Available in June 2010
from Mills & Boon® Special Moments™

The Tycoon’s Perfect Match by Christine Wenger & Their Second-Chance Child by Karen Sandler

A Marriage-Minded Man by Karen Templeton & From Friend to Father by Tracy Wolff

An Imperfect Match by Kimberly Van Meter & Next Comes Love by Helen Brenna

A Bravo’s Honour by Christine Rimmer

Lone Star Daddy by Stella Bagwell

Claiming the Rancher’s Heart by Cindy Kirk

To Save a Family by Anna DeStefano

A MARRIAGE-MINDED MAN
“I should retreat now before I make any more of an idiot of myself – ”

“No, don’t,” Tess said, grabbing Eli’s hand, just to keep him from leaving. Eli grabbed hers back, then tugged her to him, his eyes touching hers for about half a second – barely long enough for a “Wha – ?” to skate through her brain – and lowered his mouth to hers.

She tensed, then thought, What the hell? and kissed him back, no grappling involved, no body parts touching except lips, the merest suggestion of tongue, their linked hands…and Eli’s strong, rough fingers on the nape of her neck. Whee, doggie. She kissed him back and he kissed her back more and basically she turned into one big quivering mass of goo.

Just from his lips touching hers? Holy cow.

When it was over – much too soon – Eli chuckled again, sheepish, and Tess had to grab the railing, she was quivering so badly.

“This isn’t working, is it?” he said and Tess barked out a laugh.

“Our staying out of each other’s way? No. Apparently not…”

FROM FRIEND TO FATHER
Gone was the work-at-home mum he was used to.

In her place was a blonde bombshell – slender but with curves in all the right places. And legs that seemed to go on for miles.

“Is that a new dress?” Reece asked, his voice much hoarser than usual. But he couldn’t do anything about that – the second he’d laid eyes on Sarah, most of the blood had left his head and pooled about three feet south.

Her cheeks heated and she glanced down, her hand playing uncomfortably in the silky skirt. “It is. I found it at the mall last week, when I was picking up shoes for Rose.”

“You look good.”

“Really?” Her smile was tentative.

“Yeah.” Oh, yeah. Good enough to have his libido leaping to life after nearly a year of complete and total dormancy. And his body was now reminding him – in very uncomfortable detail – just how long it had been since he’d held a woman in his arms.

A Marriage-Minded Man

BY

Karen Templeton
From Friend
To Father

BY

Tracy Wolff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Marriage-Minded Man

BY

Karen Templeton

Karen Templeton is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty nappies are not mutually exclusive. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasising about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her online at www.karentempleton.com.

To Jack,

for always being there

even when I’m sure there were times when you

wondered what on earth you’d gotten into!

Chapter One

Crackly leaves darted out of the old pickup’s way as Eli Garrett effortlessly navigated the mountain road, one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel, the other thrumming the dashboard in time to Willie Nelson. Behind him, like backup, ladders and tools and whatnot rattled and rumbled in the truck’s bed.

Good times, Eli thought as he approached the final, dusk-cloaked curve to his house. He had a check from a thrilled client in his pocket, 007 waiting in his mailbox, and Evangelista Ortega’s chicken enchiladas tucked up all nice and cozy in the aluminum tray on the seat beside him. So the late fall evening stretched before him, gloriously free, nothin’ to do except hang with Mr. Bond and chow down on the best enchiladas this side of Santa Fe. Maybe in all of New Mexico, he mused, cresting the hill—

“What the hell—!”

He swerved to avoid the small, ghostlike figure who’d popped up out of nowhere, jogging on the wrong damn side of the road. The figure shrieked, then toppled over into a thicket of brush and chamisa, cussing in a mixture of Spanish and English loud enough to blow poor Willie right off the map.

All the junk in the truck bed crashed mightily as Eli jerked up short on the shoulder ahead and jumped out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you!” he yelled, striding toward the figure, already getting to her feet. “You okay?” In the glow from his taillights, she spun around, glaring, and what was left of Eli’s good mood evaporated like smoke in a high wind.

He froze, unsure of his next move. Recognizing him, Teresa Morales—wrong, Montoya—stiffened, too, a moment before a dry, caustic laugh sprang from her mouth. Eli relaxed. Some.

“Holy hell, Tess—you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Swiping dirt, dead leaves and chamisa gunk off her butt, Tess shot him The Look of Death. “Yeah, well,” she said, “you didn’t exactly do my cardiovascular system any favors, either. Crap.” Shoving a headband off her short, wavy hair, she plunked back down in the dirt, inspecting an ugly-ass dark slash on her shin. “Am I bleeding? I can’t see a damn thing in this light.”

“If I look, you promise not to go after me with a blunt object?”

Her eyes flashed to his, then back to the cut. “It’s your lucky day—I’m unarmed.”

“You sure? That headband looks kinda dangerous—”

“Geez, Eli—just look at my leg, okay?”

Eli squatted beside her, trying not to react to her scent, the same one that used to make his eyes cross as a horny seventeen-year-old. That threatened to short out his brain now. Especially when he yanked up her leg to get a better look and came into contact with all that cool, smooth skin—

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. Rubbing the underside of her calf, a little. Noticing she’d recently shaved. Or waxed. Or something. Stubble, the curse of the dark-haired, she’d said. “Yeah, you’re bleeding all right. Must’ve been a branch or something stickin’ out, scratched you up pretty good. What in tarnation were you doing runnin’ this time of night? And why on earth were you way out here?”

“It was still daylight when I started,” she muttered, digging a tissue out of her body-hugging, light-colored jacket. “And I didn’t mean to run this far—or even run at all, I’d just gone for a walk—but it sorta got away from me.” He noticed her hand trembling as she dabbed at the blood, like most of the fight had gone out of her.

Like a woman still stinging from her recent divorce, maybe?

Eli sighed. “Hold on, I’ve got paper towels and water in the truck.”

Amazingly, she was still there when he returned, her forehead propped on her arms, folded across her knees. Knowing Tess, he’d half expected to see her hobbling down the road, muttering, “Don’t need no stinkin’ help from no stinkin’, stupid ex-boyfriends.” He handed her a soaked towel. “Here.”

She jerked her head up like she’d forgotten about him, then took the damp towel and pressed it to the wound, clearly holding back a wince. A single tear dribbled down her cheek, looking like blood itself in the red glow. She shouldered it away.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, then released a breath, her mouth set. “Really,” she said, more softly, and it was everything he could do not to call her on the obvious lie.

Eli sat back on his haunches, trying to reconcile what he saw in front of him with both the carefree sixteen-year-old girl his hormone-crazed younger self had been crazy in love with and the sharp, confident businesswoman she’d become over the past few years. Or so he’d heard, since they’d barely exchanged ten words since Eli’s Big Screwup.

Even so, in a town like Tierra Rosa you could go for years without talking to somebody and still know every detail of their lives. Either you’d overhear something, or some kind soul would fill you in, or you’d notice things with your own two eyes. Things you kept to yourself, no matter how much they might be killing you inside.

“Where’s the kids?” he asked, exchanging the bloodied towel for a clean one.

“In Albuquerque. With their father,” Tess said through a grimace. She glanced at him, just long enough for him to catch the anger-tinged shadows in her eyes, then back at her leg, pressing the towel to the wound. “Yesterday would have been our ninth anniversary.”

“Sorry.”

She shrugged. Lifted the towel. “You think it’s stopped?”

“Can’t really tell in the dark. Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk,” she said, rising and putting her weight on her foot. Doing the stoic thing.

“Come on, I’ll take you back to my place and get you patched up.”

Clearly gritting her teeth, Tess took another step. Swore under her breath. “How about you take me home instead?”

“Because something tells me you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Even in the dark, he felt the full force of her glare. Caught the pain behind it, too. And not just because of her leg. “And I don’t recall asking for your input. If you don’t want to give me a lift, I’ll get back on my own steam.”

“Before next Sunday?”

The glare intensified. Eli almost laughed. “Tell you what—how about we go back to my place and get the dirt cleaned out of that scratch, then I’ll take you home?” When she still hesitated, he said, “Might even rustle up a slug of whiskey from somewhere.”

“Why? In case you need to amputate?”

“Never hurts to be prepared.”

Muttering something about “damn Boy Scouts,” Tess started for the truck. Eli tried to put his arm around her waist, got his hand smacked for the trouble. Of course, she then limped the ten feet to the passenger-side door, leaning against the extended cab for dear life while Eli shifted the enchiladas so she’d have some place to sit. Once settled in her seat, however, she emitted a sound that was half sigh, half moan.

“Those Eva’s enchiladas?” she asked.

“They are.” Huh. “When’s the last time you ate?”

Tess erased the frown before—she thought—Eli noticed it. “A while ago.”

Thinking, Women, sheesh, Eli slammed shut her door and walked around the truck’s hood. Got in. “I got no problem sharing.”

“That’s okay, I’m fine.”

Shaking his head, he pulled back out onto the road. “Your stomach might take issue with you on that.”

Tess crossed her arms over her loudly rumbling middle. “There’s food at home.”

Eli decided to quit while he still had all his crucial body parts.

It didn’t take but a couple of minutes to get to his place, a nondescript pseudo-adobe number he’d bought some time ago, close to a much larger building that housed the family woodworking and cabinetry business, which in turn was maybe fifty yards away from his parents’ house. Award-worthy? God, no. Affordable and convenient? You bet.

Tess slid out of the truck on her own steam—big surprise, there—taking a second to either get her bearings or scrutinize the house. Maybe both.

“Hard to get the full effect in the dark,” he said, carting the enchiladas past her, figuring she’d hobble behind when she was ready.

“I’m sure,” she muttered. Hobbling along behind.

Eventually she made it inside the house. “Huh,” she said, although to the open space—the result of his knocking out a bunch of non-load-bearing walls after he’d first bought the place—or the lack of Clueless Bachelor clutter, he couldn’t say.

“Yeah, good thing the maid came today,” he said, carting the enchiladas to the kitchen.

“Maid?”

After putting the tray on the counter, Eli shrugged out of his denim jacket. “No, Tess, no maid. Not that I’m suggesting you eat off the floor, but I do know how to wash a dish and take out the garbage.”

“Oh, I…” She blew out a sigh, then pointed to her wound. “Triage?”

“Right straight through, on your right. First-aid kit’s under the sink. I take it you don’t need my help?”

“No,” she said, hobbling off. Ten seconds later, he heard a shriek. Eli hotfooted it to the bathroom to find Tess gawking at her reflection in the medicine chest mirror. “How come you didn’t tell me I have half the national forest in my hair?” she asked, plucking at twigs and chamisa fluff and stuff, and in the light he could see that twelve years and a couple of kids had added a few not-unwelcome pounds here and there.

“It was dark,” he said. “Couldn’t tell.” He leaned one palm against the doorjamb, appreciating the view. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you with short hair.”

Her eyes cut to his for barely a second before veering back to the mirror. “Got tired of taking care of it long,” she said softly, bitterly, finger-combing most of the chamisa gunk out of it, sending the yellow bits floating all over his bathroom.

Don’t get sucked in, don’t get—

“Looks good,” he said, then walked away and left her to it.

Tess braced herself against his sink—far cleaner than she would have expected, nothing on it except a cup and a razor—willing her heart to settle down.

What on earth had she been thinking, not turning back long before she’d gotten so far from her own house? She supposed that had been the whole point, that she’d wanted to run away. From everything. Not forever, just for a little while. But to end up in Eli Garrett’s bathroom?

Beyond weird.

If they’d seen each other a half dozen times since their breakup, she’d be surprised. It wasn’t anything deliberate, exactly, even if their parting had been, well, pretty bad. In retrospect, chasing him down Main Street with a sponge mop had probably been a bit over the top. Not that she would have inflicted any lasting damage—she didn’t think—even if there’d been the slightest chance of catching up with those long legs of his. But for heaven’s sake, it wasn’t like she still had any feelings for the guy. Not after a dozen years and a couple of kids and a marriage blowing up in her face—

Sighing, Tess hauled out the first-aid kit, getting her first good look at her boo-boo. Eww. She’d hardly be crippled for life, but miniskirts had just been crossed off the list for the near future.

She banged down the toilet seat and sank onto it, dampening a gauze pad with antiseptic before tentatively touching it to the wound. She hissed, then swore, as hot tears bit at her eyes—from the pain, yes, but more from a sudden surge of anger and frustration, topped with a leftover jalapeño or two of grief. All that time, petrified of losing Ricky to something she didn’t even fully understand, only to discover she’d lost him anyway.

Yeah, there was some sick irony for you.

The grief, Tess could handle. Had handled, for the most part. People change, marriages die, let’s move on. The anger, however…this was new. The anger was what had propelled her out the door two hours ago, fueled a run that had lasted far longer than it should have, made her take risks she would have never normally taken.

The anger frightened her because she didn’t know its limits. What it would do. What it would make her do.

She glopped on some antibiotic ointment, then bandaged the scrape. Already, the shock of the fall was wearing off. When she stood this time, her leg seemed more inclined to do its job. The kit shoved back underneath Eli’s sink, she made her way to the front room, a living/dining combo all rustic and woodsy—and surprisingly homey—with its wooden floor and paneling, the dark beams running the length of the white ceiling. The decorating style was strictly Early Parental Cast Offs—she thought she recognized the old beige corduroy sofa—but mercifully devoid of ancient pizza boxes and beer cans.

One might not even think a bachelor lived here at all, had it not been for the two solid shelves of video game cases and the corresponding jumble of consoles under, beside and around the boxy, ’90s-issue TV squatting in the entertainment center like a bloated rhinoceros.

“So what’s the prognosis?” Eli called from the dining nook, which is when she noticed not only that he’d set the table for two, but the man who’d set that table.

Taller. More solid. Curly, light brown hair still too long, the Henley T-shirt still too loose, the jeans still ragged. The person wearing them still too damn sure of himself for his own good. And—much as it pained her to admit it—for hers.

Her hands stuffed in her jacket front pocket, Tess shrugged, reminding herself the sexually predatory divorcée was such a cliché. “No worries on that amputation thing. Um…what’s this?”

“Dinner,” he said, flashing her the dimpled grin that had been her undoing so long ago. Ducking the not-half-bad wrought-iron chandelier over the table, he set down a plate of enchiladas, then another, like Enrique used to once upon a time, when they were first married and the future beckoned, unblemished and secure.

The anger flared. “I thought I said—”

“I know what you said,” Eli said mildly, although there was nothing mild about the way he was looking at her. Don’t do that! she wanted to yell, even as longing—hot and thick and syrupy—welled inside her to mix with the anger. Since, you know, he looked at pretty much every female in the county like that—

“I’ve also been working my butt off all day,” he continued, still watching her, and her eyes latched onto his mouth, and another memory flashed, of what good a kisser he’d been, and she realized she was an inch away from pity party status, which only made her madder—

“And you live clear on the other side of town. So I’m gonna eat before I take you home, if it’s all the same to you. And since my mama taught me it’s rude to eat in front of people without offering to share…” He gestured toward the plate on the far side of the table. “You may as well join me.”

Staring at the table, Tess removed one hand from its cocoon to jerk her hair behind her ear—a habit left over from when she’d still had hair. For some reason, this set the anger loose all over again. Not a single, neatly defined emotion or reaction to any one particular thing, but a whole damn herd of pissed-off thoughts, stampeding through her brain and soul and body—

“Tess?”

Eli’d said her name so softly it took a moment to register. “It’s okay,” he said gently when she jerked her gaze to his, and her eyes burned, partly because it wasn’t true—at all—and partly because it felt so strange, somebody reassuring her, a job that had been hers for as long as she could remember. His hands resting lightly along the top of one of the high-backed wooden chairs, his gaze was warm and steady and completely unthreatening. Not at all what she’d thought she’d seen earlier.

Yeah, like that was a step in the right direction.

Only because she was starving, and because her options at home began and ended with frozen pizza, she sighed out a “Fine,” her leg only hurting a little as she crossed to the table, plopping into the chair he held out for her. She thought she might’ve caught a smile before Eli turned to the refrigerator, a white, no-nonsense old-timer that wobbled slightly when he opened the door. “What would you like to drink? I got tea, Coke, water—”

“What happened to the booze offer?”

He turned, eyes sparkling, dimples dimpling, and wasn’t she thrilled to notice they were both far more deadly now than they had been a dozen years ago? And they’d been pretty damn deadly then. “Somehow I’m thinking whiskey on an empty stomach isn’t the best idea.”

And she was thinking she’d never get through the next twenty minutes without something to dull her senses. Especially those prone to reacting to cocky smiles from sexy old boyfriends with baaaaad reputations. “Beer, then? Unless you don’t have any.”

“Oh, I’ve got some, but—”

“Then hand her over.” At Eli’s dubious—and annoyingly protective—look, she sighed. “I can hold a single beer, Eli.” Never mind the nasty little voice whispering that, actually, no, she couldn’t, which was why she rarely drank. “Especially if I’m eating.”

The voice sniggered.

Oh, for crying out loud—so what if she got a little buzz on? She somehow doubted the world would implode. But dammit, she thought as she watched Eli pour out a can of Bud into a tall glass—which he rinsed out first—she’d been responsible for everyone and everything for so, so long, what was one little old beer in the scheme of things? And besides—

“And besides—” Her hands fisted on the table, she looked him square in the eye. “This is weird, okay? Me being here with you, in your house. What with all the other weirdnesses going on in my life…”

“Got it.” Eli handed her the beer, then sat with his own, and he was all big and solid and manly and such, and she remembered that baaaad reputation of his.

“Don’t you think this is weird?” she asked, shivering a little.

“Heck, yeah,” he said, lifting his glass to her. Spearing her with those eerie light brown eyes. Almost gold. Kinda the same color as his hair. The too-long hair half covering his ears, glossy in the chandelier’s light, all those hard-edged features at odds with those soft, soft curls—

Tess tipped back her glass; three gulps later, it was half-gone—

“Hey,” she said when Eli grabbed it from her. “Give that back.”

“Not until you eat something,” he said, tucking into his own food while holding her glass just out of reach, the creep. Only after Tess downed several bites and her eyes were streaming from the chili did Eli take pity on her and return her drink. Her mouth on fire, she finished it off. The belch just kind of escaped.

“Whoa,” Eli said. Grinning. Tess blinked, thinking she could practically see the pheromones rising from his warm skin. Like ghosts from a graveyard on Halloween.

And you know this is only because every time you see Ricky you go a little crazy. Has nothing to do with Eli.

“You know, these are almost as good as mine,” she said, jabbing her fork at the enchiladas. Which were beginning to get a little blurry.

“No way,” Eli said, forking in a huge mouthful. “Nobody makes enchiladas better’n Evangelista.”

“Oh, and you would know this how? I love Eva with all my heart, but my grandmother’s recipe…People have been known to kill for her enchiladas.”

“Seriously?”

“Okay, not really. But close.” Tess took another bite. Then burped again. And frowned at her glass. “S’empty.”

Laughing, Eli stood, pulling a pitcher from the fridge. “How ’bout some tea now?”

“Hell, no. I can have tea at home.” She held out her glass, suddenly fascinated with the way it sparkled in the light from the chandelier. “Hit me with another Bud, bud.” She giggled. And hiccupped.

Eli got a funny look on his face. “You sure?”

She rolled her eyes. They felt a little loose. “Not driving, I’m good. Oh, come on—have pity on the poor divorcée, huh? What’s the worst that can happen?”

“You get bombed and puke all over my rug?”

Tess shook her head. Decided maybe she shouldn’t do that again. “I didn’t even throw up when I was pregnant,” she said, which made her sad, thinking about her babies and how much she loved them and how hard it was when they were off with their father, even though that only happened maybe once a month, if that, and that here she was, sitting in Eli Garrett’s kitchen, drinking his beer and not even thinking about them. Except she was, because she was always thinking about her babies.

She thought maybe she was getting a little…confused.

Nothing another beer couldn’t fix, right?

“Please,” she said, and Eli took her glass, pouring another beer into it, God bless his baaaaad self.

“Need any help?” Eli heard Tess ask when he went to clear the table shortly after they’d finished their meal.

“Nope. All under control. Soon as I give ’em a rinse, I’ll run you home. If you’re ready.”

She gave him a slightly guarded smile, then nodded. “Sure thing,” she said, getting to her feet. More or less steadily, he was relieved to note. Not that she was exactly sober—feeling no pain was the phrase that came to mind—but thankfully she’d stopped well short of stupid drunk. Eli’d been with his share of stupid drunk women over the years; whatever amusement he’d at one time found in those sorts of shenanigans had long since faded. And besides, Tess getting plastered…just didn’t seem right.

In any case, he got the feeling the beer had only been an excuse to let go—which something told him she hadn’t done in a very long while. Not that she’d gone all maudlin on him or anything; mostly, they talked about her kids, Miguel and Julia—pronounced with an H instead of a J—and his recently married and very much younger brother, Jesse, and his wife, Rachel, how they were dealing with being new parents, stuff like that. In fact, whenever Eli’d tried to steer the conversation in Tess’s direction, she’d steer it right back.

Because, okay, he was curious about what had happened between her and Enrique, who’d been deployed overseas for most of their marriage. Maybe more than curious—he’d watched his older brother, Silas, go through a nasty divorce, knew how hard it was. Especially on the good ones. Like his brother. Or Tess.

Still, the protective feelings boiling up inside him went way beyond your garden-variety gee-I-hope-she’s-okay concern. What did it matter to him whether she got drunk or not? Or made a fool of herself?

So why, as he stood at the sink, half watching her walk into his living room with her hands tucked into her jacket’s front pouch, did he feel compelled to make sure she wasn’t gonna keel over or anything?

“Everything okay in there?” he called over.

Tess nodded. A little too vigorously. “I like what you’ve done here.”

Stacking the plates in the dishwasher, he laughed. “I think ‘done’ might be overstating it. Unless you consider shoving around a bunch of castoffs and thrift store junk so I can walk through the room without injuring myself ‘done.’”

“It’s…” She gave him a puzzled look over her shoulder. “You.”

“Lot to be said for not having to consider anybody else’s opinion.” The dishwasher shut, he was about to say, “Ready?” when she spun around and collapsed into the couch, an old beige corduroy number that had been in his parents’ family room. The fluff was worn off in some places, and the cushions sagged from being crushed by a whole bunch of butts over the years, but it was still comfortable as hell—

“What’s wrong?” he said when Tess leaned into the cushions, her eyes closed.

“Probably shouldn’t’ve done that spinning thing.”

“You gonna be sick?”

She laughed softly. “Told you. I don’t do that.”

“Not even when you get stomach flu?”

“Nope. And by the way, technically that’s not the flu.”

“Technically, I don’t much care what it’s called. And how do you not throw up?”

“Sheer willpower,” she said, except the words seemed a little frayed around the edges. Eli crossed his arms, trying not to think how soft and vulnerable she looked, all sunk into those deep cushions with her eyes closed like that. “Comfy?”

“As comfy as one can be when your brain’s on the puree setting.”

“So you are drunk.”

“Maybe. A little.” Finally, she opened her eyes, frowning at him. “I didn’t expect you to be…nice.”

Eli frowned. “I’m always nice—”

“I mean really nice.”

“What that’s supposed to mean?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Tess snuggled farther into the corner of the sofa, letting out a shriek when the mass of fur that owned the place jumped up onto the sofa arm beside her. “Dear God—what’s that?”

“A cat. What’s it look like?”

“Something from a ’50s horror movie. After the radiation experiment went horribly wrong. Wait—” She shifted her frown to Eli. “You have a cat?”

“Got a problem with that?”

“Geez, touchy much?” she said, then looked at the cat again. Leaning back a little. “He’s bigger than my two-year-old.”

“She. And big is a definite advantage when you live in the woods. Chased a bear up a tree once.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wanna see the video?”

“No, I’ll take your word for it. Does she have a name?”

She would have to ask. Warmth prickled his cheeks. “Maybelline.”

Tess’s wide-eyed gaze flew to his; a moment later, she snorted out a very unladylike laugh. “You’re not serious.”

“I didn’t name her, okay? Some lady we were working for, it had been her mother’s cat, only the old lady died and her daughter was allergic. Damn thing glommed on to me from the moment I walked into her house, so she asked me if I wanted her.”

“And you actually said yes.”

“She’d already asked, like, ten people. It was me or the pound. Anyway, look at that face—how could I say no to that face?”

Another laugh. “And you actually call her Maybelline?”

“Actually, I call her Belly. For obvious reasons.”

Sitting on the arm of the sofa and purring loud enough to rattle skulls in a five-mile radius, Belly shot an offended look in Eli’s direction, although with one eye partly closed and her snaggleteeth on full display the effect was kinda lost. One ear was half-bitten off—Eli didn’t want to know what she’d tangled with, or what condition she’d left the other guy in—and it’d been a while since she’d let him brush out the knots in her fur. He supposed maybe she didn’t give the best first impression.

Now, sensing some lovin’ in the offing, she jumped down and trotted over to Eli, her saggy belly swaying from side to side. In one swipe, Belly coated the bottom of his jeans with a half inch of cat fur. Eli scooped her up to roughly scratch under her chin, getting her motor going full throttle. Cat did love her chin rubs.

“You. With a cat. Unbelievable.” Tess grinned, for a second looking almost like the girl he used to know. A moment later, though, she swiped the red Netflix envelope off the end table next to her, slipping out the sleeved disk. “Bond, huh?” she said, and Eli thought, Why are you still here?

Because she was making him feel maybe not so protective, which was in turn making him twitchy. He scratched the cat harder.

“Not just Bond. Craig’s Bond.”

“I’m a Brosnan girl, myself.”

“Get out.” Please.

“What can I say?” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I like suave…oh, hell—”

Cat went flying when Eli lunged forward to catch Tess as her knees buckled. She molded herself to his chest—what the hell?—only to immediately shove away again, shaking her head. Good call.

“You need to sit,” he said, trying to make her sit.

“I don’t need to sit. I’m fine, I’m—”

Tears bloomed in her eyes before she pushed past him to the door. Except she wobbled again, crashing into an armchair.

“For God’s sake, Tess—!”

She wheeled on him. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve watched a movie with another adult?”

That thud he heard in his head would be any hope of getting her out of his house before one of them did something stupid. Because clearly whatever she’d been keeping locked up inside her was only now lurching to the surface. And, since she was there to begin with at his insistence, dumping her now probably wouldn’t be cool.

Yeah, this would be a good time for the evil, scum-sucking side of his personality to kick in. If he’d had one. “You’re more than welcome to stay and watch—”

“That’s not the point!” Tess cried, charging him. Flailing a bit. “The point is…” She stopped, shaking her head, looking a little wild-eyed. “The point is, that there is no point! To any of it!”

She’d started pacing his living room like she was fixing to lift off any moment. Maybe not the best time to interrupt the flow.

“You know what I felt when Ricky said he wanted a divorce? Relief. That I could finally stop holding my breath, because it was over. He was officially no longer my responsibility! No more lying awake at night, worrying…no more wondering when he’d be home, if he’d even make it home…no more going around with a fake smile plastered across my face, pretending that everything was just hunky-dory when all I wanted to do was hit something, somebody, only to find out he’d fallen out of love with me! All that worrying for nothing, Eli! Nothing!”

She closed in on him, fists raised; although she couldn’t have hurt him if she tried, Eli grabbed her wrists, then wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as all hell broke loose, as she railed against her husband for leaving her and the kids for months on end, for coming back from Iraq only to leave her for good. Then, somehow, they were on the couch, and he was holding her in his lap—just trying to comfort her, stop the emotional hemorrhage—when he all of a sudden realized they were kissing, seriously kissing with tongue and everything, and while on one level he was enjoying it and all, in the back of his mind he thought, Dude—seriously messed up.

And wasn’t now a helluva time for the growing-up thing to kick in?

So he wrenched their mouths apart and said, “This is just you being drunk and upset,” and she said, “Yeah, so?” and planted another one on him, and blood rushed hither and yon, doing what rushing blood will do, and it occurred to him watching movies wasn’t all Tess hadn’t done with another adult in a long time.

Especially when she mumbled, “Please tell me you’ve got condoms.”

Chapter Two

With more regret than the world would ever know, Eli put some distance—not enough, but some—between him and the woman currently responsible for an erection so hard his ears were ringing.

“Honey—you don’t really want this.”

Her answer to that was to unzip her running suit top and struggle out of it, tossing it over her shoulder, her exercise bra no match for her nipples’ attempts to punch right through the stretchy fabric. “And if you don’t touch my breasts within the next two seconds, I may have to kill you.” When Eli shook his head, she clamped her hands around his face and stared him right in the eye. “They hurt, Eli. I hurt—”

“And you’re going to hurt ten times worse if we do this.” She smacked his shoulder. “What the hell—?”

“Since when do you become honorable?” she said, smacking him again, although her hundred pounds—if that—were barely gonna make an impression on his one-eighty. “Geez, Eli—you sleep with anything with hooters! So how come you choose now to rustle up some scruples?”

She gasped when he grabbed her wrists, jerking her into silence. Bringing their faces within kissing distance again, he ground out, “I do not, and never have, slept with every woman who came on to me. And I sure as hell am not gonna take advantage of somebody who’s only looking for a little stress relief!”

Her swollen mouth set, Tess locked gazes with him for a long moment, then reached up and took off her bra. Eli groaned. And stared. What? Like he was gonna look away? Then he frowned.

“They’re bigger.”

“Yeah, two kids’ll do that. So. You got condoms or what?”

“Yeah, I got condoms. But you hate me.”

That seemed to sober her for a moment. Then, smiling, she thrust her hands through his hair and kissed him again, open-mouthed and hot and slow and thorough, and his scruples packed up their little bags and began to shuffle off, sighing. Day-um, the woman could kiss. Then she finally came up for air, pressed her forehead to his and ground certain eager body parts to his equally eager body parts and said, panting, “I’m drunk and mad and horny and half-naked. Could you please just shut up and go with the flow here?” And it occurred to him that he’d hurt her a lot more by rejecting her than simply doing what she wanted.

At least, that’s the story he was going with.

So he wound her more tightly around him and stood, carrying her into the bedroom, not even bothering to pull back the covers before he dropped her on the bed and ripped off her bicycle shorts and cotton panties, realizing he was more than a little pissed off himself as he stripped off his own clothes and yanked open the dresser drawer.

“So, you want me to just—”

“Yes,” she hissed, getting to her knees to yank him onto the bed. Snatching the condom out of his hand, she shoved him on his back, straddling him, sheathing him. A moment later they were joined, her long nails gouging his shoulders as she rode him, tears streaming down her cheeks, splashing onto Eli’s chest, making him madder still. He thrust up into her, hard, no finesse, making her moan and hiss and cry out.

Then he lifted her up and off, making her moan again—from distress, most likely—only to flip her onto her back and plunge into her…and she clutched the wrinkled bedspread in her fists and arched into him, whimpering, her lower lip caught between her teeth a moment before she crossed her ankles at the small of his back and drove him higher, tighter, even though he knew he must be hurting her, if it’d been a year or more since she’d—

She sank her teeth into his neck, not hard enough to draw blood—he didn’t think—but hard enough to make him jerk, then she licked the spot and blew on it, and he thought he’d lose his mind even as he did lose control, driving into her over and over and over until she screamed, clutching at his back as she tried to get on top of the orgasm.

But damned if he would let her, pushing her up, up, up until she had to curl forward to keep from banging into the headboard, shuddering his own release into her interminably pulsing warmth.

Afterward, annoyed, he collapsed on top of her, panting, fully expecting her to shove him off, get up, get dressed and demand he take her home. Instead she wrapped herself around him, all sweaty and smelling of woodsmoke and girly shampoo and sex, and whispered, her teeth grazing his earlobe, “How long until you’re ready again?”

Floored, Eli pushed back enough to look at her. “You’re not serious?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, dragging her nails down his arms, making him shudder, making things stir he wouldn’t’ve thought anywhere near ready to stir again, “I’m just getting started.”

“Tess…you don’t—”

Her fingers clamped around his arms, stopping him, her expression gone from postorgasmic mellow to oh-no-you-don’t in two seconds flat. “Yes. I do.” Her eyes glittered. “Burn this feeling out of me, Eli. Please.”

Despite himself, his heart flipped over at the agony in those shiny eyes, at the soul-deep ache she had no idea how to ease. For some people—like his brother, like Tess—the end of a marriage was every bit as devastating as an actual death. But when he shifted to stroke his thumbs along her temples, she struck his hands away.

“No. I don’t want you to make love to me.”

His hands flat on either side of her head, Eli frowned at her. “You just want sex?”

“I just want sex.”

“You just want me to make you feel good, is that right?’

“You got a problem with that?” she said, brows arched.

“Fine,” he said, not sure why he was still pissed. “There any ground rules I should know about?”

Her pupils darkened. “None. I trust you.”

“And why in the hell would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tearing up once more. Damn. An instant later, Mad Tess was back. “But just for a moment, you made me…forget.” Her hands clamped around his face, she pushed against him, a tight smile pulling at her mouth when he responded. “Make me forget again.”

Eli reached for another condom, thinking tonight was giving a whole ’nother dimension to that Good Samaritan thing.

Nothing, Tess thought as she jerked awake the next morning, starts a girl’s day out right like waking up to a Freddy Krueger scalp massage.

Swearing, she detached Maybelline—who hissed back—and bolted upright, immediately realizing that precipitous changes in altitude were to be avoided at all costs for the foreseeable future. And that she was naked in Eli Garrett’s bed.

And nope, there was no “Did we…?” about this. Because they had. Oh, yes, indeedy, they had. Several times, in fact, before her anger was spent and many, many moons’ worth of sexual frustration exorcised.

Groaning, Tess yanked the top blanket out from underneath the cat, stomped to the bathroom and did her thing, only to scream when she returned to the bedroom to find Eli standing there, dimples at a hundred percent, her sports bra dangling from one hand.

Growling, she snatched it out of his hand, scanning the room for the rest of her clothes. “That blanket sure looks better on you than it does on me,” she heard behind her. As she irritably pondered how many times he’d undoubtedly used that line, he added, “Sleep well?”

She had, actually. Like the dead. “Guess I dozed off,” she muttered, mincing past him to look on the other side of the bed.

“Honey, you passed out.”

“I did not!” she said, twisting around, the velvety blanket’s rasping across her nipples instantly hardening them. Or maybe that was Eli’s knowing smirk.

“Like you would’ve voluntarily spent the night in my bed?”

Okay, there was that, she thought, clumsily dropping to her knees to look under the bed. Her head rebelled. As did her stomach. Especially when the damn cat decided to go after her bare toes. Yelping, Tess again jerked upright, catching her head in one palm before it rolled off her neck. Although the cat would probably love it. A new toy to bat around the room, yay.

Still cradling her head, she carefully hauled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, wishing Eli would take pity on her and leave her to wallow in her mortification alone. But no.

Her stomach boinged when she felt the mattress shift. “Touch me and die.”

And of course, that brought a warm, gentle palm to the top of her head. “Your head hurt?” Eli said softly, and many unkind thoughts leaped to her brain, mostly along the lines of how desperately she wanted Eli to not be kind. Or warm. Or gentle. Not now, at least. Last night had been another story. Last night had been—

“Oh, they haven’t invented a word for how my head feels right now,” she muttered. Just like there was no word for women who finagle their high school exes into pity sex. No, wait—actually, there were several. None of them flattering.

Her cell phone rang.

From her jacket pocket.

In, apparently, the living room.

She glared at Eli. Who kept on grinning. “Would you like me to get that for you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

And during the approximately nine seconds he was gone, Tess found and put on the rest of her clothes, scattered willy-nilly about the room though they were. Eli returned and handed her the phone. And her jacket. Tess’s heart nearly stopped when she saw Enrique’s cell number.

“Everything okay?” she barked when he answered.

“Just what I was gonna ask you. Since you’re not here.”

Tess paused. “‘Here’ being…?”

“The house. Where the hell are you? When you didn’t answer your phone I called your aunt. She’s probably on her way over already.”

Was there an award for Worst Morning After Ever? ’Cause Tess was at least a shoo-in for the finals. “You’re supposed to have the kids until tonight—”

“Julia was up half the night, I think she missed you. So I figured I may as well bring ’em back since they were so miserable.”

“They?”

“Okay, Micky, maybe not so much. But I’m not gonna drive up there and back twice in one day, am I?”

“For God’s sake, Enrique—you only see them one weekend a month as it is—”

“Yeah, I know, I’m disappointed, too. So where are you?”

“At…a friend’s. Since I thought I had the day to myself.”

Turning, Tess caught Eli’s frown. “I’ll be home soon,” she muttered, dialing Thea Griego’s number when Eli stomped off.

And it’s a beautiful day in Bozoland, she thought as Thea picked up, her “Tess? What’s wrong?” delivered in the groggy voice of the mother of a one-year-old still not entirely down with the concept of sleeping through the night.

“Please tell me I didn’t just wake you up.”

“For you to do that, I’d’ve had to have been—” Thea yawned “—asleep.” In the background, little Jonny happily squawked. “And you’re calling when the sun’s not even up yet, why?”

“Omigod, it isn’t, is it?” Tess said, realizing that until that very moment, she hadn’t thought her embarrassment level could spike any higher. She’d been wrong. “I have a huge favor to ask,” she whispered. “First off, I need you to swear to anyone who might ask that I was at your place last night.”

Silence. “Why? You kill somebody?”

“Worse,” Tess muttered. “So will you?”

“Long as it doesn’t involve the word ‘accessory’ in some way, sure, but—”

“And is there any way you could come pick me up and take me back home?”

More silence. “Um…pick you up from where?”

Somehow Tess doubted Thea’d buy her having spent the night by the side of the road. “Eli Garrett’s.”

“Lord, now I know I’m not awake yet. I could’ve sworn you said—”

“I did.”

That got a far-too-gleeful cackle. “This just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

“Can you pick me up or not?”

“Do I have to put on makeup?”

“God, no.”

“Then I’ll be there in a few. Hang tight, honey.”

Tess had no sooner shut her phone than she heard behind her, “I’m not good enough to take you home?”

She turned. And while Eli’s insouciant smile and slouch against the door frame with his hands in his pockets might’ve said Like I give a damn, the sting of hurt in his eyes told another story entirely. What the hell?

“Oh, right,” Tess said, dropping onto the edge of the embarrassingly rumpled bed to lace up her running shoes. “Like there’d be any way to explain to Enrique why you were bringing me home at the crack of dawn.”

“He’s there?”

“Brought the kids back early, yup.” Slapping her hands on her thighs, she looked up. “Lucky me.”

“Guess that makes two of us,” he said, and Tess almost—almost—cringed at the bitterness spiking his words. “Because God knows I’m the last person you’d want to be associated with—”

“And don’t even go there,” Tess said, getting to her feet. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me not having the energy to deal with Ricky this early in the morning. It’s also about me feeling like an idiot. Not because I slept with you, but because I…fell apart—”

He grinned. Not one of his best, but bright enough. “Several times, as I recall.”

“Shut up,” Tess said, her face flaming, her nether regions tingling. Damn them. Fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. “I used you, Eli. And I feel like crap about it.”

His grin died. “And didn’t I tell you this is exactly how you’d feel this morning? Although when you first came at me I sincerely doubted you’d be around for longer than twenty minutes—”

She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him. It went wide and scared the bejeebers out of the cat.

“It’s not meant as a put-down, okay?” Eli said, swiping the pillow off the floor, tossing it back on the bed. “You were obviously upset. And a little drunk. I knew what you were asking for, even before you made it more than clear my hunch’d been dead-on. And if you noticed, I had no problem stepping up to the plate.”

Too true, Tess thought as Eli came farther into the room, making her back up. A little. “Even so, I gave you plenty of opportunity to change your mind, to let me take you home before things got out of hand. Or maybe you don’t remember—”

“I remember,” she murmured, shutting her eyes.

“You know,” Eli said after a moment, “maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad if you’d just be honest about what happened last night. It was what it was. If I don’t have a problem with that, why should you?” At the sound of Thea’s old Jeep Cherokee pulling up in front of Eli’s house, he nodded toward the window. “There’s your ride,” he said, snatching a hooded sweatshirt off the back of a chair and tossing it over. “It’s cold. Put that on.” Then he stomped off, boots pounding against the old wooden floor.

“Eli, I’m sorry—!”

Too late.

Soon as she heard stuff banging around in the kitchen, Tess scurried down the hall and through the front door, yanking on the hoodie as she practically flew into Thea’s passenger seat. No fewer than three dogs of various sizes, shapes and lineages poked their heads through the gap between the bucket seats to offer greetings and/or condolences.

“Geez, mutts,” the tiny blonde—wearing a down vest over wrinkled pink pajamas—said, shoving back assorted canine heads, “give the poor woman a break.” She surveyed Tess for a few moments through a pair of perky round sunglasses before looking back out the windshield, her mouth twitching. “Rough night?”

Tess slumped down in her seat, snuggling farther into the warm, Eli-scented sweatshirt. Rats. “I seriously owe you for this.”

“Think that’s the other way around, cookie,” Thea said as she backed out of Eli’s drive. “Considering the backside-saving you did a couple months ago when everybody got the flu except the baby.”

“Where is junior, anyway?”

“Back there somewhere, between the dogs.” Startled, Tess twisted around to see the bundled up baby happily snoozing in his car seat. Thea cackled again. “Wow. This is just like high school, gettin’ a girlfriend to cover your butt so your mother won’t find out you went to some party you weren’t supposed to.”

“Yeah, well…I never did that.”

“Never?”

“You weren’t raised by a rabid Latina. My mother had spies everywhere.” Because that was a lot easier and less messy than personal interaction. Gah, at this rate her brain would melt before breakfast. “I couldn’t even look at a boy that my mother didn’t hear about it before I got home.”

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Chuckling, Thea tucked a strand of barely combed, pale blond hair behind one ear as they pulled out onto the still-dark highway, the early-morning sun furtively peering through the pinons and live oaks choking the roadside. “So…what happened?”

Tess rolled her eyes in the blonde’s direction.

“I got that,” Thea said, shrugging a dog head off her shoulder. “It’s the how-in-the-hell? part I’m kinda vague on.”

Shivering, Tess zipped the hoodie up higher. “So Ricky had the kids, right? Seizing my freedom, brief though it may have been, I went for a run, it started getting dark, Eli nearly ran me over with his truck, next thing I know I’m in his living room, stripping.”

“Sober?”

“No.”

“Ah.” After a reflective moment, Thea glanced over. “I’m assuming there were bits between the almost getting run over and the stripping?”

“A lot less than you might think,” Tess mumbled, then slumped down farther, palming her face. “I’ve never done anything even remotely like that in my entire life.”

“Yeah, it must be hell, being perfect all the time.”

Tess’s eyes flashed to her friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Honey, you know I love you—but sometimes it’s like you’ve set these impossible standards for yourself, like you’re afraid anybody might find out you’ve got weak spots. So instead of occasionally releasing steam like any normal person, you let it all build up until you do something stupid.”

“Like having meltdown sex with my old high school boyfriend.”

“That would definitely qualify.” Thea reached over, giving Tess’s wrist a squeeze. “These things happen. No sense beating yourself up over it.” She paused. “Although if you end up pregnant, that could be awkward.”

Tess let out a dry laugh. “No worries there. My period’s due in a couple of days. Which probably at least partly accounts for the meltdown. And we used condoms.”

“Condoms?”

“Shut up.”

“So,” Thea said, clearly ignoring that last thing, “does this mean you and Eli, are, you know. An item?” Tess glared at her. She shrugged. “Had to ask.”

“Would you recycle a high school boyfriend?”

“Good point. But maybe…”

“What?” Tess said, on guard.

“You could just…you know. Do the fling thing. Why not?” she said to Tess’s snort. “He’s hot, he’s personable, he’s obviously good with his hands…”

“You are so dead. And anyway, wasn’t it just last year you were saying that Eli wasn’t exactly the ripest apple on the tree?”

“True. But since he’s now my stepdaughter’s brother-in-law—”

Tess rolled her eyes.

“—I’ve gotten to know him some. Sure, he’s still a goofball, but…” The blonde’s eyes flashed to Tess. “He’s not a kid anymore. There’s a lot more beneath the surface than you might expect.”

“Whether that’s true or not, I’m not exactly keen on becoming another notch on Eli Garrett’s bedpost.”

“Hate to break it to you, honey,” Thea said as she pulled into Tess’s driveway. “But you just did.”

And damned if she hadn’t helped Eli do the carving, Tess thought on a sigh as she got out of the car, giving Thea a dejected little finger wave before she drove off.

“Mama!” Miguel dashed out the front door, throwing his small self into her arms like he hadn’t just seen her the day before. About to drown in her own self-reproach, Tess yanked him close, breathing in that sweet-musky scent of little boy, thinking Never, never, never, never again as curly-topped Julia—not to be left out—carefully clung to the porch railing as she navigated the stairs. Singing “Jingle Bells.” Sort of.

“Told you they missed you,” Enrique said from the doorway to the stucco-and-brick facade house, his hands bunched in the pockets of his Arizona Diamondbacks baseball jacket. For an instant a trick of the light made him look like the man she’d once loved with all her heart, only to torque back into the bastard who’d shredded that heart into a million pieces. A moment later her Aunt Florita—frowning, arms crossed—appeared behind Enrique in spiked boots and tight everything else, despite her lack of boobage and surfeit of years.

“I’m so sorry,” Tess said, to anybody and everybody, her arms full of her children, her heart of remorse. She kissed both kids, then rose, grabbing little hands before starting up the flagstone walk. “Obviously if I’d known,” she said to Ricky, “I would have made other…arrangements.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then frowned. “Nice sweatshirt.”

“Picked it up at a yard sale,” she lied, ignoring her aunt’s raised eyebrow. “I know it’s way too big, but it’s cozy as all get out—”

“You cut your hair?”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking, Geez, now nothing gets past you?

He stared at her head for another couple seconds, then dug out his car keys. “One thing about hair, it always grows back, right? Hey, cabritos,” he called to the kids, squatting, “come give Daddy a kiss.”

Honestly, Tess thought, it was like a wire had worked loose in her ex-husband’s brain over the years. Sometimes the connections worked, and sometimes they didn’t. Mostly, though, they didn’t. And apparently hadn’t for a long time.

His children duly kissed and hugged, Ricky stood, gave her what passed for an apologetic look, then started out to his truck, only to turn when he got there. “Oh, I forgot—I can’t take the kids for Thanksgiving. I got…a conflict. That a problem?”

Tess crossed her arms. “For me? No.”

Ricky looked at his son. “You don’t mind spending the holiday with your mom, right?” Miguel shot Tess puzzled eyes, then shook his head. “See?” her ex said with what a poor imitation of his “old” smile. “So, Micky—you be good, okay? And I’ll call you—”

“Tonight?”

“Not tonight, maybe tomorrow. Soon, okay?”

The boy hugged his father’s thighs; to his credit, Ricky gave him another kiss before getting in his car and driving off. Flo wrapped her arm around Tess’s waist, muttering, “Pen-dejo,” under her breath. And Tess highly doubted Flo meant dumbass, the most PG definition of the word.

Then her aunt’s eyes dropped. The bandage had fallen off at some point during the evening’s activities; although Tess had cleaned the scrape up, she hadn’t bothered to redress it. “Dios mio—what happened to your leg?”

“I tripped over something while I was running,” Tess said slowly making her way up the stairs with an I-can-do-it-myselftoddler beside her. At the top, though, avoiding her aunt’s X-ray eyes, she swung Julia up to pepper her soft little neck with kisses, making her giggle. “No biggie.”

Once inside, she set her daughter down on the still-newish sculpted carpet she’d had installed before Enrique’s last leave, a warm beige that was perfect with the light tan sectional she’d bought at the same time, its built-in recliner positioned so he could watch football on the flat-screen TV she’d gotten him for Christmas.

Nobody could say she hadn’t tried. Nobody.

“Have the kids had breakfast yet?” she asked softly as old memories blurred uncomfortably into newer ones, a set of deep brown eyes morphing to hot, dark gold ones, welded to hers—

“Knowing Ricky? Probably not. How about you?”

“Um, no, I’m good for now,” Tess said, backing away from her aunt’s narrowed gaze, if not from the memories. “I had coffee and toast at Thea’s. You know how early they eat on the ranch—”

“You know, you don’t sound so good. Like maybe you’re coming down with something?”

“Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

“Sure, then,” Flo said, suspicion dripping from every word. “Take your time. I’ll feed the kids.”

Tess closed her bedroom door, thinking, You’re home now, everything’s back to normal, just put last night’s craziness out of your pretty little head…

And there were Eli’s eyes again, holding hers captive as he did things to her, for her, that, truth be told, Enrique had never even thought to.

Giving her head a hard shake, Tess twisted on the shower in the remodeled bathroom Ricky had hated on sight, saying it looked like somebody else’s house, never mind that they hadn’t lived here long enough that he should have thought anything one way or the other—

Moaning, Tess sank onto the whirlpool tub’s tiled edge. Because, in the cold light of day, she had to admit…she hadn’t been that drunk. Oh, she sincerely doubted she would have jumped Eli’s bones sober—as in, no way in hell—but she hadn’t exactly spaced what’d gone down after the bone-jumping part.

Or how many times.

Or how much, each time, she thought as she caught her haggard expression in the rapidly fogging mirror over the double vanity, a little more of the deadness around her heart she’d mistaken for stoicism had sloughed off, leaving in its place something tender and new and raw and frighteningly vulnerable. She really wasn’t upset with herself simply because she’d had sex with Eli. It was what having sex with Eli had done to her that had left her shaking. And shaken.

Tess stood and stripped, daring to trace with a trembling hand the still-reddened patches left by Eli’s late-day stubble across her belly and thighs and breasts. Who was this person who’d ceded so much control to another human being? Who’d known, at the time, exactly what she was doing? And who the hell was the man she’d allowed such power over her?

Worse, though, she thought as she jerked her gaze away from her reflection and stepped into the pounding shower, was that, mixed in with the regret…

Was the really scary feeling it could happen again.

Chapter Three

No less pissed than he’d been an hour before, Eli stormed through the shop’s door, the whining of table saws and pounding of hammers piercing his sleep-deprived brain. Yeah, Tess could play the “it’s not you, it’s me” card all she wanted, but she couldn’t wait to get out of Eli’s house, could she? To put her “mistake” behind her. True, maybe nobody could make you feel like dirt unless you let them—and maybe, considering their past, Tess wasn’t totally out of line feeling the way she did—but that’s exactly what he felt like. Dirt. Worse than dirt, like something disgusting on the bottom of somebody’s boot.

But what Eli couldn’t for the life of him figure out was why Tess’s reaction was getting to him so bad. Wasn’t like he expected anything more. Or less. And for sure it wasn’t the first time he’d had a go-with-the-flow moment, even if the last one had been a while ago. Still. For somebody who’d been singing the no-strings song for a whole lot of years now, the last thing he’d expected was to…

Was to feel something for somebody he had no business feeling anything for. Not after all this time. Not after what he’d done. Not after one freaking night, for God’s sake. What those feelings were, he couldn’t even begin to sort out. But being with Tess…it just wasn’t what he’d expected, that’s all.

Just like getting his nose whacked out of joint wasn’t what he’d expected, either.

“And what got up your butt?” his father launched at him as Eli strode across the dusty floor to the “kitchen”—a microwave, hot plate and coffeemaker set up on an old card table.

“Nothin’,” Eli muttered, grabbing the coffeepot and sloshing some into his mug. “Just didn’t sleep good last night.”

At least it wasn’t a lie. Especially after Tess passed out, and, instead of crashing, too, Eli found himself watching her sleep, hardly able to breathe through the “What the hell was that?” shock. Now, though, Eli didn’t have to look at his father to see the what-now? squint. A squint not without cause. Not after some of the boneheaded stunts he and his brothers had pulled over the years. How his parents had survived raising four boys was nothing short of a miracle.

“You got troubles, son?”

Forcing a smile to his lips, Eli looked back at the old man. Jowly, balding and paunchier than was probably good for him, Gene Garrett may not have been as physically commanding as he’d once been, but that steely-blue gaze still lasered right through a person, even behind his glasses. His boys might not always agree with him, but not for a second would any of them think of disrespecting him.

“Nothing that’s gonna cause the world to stop spinnin’,” Eli said, clapping his father’s shoulder before heading back to his own area of the shop, where a massive, carved headboard awaited staining. His father followed him, his arms crossed high on his chest. Eli glanced over.

“I’m okay, Pop. Really.”

“No, it’s not that.” His father’s gaze veered to the bed. “Guy called this morning and canceled.”

“What? He can’t do that, this is custom—”

“I explained all that, and he said he knows it means forfeiting the deposit and all, but…he said he was real sorry, but this just isn’t a real good time to be spending big bucks on a headboard.”

On a rough sigh, Eli dropped onto a nearby stool. “It hasn’t been a good time for a while now. I mean, what the hell?” He scrubbed a hand along his jaw and let out another sigh as he glowered at the almost-finished piece. “It’s not like I can just toss it in the back of my truck and go hawk it out on the highway, like Thea Griego does with those awful painted coyotes of hers. And don’t you dare start up about how if I was led to make this thing, then it’s gotta find a home.”

“Patience has her perfect work, son,” his father said, then smiled. “And God knows your mother and I have had ample opportunity to prove that particular passage over the years.”

Sighing, Eli wagged his head, then got up and snatched a manila folder off the battered desk in the corner of the room. “You see this? It’s my order folder.”

“Looks a mite on the thin side.”

Eli opened it and turned it upside down. A single sheet of paper fluttered to the gouged, sawdust-smeared floor.

“That was the bed, I take it?” his father said.

“Yep.”

“Then there’s somethin’ else better waitin’ in the wings, you’ll see.” Before Eli could groan, Gene added, “But we’re doin’ okay—you know what they say, when folks aren’t buying new homes, they remodel. So we can always use you over on this side of the shop.”

Eli glared at his father’s back as he walked away. Yesterday, he’d been happy as a damn clam. Now the clam had just been shipped off to hell in a handbasket…a trip Eli’d taken a time or two before in his life.

Except now he realized it was up to him, whether it was a one-way trip or not. He could sit here and stew, or he could act like a grown-up and actually do something about it. Or at least try. Not about the canceled order, maybe—at least, not now—but about Tess? Yeah.

“Anybody got a phone book?” he yelled to the world at large. Seconds later one flapped to his feet, sending up a cloud of wood dust. With a nod to Jose, one of their employees, Eli snatched it up, elbowing off the cobwebs. Two years out of date but good enough. He flipped open the thin book, found Tess’s number, then dug his cell phone out of his shirt pocket before he lost his nerve.

Maybe last night was a one-time thing—and maybe that’s all it should ever be—but that didn’t mean he and Tess Montoya didn’t have a few things to clear up between them.

Like, now.

Toweling her hair, Tess stared at the ringing landline as though she’d forgotten it was there, since nobody called her on anything but her cell anymore, prompting her to wonder why she even kept the darn thing—

“You gonna get that or what?” her aunt yelled from down the hall.

“No,” Tess yelled back.

Seconds later, Flo appeared at her door, phone in hand and speculative look on face. “It’s Eli Garrett,” she said, conveying a wealth of questions in three words. Because not only would Flo undoubtedly remember Tess’s Eli phase, she would know Tess’s and Eli’s dealings since then had been virtually nonexistent.

Still, Tess played it as cool as a woman in a towel with recently applied beard burn across much of her person could. “Now what on earth do you suppose he wants? We haven’t even spoken in years.”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Flo said, handing over the phone. With a pointed look at Tess’s abraded neck.

“Hot shower,” she whispered.

“Whatever,” Flo said, leaving the room and shutting the door behind her.

“Are you insane?” Tess said into the phone. “Why on earth—”

“Just making sure you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“And maybe that’s not an opening you want to be giving people, just at the moment. But that’s neither here nor there. We need to get together. To talk.”

“Eli…Last night…Nothing’s—”

“Gonna happen. I know that. But there’s stuff I need to get off my chest.”

She tensed. “Then just say it.”

“Dammit, Tess—where’s it written you get to call all the shots? You don’t have to accept my apology—”

“For what?” she said, thinking, All the shots? How about any of the shots? “Last night?”

“Hell, no, not for last night. Got no regrets about that. Never will. No, for what I did a dozen years ago.”

Her chest cramped. “Eli—”

“I’m not offering up any excuses. But I’m truly sorry, Tess, for hurting you. I was then, even if I couldn’t get over myself enough to say it. As for the other stuff…well. I’m not gonna make any excuses for that, either. But I want you to know…I’m not that person anymore.”

“Why would I believe that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding…tired. Sounding much too much like a man looking for comfort…making her much too much aware how willing she’d be to give it. Maybe. Under other circumstances. Like if they were two different people who didn’t have some really bad history between them. “I don’t suppose I’ve exactly given you—or anybody else—cause to believe I’ve changed,” he was saying. “But last night…I guess it shook loose some stuff in my head I didn’t even know was there. Ah, hell, I’m not even sure what I’m saying.”

“Then don’t,” she said, fervently wishing he’d stop. Now. While she still had a grip on her anger. On her control.

“No, I’ve got to get this out.” He paused, then said, “It’s just…being with you again reminded me of what we had, I guess. What I threw away. But it’s not like I was having some kind of let’s-go-back-to-high-school fantasy or anything, okay?” Another pause. “Can I be honest?”

“I thought you were.”

“Okay, more honest.” He blew out a breath, then said, “Look, there’s been a few women in my life—”

“A few?”

“Yeah, well, there were a lot of nonstarters in there. Even so—and I know this isn’t gonna win me any points—most of ’em were…diversions. I’m not proud of that, but I never led any of ’em on, either. Given ’em any reason to think I was offering anything more than I was. I might’ve been a jerk, but I’ve always been an up-front jerk. But here’s the thing, and I know this is gonna sound like a line, and a lame one at that…but it was different with you—”

“Oh, Eli, for God’s sake—”

“I swear, Tess,” he said, forcefully enough to shut her up. She could count on one hand how often that’d happened. “You weren’t a diversion, you were a helluva lot more than that. And I’m not sayin’ that to get you back into my bed, or my life or anything. I know you weren’t looking for anything last night except what happened, and that you’re not likely to be looking for anything in the near future. Least of all from me. And that’s okay, because I’m not, either. But I just couldn’t stand the thought of you goin’ for another second thinking…I don’t know. That I didn’t respect you or something. So. We clear on that?”

Another shudder of something damn close to terror snaked down Tess’s spine. She had absolutely no idea how to respond, not to this…this take-charge person who in no way, shape or form resembled the laid-back, goofy Eli she remembered.

“Yeah, Eli,” she said, startled to realize her voice wasn’t steady. “We’re clear.”

As mud.

“Good. Then I’ll let you get back to it. You have a good one.”

Still wrapped in her towel, Tess sat on the edge of her bed for a long time after Eli hung up, feeling a little like she’d just seen a spaceship land outside her window—a combination of disbelief, apprehension and curiosity, all underpinned with the sneaking suspicion that life as she’d known it would never be the same.

Although there was no earthly reason for her to feel that way. Even if Eli had somehow done a one-eighty, what difference did it make? Like he said, she wasn’t even remotely interested in starting up something. With anybody. Because hope don’t live here anymore, she thought, tossing the phone onto the bed.

She dressed on autopilot, pulling items out of drawers and closets without thinking. Or, apparently, looking. Not until she returned to the kitchen, and her aunt’s eyebrows shot up, did it hit her she was wearing her fave suede skirt, the designer boots she’d scored on eBay, a dressy sweater.

In other words, she’d dressed for work.

On Saturday.

It’s official, cookie, she thought, dropping onto a kitchen chair—you’re losing it. Or already had. Not that she’d never worked on Saturday, if that’s the only time a client could look at houses, but when was the last time that had happened?

At the sound of the chair opposite dragging across the tiled floor, she peered over at Flo, whose heavy-handed makeup was not holding up well in the daylight. Something about the glittery eyeshadow.

“Okay,” Flo said, “I was gonna keep my mouth shut—don’ you roll your eyes at me, young lady—but firs’ you get a call from Eli Garrett, an’ now you come out here dressed like Miss Hot Shot Real Estate Lady when you haven’t been to work in a month—”

“The two are not related.” She didn’t think.

“Maybe not. But somethin’ is going on with you. An’ I’m not leaving this house until I find out what. You can start by telling me where you really were las’ night.”

Tess looked around. “Where’re the kids?”

“Out back, playing. Micky’s keeping an eye on the baby. An’ don’ change the subject.”

“Hard to do when I don’t even know what the subject is.”

Leaning back, Flo crossed her arms across her breasts, such as they were. “I got one word for you…Eli?”

“What makes you think—?” Her aunt laughed. “Glad you think this is funny.” Suddenly starving, Tess got up to pour herself a cup of coffee before wrenching open a large metal tin on the counter filled with Little Debbie treats. She tried to remember how long ago she’d bought the chocolate-coated donuts. Couldn’t. From outside, she heard Julia’s belly laugh; ripping the cellophane off the donuts, she walked to the window over the sink, then twitched back the curtain. Her babies were playing tag, an obviously still bummed Miguel letting Julia tackle him to the ground.

An entire stale, tasteless donut stuffed in her mouth, Tess’s eyes smarted as she decided she was oddly grateful that the kids were as young as they were, that maybe their parents’ divorce wouldn’t scar them for life. But you know, considering the long stretches when they didn’t see Enrique before, how much could his absence—his deliberate uninvolve-ment—affect them now?

Guilt, justifier of all things.

Three of the four donuts devoured, she grabbed her coffee and returned to the table, realigning the crooked salt and pepper shakers before cramming in the last doughnut. “Do I act like I think I’m perfect?” she asked with a full mouth.

“Where did that come from?”

“Something Thea said.”

Underneath a head of stiff, black curls, Flo’s brow crinkled. “I don’ know about perfect, but…when you were real little, you’d go outside and play, bring half the dirt back inside with you. Pull out all your toys an’ leave them all over creation. You know, like a normal kid?” Her mouth thinned. “Then your father walked out, an’ everything changed. Suddenly, you couldn’t stand messes. Wouldn’t let yourself get dirty, never left a toy out of place. Your mother told me how you’d come home from school an’ go straight to your room to make sure everything was exactly the way you left it. How you’d jump up from the dinner table to be the first to clear the dishes.”

“So I became more orderly. What’s wrong with that?”

Her aunt shrugged. “Nothing. On the surface. Only it was like after your father left, a switch flipped inside your brain, you know? An’ suddenly it became all about control. About you having control over your universe. An’ every time something threatened that control…” Her aunt shrugged again. “You got worse.”

Tess stood to rinse out her coffee mug, setting it in exactly the same spot in the drainer she did every morning. Oh, God. But…Frowning, she looked at her aunt over her shoulder. “There was more to it, though, wasn’t there? It was about me trying to please Mama.”

Flo raised her coffee cup to her in salute.

Drying her hands on a dish towel, Tess returned to the table, sinking back into her chair with a sigh. “And after Ricky went into the service…all those months of feeling like my heart was in my throat…” Her eyes watered. “It was the only way I could keep from losing my mind.”

“I know, querida,” Flo said, leaning forward to briefly squeeze Tess’s hand. Then she sat back again, her arms folded again. “Whatever happened las’ night must’ve been really something.”

Tess’s eyes shot to her aunt’s. “What makes you say that?”

“When was the last time we actually talked?” At Tess’s blush, she added, “So. You spent the night with a man. An’ now you’re eaten up with guilt.”

Tess’s mouth flattened. “I’m not exactly proud of myself.”

“One lapse don’ make you a bad person, Tess.” Her lipsticked mouth quirked up. “An’ not to put too fine a point on it…but if you ask me, you were way overdue.” At Tess’s slightly hysterical laugh, Flo added, “You’re a young woman still. An’ a divorce isn’t a death sentence.”

“It’s only been a year—”

“You don’ really expect me to believe that, do you?”

Tess bounced up out of her chair again and returned to the sink, her hand knotting atop the cold porcelain as she watched the kids through the window. It was true, she rarely talked about her feelings, to her aunt or anybody. But after last night…“Having a man around…it’s just too confusing, trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be. And anyway, then they leave, or change their mind—or change, period—and then what?”

Flo came up to pull Tess close, as always the mother Tess’s own mother had never really been. “You know, baby doll, you don’ have to be strong all the time.”

“What choice do I have?” she said, gesturing lamely toward the window, her babies. “It’s not like their dad’s exactly picking up the slack.”

“What about Eli?”

Tess frowned into her aunt’s concerned eyes. “What about him?”

“Does he like kids?”

“Oh, geez,” Tess said on an airless laugh. “Eli as…as…omigod, I can’t even find the words. No, no, no…” Her hands lifted, she walked back to the coffeemaker and poured herself another cup. “That was an aberration, pure and simple. A meltdown. And no how no way will it happen again.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not serious? Flo, you’ve heard the stories, same as I have—”

“So maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

The mug almost to her mouth, Tess lowered it, nonplussed. This from the Gossip Queen of Tierra Rosa. “Yeah, well,” Tess said, “not only do I have firsthand experience—”

“Sixteen doesn’t count.”

“—but corroborative evidence abounds,” she continued, ignoring her aunt, “to back up my theory.” Never mind his parting words—that he had changed—gonging in her head. “Eli and me…ain’t gonna happen. End of discussion.”

After a moment, her aunt returned to the table to retrieve her own mug. “So. You going into work?”

“No,” Tess sighed out. “Not sure I’m ready yet. Besides, it is Saturday.”

“So?” Flo said, clicking back to the sink to rinse it out. “Give your brain something to do besides chew the past to bits. Find an outlet for all that excess energy. Not unless you wanna have another one of those meltdowns.”

“I won’t—”

“I’m off until Monday, I’ll watch the kids since I know Carmen doesn’t sit for you on the weekends—”

“I’m not going into work today! It was a mistake, okay?”

“Tell that to the boots and skirt,” her aunt said, nodding at Tess’s outfit, and Tess thought, Rotten subconscious.

“I know you needed some downtime after…after you signed the papers,” Flo said gently. “But you gotta be goin’ nuts by now, not working. So go into the office for a couple hours. Jus’ to take your mind off…everything.”

She could fight her, she supposed. Say, No, don’t wanna, not ready yet. Except…Flo was right, damn her meddling little heart. A couple hours focused on the miserable real estate market would definitely take her mind off Eli, yep.

“You sure Winnie and Aidan don’t need you?”

“I’m the housekeeper, not their slave. An’ he’s busy workin’ on one of those big paintings for that show in New York, anyway. He won’t even miss me. So go.”

So Tess hugged her aunt, grabbed a leather jacket from the coat closet and her purse from the counter, kissed her children—who’d tumbled back into the house, panting and looking for juice—bye-bye and told them she’d see them in a little while, to be good for Auntie Flo. Julia just waved and resumed her juice quest—little twerp—but Miguel gave her a look of such longing it nearly ripped her heart out.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said, leaning over to cup his cheek. “We’ll make cookies, okay?”

“’Kay,” he said, smiling a little.

And that, Tess mused as she eased herself behind the wheel of her slightly dented and dinged white SUV, just cried out for a serious caffeine and sugar injection, one Flo’s wussy coffee and a pack of stale Little Debbies couldn’t even begin to address.

Fortunately, Tess knew just where to get her fix.

Chapter Four

She jerked the SUV into Ortega’s tiny parking lot, realizing it’d been months since she and her girlfriends—Thea, her stepdaughter Rachel and relative newcomer Winnie Black, married to Flo’s landscape-artist employer—had gotten together for their Wednesday afternoon gabfests, scarfing down churros and nachos or whatever Evangelista had left over after the lunch rush. After Tess’s divorce, they’d tried to hold it together, but a bumper crop of new babies put paid to that idea. Not until Tess set foot inside the chile-, grease-and coffee-scented restaurant, though, did she realize how much her sanity had depended on those get-togethers. Maybe if they’d kept them going, last night wouldn’t’ve happened—

“What can I get for ya?”

Tess smiled for the pimply, painfully young waitress who’d taken over for Thea, who’d realized a night-owl newborn and waitressing were not a good mix.

“Coffee. To go.”

“Large or small?”

“Huge. Cream, no sugar. You’re new?”

Pouring coffee into a foam soup container, the girl flashed a smile. “Just started last week. Name’s Christine.” She popped a plastic top on the cup, then wiped her hands on her jeans. “That’ll be a buck-fifty.”

“Actually, why don’t you toss in one of those cinnamon rolls, too?”

“You know, those’ve been sittin’ out since this morning. We’ve got a fresh batch just about to come out of the oven if you don’t mind waiting.”

“You, honey, are an angel,” Tess said, right about the same time she heard, “How’s the leg?” right behind her. Yeah, just who she wanted to run into. Especially as, awake and sober, the tingling stuff from the night before?

Ten times worse.

“Leg’s fine,” she said, turning back to the counter, thinking if she concentrated real hard Eli wouldn’t be there when she looked around again.

“Workin’ today?”

So much for that. “Maybe.”

Sliding up on the stool right next to her, Eli chuckled, all low and deep and rumbly. That, too, was ten times worse, awake and sober. You would think messing around six ways to Sunday would have gotten it out of her system.

But no.

“Us, too,” Eli said. “Dad’s got a big job installing next week, so couldn’t take the day off.”

“Oh. That’s good, then,” she said, facing him. Acting like she had spontaneous, combustible sex with the random ex-boyfriends all the time. “That you’re so busy.”

“Yeah. It is,” he said, facing away. “Hey, Chrissy,” he called out to the waitress, his voice just as warm and sunshiny as it could be. “Gimme a half dozen breakfast burritos, okay?”

“Got it!”

“That cold all gone?”

The girl beamed. “Sure is. I did just like you said and drank a ton of hot tea, and it hardly even bothered me at all.”

“Told you. What?” he said to Tess, who swung her head back around.

“Nothing,” she muttered, and Eli swiveled his stool, plunked his elbows on the counter and resumed his conversation with Christine, now serving a couple at one of the tables.

“How’s your grandmother getting on?”

“Oh, she’s fine now. She’d just forgotten to eat breakfast and fainted, was all. That reminds me—she said to thank you for cleaning out her gutters last week.”

“No problem,” he said with a bright, completely nonflir-tatious smile, then swung back around, pinning Tess with his gaze. “What?”

“Who are you?”

He laughed, then tilted his head. “I like that sweater on you.”

“Um, thanks?”

“Although…”

“Don’t even go there,” she muttered because she knew exactly where he was going. As did her nipples, which perked up quite nicely at the unspoken innuendo.

“You know, you really need to loosen up some.”

“Yeah, like it worked so well the first time.”

“And the second. And the third—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—” Her head whipped around. “Is this the way it’s gonna be from now on?” she whispered. Savagely. “You never letting me forget my one…indi-discretion?”

Last thing she’d expected was for her voice to go rogue on her. Or for a pair of contrite golden eyes to find hers. Which didn’t at all jibe with the soft, intense, “Maybe I don’t want you to forget it,” that followed.

Christine picked that moment to return with Tess’s bagged cinnamon roll, bless her soul. Armed with her coffee and snack, Tess turned smartly on her skinny boot heel…and ran smack into some dude who’d come up behind her.

“Oh! Sorry!” she said to the cowboy as the flimsy lid flew off the coffee, which erupted all over her jacket. She yelped, wondering when she’d turned into such a klutz, as Eli grabbed her from behind to keep her from creaming the poor guy.

“You okay?” Eli asked, so gently tears crowded her eyes, which was even more ridiculous than the tingling and all that it represented. “Honey,” he said to the startled waitress, “you mind bringing us a damp cloth or something?”

But before she could scurry off, Evangelista Ortega herself appeared, three hundred pounds of take-no-crap efficiency. “Gimme your jacket,” she demanded, practically ripping it off Tess as she barked to the new girl to get another cup of coffee, for God’s sake, what was she waiting for?

Diplomacy had never been Evangelista’s thing.

Her gigantic bosoms shimmying magnificently, she carefully blotted up the coffee from the leather, blew on it until she was satisfied and handed the coat back to Tess.

“There. Good as new. But I never see you this jumpy before.” Her black gaze zeroed in on Eli. “Dios mio—don’ tell me you’re back in the picture?”

“No!” Tess said, her face flaming. “Just a coincidence, us running into each other…” She cleared her throat, which also apparently sparked An Idea. “Hey, Eva, you don’t by any chance know of anybody looking to sell their house who might need a listing agent?”

Black brows lifted. “Why you asking me?”

“Because nothing gets past you?”

Her mouth pulled down in a this-is-true expression, Eva nodded. Then sighed. “Other than that old junker up on Coyote Trail? Nada.”

“Charley Harris’s place, you mean?” Eli put in. Because he was clearly harder to get rid of than mold.

“That’s the one. His kids’ve been trying to unload it for more’n a year now.”

“Yeah, I know that place,” Tess said. “My partner had it listed for a while.”

“My cousin, she did some cleaning for the old guy who used to live there,” Evangelista said, clearly unconcerned about her other customers. “Said the inside looks like something out of a vampire movie. Guy was a real pack rat, she said, although they probably got rid of all the crap by now, if they’ve been trying to sell it. But the kitchen and bathrooms?” She rolled her eyes. “God himself couldn’t move that place. Oh, here’s your food,” she said to Eli, peering through her glasses at the ticket. “Put it on your tab?”

“Yeah,” he said, hefting the plastic bag as he slid off the stool. With a nod to Tess, he started toward the door.

“By the way,” Evangelista called, “how were those enchiladas? I tried something a little different with the sauce, did you notice?”

Shouldering the door open, Eli turned, dimples flashin’. “Can’t say as I did.”

“They weren’t too hot, then?”

His eyes touched Tess’s. “Nope, not too hot at all,” he said, then pushed his way outside.

“Man,” Evangelista said on a wistful sigh as they both watched Eli through the plate glass window as he got into his truck, “if I was twenty years younger, I would be all over that hombre.”

Blowing out a breath, Tess gathered up her replaced cup of coffee and the battered roll in its bag, refusing to meet Evangelista’s questioning gaze before hotfooting it out herself. She’d intended to head straight for the little office on Main Street she’d shared with Suzanne Jenkins, her partner; instead she headed east, toward the house in question. Normally she’d never go after one of Suz’s old listings—the real estate equivalent of dating your best friend’s ex—but times being what they were, she’d take what she could get.

As far as listings went, that is.

She pulled up in front of the secluded old adobe and got out, getting a scolding from a crow atop a nearby telephone pole, a thick layer of pine needles cushioning her footsteps as she walked up the flagstone path. From the outside, the pinon-smothered house didn’t look too bad—the adobe was solid, the pitched, tin roof seemed in fairly decent condition. On the small side, maybe, but not everybody needed or wanted a big house. And—she turned—the setting was spectacular, with great, sweeping views of sky and mountains and valley.

Location, location, location…

Shivering in the frigid breeze, Tess tiptoed around the house’s perimeter, peering inside cloudy windows, the turquoise-painted wooden trim peeling and pockmarked with dry rot…an easy-enough fix. Heck, once the trim was replaced, she could paint it herself if she had to. The inside, though…oh, dear. Even through the murky glass, she could see the outdated kitchen cabinets and countertops, the scarred, smoke-smudged walls, the worn shag carpeting in the living room.

She got back in her car, giving the poor, neglected house a final glance. Were these people off their nut? Who on earth put a house on the market in that condition? Especially these days?

Was she off her nut, even considering taking the thing on?

Twenty minutes later, she walked into the office, nearly giving Candy Stevens, their receptionist, heart failure. “What in the blue blazes are you doing here?” the well-past-forty redhead barked from behind her desk by the front door.

“Got a divine message I was supposed to come back today,” Tess said, crossing to her side of the one-room office. Dust of postapocalyptic proportions lay thick on her desk.

“You might’ve given us some warning,” Candy—whose fashion philosophy pretty much began and ended with pushup bras, fringe and Aqua Net—said, following. Today’s ensemble included a snuggly sweater, tight jeans and cowboy boots never meant to come anywhere near a horse. “I haven’t even dusted or anything over here in weeks.”

“So I noticed.” Tess set her coffee and roll on top of her printer, then shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it on the back of her chair. “Where’s Suze?”

Who, knowing her partner, would be less than thrilled by her return. Suze wasn’t real big on sharing. Except for rent and utilities.

“On vacation,” Candy said, madly taking a feather duster to shelves and things, stirring up a lot more dust than she was dispatching. “She’ll be back Monday. Oh, my goodness, honey—you got a rash or something on your neck? You’re all red—”

“It’s nothing!” Tess said, only to be suddenly squished against Candy’s copious bazooms.

“God, I missed you,” the older woman whispered, as though somebody might be eavesdropping. Then she let Tess go. “You know I love Suze to death, but she’s…”

“Suze,” Tess said, smiling. Heaven knew why Suze had taken Tess under her wing, mentoring Tess into as good an agent as she was. Or at least had been. But the four-times-married blonde’s piranha-esque tactics were legendary. Woman could probably sell property to the dead. So why hadn’t she been able to unload the house up on the hill?

“So I see she dropped the Coyote Trail listing?” Tess said, settling in front of her computer.

“More like the sellers dropped Suze,” Candy said, butt twitching as she returned to her own desk by the front door. “Birdbrains. They wanna dump it but won’t spend a dime on updates. Suze took a stab at selling it as a fixer-upper, but in this market? No way.”

“So there’s no lockbox?”

Candy’s eyes snapped to hers. “You went up there?”

“Just a little bit ago, yeah. I think it has potential.”

“For the Addams family, maybe.”

Tess smiled. “You got the clients’ contact info?”

Now Candy frowned. Carefully. “Well, sure, it’s still in the system, but honey…you can’t be serious.”

“What can I say? I’m up for a challenge.”

Anything to take her mind off Eli, she thought, catching herself moments before she touched the aforementioned “rash” on her neck. But not before the memory of how that rash got there started up the tingling. Again.

“There’s challenges and then there’s banging your head against a wall. Sugar, I hate to break it to you, but business hasn’t exactly picked up while you were gone. In fact…” She sighed. “Suze said if things didn’t improve by the end of the month she’d have to let me go. So I’m thinking this might not be the best time for you to be thinking about getting back in the groove.”

A feeling like hot steam flashed up the back of Tess’s neck. “Nobody’s letting you go, Candy,” she said, even as she wondered how she planned on making good on her promise. A moment later, she had the contact info on the screen in front of her; five minutes after that, she’d arranged to meet Fred and Gillian Harris at the house the following Monday.

She hung up the phone to see Candy wagging her head. “Honey, you are one serious glutton for punishment.”

Yeah. Tell her about it.

Once inside the house on Monday morning, Tess decided it reminded her of a tired housewife who’d given up the good fight. Unfortunately, houses were not capable of dragging their saggy butts to the gym or touching up their own roots.

According to Fred and Gillian-please-call-me-Gilly, the late-middle-aged, well-heeled sibling duo currently dogging Tess’s heels on her preliminary walk-through, their father had succumbed to Alzheimer’s more than a year before, necessitating their putting him in a care facility. Clearly the poor guy hadn’t been able to keep the place up for some years before that. Still, there was a lot of charm left in the old girl, if you knew what to look for.

How to bring her back to life.

But it hadn’t taken Tess five minutes to size up the pair as the “just make it happen” type. These days, though, making it happen took a bit more effort than simply sticking a For Sale sign out by the road and slapping the place up on the Internet.

“It’s already been on the market more’n a year,” Fred said to Tess’s back as she frowned at the worn, fake brick flooring, the dark, depressing cabinets. Big difference between retro and regressive.

“So I heard,” Tess said with a slight smile as she peered inside the good-size pantry, recoiling at the telltale scent of rodent droppings.

“We really need to sell it,” Gilly said. “For Dad.” The neatly coiffed brunette glanced at her brother, then back at Tess. “The place we’ve got him in…it’s good. And, well, pricey.”

As were, Tess surmised, the gal’s diamond earrings and Fred’s watch. So she wasn’t exactly getting an indigent vibe here, even if she didn’t doubt Charley’s new “home” was costing an arm and a leg. Still, she knew she had to tread very carefully if she wanted this listing. Which she did, so badly she could taste it. To feed her sense of self-worth almost more than her bank account. Not to mention help Candy keep her job.

“I suppose…” Fred exchanged another glance with his sister. “We could lower the asking price…”

“Actually, I think you should raise it. A lot.” As expected, four eyes popped wide open. While Tess had them in stunned mode, she moved in for the kill. “Slow market or no, there’s still some demand for these old adobes—”

“Then—”

“—as long as they’re in tip-top condition,” she said, and both faces fell. Gee, big surprise. “For the most part, people are looking for vacation homes,” she continued, “someplace to spend weekends skiing or escape from the summer heat. Soon as they get the keys, they want to walk through the front door, kick off their shoes off and run a hot bath, not start gutting old kitchens. And cleaning up mouse droppings.”

Gilly’s eyes darted around the kitchen. “You think there’s mice?”

“Oh, I’d stake my life on it. Look,” Tess said, gently, but firmly, when they both made a face, “you gave the fixer-upper plan a year and it didn’t work. Be honest—would you want to live here? In the shape it’s in now?”

Another shared glance. Then the woman said, “What…do you suggest?”

Tapping her pen on her clipboard, Tess looked around, pretending to consider. “I’m not talking major remodel, but the kitchen and bathrooms need some serious updating. New cabinets and countertops, tile floors. And the shelves in the den? Really awful.”

“Dad built those himself,” Gilly said, sighing. “He was so proud.” She looked at the seventies-era harvest gold stove. “And the appliances?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to change them out. Don’t have to be top of the line, but they should at least be from this century.”

The siblings looked at each other, then back at Tess. “What kind of money are we talking?” Fred asked.

“Well…you could easily sink forty, fifty grand into the place—”

“Good God!”

“But twenty-five should cover it.”

“Forget it—”

“Oh, come on, Freddy, it’s not as if we don’t have it. And if she can get us—” Gilly turned to Tess. “How much?”

Tess wrote a number on her pad, then turned it around to show them.

“Oh, my,” Gilly said, hand on cheek.

Fred frowned. He seemed to do that a lot. “But there’s no guarantee it’ll sell.”

“No, there’s not,” Tess said easily. “And I understand your concerns, I really do. But you know, we’re so close to Taos and Santa Fe…once the house is fixed up, even if it doesn’t sell it would make a terrific vacation rental. So there’s another option. We could manage the property for you. You wouldn’t have to do a thing.” When the two exchanged another glance, Tess picked her purse up off the chipped Formica counter. “Tell you what…why don’t I give you a few minutes to talk it over between you? I’ll just wait outside.”

Tess crossed to the kitchen patio door, the glass practically opaque from God-knew-how-many years’ worth of grime and dust. French doors, both in here and the living room, would be spectacular…

Five minutes later, if that, she heard the door slide open behind her. “Ms. Montoya?”

Tess turned, trying not to look too eager. “Yes?”

“Tell you what,” Fred said, hiking up his designer jeans as he walked out onto the redwood deck. “If you can bring in the renovations for twenty grand, we’ve got a deal. I’m not real keen on the vacation house idea, but Gilly seems to think it could work. And we like your style.” He extended his hand. “So. You’ve got the listing. Until Christmas.”

Tess’s stomach dropped. “But…that’s less than two months! Six is more customary.”

“If you can’t sell it before the holiday vacation season starts, we might as well rent it out.”

That’ll teach her to come up with brilliant ideas.

“And one more thing—long as you’re hirin’ a carpenter anyway…you know Gene Garrett?”

“Uh…sure…”

“He and I went to school together, I know he’s got a cabinetry shop in town. If I gotta spend the cash to fix this place up, might as well toss some of it his way, you know what I mean? Especially these days, I imagine he could use the business. Betcha also if you mention my name? He’ll give us a good deal.”

Lord save her from cheapskates. And heaven knew there were other carpenters in the area she’d much rather hire, for obvious reasons. But if Gene Garrett was part of the deal, she’d deal.

“I’ll get in touch with him this afternoon,” Tess said, shaking Fred’s hand.

“For crying out loud, dog,” Eli yelled at Blue, his father’s old Heeler, when the mutt started yapping up a storm at the front of the shop. “What’s your problem?” A moment later, light flashed across the front room as the door swung open.

“Anybody here?” Tess called out.

Thinking, What the hell? Eli set down the sander and walked out front, his fingers jammed in his jeans’ pockets. Busy with the dog, Tess didn’t see him at first, giving him time to give her a nice, leisurely once-over. Tight jeans. High-heeled boots. A soft, body-hugging sweater too long for her leather jacket. Big old dangly earrings. An aura of purpose he still wasn’t used to.

“Slumming?” he said mildly, making her jump. She straightened, clutching a purse bigger than she was to her side, out of which she dug his sweatshirt.

“Um…I brought this back,” she said, handing it to him, then looking around. “Your dad here?”

“Nope. Out on that install. So’s everybody else. Just me and the dog holdin’ the fort. What can I do for you?”

Yeah, the double meaning had been sorta deliberate.

Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of reacting. Except for her eyes. Gal’s eyes gave her away every time. And why he was goading her, he had no idea. Wasn’t like he expected, or wanted, anything to come of it. Then again, maybe that was the point. That, knowing he was perfectly safe, he could goad all he wanted.

Safe from her anyway. Safe from himself? Maybe not so sure about that.

“I just got the Coyote Trail listing,” Tess said, and he dragged his head back from wherever it had wandered.

“You’re kidding.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Because the place is a dump?”

“It’s not a dump, it just needs…a little TLC.”

“Honey, what that place needs is ten years of intensive care.”

“In an ideal world, maybe. But what I got the Harris spawn to agree to is the rehab equivalent of Botox. In any case, Fred Harris apparently went to school with your dad, wants to give him the work—”

“Wait a minute…you actually talked them into fixing the place up?”

She almost smiled. “I can be very persuasive,” she said, her voice all low and sexy, and Eli literally bit his tongue to keep from saying something stupid. Instead he squatted to scratch Blue’s ears.

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Dad’s booked through January. Unless y’all can wait until February—”

“No, it has to be done immediately. I only have the listing until Christmas.”

“That’s insane.”

“Tell me about it.” For the first time, doubt wrinkled her forehead. “Are you sure he couldn’t squeeze this in? Somehow?”

“You’re talking, what? Kitchen and bath update?”

“And redoing some of the built-ins, and the window trim…”

“Then I think it’s safe to say Dad’s not gonna be able to ‘fit you in’.” To prove his point, he walked over to the old, beat-up desk on the other side of the room and picked up a bulging folder.

“Crap,” she said. “Not that I’m not thrilled for your dad, having so much work.”

“Of course, if you’re really hard up…” Eli grinned. “There’s always me.”

“Um, I think I’ll pass.” But she didn’t sound all that happy with her decision. Or him, hard to tell. “Were you always this…cocky and I somehow missed it?”

“I prefer to think of it as charming.”

“As I said.”

Eli crossed his arms. “How come you didn’t call first, save yourself a trip?” Saved yourself the awkwardness of having to talk to me.

“I did. Nobody answered. Kept getting the machine.”

“But I’ve been right here…” Eli glanced over at the phone, blinking its little butt off. Messages, 3. “How many times you call?”

“Three.”

“Guess I couldn’t hear over the sander.”

“Guess not,” Tess said, starting for the door.

“You’d rather lie naked on an anthill than work with me, wouldn’t you?”

Slowly, she turned, her brows drawn. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Funny, I would’ve never pegged you as somebody who’d judge a person without having all the facts.”

The frown deepened. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Frankly, yeah. Because apparently what I said, about how I’ve changed? Didn’t even register. And excuse me, but it’s just the tiniest bit annoying that you’re assuming a lot based on what basically amounts to hearsay.”

“You’re saying…the gossip’s untrue?”

He hesitated. “Not all of it, no. But…” Digging his fingers into the back of his neck, Eli tried to pull in enough breath to ease the tightness in his chest. “But what you hear…I’m more than that, Tess. I swear.”

“Then if there’s some salient fact I’m missing, by all means, clue me in.”

A couple of beats passed before Eli walked over to an old futon on the other side of the room and sat on the arm. Unfortunately, this wasn’t just any random piece of furniture, but the very one where they both lost their virginity many moons ago. When Tess sucked in a breath, Eli softly laughed. “Yep. It’s still here. Even if the two kids who enjoyed each other on it aren’t.”

“Eli…don’t—”

“You know, I still see glimpses of the crazy, funny girl who could light up a room just by walking into it. Not to mention the one who never had a bad word to say about anybody. It’s not that I don’t understand why she doesn’t come around much anymore,” he said quietly, “but I sure do miss her. Like I said, I know I hurt you back then. And I don’t even expect you to accept my apology. But seems to me that girl wouldn’t still be obsessing about a failed high school romance.”

Tess gave him a long, penetrating look, then let out a sigh that seemed more perplexed than mad. “First off, that girl? I’m not all that sure she ever really existed. Secondly, I’m hardly obsessing about our breakup. What still bugs me, though, is that you never gave me an explanation. Not even when you called to apologize the other day. So, combined with your reputation? The anthill’s looking pretty good.”

Eli’s brow knotted. “You never asked.”

“I shouldn’t have had to ask! Because I deserved an explanation. I deserved…” She pushed out a breath. “More. And I’d expected more from you. Hence the mop. And the anthill thing—”

“I was scared, Tess. That’s it, bottom line. I was terrified out of my skull.”

“Of what? Me? That’s—”

“Hell, yeah, you. I had no idea it was possible to feel so strongly about somebody at, what were we? Seventeen? And I couldn’t deal with it. So I snapped.”

For a moment—barely—he thought he saw a glimmer of sympathy in her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, Eli, it wasn’t like I expected us to get married or anything.”

“Logic didn’t even enter into it,” he said, getting to his feet. “All I knew was, things were happening way too fast, and I wasn’t even remotely ready. And I had no earthly idea how to tell you that.”

She glanced away, like she was trying to process this. But when she looked back, the sympathy had gone buh-bye. “And somehow this translated into going after Amy Higgins?”

Cripes, it was like having a conversation with two different people. He half expected to see her eyes glow red.

“It was sorta the other way around, truth be told. I swear,” he said when she huffed out a sharp laugh. “But it never felt right. We broke up, like, a month later—”

“Yeah. I remember. I also seem to remember you recovered from her quickly enough, too. And the one that followed. And the one that followed after that—”

“Didn’t take you long to hook up with Enrique, either, as I recall.”

She flinched, and Eli finally got it, that this wasn’t only about the two of them. That somebody else far more recently than him had hurt her, too—

“Actually, it was more than a year,” she said in that wind-outta-her-sails voice.

And once more Eli happened to be in the line of fire, just like he’d been the other night.

“But from everything I heard,” she said, “your pace sure didn’t slow down any—”

“You were away for several years, don’t forget.”

“True. But when I returned…well, let’s just say the broken heart trail didn’t seem to be in danger of stopping anytime soon. Oh, come on, Eli,” Tess said, revving up again, “you know you can’t go anywhere in this town without running into somebody hot to tell you the latest, good or bad. And people have long memories, especially those well-meaning souls eager to assure me—even after all this time—I was better off without you, that the boy who skipped on me just kept on skipping, from one chick to another like rocks in a creek.”

Her words pelted him like sleet, stinging all the more because they were truer than he wanted to admit, inflicting enough pain to make him say, “Wow—you must’ve been really out of it to end up in my bed.”

Color flared in her cheeks. “Already established that,” she muttered, this time making it all the way to the door, and Eli wondered if he’d ever learn to think before he spoke.

“It’s okay, I completely understand,” he called after her. “But if you get desperate, you know where to find me.”

After one final, flummoxed glance, Tess walked out, slamming the door shut behind her.

Which Eli stared at for a lot longer than he should’ve probably, but the feeling-like-dirt feeling had come back with a vengeance, clobbering him upside the head over and over and over. Because no matter which way you looked at it, Tess was right. If not about all of it, about enough to completely justify her attitude. Because he had hurt her, he hadn’t bothered to tell her why and he’d definitely provided plenty of fuel for the gossip mill these past several years. So from where he was sitting, he had some serious atoning to do. And some lame “I’m sorry, I’m not that man anymore” wasn’t gonna cut it—somehow he had to prove to Tess he’d changed.

For his own peace of mind, if nothing else.

Mulling that over, Eli trudged back to work, letting himself get caught up in his tasks until, maybe two hours later, the phone rang.

And yeah, he might’ve smiled for a second when he saw the caller ID, relishing the victory. Except underneath the relishing, something else kinda hummed. Like the sound from those overhead wires they said messed with your brain or something.

“Garrett’s—”

“Fine, so you win. I’ve called every carpenter within fifty miles, and there’s nobody else available unless I want to bring in somebody from Albuquerque, and no way are the Harrises gonna fork over the extra cash for that. So when can you meet me at the house to give me an estimate?”

“You sure do cut to the chase, don’t you?”

“The groveling stings less that way.”

Eli chuckled. “In an hour good for you?”

“That’s fine. Long as you don’t mind the kids being with me.”

The humming got louder. “Not at all,” he said, looking out the wood-dust-coated window. Telling himself he was strong enough to avoid that particular pull. That if he wanted an opportunity to prove himself, this couldn’t be a better one. He smiled. “Especially since you clearly need a chaperone. Or two.”

“Bite me,” she said and hung up.

Chapter Five

An hour gave Tess just enough time to pick up her kids and put her pride back in the dungeon where it belonged. Umbrage was all well and good in its place, but it had no place in business. And business was what this was all about, she thought when Eli knocked on the house’s open door, the dog bounding inside ahead of him.

And only what it was about.

“Cool!” Miguel said, immediately on his knees to hug the dog. “What’s his name?”

“Micky! Be careful—!”

“It’s okay, he loves kids,” Eli said, then gave Micky a half smile. “And his name’s Blue. I’m Eli.”

One eye on the dog and Julia balanced on one hip, Tess literally met Eli halfway, in the middle of the musty, mud-colored carpeted living room. But before she could open her mouth, Eli said, “You really okay with this?”

“I’m…” A smile tugged at her mouth. “Getting there. In any case, I’ve had lots of practice making the best of a bad situation.”

With a soft laugh, Eli headed for the kitchen, clipboard in hand. “Good to know. Because I’d hate to mess up the whole symbiotic thing we’ve got going on here.”

“Symbiotic?”

“Yeah, you know, when each entity needs the other to survive?” At her poleaxed look, he grinned. “Mom was one of those word-a-day freaks. Her two goals, when we were kids, were making sure we knew the right way to hold a fork and force-feeding us a whole bunch of ten-dollar words. Because God forbid anybody take us for hicks,” he said, carefully opening a kitchen cabinet door about to fall off its hinges, then brushing dust from his hands. “Yep, place looks about as bad as I remember.”

From the living room, Tess could hear Miguel chattering to Blue. Hiking a squirmy Julia higher on her hip, she glanced through the doorway to see her son perched on the edge of the raised hearth, the dog sitting in front of him with his head cocked—

“You’ve been here before?” she said, Eli’s words sinking in.

“Yep.” Leaving the door ajar, Eli squatted to inspect one of the lower cupboards. “Used to come over now and again to check up on Charley after he started going downhill.”

“Huh. Fred didn’t mention that little detail.”

“Not sure he knew about it, to be honest,” Eli said, straightening to make notes on the clipboard. “Dad did, mostly, but I’d stop by once a week or so. Bring Charley a stuffed sopapilla from Ortega’s. Or a beef and potato burrito. Man, he did love those. Grinned like nobody’s business the minute I’d unwrap it—”

“Down!” Julia screeched. “Down, down, down!”

Realizing she and Eli would never be able to hear each other if she didn’t give in, Tess lowered the child to the dusty tile floor; immediately she zoomed off to join her big brother. Eli glanced over, his expression…odd.

“Sorry,” Tess said. “What she lacks in vocabulary she makes up for in volume.”

“And earnestness.”

“That, too. My little toughie.”

“Like her mother,” he said, opening another door. “And that was a compliment, so don’t go gettin’ all bent out of shape.”

She smirked. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Wandering away to keep an eye on her little hooligans, their high voices echoing in the empty space, she shook her head. “I just wonder why Charley’s kids didn’t get him out of here sooner.”

“You’d have to ask them that. Although I think you can guess.” When she turned, Eli rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “As in, they didn’t want to see their potential inheritance dwindle by spending it on their own father. Fortunately, he never got too bad—never wandered down Main Street naked or anything. And he always knew who Dad and I were. It was just…It was like he was in a dream. In his own little world.”

“Still,” Tess said, facing her kids again. “That’s so sad. To think…” She shook her head.

“If it makes you feel better—” she heard Eli’s metal tape measure rattle across the countertop “—I don’t think he was unhappy. Or lonely. But I know what you mean. I can’t imagine leaving my folks to the mercy of whoever happened to be available.”

“I couldn’t do that to Flo, either.”

The tape measure snapped back. “Still on the outs with your mom, then?”

“She has her life, I have mine,” Tess said softly, her heart swelling with love for those hooligans even as old hurts tried to wind themselves around it.

“She sees her grandkids, though, right?”

“Once in a blue moon, maybe. She’s…not much of a kid person.”

In the empty room, Julia let out one of her belly laughs, probably at something her brother did. Tess nearly jumped when Eli’s hand landed on her shoulder—bzzzt—for an instant before he swept past her out of the room. “Okay, that’s it for in here,” he said as Tess told herself she didn’t miss his touch. Really. “Let’s go check out the bathroom. No telling how bad that must be by now—”

“I got Blue to sit, Eli!” Miguel said, accosting the poor man the instant he hit the living room, as he was wont to do with every male he met these days. Sensing the void, Tess supposed, left by his rarely-there father, their infrequent visits infected both with the boy’s wary neediness and his father’s discomfort or guilt or whatever. “Wanna see?” Miguel said, hopping about like a curly-headed little flea.

Eli halted, briefly, giving Miguel a strained smile. “Maybe later,” he said, with an equally brief, strained glance at Julia, who’d taken up the flea dance, too, accompanying herself by “singing” at the top of her robust little lungs.

As Eli continued down the hall, Miguel frowned at Tess, not so much hurt as confused. Make that two of us, Tess thought. Seeing Eli with Christine in Ortega’s, listening to him talk about how he and his dad kept tabs on poor old Charley…why would he be standoffish with her kids? Although…

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “He’s just busy. Um…watch Julia for a sec, okay?”

“’Kay.”

Busy poking at tiles and such, Eli didn’t at first notice Tess when she leaned against the bathroom door. “Sorry about the ambush,” she ventured. “Micky tends to gravitate to Y chromosomes like metal filings to a magnet.”

Eli flashed a glance in her direction. “No problem.”

“Even so…all he did was ask you to watch him get your dog to sit.”

Retracting his tape measure from across the grime-encrusted sink cabinet, Eli gave her a steadier look, his normally mischief-riddled eyes flat. “Just trying to keep things moving, that’s all,” he said mildly.

“You don’t like kids?”

Eli’s brows shot up, followed by a startled laugh. “Just because I didn’t stop and watch Miguel and the dog, you automatically assume I’ve got a problem with kids?”

“You looked…pained, is the only word I can come up with.” No, she realized as the flatness in his eyes sharpened. What he looked was scared. “I mean, not that I care one way or the other. I’m just curious.”

One corner of his mouth tucked up before he looked away. “Nothing to be curious about. You’re reading more into it than there is.” He scratched behind one ear, then squinted at her. “And when we’re done, I’ll be glad to let Miguel and Blue show me their trick, okay? So you can ratchet down the Mama-protecting-her-cubs thing a notch.”

“This isn’t about me, Eli,” Tess said, unaccountably irked. “But after what Miguel’s been through with his dad, he’ll pick up in an instant if you’re just playing nice.”

“I won’t be,” he said, frowning at the ugly gold sink before gesturing toward the hard-water-stained tub. “You do realize this room’s gonna have to be gutted, right? New tub, new toilet, the works?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No, actually I’m getting back on subject,” he said, his opaque eyes at odds with the it’s-all-good grin. “Which would be this house.”

Fine, two could play at this, Tess thought, despite the not-so-vaguedissatisfaction suddenly gnawing at her. No, more than that—an annoyance that the man was systematically annihilating her preconceived notions about his being, well, basically one-dimensional.

Like she needed layered men in her life right now.

Like she needed any man in her life right now.

“The Harrises have been warned,” she said, following him out of the room and back into the kitchen, hauling Julia up into her arms when the little girl came running over to her, a multilimbed bundle of joy. “In fact—” she kissed the baby’s chubby cheek, then looked back at Eli, who was giving her a strange look “—I told him flat out the scuzzy bathroom was a big reason why the place hadn’t sold. Squicking out potential buyers is not the way to go. Oh, no, honey,” she said when Julia launched herself toward Eli. “He doesn’t want—”

But he’d caught the baby before she landed on her noggin, setting her in the curve of his arm like it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t exactly go all goo-goo-ga-ga over her, giving her what seemed to Tess a cautious smile, but he seemed comfortable enough holding her, so she let it go.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, looking back at the cabinets, “easiest thing would be to just rip ’em all out, replace ’em with standard stock from Lowe’s or Home Depot or someplace. Heckuva lot cheaper, too.”

“They won’t look cheap?”

“Nah, they’ll look fine. And we can do granite veneer on the counters, looks great, but for, like, a quarter of the cost of solid.” He looked around. “Ditch the wallpaper, paint the walls, maybe do some tiling on the backsplash if you want…” He looked over, a slight smile tilting his lips. “I can get you an estimate by late tomorrow. How’s that?”

“Um, sure, that’s great—”

“Okay, pumpkin, back to your mama,” he said, handing the baby over and returning to the living room. “So, Miguel. Show how me what you taught the dog.”

It was pitiful, the way the kid lit up. Pitiful and totally understandable. “Okay!” he said, bending over and patting his thighs. “C’mere, Blue! C’mere, boy!” The dog’s bat ears half-lowered, he looked back at Eli as if to say, Do I gotta? At Eli’s nod, the thing sighed and plodded over to Micky. “Now sit!” When the dog sat, Miguel looked at Eli, beaming. “Told you!”

Smiling, Tess glanced back at Eli just in time to catch an achy expression on his face that stopped her smile cold, even as the man chuckled. “Let’s see if it works for me. Come, Blue.” The dog literally rolled his eyes, heaved himself to his feet and plodded back to Eli. “Sit, Blue. Well, look at that—you’re a good teacher, Miguel! Okay,” he said, gathering up his things. “I gotta git, but you two be good for your mama, y’hear?” Then he boot-scooted his fine self out of there, Blue trotting along behind.

Bizarre.

And all the way home, as Miguel yammered about how cool Eli was, the whole dog-sitting incident bugged. Yeah, Eli’d done and said all the right things, but Tess couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. Not that he didn’t like kids, or even that he didn’t know what to do with them, but…

But like there was a story there he wasn’t telling.

And if she was smart, she’d let it stay untold.

Situated in what used to be an old A-frame house far enough from the center of town to be discreet, but not so far as to inconvenience anybody, the Lone Star Bar was about as threatening as a toothless hound dog. And almost as comical. Even with most of the original walls ripped out, the inside was hardly big enough for a decent-size bar, let alone the handful of tables and chairs and the requisite pool table squeezed into the back corner. Oh, and the six-foot-square “stage” set up for karaoke night. Ramon Viera, the owner, used to joke the place was so small he didn’t dare hire chesty waitresses for fear they’d put somebody’s eye out. But if, like Eli, you just wanted someplace to de-stress for a few minutes, there was no place better.

Ramon’s bushy eyebrows barely lifted when Eli slid onto one of the dozen barstools. “Hey, Eli…haven’t seen you in forever,” he said over Reba McIntyre’s warbling on the jukebox, the clacking of billiard balls, some gal’s high-pitched laugh. “Everything okay?”

Hell, no. Not by a long shot. And all it’d taken was the feel of Tess’s little girl in his arms, the yearning in a six-year-old boy’s eyes, for everything he’d worked so hard to put behind him to come roaring back up in his face, just like that.

“What? I can’t stop in for old times’ sake?”

Ramon shrugged. And grinned. Took a lot more than a cranky carpenter to offend the old bartender. “What’ll it be?”

“Whatever’s on tap,” Eli said, tossing a couple bucks on the pock-marked bar when Ramon placed the filled glass in front of him, only to nearly choke on a cloud of perfume pungent enough to spray crops with.

“Well, hello, stranger,” Suze Jenkins said, sliding up onto the seat beside him. “How ’bout buying a girl a drink?”

Oh, Lord. They’d gone out exactly once, probably five years ago, although Eli couldn’t for the life of him remember why. What he did remember was that a) nothing had happened, and b) Suze had been right pissed about that. That despite his calling the next day to say he was sorry, but it didn’t seem right to leave her dangling when he knew nothing was gonna blossom between them—which had seemed the decent thing to do, if you asked him—she’d been harder to shake than a burr off a long-furred dog. And although she eventually let go, she still occasionally popped up, just seeing if the wind had changed.

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Eli now said, taking a sip of his beer, eyes straight ahead.

“Chicken.”

Finally, he looked at Tess’s business partner, seeing exactly what he’d seen then—a pretty woman in a low-cut sweater with desperation issues as strong as her perfume. “Just not in the mood for misinterpretations, that’s all.”

“Oh, come on…after all this time? Don’t make me laugh.” She signaled to Ramon, ordered a whiskey and soda. “Heard you might be doing some work on the Coyote Trail house,” she said after Ramon set her drink in front of her.

Eli frowned. “How’d you find that out?”

“Candy might have mentioned it…oh, crap,” she said as she knocked her purse off the counter, adding, “No, that’s okay, I’ll get it,” when she bent over, a move that bathed her ample cleavage in a deep, neon-red glow.

“Nothing’s set in stone yet,” Eli muttered, looking away. “Not until I submit my bid to the Harrises.”

Once more upright, Suze fluffed her streaky bangs and took a sip of her drink. “And good luck with that. Tightwads.”

Unaccountably irritated, Eli said, “Tess already got ’em to agree to a budget of about twenty grand. Long as I come in under that, we’re good.”

“Even so…” Suze dunked her swizzle stick between her ice cubes. “How Tess thinks she can move that place is beyond me. Especially by Christmas? No way. I mean, if I couldn’t make it happen, nobody can.”

“And maybe you shouldn’t be so sure about that,” Eli said, glancing toward the door just as his younger brother Noah came through it. Thinking, Thank You, Lord, Eli muttered his excuses, leaving another couple of bills on the counter to cover Suze’s drink before grabbing his beer and crossing to meet his brother.

“Talk about your perfect timing,” he said in a low voice.

Noah chuckled. “Yeah, you might want to watch out for that one.” He settled into a wooden chair at a hubcap-size table, tossing his cowboy hat on it and ruffling his short, light brown hair. “She’s like Super Glue.”

“The new and improved formula,” Eli said, dropping into the other chair and shoving the hat aside to make room for his beer, wondering what it was about the west that made so many men who’d never gone near a cow don the duds. Himself included. Then he realized what Noah’d said. “You and Suze…?”

“Couple years ago. In my ‘older woman’ phase. Waaiit a minute…you, too?”

“Woman’s got one hell of a gravitational pull,” Eli said on a rough sigh. “Wasn’t serious, though. Least, not on my part.”

Leaning back, his brother barked out a laugh. “When have you ever been serious? About anybody?”

“Look who’s talking,” Eli said, smoothly shifting the conversation away from himself. Away from the memories being around Tess had provoked, about a period in his life his younger brothers didn’t know about, when Eli thought he’d finally gotten a handle on serious and responsible, only to discover he didn’t know jack.

Oblivious, Noah grinned, then crossed his arms. “Actually, I’m glad I ran into you. Since I’ve been meaning to call anyway.”

“We see each other every damn day, what—?”

“It’s about Silas. Mom’s about to drive him nuts.”

“Mom drives all of us nuts, it’s what she does,” Eli said with an indulgent smile. “What about this time?”

“From what I could tell, she’s seriously on his case about how he needs to move past Lori, start looking around for a new mother for the boys, how it’s too hard, him raising two babies on his own.” Noah grimaced. “You know how she gets.”

Didn’t he just? However…“The boys aren’t babies anymore. Tad’s, what? Three now?”

“And Ollie’s in kindergarten, I know. But far as Mom’s concerned, long as they have baby teeth, they’re still babies. And there’s something unnatural about men raising babies by themselves.”

“Silas is a big boy. I imagine he can handle Mom just fine.”

“He also doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, not after how bad Dad and her felt when his marriage bit the dust. No, I’m serious,” he added when Eli shook his head. “Silas told me he went to pick up the boys the other day, and Sally Perkins was there.”

Swallowing, Eli set down his beer. “From church, Sally Perkins?”

“The very one. Now you know that’s just twelve kinds of wrong. So I thought maybe you and me could, I don’t know, run interference or something.”

“No.”

“Bro. Sally Perkins.”

Yeah, Mom must be getting pretty desperate if she was flinging Sally Perkins at his brother. And Mom desperate was not a pretty picture. “Okay, fine,” Eli said on a released breath. “I’ll think of something. But if Si finds out, you do realize he’ll kill us, right?”

“Can’t be worse than the torture he inflicted on us when we were younger,” Noah said, and Eli chuckled. Hard to remember their geeky brother’s hellion phase. Minute he had his first kid it was like he became a new person. A better person, Eli thought with a trace of bitterness. Man, what was up with the past being all up in his face tonight?

“Does Dad know?” he asked. “About Mom?”

His younger brother shook his head. “If he does, he’s probably on her side. You know how they always go on about wanting us to have what they’ve had. But it’s even worse for Silas, with the two boys and all. Why she can’t see he’s okay, I have no idea.”

“Okay, tell you what,” Eli said as Noah’s cell phone rang. “If the opportunity arises, I’ll broach the subject with Dad. Although like you say, they’re usually on the same side about everything, so don’t expect any miracles.”

Although, frankly, he thought as his brother answered the call, what he’d say to his father, he had no idea. Not that he’d wish his mother’s well-intentioned nagging—let alone Sally Perkins—on anybody, but the fact was Silas was anything but “okay.” Something about all the mornings he’d come in to do the accounts—late—looking like hell warmed over because one kid or the other had been up sick half the night, or just that frazzled look from trying to keep the several dozen plates he had going at any one time from all crashing down on his head.

The thing was, much as it killed Eli to admit it, Mom rarely meddled without cause. Good cause. And the second thing was, call him old-fashioned, but in this case maybe she was right, even if her modus operandi could use a little tweaking. Not that Eli didn’t know plenty of single parents who did a bang-up job of raising their kids on their own, but in his brother’s case, the strain was definitely showing.

Just like it was with Tess, he thought with a spurt of annoyance. And something like sympathy. Maybe that’s what was bugging him about her—the way she seemed so determined to show everybody how much she had her act together when it was patently obvious she was coming apart at the seams. To him, anyway. Oh, sure, if anybody could keep a hundred plates up in the air at once, it would be Tess, but that’d been one helluva meltdown she’d had that night. Pretty good indication things weren’t nearly as okay in Tessville as she wanted everyone to believe.

And why Eli cared, he had no idea. Proving to her he’d grown up was one thing. But this insane urge to take care of her? After what he’d been through? No damn way—

“Yo, Eli…where’d you go, guy?”

Took him a second for his brother’s face to come into focus.

“Just thinking about the bid I need to be working on,” Eli said, swallowing the last of his beer and getting to his feet.

“Bid? What bid?”

“Charley’s house is back on the market. Needs some updating. Dad’s busy, so I signed on.”

“No kidding? Fred and Gilly sellin’ the place on their own?”

“No. Tess Montoya’s the agent.”

Noah frowned. “Didn’t you used to—?”

“Shut up,” Eli grunted, his brother’s evil laugh following him as he wormed his way through the noisy crowd to get the hell out of there.

Chapter Six

Kisses duly dispensed—how long, Tess wondered, before Miguel called a halt to that?—she sat in the drop-off zone in front of the elementary school, leaning farther and farther over to watch her little boy run off to join his classmates on the playground, until some doofus behind her leaned on his horn.

Okay, so maybe I’m just a smidgen overprotective, she thought as she pulled away, Julia singing one of her tuneless creations behind her. Tess suddenly had a vision of her baby with a nose ring and pink hair up on a stage somewhere surrounded by drugged-out rockers and nearly had a heart attack.

“Birdies, Mama! Look!” the little girl cried as they passed a naked ash tree studded with big, black, scary-looking crows. One of them cawed; Julia cawed right back, then giggled, and Tess relaxed, deciding she probably had a few years yet to worry about her daughter’s induction into the dark side. Right now, her major concern was getting the kid to her babysitter’s so Tess and Eli could trek to Home Depot to choose cabinets and paint and such.

Yeah, she was so looking forward to that. Sitting next to him in the confined space of somebody’s vehicle. For a half hour. Each way. Smelling him. Hearing him—

Please, God, just don’t let him chuckle, ’kay? Thanks.

It’d been a week since the Harrises approved Eli’s bid, bless their miserly souls, wrenching from Tess a promise she’d do an open house the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Never mind that open houses right before Christmas were pretty much nonstarters. Because people were, you know, doing Christmas shopping and putting up trees and wrapping presents and who the hell went house shopping in December?

Not that she used those exact words.

And anyway, these days grasping at straws was better than grasping at nothing. Maybe.

At least the demolition phase was moving along nicely. And quickly. Eli had found worker bees from God knew where—cousins and brothers and uncles of the guys who worked in the shop, she gathered—and lo and behold, the ’60s were vanishing right before her eyes. Now all the gutted kitchen needed was new cabinets and counters to make it all purdy—not to mention inhabitable—and they’d be good to go. But since the Harrises had entrusted Tess with all the design decisions—as in, as long as the project came in on time and under budget, they didn’t give a rat’s booty what it looked like—Eli insisted Tess go with him to help choose.

Hence her rumbly tummy.

She pulled up in front of the tidy little ranch-style house where Carmen Alvarado, Evangelista’s niece and Tess’s part-time babysitter, lived. One of her own toddlers straddling her hip, the smiling, slightly pudgy young woman opened her door, calling to Julia in Spanish before Tess had fully untangled her from her car seat. It wasn’t that the area locals couldn’t speak English—most of them did, as well or better than their gringo counterparts. But if English was a pair of dress shoes worn only in company, Spanish was that favorite pair of slippers you put on as soon as you got home.

Except for Tess, whose mother had refused to let her speak Spanish growing up, or even to take it in school, a quirk—the nicest word Tess could think of—that had always made Tess feel like part of her was missing.

Julia wriggled free as soon as the car door slammed shut, running up to her sitter, babbling about birds. “Vi parajos, Carmen! Muchos parajos! En arbol!”

“Usted hizo? Cool! Ahora dé a su mama un beso, sweetie!”

And wouldn’t that frost Julia’s grandmother? Tess thought as she and her daughter exchanged a dozen kisses before the little girl gleefully stomped up the few steps into the uber-babyproofed house filled with toys and dolls and books and healthy snacks…and no TV.

Yeah, maybe she shouldn’t think too hard about Carmen’s extraordinary child-care skills. “I should be back no later than two,” she said, and the young woman smiled.

“No problem. Since she takes her nap from one to three, take your time.”

As she was saying.

Twenty minutes later, some radio talk show—en espanol, natch—spilled through the half-open front door when Tess arrived at the house. Devoid of the rotting blue window trim, the house now looked like that old woman without any makeup at all, mouth and eyes agape in shock. Inside, the noise was as thick as the dust—bursts of laughter, the pow! pow! pow! of a nail gun, that radio show.

“Hello!” she yelled over the din, even as she took in the remarkable progress Eli and his elves had already made. Sure, it looked like a bomb had gone off, but you can’t re-do until you un-do. Not only that, but the pow-pow-powing was due to the brand-new shelving going into the living room, replacing the sorry, warped built-ins.

One of the workers noticed her and nodded, grinning. “Buscando Mr. Eli?”

“Yeah. Is he here?”

“In the back. He’ll be out in a minute.” He loaded another nail into the gun, then gestured with it toward the new shelves. “You like?”

“Very much,” Tess said. “They look terrific.”

“Gracias, senora.”

“De nada. I’m sorry…what’s your name?”

“Teo,” Eli answered, coming into the room. Smiling. Making Tess’s lungs seize up. “Teo Martinez.” He nodded toward both the gray-haired man and the younger one on the other side of the shelves. “And his son, Luis. I was damn lucky they were both available. Couldn’t ask for a better crew.”

“No, it’s us who are grateful, Mr. Garrett. With the economy the way it is?” He did the in-the-tank gesture with his thumb. “Not so easy, finding construction work these days.” Turning back to the shelves, he lined up the nail gun and let ’er rip. Pow. He glanced over his shoulder at Tess while reloading. “Las’ month was the firs’ time in twenty-five years I have to go on unemployment. Luis, he’s been laid off, what? Three, four times in the last year. With a wife and son to support, he’s thinking, maybe he should join the army or the marines—”

“It’s just an option, Pop,” the younger man said as Tess’s lungs seized again, for an entirely different reason.

“An’ I tell you—” pow “—wait a little while, see if things pick up. An’ see?” He tossed a grin in Eli’s direction. “They did.”

Tess’s gaze slid to Eli, exchanging an apologetic glance with the younger Martinez, and Tess guessed that this job was at best only a reprieve. The younger man shrugged—It’s okay, man, I’m cool—then bestowed a beautiful smile on Tess that broke her heart.

At that moment, Eli wasn’t sure what was tearing him up more—Luis’s bravado or the obvious turmoil that bravado provoked in Tess. Because even though she was smiling and commending Luis for wanting to serve his country, Eli could tell the conversation was bringing a whole lot of junk to the surface…even if he couldn’t immediately identify what that junk was.

“Looks great, guys,” Eli said to the two workers, then steered Tess into the gutted kitchen. “You okay?”

Caution flashed in her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe because the minute Luis brought up the military you looked like a brick had fallen on your head?”

“That obvious, huh?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Watching the young man, she breathed out a sigh. “How old is he?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Same age as Ricky when he first went in,” she said, more to herself than Eli. “Teo said there’s a kid?”

“Yeah. A little boy. Just turned one a couple weeks ago.” When Tess sucked in a breath, Eli said, “Tess? What is it?”

After several seconds, she shook her head. “Nothing. You ready to go?”

“Sure,” Eli said slowly, grabbing a leather baseball jacket off the counter’s skeleton and shrugging into it. He fished his car keys out of his pants pocket, then patted his other pockets, sighing. “Okay, I’m an idiot, I must’ve left my wallet at the shop.”

“It’s okay, we can take my car. I just gassed up, anyway.”

“That’s fine, but I need the company credit card. Which is in my wallet—”

“Wait—you’ve been driving without your license?”

“Yeah. From the shop to here. And since I wasn’t giving the sheriff any reason to pull me over, you can wipe that oh-my-God-you-didn’t look off your face. But you mind if we swing by the shop on our way out of town?”

“Not at all,” Tess said. Looking highly amused.

He told the guys they’d be back in a couple of hours, then followed Tess outside and to her car, not realizing until his hand landed on the driver door handle what he was doing. As he trooped around to the passenger side, grumbling, Tess laughed. It wasn’t the old Tess laugh—the laugh that used to drive him crazy, in a good way—but then, this wasn’t the old Tess.

“It must be killing you,” she said as they both got in, “letting me drive. You couldn’t stand it…” The key in the ignition, her eyes darted to his. “Before.”

“What can I say? I’ve evolved.” Shoulder belt latched, Eli leaned back, watching her. “At least, on the surface.” When she gave him a puzzled look, he shrugged. “It’s not like letting a woman drive threatens my masculinity or something. But to tell you the truth…sitting on this side of the car? I hate it. If I’m in a vehicle, I want to be the one driving. The one making the decisions that could mean the difference between me being alive at the end of the trip or not.” At her silence, he glanced over. “Just bein’ honest.”

Her mouth twitching, she glanced at him. “Can’t very well take offence since I feel exactly the same way.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“You think this means we have control issues?”

“Oh, I know we do,” he said. Then grinned. “Especially you.”

She didn’t grin back. Although she didn’t try smacking him with her purse, either. So he’d count that as a draw. “How on earth I’ll ever teach the kids to drive, though, I have no idea.”

“This is why God made driver’s ed. And you need to turn right up ahead—”

“I know where I’m going, Eli. Sheesh.”

But at least she was smiling.

When they got to the shop, Eli said, “You may as well come in. This might take a while.”

“You don’t know where your wallet is?”

“Sure I do. It’s in there. Somewhere.”

Rolling her eyes, she got out of the car and followed him inside. Jose glanced up from the table saw, nodding to Tess as she followed Eli back to his workspace. “Wow,” she said when she noticed the headboard. “That’s amazing. Who’s it for?”

“A client who canceled his order.”

“Idiot,” she muttered, then walked over to get a closer work. “Thea told me you’d gone into furniture making, but I had no idea you were this talented. No, seriously, I’m impressed. And I don’t impress easily.” Now there’s a shock, Eli thought as she added, “What’re you going to do with it?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” Eli muttered, pawing through the crap on his workbench.

“Wait a minute…I’d planned on staging the house anyway—if you haven’t sold the bed by the first open house, could I borrow it?”

Eli looked over. “You serious?”

“Absolutely. I’ve still got the old queen mattress and box-springs in my garage from when I changed out the master bedroom…” She shut her eyes for a second, then said, “And I’m sure I can rustle up a comforter and some pillows. And who knows, maybe somebody will buy it. So how about it?”

“Well…okay, then. Yeah. Thanks.” Eli spotted the shirt jacket he’d been wearing the day before; sure enough, the wallet was in the chest pocket.

“Any other furniture just lying around?” Tess said, craning her neck.

“Sorry, no. Although…” He glanced over at a stack of reclaimed lumber he’d been hoarding for more than a year. “I might be able to throw together a dining table and a couple of benches. If that would work.”

“Oh, don’t go to any extra trouble—”

“I wouldn’t be.” He held up the wallet. “Got it. Ready?”

As they traipsed back front, though, she stopped for a moment to chat with Jose—apparently his son and Enrique had been in boot camp together—and something warm bloomed inside him as Eli realized her friendliness wasn’t some salesperson schtick, but stemmed from a genuine concern about how other people were getting on. Not that she couldn’t get as bristly as the next person, if the situation—or the offense—warranted it. But neither did she let cynicism infect her relationships.

Not all of them anyway.

“Teo clearly thinks the world of you,” she said once they were on the road again. “For giving him and Luis work.”

“Just glad this job came along so I could. We’ve known the family forever. Mom and Teo’s wife, Luisa, do a lot of church stuff together.”

“Here,” she said, fishing a small pad and pen out of her purse on the console between them as she drove one-handed. Eli nearly had a stroke. “Write down their number,” she said, wagging them at him. “In case I hear of any other work in the area.”

Eli pulled out his cell, clicking through his contacts menu until he found Luis’s number. As he wrote it down, he slid his eyes to Tess. “Please tell me you’re not one of those women who puts on her makeup while driving.”

“Dear God, no,” she said on a short laugh. “Ricky hated that—” She hissed in a quick breath. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget. That he’s not really part of my life anymore.”

Replacing the pad and pen in her purse, Eli said, “Does it bother you to talk about him?”

A shrug preceded, “Depends on the day. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes not.” She shoved a tuft of hair behind her ear; it popped right back out. “Since there’s nobody to talk to, though, it’s kinda moot.”

“What about your aunt? Or your friends?”

They drove probably another half mile or so before she quietly said, “Dumping on the people you care about gets old real fast.”

“Even though you’d do the same for them.”

She shot him a glance. “And you know this how?”

“Because I know—or knew, at any rate—you. In school, you were always the sounding board for everybody else, the guys, as well as the girls. It was weird,” he said when she softly laughed. “So how is it everybody can bitch to you, but you don’t feel right about letting somebody else bear the burden from time to time?”

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. At perfect ten-to-two driving school formation. “Maybe because I don’t feel I need to, because I’m doing okay—”

“Like hell,” he said, and her eyes flashed to his. “I was there, Tess,” he said when she looked away, her mouth set in an angry line. “People who’re ‘okay’ don’t have wild sex with their old boyfriends.”

“And I could’ve gone all day without you bringing that up.”

“It happened, Tess. You can’t deny it. And God knows I’m not gonna. And it seems to me maybe you better figure out why it happened. Because if the earth tilts on its axis and we ever do that again, I wanna make good and sure it’s not because you’re mad at the world and taking it out on me.”

“If we ever…?” Her laugh this time was sharp. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Just saying, if it does.”

“Well, it’s not. So you can put that thought right out of your head.” She paused. “And I thought you didn’t care. About my…” Her lips smushed together. “Motivation.”

“That time, no. Just don’t let it become a habit.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Eli—” When he chuckled, she realized she’d been had. “I hate you,” she said, without heat.

“Ah…just like old times,” he said, propping one boot on the dashboard, earning a disapproving frown. “Do I make you nervous?”

Her head whipped around so fast her sunglasses slipped. “What? No!” When he raised one eyebrow, she released a breath. “Okay, maybe a little—”

“Ha!”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “It’s…strange being around you again. That’s all.”

“You can say that again,” Eli said nonchalantly, slouching down as much as the seat belt would let him, his hands folded over his stomach.

“Do I…make you nervous?”

“Heck, yeah. ’Cause it’s like I should know you, you know? Only I don’t. And yet…”

“What?”

He looked at her. “Before, when we were kids? I know ninety, maybe ninety-five percent of the relationship was about body contact. But the five to ten percent that wasn’t?” Focusing back out the windshield, he said, “I really liked you, Tess. Hell, I thought you were the coolest person I’d ever known.”

“Oh, God, Eli—”

“Don’t go getting your panties in a twist. I’m not tryin’ to score or anything. Exactly.” He ducked, chuckling, when one hand flew over the gearshift to smack at him. “But I guess what I’m trying to say is, some tiny part of that—it’s still alive. On my side of the fence anyway. I mean, by rights, this should feel totally bizarre, right? After all those years apart, then us hooking up like that.” He waited for another sputtering explosion that never happened. “And yet in some ways this feels completely natural. Which is what makes it so weird.” He sighed. “Am I making any sense at all?”

The Home Depot in their sights, she met his eyes. “Yeah. You are.” Turning into the parking lot, she added, “Which only goes to show how bad off I am.”

However, once in the store, Tess impressed the hell out of him by charging straight to the cabinet section, no veering off down aisles they didn’t need to be. And within maybe thirty seconds of his showing her the few options that were not only in stock, but within their meager budget, she said, “That one. See you in Paint,” and off she went, leaving him to order what they needed. Not surprisingly, by the time he caught up with her in the paint department, the first of four different colors were being mixed up.

Leaning against the paint counter, Eli softly laughed.

“What’s so funny now?”

“Just never met a gal who didn’t prevaricate for a week about choosing paint colors. Took my mom three months to decide what color to repaint the living room, another month to choose the carpet to go with it.”

“And you’re basing all women on that one experience?”

“Nope. My ex-sister-in-law was just as bad. And there might’ve been a girlfriend or two along the way who’d watched one too many episodes on HGTV who’d dragged me shopping with her. Drove me nuts. Me, I point to something, say, ‘Yeah, that one,’ and that’s it. Half makes me wonder if you’re really a woman.”

Tess gave him a look. Eli grinned harder.

“So,” she said, moving smartly along, “you got close enough to a ‘girlfriend or two’ to do the decorating thing?”

“Not by choice, believe me.” He paused. “And that pretty much signaled the end of those relationships, too.”

“Death by paint chips?”

“You wanna send a man to hell, show him fifteen different shades of white and ask him which one he likes better.”

Tess laughed, and Eli smiled, thinking, Don’t stop. The dude clunked the first two gallons up on the counter, went to work on the next batch. “I’m not a ditherer. Especially when it’s not for me,” she said, skimming a finger along one can’s rim. A beat or two passed before she looked back at him. “And I’ve learned the sorts of colors more likely lead to an offer. Warm neutrals,” she said, holding up a swatch that reminded him of coffee with too much cream.

A few feet away, a couple started bickering with each other in Spanish. Figuring it wasn’t exactly a private affair, Eli didn’t even pretend not to listen in. Except they were talking too fast for him to pick out more than a word here and there. He nudged Tess with his elbow. “What’re they saying?” he whispered.

“What?” she said, then glanced over her shoulder. Shaking her head, she turned back to her paint swatches. “Something about his mother, but that’s about all I can make out. My Spanish is from hunger, remember?”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged. “Mom never let me speak it. She considered it low class. What do you think of this for the dining room?” she said, holding up another swatch.

“It’s…yellow? And what do you mean your mother considered it low class?”

“Just what I said. Not a whole lot of Latino love goin’ on in my house growing up. And can we please change the subject?”

He got the message. “You got a painter lined up?”

“Yeah. Me.”

“You?”

Again with the eyes. “I painted my whole house myself. I imagine I’ll be okay with a few accent walls and a bathroom. And it’ll help stay within the budget.” Grunting softly, she hefted first one can, then the other into the cart. “I’ve become very handy over the years, I’ll have you know.”

“You one of those gals who changes her own tires?”

“One of my least favorite jobs in the world, but yep. And my oil, sparkplugs and filters, too.”

“Impressive.”

“Not at all. Just easier than depending on someone else,” she said as the next can of paint appeared in front of them. Eli grabbed it before she did, if for no other reason than to avoid the strange look the paint-mixer dude was giving him. Maybe because Tess weighed less than the paint.

Forty-five minutes later—after choosing the cabinet hardware, backsplash tile and bathroom vanity and fixtures with equal efficiency—they were back in her SUV and Eli realized he was starving.

“Hey. Wanna burger or something? My treat.”

“I can buy my own lunch—”

“I’m sure you can, but you’re not gonna today. So deal. So what’ll it be? Mickey D’s, Wendy’s or Burger King?”

“I think my arteries just screamed.”

“You don’t eat meat?”

“Meat that doesn’t look like it’s been run over by a steamroller, sure. If something’s gonna eventually kill me, I’d at least like to enjoy the process.” Her mouth worked for a second before she abruptly turned off the highway onto a little street winding away from the touristy area. “You want a burger, I’ll show you a burger.”

Twenty minutes later, Eli grinned down at a burger so fat and juicy and sassy he half expected it to moo. Then he looked over at Tess, her eyes closed as she savored her own first bite, and something squeezed tight in his chest.

“I take it,” he said, “you haven’t had one of these in a while, either.”

Tess shot him a look, but was apparently too caught up in red meat worship to make a comeback. Swallowing, she shook her head. “Taking two little kids someplace like this is a waste. One bite and they’re done. Or have to go potty. Sure, the girls and I have our Ortega’s Wednesdays—sometimes—but it’s not the same as—”

Lowering her burger to her plate, she turned toward the window. But not before Eli saw tears swell in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, dipping his head. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said on an embarrassed half laugh, then pressed the edge of her napkin to one eye. “Have no idea where that came from. Don’t take it personally.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“No, I mean…” She blew out a breath, then took a sip of her iced tea. “I’d just forgotten how nice it can be to have a civilized meal. Even if it’s just a burger and fries. Just two adults sitting in a booth…” She shook her head, laughing a little.

Covering.

“Hey,” Eli said, and she looked up again, chewing. “Admitting you enjoy the company of somebody over four feet tall isn’t a sign of weakness. Even if the company is me. Although I’m flattered as hell you consider me an adult.”

He’d expected—wanted—a laugh. Instead, she lowered her gaze again, dunking a French fry in a pool of ketchup for several seconds before answering. “Okay, confession time…watching you work, the way you interact with your crew…” She almost smiled. “Whatever personal baggage we have between us, I can’t deny the person I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks…”

Eli went completely still, watching her. Waiting. Finally she lifted her eyes, looking seriously put out with herself. “I was wrong about you, okay? And seeing somebody for who he is—not who you thought he was—has nothing to do with flattery.”

Wow. Talk about your whoa and damn moments. Eli leaned back, one arm stretched across the booth seat’s top. “Despite all the gossip?”

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