. Are you changing the subject?”

“Yeah,” he muttered and grabbed an empty dolly. “I am.”

Curiosity arched Zach’s eyebrows. “Why don’t you want to talk about T.J.?”

“Because she’s not taking the lessons.” That was part of it, anyway.

“Does that mean she won’t be watching Jas and Jenny?”

That was another part of it. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t had time to come up with anything else to barter with.”

Considering the way she’d withdrawn from him, the bigger problem was whether she’d be willing to barter at all.

Chapter Four

She had no one to blame but herself. She’d dropped her guard. Forgotten to be wary.

T.J. dumped a scoop of sweet oats into a dented metal pie pan and set it inside one of the large wire enclosures she’d built into her woods. It had been more than twenty-four hours since she’d walked away from Sam Edwards, yet she simply couldn’t shake the sting she’d felt when he’d so abruptly rejected her understanding.

It didn’t help matters that she’d run into his sister a while ago, and now felt embarrassed on top of everything else.

The scent of damp pine and sea air filled her lungs as she pulled a deep breath. She needed to let it go, at least for now, so she could focus on her chores before the last of the day’s light faded. She and Andy had returned from a birthday party for one of his friends less than twenty minutes ago and the pale twilight wouldn’t last much longer. She had already helped her tired little boy through a modified version of his nighttime routine and tucked him into bed. Now she needed to get the animals fed so they could bed down, too.

Calmed by her own rituals—at least, telling herself she was, she grabbed the hose and the handles of her loaded wheelbarrow and headed into the woods. The narrow path led to the big enclosures she’d built near the creek at the back of her house. Inside the farthest one, two orphaned fox pups stopped chasing and tumbling with each other long enough to check out the food she spooned into their dishes. Heading back up the path after she’d secured the door, she slipped fish into a cage for the seagull someone had shot in the wing and left to die and veggies into the enclosure for a wild hare that had tangled with something with claws, murmuring to them all along the way.

Even as occupied as she was, she couldn’t shake the feelings still nagging at her.

Those feelings were mercilessly easy to identify. She felt regret because she had clearly stepped into Sam’s personal space and stepped over a line he didn’t want crossed. And stung because she’d reached out only to have him pull back like a snapped spring and slam an invisible door. The embarrassment was there because, thanks to Lauren, she now realized he probably thought she’d been coming on to him.

The embarrassment she could live with.

It was the rejection she hadn’t been prepared for.

She’d left herself wide open for it, too, which wasn’t like her at all. Over the years, she’d honed her reserve with men, developed a finely tuned sense of caution with any human possessing a Y chromosome. She trusted only children, animals and books and neither expected nor wanted anything from any male other than her son.

That reserve had failed her, however, with Sam Edwards. Until the moment he’d walked away from her in the hangar, her usual reticence simply hadn’t existed.

The front wheel of the wheelbarrow squeaked as she moved her supplies toward the next enclosure and the hole of twilight at the beginning of the path. It had taken her only minutes of the drive home last night to figure out why that caution hadn’t been there.

The sympathy she’d felt for him having lost his wife and being left to raise his children on his own had prevented it. Even the way he kept to himself, his work and his little family had served to sabotage her usual defenses. It was almost as if she’d sensed a kindred sprit in him, as if they’d had so much in common that there had been no need for protection. Only, there hadn’t been a connection at all. She just hadn’t been able to avoid responding to him any more than she could avoid responding to any wounded animal.

Water trickled from the end of the long garden hose as she hauled it back up the path. She was almost finished with her chores, but she wasn’t finished lecturing herself just yet. After all, no one knew better than she did that wounded animals needed to be approached with caution. She’d learned that lesson when she was eleven years old and tried to play nurse to a cougar. The beautiful sleek animal had been hit by a car and left for dead by the side of the road. The big cat had turned on her when it had come out of its stupor and missed slicing her face with its claws by scant millimeters before bolting into the woods to heal or die on its own.

A person would be a fool to forget a lesson like that.

Two adolescent raccoons chittered as she left a plate of cat food in their enclosure and added more water to the plastic bowl they’d dumped. In the larger enclosure at the edge of the trees by her lawn, a lame doe made her way to the sweet oats T.J. had left her a while ago. Mindful of the doe’s daughter following her as she fed the last of her charges, she smiled at her little shadow.

“This isn’t for you,” she murmured to the tiny fawn and dipped into the sack of oats once more. “It’s another serving for your mama. You need to talk to her about your meal.”

The fawn’s back barely reached T.J.’s knees. With the metal scoop in one hand, she bent to smooth her other hand over the white spots scattered over the animal’s lovely rust-colored coat.

She’d barely touched the soft hide when she suddenly went still.

So did the fawn. Her little head jerked toward the narrow gravel road beyond the house as the sound of crunching rock and a vehicle engine grew louder. Seconds later, the animal’s whole body on alert, they both stood frozen in the headlights of a large dark truck.

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