A MOTHER’S WISH
“D’you ride? Horses.”

“It’s been a while, but yeah.”

“Good. I’ve got horses that need to be ridden. We’ll take the boy with us. Day after tomorrow,” he added as an afterthought, then stomped out of the kitchen.

Winnie realised how monumental this was. Except…

She turned to follow him. She found him on the back deck.

“Back where I come from,” she said, “it’s the custom to ask a woman if she’d like to do something. So –” she crossed her arms “– care to try this again?”

Aidan looked back out towards the setting sun. “I’m thinking of going horseback riding on Saturday. Wouldya be interested in goin’ along?”

“I’d love to,” she said, then turned smartly on her heel and walked away.

MOTHER TO BE
Pregnant?

His jaw dropped. They’d made a baby, he and Delia. Good God, she was carrying his child.

“Alexander? I’ve blown your mind, haven’t I?” Delia asked. “Before you get too freaked, I just want to let you know I’m not asking for anything. I only –”

“Freaked?” He got to his feet, crossing the small room to take her hand in his. “You’re amazing. You’re strong and audaciously funny and a beautiful woman. There’s no one else I’d rather have as the mother of my child.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously? Because –”

“Marry me, Delia Carlisle.”

A Mother’s Wish

By

Karen Templeton
Mother to Be

By

Tanya Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Title Page

A Mother’s Wish

About The Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Mother To Be

About The Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Preview

Copyright

A Mother’s Wish

By

Karen Templeton

Karen Templeton is a Waldenbooks bestselling author and RITA® Award nominee. As a mother of five sons, she’s living proof that romance and dirty nappies are not mutually exclusive terms. 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 at www.karentempleton.com.

Chapter One

Eyes narrowed against the low-slung October morning sun, Winnie Porter stood in the open doorway to the Skyview Gas ‘n’ Grill, sipping strong coffee from a foam cup. Outside, the relentless wind scoured the barren West Texas landscape, the whiny, hollow sound like the cry of a never-satisfied newborn.

Fitting, Winnie thought, the constant hum of semis barreling along I-40 a half mile away tangling with the wind’s nagging. Come on, girl, get a move on, it seemed to say, echoing a restlessness that had plagued her for longer than she could remember. Except now that she finally could get a move on…

She shifted on cowboy-booted feet, plowing one sweaty palm down a denimed thigh, the fabric soft as a baby’s blanket. Over her cotton cami’s neckline, the ends of her wet hair tickled her shoulders and back. Annabelle, her Border collie, nudged her thigh, panting. We go for ride? I ride shotgun, ‘kay—?

“Here you go. And don’t eat it all before you get to Amarillo.”

Winnie’s eyes shifted to the bulging plastic sack filled with enough food to see a family of pioneers through the winter. “Thanks,” she said, steeled against the barely restrained censure flooding the nearly black eyes in front of her. Winnie took the bag, turning away as Elektra Jones blew a breath through her broad nose.

“Miss Ida ain’t even been dead a week—”

“I know—”

“And all you’re doin’ is just setting yourself up for more hurt.”

An opinion offered at least a dozen times in the last two days. “Can’t hurt worse than what I’ve lived through the last nine years,” Winnie said softly, hoisting her duffel onto her shoulder.

“But all this time, you said—”

“I was wrong,” Winnie said simply. “And don’t even start about needing me here, E, you know as well as I do you’ve been basically runnin’ this place on your own anyway. Especially for the last year—”

Her voice caught as she glanced around Ida Calhoun’s legacy to her only granddaughter—a run-down diner/convenience store/gas station, its proximity to the interstate its sole saving grace. Since Winnie was ten years old the place had variously been a refuge and a prison. And now it was all hers.

Even from the grave, the old girl was still getting her digs in.

“You won’t even miss me,” Winnie said, facing the downturned mouth underneath an inch-thick cushion of dyed blond hair.

“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” Elektra said, eyes brimming, and Winnie thought, Don’t you dare, dammit, giving up the fight when E muttered, “Oh, hell,” and clasped Winnie to her not-insubstantial bosom.

“It’s only for a week, for heaven’s sake.”

“Still.” Elektra gave her one last squeeze, then clasped Winnie’s shoulders, her hands cool and smooth on Winnie’s heated skin. “You be careful, hear?” Afraid to speak, Winnie nodded.

Minutes later, with the Dixie Chicks holding forth from the old pickup’s radio and Annabelle grinning into the wind from her passenger side perch, Winnie glided onto the interstate behind a big rig with Alabama plates, headed west on what even she knew was likely to be a fool’s errand.

Hours later, she climbed out of the truck in front of a mud-colored gnome of an adobe squatting in the woods, wearing an incongruous, steeply pitched, tin-roof hat. With a woof of anticipation, Annabelle streaked into the dense, bushy piñons and yellowing live oaks, their leaves rustling in the cleanest breeze Winnie had ever smelled; she squinted into the glare of luminescent blue overhead, nearly the same color as the peeling paint on the house’s front door. This, I can deal with, she thought, smiling, as the sharply cool air—a good twenty degrees cooler here than home—goosed her bare arms and back.

Winnie backtracked to tug a long-sleeved shirt off the front seat, as a white Toyota Highlander crunched up behind her. The real estate agent, she guessed, her thought was confirmed a moment later when a very pregnant, very pretty, dark-haired gal carefully extricated herself from behind the wheel and shouted over, “You must be Winnie! I’m Tess Montoya, we spoke over the phone.” She opened her back door to spring an equally dark-haired preschooler from the backseat, then laughed. “I warned you not to expect much!”

“Are you kidding?” Winnie shrugged into her shirt, smiling for the adorable little boy, shyly clinging to his mother’s long skirt. Then she turned to take in the swarms of deep-pink cosmos nodding atop feathery stems on either side of the door, the pair of small windows—also blueframed, also peeling—hunkered inside foot-thick walls, like the eyes of a fat-cheeked baby—

“I love it already!” she said with another grin in Tess’s direction as she grabbed duffel and sleeping bag from behind the seat, then followed the chattering agent inside.

“Unfortunately, both the electricity and plumbing can be temperamental,” Tess was saying, palming her stomach. Winnie looked away. “But my aunt—she’s the owner’s housekeeper—stayed here for a while before she moved in with the family. So I knew it would be livable. At least for a week! Although it’s still beyond me why you wanted to stay in Tierra Rosa. Now if you’d said Taos or Santa Fe—”

“This is fine. Really,” Winnie said, her gear thunking to the bare wooden floor, gouged and unpolished, as she let her eyes adjust to the milky light inside. In an instant she catalogued the stark, white, unadorned plaster walls and kiva fireplace, the mission-style sofa and matching chair with scuffed leather seats, the oversize rocker, the logheadboarded double bed. The “kitchen” consisted of an old pie cupboard between an iron-stained sink and an ancient gas stove, a battle-weary whitewashed table with two mismatched chairs. A low-framed door, she discovered, led to a bug-size bathroom, clearly an afterthought, with one of those old-time claw-footed tubs.

But the place was spotless, with fluffy towels hanging from black iron rings, a brand-new cake of Dove on the sink. And the thick comforter and fluffy pillows on the bed practically begged her to come try it out.

“It’s…cozy,” she said, and Tess laughed.

“Nice word for it. Listen, sorry I have to scoot, but I’ve got a million things to do before this little squirt pops out. But there’s my card,” she said, laying a business card on the table, then trundling toward the open front door, through which floated childish laughter. “Call me if you need anything. Or my aunt, she’s just up the hill, I left you her number, too—Oh! Miguel! No, baby, leave the doggie alone!”

“I think it’s the other way around,” Winnie said, laughing, as she called Annabelle off the giggling—and now dog-spit-slimed—little boy.

“I keep thinking about getting him a dog, but with his father away and a new baby…” Tess sighed. “Anyway…enjoy your stay!”

Winnie watched the SUV rumble down the dirt road, then went back inside. Annabelle promptly hopped up on the bed, turned three times in place and flopped down, grinning, eager-eyed. We live here now?

“Only for a week,” Winnie said over the pinch of anxiety in her stomach, Elektra’s warning ringing in her ears. “Maybe.”

She tugged open the back door and walked out into the small clearing carved out of the forest, where the sweet, clean breeze caught her loose hair the way a mother might sift a child’s through her fingers. A shrill bird call made her glance up in time to catch a flutter of blue wings. A jay, maybe, rustling in the branches, searching for pine nuts. She shut her eyes, savoring, telling herself even if her reason for being here didn’t pan out, that after the past year—years—there were worse things than spending a week in heaven.

Winnie’s smile faded, however, when she opened her eyes and noticed the fresh bicycle tracks in the soft dirt, leading to a path that disappeared into the trees. She turned, frowning, her gaze following the tracks, which stopped just short of the house, next to a woodpile probably loaded with eight-legged things. Or, far worse, no-legged things. With scales and forked tongues.

In the woods behind, something cracked. Winnie wheeled, her back prickling, her great fear of slithery wildlife momentarily forgotten as Annabelle joyfully vanished into the undergrowth in hot pursuit…only to flinch at the barrage of pine nuts from overhead, courtesy of a huge, and very pissed-off, squirrel. The dog glanced up, confused, then hauled ass back to the house to cower behind Winnie’s legs.

The sky embraced her laughter.

His breath coming in short, angry pants, the child tightly gripped the handlebars of his birthday bike—a real mountain bike, just like he’d wanted—as he watched the lady and her dog through the trees. He let go long enough to swipe a hand across his nose, a hot burst exploding inside his chest. You get away from my house! he wanted to yell, except his throat was all frozen up—

“Robbie! Rob-bie!”

Robson jerked his head toward Florita’s call, her voice pretty faint this far from the house. If he didn’t get back soon, she’d get worried, and then she’d tell his dad, and he’d get worried, and that would suck. So after one last glance at the lady laughing at her dumb dog, he turned around, pumping the pedals as fast as he could to get back.

To get away.

The chickens scattered, clucking their heads off, when he streaked through the yard, dumping his bike and running around to the back. “An’ where were you?” Florita asked when he came into the sunny kitchen, the pretty blue-and-yellow tiles making Robson feel better and sad at the same time, because Mom had picked them out.

“Just out ridin’,” Robson said, panting, going to the big silvery fridge for a bottle of juice. He could feel Florita’s dark eyes on his back, like she could see right through him. He really liked Flo, but she saw too much, sometimes. And nice as she was, she wasn’t Mom. Mom had been all soft and real-looking, her long, black-and-silver hair slippery-smooth when Robson touched it. Flo’s hair was dark, too, but it was all stiff and pokey. She wore way too much makeup, too, and clothes like all the teenage girls did at the mall, like she was scared of getting old, or something.

Mom had always said getting old didn’t scare her at all, it was just part of life. Robson swallowed past the lump in his throat, only then he realized Flo had been saying something.

“Huh?”

Flo rolled her eyes. “One of these days, you’re gonna clean out your ears an’ hear what I say the firs’ time, an’ I’m gonna fall right over from the shock.” Since Flo said stuff like that all the time, he knew she wasn’t really mad. “I said, your father’s goin’ down to Garcia’s, you wanna go with him?”

“No, that’s okay,” Robbie said, and Flo gave him one of her looks, the one that said she understood. That ever since Mom died, Dad spent more and more time up in his studio, painting, and not so much time with Robson. Not like he used to, anyway. Flo said Dad was just trying to “work though” his feelings about Mom dying and stuff. Which made Robson mad, a little, because you know what? He missed Mom, too. A lot. And it hurt that he didn’t feel like he could talk to Dad about it. But whenever he tried, Dad would get all mopey-dopey, and that only made everything worse. So finally Robson stopped trying. Because what was the point?

“You can’t stop trying,” Flo said softly, like she’d read his mind, which kinda freaked Robbie out. He also knew she’d only nag him if he didn’t go, so he finished his juice, went and peed, then dragged himself out to Dad’s studio, pushing himself from one side of the passage to the other as he went, even though Flo would get on his case about the handprints.

Once there, he had to blink until his eyes got used to the bright light—with all the windows along the top, it was almost like being outside. Especially since the room was so tall. Robbie liked how it smelled in here, like oil paint and wood and that stuff Dad used to make the canvases white before he painted on them. Rock music playing from a CD player on the floor practically bounced off the walls and ceiling, it was so loud, tickling Robbie’s feet and moving right on up through his body. When he was littler, he used to like yelling out his name in here, just to hear it echo.

Paint all over his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, Dad was cleaning up one of his big paintbrushes, frowning a little at the painting he was working on. At least, Robbie thought he was frowning—it was hard to tell with Dad’s dark, curly hair hanging in his face. Robbie fingered his own much lighter-colored hair, which was almost as long. Flo was constantly fussing at both of them to get it cut, but Dad said this was their mountain-man look. He didn’t shave every day, either. Flo had a lot to say about that, too.

Robbie looked at the painting. Some of Dad’s canvases were so humongous he had to build this thing called a scaffolding to reach the top. But this one was small enough to sit on one of Dad’s special-made easels. The colors were real bright, oranges and purples and pinks and greens, kinda like the view from his window when the sun was going down. But instead of being pretty, the colors looked like they were fighting each other.

“D’you like it?” Dad asked. His father sounded different from everybody else around here because he was from Ireland. It was neat, watching his friends’ eyes get all big the first time they’d hear Dad say something.

He twisted to see Dad watching him with that sad look in his eyes Robbie hated, so he turned his head back around, fast, like when you touch something hot and drop it right away, before it can burn you.

“Who’s it for?”

“Just for me,” Dad said.

And Robbie said, “Oh.” Then he added, “Flo said you’re goin’ down to Garcia’s?”

“Yeah, they got in a shipment for me today.” Dad often had art supplies and stuff sent to the old store down on the highway, rather than to the house, partly because it was sometimes hard for the delivery trucks to get up here, partly so people wouldn’t be able to find him. Dad didn’t like people poking around in his business, he said. “Want to come along?”

“Sure,” he said, like it was no big deal. Except when he looked at Dad, he was smiling, sort of. At least enough to make creases in his fuzzy cheeks. But his eyes still looked like they were saying he was sorry. Like Mom’s dying had somehow been Dad’s fault. Robbie wanted to tell Dad to stop being dumb. Instead, he asked, “Can I get a Nutty Buddy?”

“You’re on,” Dad said back, reaching down to swing Robbie up into his arms, like he used to do, and Robbie hugged his neck as tight as he could, not even caring that Dad’s face was all prickly, like a porcupine.

The sign in the window was hand-lettered and to the point:

Dogs and Kids Allowed Only With an Adult

Gotta love a town that’s got its priorities straight, Winnie thought as she freed Annabelle from the truck in front of the long, stuccoed building with a columned front porch, all by its lonesome out on the highway. And according to the larger—but still hand-lettered—sign stuck in the dirt bordering the road, Tierra Rosa’s only gas station. She’d keep that in mind.

On one side of the porch sat a series of wooden rocking chairs, flanked by wooden crates of corn, melons and apples; on two of the chairs sat a pair of toothless, leathery-faced old men, rocking off-sync and scrutinizing Winnie from underneath battered cowboy hats as she and Annabelle walked up the steps. She nodded; they nodded back.

Inside, the plank-floored building was the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned general store. A quick perusal revealed everything from diapers to fishing tackle, Hungry-Man dinners to motor oil, Levis to Rice Krispies. In addition to food, gas and pretty much everything else, a sign at the front counter also proclaimed the place’s official U.S. Post Office status, P.O. Boxes Available.

Aside from the old dudes outside, Winnie and Annabelle were the only customers; by the cash register, a very cute, overly cleavaged, brunette teenager in a low-cut top and open hoodie leaned on the counter, her chin digging into her palm as she flipped through what looked like a textbook, frantically taking notes in a spiral notebook beside it. Something told Winnie that whatever the gal’s assignment was, she wasn’t finding the tall, buff, teenage boy with a shaved head trying to get cozier all that much of a distraction.

“Quit it, Jesse!” she said, making a great show of moving out of range. “I’ve got this major test tomorrow—!”

“Aw, c’mon, Rach…just one little kiss? Please?”

Then she giggled, which the boy took as leave to swoop in for that kiss.

Winnie smartly wheeled her hundred-year-old grocery buggy toward the back, thinking, Ain’t love grand? over a wave of déjà vu so strong she was half inclined to stomp back to the register and smack some sense into one or both of the kids. Because nobody knew more than her where swooping and such led to.

Then she sighed and went about her business, reminding herself that not every teenage girl who indulges in a little kissy-face gets knocked up. That some were smart enough not to let things go that far. Or at least to make sure there were no consequences if they did.

“You need any help finding stuff?” the girl called out, almost like she cared. Winnie poked her head up over a shelf brimming with Old El Paso products.

“Um…dog food?”

“Back wall, to your right. Ice cream’s on special this week, too. Two half gallons for six bucks.”

“Thanks,” Winnie said, hauling a twenty-pound bag of Purina into her cart, then nudging it toward the frozen-food case, since the gal had taken such pains to steer her in that direction. Lost in a quandary between mint chocolate chip and Snickers, she barely heard the bell jingle over the door. So it took a second for the deep, Irish-accented male voice asking about a package to register.

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Black,” the girl said. “It’s right here, let me get it for you…”

After a white-hot jolt of adrenaline, Winnie ducked slightly behind a display of fishing rods to peer toward the front, too late realizing that Annabelle had sauntered back up to see if anybody needed herding, kisses, whatever. A moment later a young kid with shaggy, pale-blond hair popped into view, yanking open the case to grab one of the loose Nutty Buddies inside. At Winnie’s sucked-in breath, the kid’s head whipped around, eyes wide, and something inside her exploded.

Five minutes on the Internet, and there’d been the magazine article, complete with a photo of the reclusive Western landscape painter and his wife, a textile artist/social activist, her broad smile much more relaxed and friendly than her significantly younger husband’s. And scattered throughout the article, shots of the marvel of wood and glass—one whole side devoted to the high-cei-linged studio built especially to accommodate the “Irish Cowboy’s” massive canvases—that Aidan and June Black had built in the mountains bordering the picturesque northern New Mexican village of Tierra Rosa.

Then Winnie’s heart had stopped at the single profile image of the Blacks’ only child, a son. Adopted, although the article hadn’t mentioned that. Seven at the time of the shoot two years earlier, his hair had been almost angel-white in the sunlight.

The same color Winnie’s had been at that age—

“Yarp!”

Annabelle had reappeared to bow in front of the boy, tail wagging. Boy play with me? Please? Frowning, his thin shoulders weighted in some way she couldn’t exactly define, the kid looked from the dog to her, then back at the dog, quivering in anticipation.

“It’s okay,” Winnie said, not sure how she was breathing. “She wouldn’t hurt a bug if she stepped on it.”

Slowly, the boy got down on one knee to pat Annabelle’s head, and the dog became a blur—Boy likes me! Boy really, really likes me!—trying to lick everywhere at once. But he’d barely started giggling before he scrambled back upright, as though realizing he wasn’t supposed to be cavorting with strange dogs. Or a stranger’s dog, at least. Now the eyes focused on Winnie’s were accusatory, suspicious. Pained. And nearly the same weird blue-gray as hers, except for the flecks of gold near the iris.

“You the lady stayin’ in the Old House?”

The Old House. Like it was a name, not a description.

“Just for a little while.” He has my nose, too. For trouble, I bet. “You…saw me?”

“Yeah. Earlier.” The pointed chin came up. “Through the trees. I was on my bike.”

Bicycle tracks. Check.

“Oh. Do you, um, like to play around there?”

“Sometimes,” he said with a shrug. Not that I care.

Winnie’s mouth curved, at his beauty, his bravado. At how silly his long hair looked, nearly to his shoulders, as shiny and wavy as a girl’s. But every inch a boy, all the same, in his skater-dude outfit, the holes in his jeans’ knees. Still, she imagined the only thing keeping him from getting the crap beat out of him at school was his height, which made him look more like ten, maybe even eleven, than just-turned-nine.

Her face burning, Winnie turned back to the freezer case, grabbing—of all things—a carton of strawberry cheesecake ice cream, swallowing back the reassurance that wanted so bad to pop out of her mouth, that he could still come down and play, anytime—

“Robbie? Where’d you go—?”

They both looked up as Aidan Black—far shaggier and craggier than she remembered—materialized at the end of the aisle, nearly sending Winnie’s heart catapulting from her sternum. A second’s glance told her this was definitely not the mellow, grinning young man, his musical accent as smooth as one of Elektra’s chocolate shakes, she’d met barely two weeks before delivering the baby who’d become his son. The warm, laughing green eyes now dull and shuttered, this, she thought, was the very devil himself.

A devil who, despite how much she’d changed, too, instantly recognized her.

And wasn’t the least bit happy about it.

Her hair wasn’t punked up and jet-black as it had been then, but there was no mistaking those dusty-blue eyes, the set to her jaw, the way her long arms and legs seemed barely joined to her long-waisted torso, like a marionette.

A curse exploded underneath Aidan’s skull, just as Robbie said, “She’s the lady livin’ in the Old House,” and Aidan thought, Flo is a dead woman.

“We need to go,” he muttered, grabbing his son—his son—by the hand and practically hauling the lad up front to pay for his ice cream, hoping to hell “the lady” got the message that if she so much as opened her mouth—

He threw a couple of ones at Johnny Griego’s daughter at the register and kept going, swinging Robbie up into the truck’s cab and storming around to his side.

“Dad?” Robbie said, cautiously, once they were back on the highway. “What’s wrong?”

Where would you like me to start? Aidan thought. “Nothing, laddie,” he muttered, bracing himself as they passed a pasture where a half dozen or so horses aimlessly grazed…but not a peep from the other side of the truck. Then they crested a hill, on the other side of which lay a field chock-full of pumpkins. He glanced over, trying to decide if Robbie’s gaze was as fixed on those pumpkins as it appeared.

“We could stop, if you like,” he said carefully. When Robbie stayed quiet, Aidan added, “Shop early for the best selection?”

A second or two passed before Robbie shook his head. Aidan didn’t have to look at the lad to see the tears in his eyes.

His own stinging, as well, they kept driving, a heaping great sadness clawing at Aidan’s insides.

Aidan waited until he heard the distant boops and beeps of Robbie’s video game before confronting his housekeeper. “And it didn’t occur t’ya to tell me who Tess had let the Old House to?”

As it was, Aidan had only begrudgingly ceded to Flo’s entreaties, via her niece, to rent out the house to some woman from Texas determined to stay in Tierra Rosa and only Tierra Rosa. A normal man might have been at least curious about that. But Aidan was not a normal man, rarely concerning himself with the goings-on of the town he’d called home for more than a decade. So why would he have been even remotely interested in some woman keen on finding lodgings right here in town, and no where else?

Because I’m an eejit, he thought, as Florita slammed shut the oven door on their taco casserole, then turned, fully armed for the counterattack.

“An’ how were we supposed to know she was Robson’s birth mother? Even if Tessie had told me her name, it would have meant bupkis to me, since nobody ever told me what it was. Right? So you can stop with the guilt trip, boss.”

Aidan dropped heavily onto a kitchen chair, grinding the heel of one turpentine-scented hand into the space between his brows. True, since Flo hadn’t come to work for them until after Winnie Porter had removed herself from the equation, there’d been no reason to tell her who Robbie’s birth mother was.

But an anxious-eyed Flo had already sat across from him, their squabble forgotten. “You scared this woman’s gonna pull a fas’ one on you?”

“Not scared. Angry. That she showed up out of the blue. That she’d…” His hand fisted in front of him. “She’d no right to do this.”

“But if it was an open adoption—?”

“One she herself opted out of more than eight years ago.”

Flo seemed to consider this for a moment, then said, “You think she knows about Miss June? That she’s showin’ up now because Robbie’s mama’s dead?”

“I’ve no idea,” Aidan said on an expelled breath, then surged to his feet, grabbing his wool jacket from the hook. “Y’mind holding dinner for a bit?”

“Where you goin’?”

But Aidan was already out the door, the blood chugging through his veins faster than it had in more than a year.

Chapter Two

It’d been years since Aidan had even been down to the eighty-year-old, single-room adobe where he and June had lived when they first moved to Tierra Rosa. They’d bought the property for its own sake, holing up in the Old House until Aidan’s career had taken off well enough to build the New House, a half mile farther up the mountain. A half mile farther away from civilization. Not that either Aidan or June had been hideously famous, not then, not ever. Certainly not like the A-list actresses and shock jocks and such who called New Mexico home—they simply valued their privacy. Aidan, especially. In fact, he’d balked about that damn magazine spread, but June…

The back of his throat clogged as, despite top-of-the-line shocks, the truck shimmied and jolted down the dirt road, partially obscured by clumps of live oak and lemon-flowered chamisa, until shuddering to a stop in front of the house.

Snoozing in a coppery patch of sun on the low porch, the Border collie instantly jumped to attention, yapping; a second later, the screen door banged open and Winnie Porter appeared, hands shoved in her jeans’ pockets, the ebbing sunlight glancing off features a lot harder-edged than he remembered. But then, when he’d last seen her she’d been a very pregnant eighteen-year-old, her defiance worn down—according to June—by water weight and too many sleepless nights.

As he’d been then, Aidan was struck by her height, her almost mannish stance in cowboy boots that were all about utility rather than style, how there was nothing soft about her, anywhere. Even her hair was stick-straight, a million strands of wheat blowing helter-skelter around heavy-lidded eyes and pronounced cheekbones.

“Figured you’d be here soon enough.”

Her gaze was dead-on, unflinching. Certainly not a look designed to provoke concern about a woman being out here all alone, never mind that the only place safer would be a padded cell.

Aidan climbed down from his truck, coming just close enough for purposes of communication. Close enough to catch the determined set to her mouth. The instant that mouth opened, though, he cut her off with, “How the bloody hell did you find us?”

She shoved a stray chunk of her hair behind her ear. Unlike before, when black gunk had rimmed her eyes and she’d sported more studs than a country singer’s costume, she wore no jewelry, no makeup that Aidan could tell.

“Online,” she said, and his brain snapped back to attention. “That magazine article from a couple years back? At least, that you were living in Tierra Rosa—”

“You gave up the right to be part of Robson’s life more than eight years ago, when you begged—begged—us not to send you any more information about him.”

He saw the flash of regret. “I know. But if you’d give me a chance—”

“To do what? To disrupt a nine-year-old’s life?”

“No!” The word boomed between them. “That was never my intention! It still isn’t,” she said, but Aidan saw something in those dusky eyes that said there was more, the kind of more that was tensing his whole body. “Yeah, I knew it was a long shot, showing up out of the blue—”

“Long shot, hell. Try idiotic.”

Winnie backhanded her bangs out of her eyes. “And if there’d been any way of contacting you, I would’ve cleared things with you and June first—”

“Robbie’s mother is dead.”

She literally reeled. “Oh, God…I had no idea—”

“Just as you had no idea this house was on my property, I suppose.”

“I didn’t,” she said, her brows nearly meeting underneath the tangle of hair on her forehead. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—it wasn’t like I was gonna tell anybody I was looking for you! Not until I got here, at least. So how would I have known?”

Aidan shifted to cross his arms. Her damn dog sidled up to him, wagging its tail, trying to play mediator. “So you just came here on the off chance that…what?”

She rammed her hands into her back pockets, somehow managing to look sheepish and determined at the same time. “That somehow I’d be able to see him. That’s all. Just…see him.”

“D’you think I’m daft?”

She almost smiled. “I doubt anybody’d call your sanity into question.” The dog trotted back, all eyes for her mistress; Winnie bent over to pet her, her features softening in the peachy light. Then she lifted her eyes again, her voice gentle as rainwater when she said, “June hasn’t been gone very long, I take it?”

Aidan braced himself against the wave of pain, even though it no longer hit as high or hard as it once did. The guilt that it didn’t, though, sometimes felt worse.

“A year ago July. She was already sick when the magazine people came around.” He paused, his eyes riveted to hers. “It’s been a rough couple of years. Especially on the boy.”

Winnie broke the stare first, her gaze shifting toward the fiery glow behind the trees. “I can imagine,” she murmured, before her gaze met his again. “My grandmother died, too. A week or so ago.”

An event, he instantly surmised, that had something to do with Winnie’s sudden appearance. An image popped into Aidan’s head of the tall, commandeering woman with hair the color of a rooster’s comb and a gaze hot enough to peel flesh from bone. “My condolences.”

Winnie’s mouth stretched tight. “Not necessary. As you may have gathered, Miss Ida was definitely a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of gal. And ‘her way’ did not include helping raise her teenage granddaughter’s bastard.”

Aidan tensed. “You swore the adoption was your idea.”

“I was eighteen. Legal, maybe, but nowhere near ready to raise a kid on my own. And on my own is exactly what it would’ve been, since the baby’s father had vanished faster than a summer thunderstorm and my grandmother would have kicked me and the baby out on our butts.”

“You really think she would gone that far?”

Winnie blew a humorless laugh through her nose. “You met her. What do you think? And at the time,” she said, in that careful voice people use when the emotions are far too close to the surface, “I was totally on board with the open-adoption idea. Bein’ able to keep tabs on my baby, hear from time to time how he was getting on…” She stopped, once more shoving her breeze-stirred hair out of her face, and Aidan braced himself, thinking, No. Don’t. Except he wasn’t at all sure whether the order was meant for Winnie or himself.

“So what happened?”

“I made the mistake of holding my baby, that’s what. Knowing what’s best and what you feel…” Her eyes glistened. “But I thought, for my son’s sake, I can do this, I can let him go. Except it’s a little hard to let go when there’s this thread keeping you tied to each other. After a few months I knew if I didn’t cut that thread completely, I’d go crazy.”

“Then why are you here now?”

“Because when Ida died,” she shot back, “it hit me that I had nobody else in the entire world I could call family. No aunts or uncles, no cousins, nothing. And maybe this doesn’t make sense to anybody but me, but I just…I just wanted to make sure my kid was okay, that’s all. For my own peace of mind.”

“Fine,” Aidan said in a low voice. “You’ve seen him. So you can go back home with a clean conscience.”

Winnie’s head tilted on her long neck, the serrated ends of her hair sliding across her shoulders. “You would think,” she said sadly, and realization slammed into Aidan that it wasn’t anger making his skin crawl.

It was fear.

Even in the waning light, there was no mistaking Aidan Black’s don’t-mess-with-my-cub expression. If nothing else, at least Winnie could comfort herself knowing the adoption had taken so strong. Hey, if the roles had been reversed, she’d probably see her as a threat, too.

Except the roles weren’t reversed, they were what they were, and the fact was, a glimpse hadn’t been enough. Why she’d ever thought it would be, she’d have to dissect at some future date. Not that she wasn’t aware how thin the ice was she was skating on, just being here to begin with. But now that she was here—

“I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me spend some time with Robbie?”

“You’re not serious?”

Winnie felt as if she was trying to swallow five-year-old peanut butter. “Just as a friend. As your son, not mine. And you have every right to tell me to go to hell—”

“Back to Texas would be sufficient, I think.”

Tears threatened. No, she thought. “I know you don’t trust me—”

“And you’re wastin’ both of our times,” Aidan said, hands up, starting toward his truck.

“You could try to get to know me!” she shouted toward his back. “The me I am now, not the whacked-out teenager you met exactly once, and only for an hour at that. I swear,” she called out when he reached the driver-side door, “I would never do anything to hurt my own child! To hurt any child!”

Aidan turned. “Maybe not intentionally. But the effect would be the same.”

“How?” she said, coming off the porch, hearing Fool, fool, fool echo inside her head, helpless as usual to stop her mouth once it got going. “Aidan, I promise I’m no more interested in turning back the clock than you are. I’ll even respect if you’ve never told him he’s adopted—”

“Of course he knows he’s adopted!” Aidan said, long fingers squeezing the door handle. “But not only has he shown absolutely no curiosity about his birth parents, he’s still torn up about his mother’s death. Don’cha think that’s enough stress for a nine-year-old to deal with at one time?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve been there. So I’ve got a pretty good idea how Robson’s probably feeling.” She paused, suddenly identifying the nameless emotion she’d seen in the boy’s eyes back at the store. “Hell, he drags his pain around with him like a ball and chain. And yeah, it’s that obvious,” she said at Aidan’s raised brows, deciding it probably wouldn’t do to point out that Aidan did, too. She swallowed. Came close. “If you don’t want him to know I’m his birth mother right now, I’m fine with that.”

For the first time, she sensed Aidan’s wavering.

“Please,” she said softly, briefly touching his arm, muscles stiff underneath a layer of weathered denim. “I know I’m asking a lot, and you’ve got every right to say no—”

“That I do,” he said, his eyes going flinty again. “I’m sorry, Winnie,” he said, like he wasn’t sorry at all. “I can’t take the chance.”

It was stupid, how much it hurt, especially considering how low she’d thought her expectations had been. And anyway, even if she did get to see Robson, what if this new objective turned out to be no more satisfying than the first? What if she ended up returning to Texas with a heart even more broken than before, just like Elektra’d said?

Except then she realized it was too late, she’d already opened that particular can of worms and there was no cramming them back inside.

Nodding, her gaze sliding away, she backed up, her arms crossed. “Does he even know my name?”

“No.”

Her eyes lifted again. “You ever gonna tell him about me?”

“Only if he asks.”

After a moment, Winnie nodded again, hoping to make it back inside before the tears fell.

“So you’ll be leaving in the morning?” she heard behind her.

“I suppose. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day—”

“Watch out for the electricity, it’s a bit dodgy.”

Winnie turned, thoroughly confused. “Uh, yeah…Tess already told me—”

“And I assume you have a cell phone?”

“Charging even as we speak—”

“Give me your number, then,” Aidan said, digging his own phone out of his pocket.

“Why?”

“You’re on my property, I’m responsible for your welfare. So just give me your number, damn it.”

Shaking her head, Winnie stomped inside, fished a pen out of her purse and scribbled her number on a Burger King napkin from a pit stop in Moriarty, then went back outside and handed it to him.

“Then you better give me yours, too. Just in case a herd of rabid raccoons storms the house during the night.”

She thought maybe his mouth twitched. “505-555-2076.”

She scribbled it on a second napkin, although since she had a mind like flypaper she’d already memorized it. After that they stared each other down for another couple of seconds until Aidan finally opened his door and climbed into his truck.

“Hey,” she called over before he could shut his door.

“What?”

“I may have made some really, really dumb choices in my life, but something tells me choosing you and June as my baby’s parents wasn’t one of them.”

Then she went inside, thinking, Chew on that, buster.

Some time later, sitting on the bed in a pair of seen-better-days sweats, the tub of cheesecake ice cream rapidly vanishing as she stared at the flames belly-dancing in the fireplace, Winnie realized she’d stalled out at O-kay…now what?

By rights, she supposed she should at least be a little spooked, out here in the middle of nowhere all by her lonesome, with nothing but a lazy dog—she cast an affectionate glance at Annabelle, smushed up against her thighs—to protect her. But Winnie had never been the spookable sort. Not by things like slasher movies or ghost stories or things that went bump in the night, anyway.

Nor was she generally prone to boredom, since having lived most of her life in her own branch of nowhere she’d learned early on how to keep herself occupied. There’d always been people to see, fat to chew, businesses to keep tabs on, ailing grandmothers to tend to…even if by the end of Ida’s illness Winnie’s biggest fantasy centered on not having one blessed thing to do.

Well, honeybunch, she thought, setting the melting ice cream on the nightstand and curling forward to hug her knees, wish granted. Because here she was, with nothing and nobody to tend to.

Except her own thoughts.

Like about how being absolutely alone like this made her realize just how absolutely alone she was.

Now that was spooky.

Not that her family life had been any Waltons episode, although you’d think the way Ida’d watched those damn DVDs over and over, something would’ve rubbed off on her. But apparently they had rubbed off on Winnie, who still believed, deep in her heart, that families like that existed, somewhere. Families where all those binding ties held you up. Not tripped you up.

And coming here, seeing Robson…

The funny thing was, she thought, blowing her nose into another napkin, it wasn’t like she’d laid eyes on Robbie and immediately fallen in love with him. Oh, she’d felt a definite pang of something, she just hadn’t defined it yet. Curiosity, maybe. Combined with a little shock. But mostly she’d thought, Wow. That’s my kid.

And speaking of pangs…was it just her, or was Aidan seeing her appearance as much of a threat to him as to his son? Why she should think this, she had no idea, but all told she supposed it was just as well she was leaving. A body could only take so much weirdness at one time—

“Oh, Lord!” she yelped at the sudden knock on the door. She glanced at the dog, who yawned and snuggled more deeply into the soft, welcoming mounds of comforter, rolling one eye in Winnie’s direction. I stay here, keep the bed warm for you, ‘kay?

“Sure thing, wouldn’t want to disturb you,” Winnie muttered, before, on a profound sigh, she crawled out from underneath the nice warm covers to creep across the bare floor in sock-clad tootsies.

“Who is it?” she yelled through the—thankfully—solid front door.

“Florita Pena,” came a warm, richly accented voice. “Mr. Aidan’s housekeeper? I’m…jus’ checking to see if you have enough towels and…things?”

Hmm. The woman sounded harmless enough. Then again, some people might’ve thought her grandmother was harmless, too. If they were deluded or drunk enough. Steeling herself, she opened the door to a middle-aged woman in tight everything, like a drag queen doing a bad Rita Moreno impersonation.

Winnie was guessing the whole linens thing was just a ruse.

“Does your boss know you’re here?” she asked the housekeeper.

Wide, very red lips spread across a heavily moisturized face. “Do I look like I jus’ fell off the truck?”

“I’ll make tea,” Winnie said, holding open the door, taking care to keep her tootsies well out of range of the four-inch stilettos.

“And where the hell have you been?” Aidan hurled at his housekeeper when she “sneaked” back in through the kitchen door. “As if I couldn’t guess.”

Shucking off her gold leather jacket and hanging it on the hook by the door, Florita slid her eyes to his. She’d pounced on him like a cat on a lizard the moment he’d returned from his earlier visit to Winnie, although he hadn’t been able to fill her in properly until after supper, when Robson had gone up to his room to do homework. She’d listened, said little—which should have set off alarms—then vanished the minute Aidan’s back was turned. Now she shrugged. “My name’s not Cinderella, big shot, I don’ have to explain my comings an’ goings to you. I jus’ decided to check this chick out for myself.”

Then, because she was Flo, she grabbed a sponge and started to wipe down already sanitized counters. “And?” Aidan said with exaggerated patience.

“She’s got cojones,” she said at last, bony shoulders bumping. “It took guts, her coming here like this.”

“And…?” he said again.

Crimson lips pursed. “I think she knows nothing’s gonna change, no matter what. But I also think she felt she had to do this, you know? Like she heard a voice, maybe.”

The Irish with their superstitions have nothing on the Latinos, Aidan thought, muttering, “Doesn’t mean we’re hearing the same voices.” When Flo didn’t reply, he said, “Jaysus, Flo, the woman’s already changed her mind twice about what she wants, once when Robson was still a baby, the second time barely two hours ago. Winnie Porter’s as unstable as a three-legged table. If not downright crazy, coming here without even knowing if we were around or not.”

“Just because she did something crazy doesn’t mean she is crazy,” Flo said, but she didn’t look any too sure of that.

“Surely y’don’t think I should let her see him?”

“I don’t know, boss. An’ anyway, it’s not up to me.”

Aidan released a breath. “Winnie swore up one side and down t’other she wouldn’t tell Robbie who she was, but what’s to prevent her from having another change of heart? All it takes is one slip, and the damage is done.”

Rinsing out her sponge at the stainless steel sink, Flo tossed him a wordless glance over her shoulder.

“He never even asks about his birth mother, Flo—”

“An’ you don’ exactly encourage him, do you?”

“Why would I do that when everything’s fine the way it is?”

Slamming the sponge down by the faucet, the housekeeper spun around, grabbing a dish towel to dry her hands. “Fine?” She barked out a laugh. “After a year, Robbie still mopes aroun’, keeping to himself…that sure don’ sound like fine to me. Dios mío—when was the las’ time there was any real laughter in this house? I’ll tell you when,” she said, tears pooling in her dark eyes. “Not since Miss June was alive. If you call that fine, I call you loco.”

Aidan’s mouth pulled tight. True, Robson and he rarely talked anymore. Even tonight, Aidan’s awkward attempts to draw his son into some sort of conversation had been a bust, like always, his offer to help the lad with his homework rejected out of hand. No, things were far from fine. But…

“She had her chance, Flo. We were more than willing to keep her in the loop, and she backed out of the deal. And whose side are you on, anyway?”

Flo crossed her arms over a bosom so flat it was nearly concave. “Robbie’s my baby, too, I don’ want to see him hurt any more than you do. An’ I’m not saying I totally trust this girl—”

“You think she’d try to make contact behind my back?” Aidan said over the jolt to his heart.

“At this point,” Flo said, frowning, “no. I don’ think so. She knows forcing the issue’s not gonna get her what she wants. No, it’s Robbie I’m worried about.”

“Robbie?”

“When you get back from Garcia’s, he comes in here, starts asking me if I knew there was some lady staying in the Old House, how come nobody ever stayed there before now.” When she paused, Aidan caught the ambivalence in her eyes, that she was just as conflicted as he was. “If I knew who she was. I tell him no, but I can see the wheels turning,” she said, pointing to her head, then crossing her arms. “An’ once those wheels get started…” Her sentence ended in a shrug. “You know what they say—el gato satisfecho no le preocupa ratón.”

Aidan was by no means fluent in Spanish, but after ten years of living in a town where the population was seventyfive percent Hispanic, even he got that one: The satisfied cat ignores the mouse.

“Except Winnie’s leaving in the morning,” Aidan said, “so the point’s moot.”

“You think if she disappears, so will his questions?” When Aidan grimaced a second time, Flo added, “Maybe you should ask yourself…what would Miss June do? What would she wan’ you to do?”

A few minutes later, tall boy in hand, Aidan stood outside on the second story deck looking down toward the Old House, slivers of window light barely visible through the trees. And in that house, a woman with the courage to ask for something even she’d acknowledged she had no right to ask. As much as her plea had annoyed him, it had also threatened some part of himself he’d thought he’d secured good and tight months ago.

One hip propped against the railing, Aidan took a swig of his beer, replaying that whole cat-and-mouse thing in his head. Except people weren’t cats. In fact, that was the trouble with humans—the more they knew, the more they wanted to know. Winnie Porter had already demonstrated that, hadn’t she?

Aidan pushed out a groan into the rapidly cooling air. Winnie’s coming here was definitely an aggravation he did not need. However…what would June do? Where would her sympathies lie?

Stupid question, he thought on an airless laugh. As thrilled as his wife had been about adopting Robson, hadn’t she been the one to worry about how Winnie was dealing with it, if she had anybody to talk to who understood what she was going through? Then when Winnie cut off communication, he’d thought surely Winnie herself couldn’t be taking it any harder than June.

His mouth curved. In so many ways, June had been as tough as they came, taking on causes nobody else would touch, having no qualms about stirring up trouble if she thought stirring was warranted. But her heart was soft as cotton. She was more than a loving person, it was as though love was her purpose in life. Not the kind of love blind to human failings, but the kind that sees through those failings to the core of a person. His wife had no patience with stupidity, but deep down she believed in the basic goodness of mankind.

Aidan’s lungs filled with the sweetly acrid air, that pungent blend of moldering leaves and fireplace smoke that would always remind him of his wife. For her, not spring, but autumn had always been about new beginnings. She saw in the blaze of color that swept the mountains not death, but beauty. Comfort. Joy.

And right now, he felt her presence so strongly he could barely breathe.

June had never specifically spelled out her wishes regarding Robbie and his birth mother, but if she were here…

But she’s not, Aidan thought bitterly. And the situation was very different than if she had been. His first duty was to protect Robbie, at all costs. He didn’t owe Winnie Porter a damn thing.

Oh, for godssake, babe, the breeze seemed to whisper, don’t be such a tight-ass!

Aidan jerked so hard he nearly lost his balance. But a moment later Winnie’s voice replaced his wife’s, a voice every bit as strong and determined—even in pleading—as June’s had been, along with a pair of smoky blue eyes unafraid to meet his dead-on. Of course, the woman was bleedin’ crazy…

And sometimes crazy’s just courageous in disguise.

June again. His nostrils flaring as he sucked in a deep breath, Aidan squeezed shut his eyes, remembering how June had said, after they’d met Winnie, how much alike she thought she and Winnie were.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Aidan said aloud, then shook his head, thinking, And who’s crazy now? Only to violently shiver when the wind shoved at his back, insistent as a pair of hands, pushing him upright. Even more alarming was the way it seemed to be whistling, Talk to her Just that, over and over, until he thought he’d go mad. Madder than he suspected he already was, at least.

The wind—and the whistling, and the words—stopped when he went back inside. Thank God for small favors, Aidan thought as he tossed his bottle in the garbage, then went upstairs to say good-night to his son. Except Robbie was already asleep, a tangle of bedclothes and long arms and legs, Spider-Man and Transformers at war. Aidan straightened out boy and bedding as best he could, then eased himself onto the edge of Robbie’s bed to brush one permanently oil-paint-stained hand over his son’s shaggy hair. And underneath the hair, a face that spoke the truth far more in sleep than it ever did when the lad was awake, his expression as tangled as his bedding.

“We’re a right mess, you and I,” Aidan said softly, the emptiness inside about to stretch him to bursting. Things were supposed to get easier, “they” said, after a year. Certainly, Aidan had hoped they’d be more adjusted to their new reality better than they apparently were.

Then he thought of the look in Winnie’s eyes and realized that some realities are harder to adjust to than others, whether you’re “supposed” to or not.

Aidan’s loss was permanent, irreversible, the hopelessness of it an odd sort of comfort, he supposed. But for a nine-year-old child…

For a woman who, nine years ago, had quite possibly felt backed into a corner…

Releasing a long, silent sigh, Aidan rose from the bed and left his son’s room, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he went.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Winnie awoke with a yelp when an ice-cold doggy nose torpedoed underneath the comforter to make contact with her warm back. Instantly awake—and cranky—Winnie flipped over to glare at the beast whose toothy grin was a blur in the wriggling excitement that was Annabelle.

It’s morning? We go play? Find things to herd?

“Forget it,” Winnie grumbled. Between feeling like she’d hosted a rowdy keg party in her brain all night and an unfamiliar bed, she was lucky if she’d logged in three hours the entire night. Morning, whatever. And it was coollld out there on the other side of the comforter—

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, remembering that Aidan had invited her to breakfast. That she’d said yes. That loneliness and butter-soft Irish accents were a really, really bad combination. That—

That somewhere in the distance, a rooster was crowing.

“Crap, what time is it?” she asked the world at large, grabbing her watch off the nightstand, then sinking back into the mattress, groaning. Lord, show me a sign, she’d prayed the night before, mainly because Elektra was a big believer in the suckers and Winnie was up the creek, whether I should go or stay. Whether her wanting to get to know Robbie was a right idea, or a relapse into the stubbornness that had ruled so many decisions for so many years. Then Aidan had called, not a minute afterward, and she’d thought, Wow. Fast service.

“I can’t do this,” she now said to the dog, even though she had no earthly idea what this was. Annabelle stopped wriggling long enough to cock her head at her mistress, after which she heaved a great doggy sigh, laid her snout on top of the mattress and commiserated with Winnie with what she probably thought was her best soulful look. Except Annabelle, not being a hound, didn’t do soulful very well. Annabelle was all about perky and playful. Like a cheerleader.

Sure enough, after, oh, ten seconds of sympathy, the dog moonwalked backward, bowed with her butt in the air and yarped. Her version of Get your fat bee-hind out of bed. Now.

With a sigh of her own, Winnie dragged said bee-hind out of bed, the comforter wrapped around her shoulders and trailing after her like a poufy coronation cape as she let the dog out, then clumsily put on coffee, because facing the world—and Aidan—without fresh caffeine in her system wasn’t gonna happen.

Her cell rang. Winnie stared at it, shimmying on the counter like a rattlesnake, a thought that made her shudder mightily. With any luck, it would be Aidan, canceling. Except then she realized, yeah, well, if she wanted to get closer to Robbie, going through Aidan was her only option.

And according to Elektra, once you accepted a sign, you were pretty much stuck with it.

“Good,” Aidan said the moment Winnie put her phone to her ear. Now she heard the crowing in stereo. “You’re awake.”

“Up, yes,” she said, yawning. “Awake, not so much.” Annabelle whined at the back door; Winnie shuffled over to let her in.

“I thought I said breakfast was at eight-t’irty?”

And early morning Irish attitude was just what she needed. “It’s eight…” She squinted at her watch. “Ten. So no problem.’

“Glad to hear it,” Aidan said, and hung up.

Winnie looked at Annabelle, who’d been pretending not to listen. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” she said, but, sadly, dispensing advice was not part of Annabelle’s job description.

The village of Tierra Rosa, Winnie thought as her truck wound up, then down, the curved main drag like a roller coaster on downers, was oddly charming, in a Tim-Burton-gone-Southwest kind of way—a cross between an old Spanish settlement, a set for a fifties’ Hollywood Western and a trailer park. To add to the confusion, she mused as she spotted the cafe, was the occasional bank or church or police department building that was pure Sixties blah.

“No, baby,” she said to the dog as she got out, leaving the truck windows at half-mast since the temperature had inched up to maybe fifty or so, “you have to stay here.” After a moment of looking bereft, the dog sighed and sat. Annabelle was nothing if not flexible.

Then, the breeze zipping right through the persimmon-colored velvet blazer that had seen her through any number of Octobers, Winnie started toward the cafe and was hit by a wave of nervousness so strong she half expected to pass out. The moment she pushed through the glass door, however, the pungent aromas of coffee and griddle grease, the sounds of breakfast orders being barked to the cook, the crush of animated early-morning conversation, wrapped around her, both soothing and unsettling in their familiarity.

The place was nearly full, patrons squeezed around a half-dozen randomly placed tables, into as many bright-red booths. Hand-painted bougainvillea vines snaked underneath a heavily beamed ceiling, the bright pink flowers vibrating against deep-blue walls. The kitchen was open to the dining room, framed by an enormous mural depicting vintage pickups traveling along piñon-dotted mountains.

Nope, definitely not in Texas anymore, she thought, recovering from the onslaught of color. Her nostrils flared at the top note of roasted chili peppers seasoning every deep, calming breath, like Elektra had taught her before she gave birth, although as Winnie recalled when the time came they didn’t do her a damn bit of good. Then her gaze snagged on Aidan, rising out of his chair, and she thought, Not gonna do a damn bit of good now, either.

He dwarfed the tiny table in front of him, the light streaming in through the window beside it bouncing off all those angles and muscles and things practically hard enough to hear, making his white shirt—open one button too far—downright glow. Some people might think the jeans rode a trifle too low, too. Winnie couldn’t decide if she was one of those people or not.

Aidan angled his head slightly, his frown only accentuating the Celtic warrior/cowboy thing he had going with the wild hair, the beard shadow. Not that he was scuzzy—oh, my, no—but he was—

“If you don’t mind?” he said, the frown deepening.

Sorely in need of some manners, Winnie thought irritably, winnowing her way through the maze of tables and chairs toward him, remembering why she was here. Reminding herself that Aidan had the upper hand. And that if she’d had any sense she would’ve left her hormones back in the truck with the dog.

However, the closer she got, the more she could see past the muscles and the too-low jeans and the sheer oh-my-God-ness of the man to the pain-pretending-to-be-annoyance in his eyes. A look she’d seen plenty, in various permutations, over the years as she’d poured yet another cup of coffee or set down a piece of pie or a serving of fresh-made meat loaf and whipped potatoes and gravy. This realization did not make her less nervous, exactly, as much as it somehow gave it a different color.

Although she somehow doubted she’d look back on her years of indentured servitude to her grandmother with anything resembling fondness, there was nothing like working in a diner to hone a person’s ability to read people. The men, especially, hard-wired to believe they were impervious to things like sorrow and heartbreak.

She’d even been able to dispense the odd parcel of advice, now and then, when she’d known enough of the particulars to feel on sure footing. But this time, when something too formless to be a real thought suggested she might be able to help Aidan, too, she nearly laughed. Not only did she know nothing about the man, but how in heaven’s name was she supposed to help somebody else when her own life felt about as solid as a half-set Jell-O salad?

Except then it felt like a pair of hands gently pushed her into the seat in front of him, and she sighed, resigning herself to this being one of those times when the angelthought said, Do this, and you said, Okay, I’ll try.

“You look different,” Aidan said, like it was gonna bug him to no end until he figured out why.

Suddenly ravenous, Winnie picked up the laminated menu with hands she refused to let shake and said, “It’s daylight.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s…you’re wearing makeup.”

Winnie batted her eyes over the top of the menu. “So?”

“You weren’t last night.”

She shrugged. “End of the day. And I wasn’t expecting company.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but whatever. “Trust me,” she said, scanning the column of breakfast specials, “I’m doin’ you a favor. But good news—no bunnies were harmed in the making of this mascara.” Her selection made, she slammed down the menu. “So. What made you change your mind?” she said, taking no small pleasure in the look of surprise that crossed his features, just as the waitress—small, blond, fine-featured, grinning—appeared.

“Hey, Aidan…haven’t seen you in here for a while.”

“No, I suppose not,” he said, not returning her smile, and Winnie briefly considered kicking him under the table. Except then the blonde gave Winnie a bemused shrug and a “watcha gonna do?” eye roll. And a light smack on Aidan’s shoulder with her order pad. She was still young enough to look good under fluorescent lighting—and in tight black jeans—but old enough to smack ornery customers with her order pad. Winnie liked her immediately.

“You gonna introduce me or what?”

Aidan frowned at Winnie. Like it had just occurred to him that maybe taking her someplace where people knew him hadn’t been the smoothest move in the book.

“Thea, this is Winnie Porter. Winnie, Thea. Are the eggs fresh?”

“Considering they came from your chickens, I assume so. Salsa’s fresh-made, too.”

Aidan waited until after she’d taken their order and zipped back to the kitchen before he finally said, “What makes you think I’ve changed my mind?”

“Other than you giving the definite impression last night that you were hoping the mother ship would snatch me up?”

“That’s assuming they’d be interested in reclaiming you.”

“Brother. Your wife was clearly a saint.”

“No argument there,” Aidan muttered, his gaze drifting outside as he sipped his coffee. He appeared to be looking at Annabelle, who was looking back. Winnie waved and the dog barked, although you couldn’t really hear it through the glass. Then Aidan said, “Even so, I’m sorry I came down s’hard on you,” and her gaze swung back to his.

But only for a moment. “You had cause,” she said, lowering her eyes to spread her napkin on her lap, then upending the sugar dispenser over her coffee, watching the stream of white crystals disappear into the lake of dark, steaming liquid. Frankly, she needed more caffeine like a hole in the head, this being her third cup in less than an hour, but some days were like that.

She set the sugar dispenser back between them, stirred her coffee. “So, what?” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze, aching for him whether she wanted to or not. “Is this some kind of trial? The number of correct answers determine whether I get to see Robbie or not?”

“It’s not that cut-and-dried,” he said, looking none too comfortable himself.

“No,” Winnie said, lifting the heavy cup and taking a sip. Grimacing, she added more sugar. “I suppose not.”

Her gaze drifted out to Annabelle again, lending her silent, but unwavering, support, her eyes cutting back to his when he said, “I gather my housekeeper paid you a little visit last night.”

“She did.” Winnie took another swallow of coffee. “Did I pass muster?”

“For having cojones? Yes. What’s so funny?”

“Never heard that word with an Irish accent, that’s all. But tell her thank you.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s necessarily on your side.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” When Aidan’s brows lifted, she said, “Flo’s obviously very loyal to you. All of you,” she added, backing up slightly when Thea brought them their food, then left to chat up a good-looking cowboy who’d just come in to pick up a take-out order, or so it looked like. She was all smiles; he wasn’t, doing the whole eye-avoidance thing that spelled doom with a capital D, and Winnie, who’d been on the receiving end of that little scenario more times than she could count, thought, Uh-oh. Then he left, shoulders hunched with apology, and Thea’s eyes touched Winnie’s, full of hurt and confusion and embarrassment, before she disappeared through the archway marked Restrooms.

“That she is,” Aidan said, and Winnie thought, What? Oh. Flo. Right.

She dug into her fried potatoes. “Which is how it should be. So it wasn’t like I was sensing any real support from that camp. Still, I’m a big believer in fate.”

Aidan paused, his fork suspended over his own huevos rancheros. “Willing something to happen isn’t the same thing as fate.”

Again, Winnie laughed, the food too good to stop eating. “Oh, honey…believe me, you’d know if I was being willful. This doesn’t even come close.” She leaned forward to butter a piece of toast, thinking that sometimes nothing hits the spot like a perfectly toasted piece of white bread drenched in butter. “And anyway, nobody told you to call me.”

His eyes dipped to his breakfast, but not fast enough for her to miss his blush. “So this is my doing, is it?”

“Works for me.”

Apparently stymied, at least for the moment, Aidan seemed unable to tear his gaze away from Winnie’s slathering her omelet with copious amounts of thick, fragrant salsa.

“You might want t’go a little easy with that. It’s not for wimps.”

“I think I can handle it,” she said, thinking maybe she was talking about more than salsa. She forked in a large bite of eggs—the stuff definitely had a kick, but she’d had hotter. “And you know, if this really is about gettin’ to know me, you’ll have to take at least some of it on face value, since it’s not like I’ve got a half-dozen character witnesses in my back pocket. But I swear, I didn’t come here to mess with anybody’s head.” The salsa hit the pit of her stomach with a small explosion. “Least of all Robbie’s. And I also swear…”

“What?”

Winnie chewed for a moment, thinking that while she could probably B.S. her way through this little interview, in the long run what would be the point?

“Okay,” she said, noting that Aidan seemed suitably impressed that she hadn’t sucked down half a glass of water to douse the flames, “this probably isn’t gonna earn me any points, seeing as you already think I’m a couple bricks shy of a load as it is. But since you brought up the whole human will thing? I didn’t exactly decide to come out here.”

“What you said about not having any family left notwithstanding. ”

“Oh, that was—is—true enough. Only that alone wouldn’t’ve been enough to make me do something like this. But a couple days after my grandmother died…” She blew out a breath. “It was almost like I heard…a voice. Although not a voice, voice, more like…a real strong feeling. That I had to come here.” At his what-kind-of-fool-do-you-take-me-for? expression, she shrugged. “I know. Elektra thought I was nuts, too. So there’s another tick mark in your column.”

“Elektra?”

“She runs my grandmother’s diner. My diner now, I guess.”

“You don’t sound exactly thrilled.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I just inherited a chain of five-star hotels or anything. And I know I should be grateful. It’ll never make me rich, but that’s okay, I wouldn’t know what to do with rich if it bit me in the butt. It’s just not…me.”

“And what is…you?” he asked, unsmiling.

“I think maybe I want to work with kids—I’ve got my teaching degree, I just have to get certified—but I haven’t had five minutes to myself to think about it.” Then she let out a sound that was equal parts laugh and sigh. “And here I’m supposed to be at least trying to make a decent impression. But you know what? I am who I am, either you deal with that or you don’t. I may be a bit on the flaky side, but I’m not a bad person. Not anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“Oh, come on—when we met, I’m sure I must’ve looked like I had the devil’s mark on me. I sure felt that way at times. Although,” she said, waving her fork, “I was not a rebel without a cause. Or at least a reason.”

“You got pregnant on purpose?”

At least he looked more intrigued than judgmental, for what that was worth. “If I say I’m not sure,” Winnie said, “it’s not because I’m trying to evade the question, okay? It’s because after all this time I still don’t know.” Frowning, she finally took that sip of water, then met his gaze. “Mostly I wanted to make my own decisions, about my own life. Even if they were stupid. But I’m not that person anymore, Aidan, you’ve got to believe that.” She sucked in a long, shuddering breath. “I swear.”

The tremor of sympathy happened before Aidan could squelch it. Oh, he definitely remembered the Winnie from back then, those big blue eyes bleeding a mixture of anger and fear and resentment. But most of all, an unfathomable sadness that, even then, had burned something inside Aidan. He remembered how wrong it had felt, that his and June’s happiness should be predicated on someone else’s misery.

“And how, exactly, d’you think you’ve changed?”

“Well…for one thing,” she said after a moment, “I’ve stopped making myself the victim of my own anger. Took a while, though, before it finally dawned on me that trying to hurt somebody else is a surefire way of hurting yourself more. But until I got to that point…” She stared at her plate, her breathing hard, and Aidan waited out the next wave of sympathy. “Who knew it would be so much harder to love myself than my grandmother?”

“She didn’t exactly strike me as the warm fuzzy type,” Aidan said quietly, and Winnie snorted.

“That’s what fear’ll do to a person, I suppose. She was so afraid I’d go off half-cocked like she was convinced my mother did. Ida couldn’t help being strict, that’s just how she was raised herself. But every time she said…” Her face tilted toward the window; Aidan saw her swallow. “Every time she said, ‘You’re just like your mother,’ the more I figured, what the hell, she already thinks the worst of me, might as well live up to her expectations.”

Aidan’s stomach clenched. “And what did she mean by that? Your being just like your mother?”

Winnie’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “I gathered Mama was stubborn as all get-out, too. She apparently bucked my grandmother every chance she got, the crowning touch being to elope with my father the second she turned eighteen.” Her eyes veered to Aidan’s. “I remember Daddy being a good man. Kind. He just wasn’t real successful, if you get my drift. I’m sure Ida saw Mama’s ‘bad choice’ as her own failure, but growing up, all I knew was that my grandmother constantly bad-mouthed the people I’d loved most in the world. It didn’t sit well.”

Their breakfasts and their surroundings all but forgotten, Aidan caught himself a split second before he stumbled head-on into the now dry-eyed gaze in front of him. While he knew Winnie wasn’t playing him for a con, anger still swamped him with an intensity bordering on painful.

He didn’t want to feel sympathy for Winnie Porter or anybody else, dammit, didn’t want to get sucked into anybody else’s sad tale. Not now, not ever again. June had been the compassionate one in the marriage, the one with the bottomless heart. But while Aidan had loved his wife beyond measure, and would do anything for his son…

Refusing to even finish the thought, he jabbed a fork into his now cold eggs. “Your antipathy sounds completely justified to me.”

“Maybe. But even I realized it wasn’t healthy. By the time Ida got sick, I’d come to terms with a thing or two. At least, I learned to channel the anger in more positive ways.”

“You forgave her?”

Winnie sighed. “The resentment gets to be a real bitch to lug around, you know? Her wanting more for my mother wasn’t a bad thing in itself. And I know it nearly killed her when Mama died. God knows it was no fun living with a woman who tended her disappointment and heartache like some prize orchid, but it wasn’t her fault she got sick. And if nothing else, I sure learned a lot from her example.”

“And what’s that?”

“Not to take out your own pain on anybody else. Least of all an innocent child.”

After a long moment, Aidan said, indicating her now empty plate, “Are you done?” When Winnie nodded, he signaled for Thea, pulling his credit card out of his wallet when she gave him the bill. “I suppose you think I’m being a hardnose by not wanting Robbie to know who you are.”

Winnie wiped her mouth on her napkin, demolishing what was left of her light-colored lipstick. “You’re his father, Aidan,” she said at last. “Like you said, I gave up any right to a say in the matter a long time ago, and I have to trust that you know what’s best for your own son.”

“And has it occurred to you,” Aidan bit out, “that since he’s already seen you, already knows you’re staying on our property, what might happen if and when he does ask about you down the road? You’ve put me in an untenable position, Winnie. You do realize that, don’t you?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I’m so sorry,” she muttered, getting up and grabbing her purse from the floor. “Here I’m telling you how far I’ve come, about learning that’s it not all about me, and then I go and do exactly the same thing I’ve always done.” She straightened, swiping a stray piece of hair out of her eyes as a markedly less bubbly Thea set the charge slip in front of Aidan. “All I wanted…” Shaking her head, she backed away, stumbling into an empty chair before turning and striding toward the door.

A sane man would have let her go, with her earnestness and regret and those damnably soulful eyes. Eyes that had shaken him nine years ago, even when he’d been happy and in love and she’d been little more than the means to his becoming a father. Ashamed, angry, Aidan scribbled his signature on the slip and took off after her. Already to her truck, she turned at his approach, her gaze wary. Embarrassed. He stopped a few feet away, breathing hard. Annoyed as all hell.

“Okay, look,” he said, determined to keep the blame for this whole mess firmly at her feet, “I still think the timing sucks, that tellin’ Robbie the truth right now…” The very thought made him ache, even if he couldn’t completely define the “why” behind it. “But maybe…”

Turning slightly to dodge the hope in her eyes, Aidan felt the ends of his too-long hair whip at his face. “Maybe if he got to know you a little first, we could somehow ease him into it.”

After too many beats passed, he looked at Winnie again. She was frowning, holding her own wind-blown hair out of her face.

“You sure about this?”

“Not a’tall.”

Her expression didn’t change. “What you really want is for me to say I’ve changed my mind, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea.”

She looked away then, frowning, then back at him. “I promise, I won’t tell him. Not until you give the go-ahead.”

“Come to supper tonight, then,” he said, feeling the none-too-solid ground he’d been navigating for the past year give way a bit more. “Around seven. Just follow the road up from the Old House. And keep an eye out for the chickens.”

An amused expression crossed her features before settling back into concern. “What are you going to tell him? About why I’m there?”

“I’ve no idea. I suppose I’ll figure something out.”

She nodded, then opened her door. Hugging the shimmying dog, she angled her head enough to say, “Thank you.”

But Aidan didn’t want her thanks. He didn’t want any of this, not the responsibility or the sympathy those damn blue eyes provoked or…any of it. Most of all, he didn’t want to be nice or kind or even civil unless absolutely necessary. So he spun around and strode to his own truck, parked on the other side of the small lot, thinking that she’d been dead wrong, about needing makeup in the daylight.

“So that’s the update,” Winnie said to Elektra later, leaning against her truck’s bumper, watching her creditcard bill soar as the little numbers flicked by on the gas pump faster’n she could read ‘em. Her nerves much too frayed to go back to the little house and sit there staring into space, Winnie had instead decided to do some sightseeing, immediately nixing Santa Fe—very pretty, way too crowded with looky-loos for her and Annabelle’s taste—for a nice, long meander along the back roads connecting any number of little towns like Tierra Rosa. The weather was almost embarrassingly gorgeous, the views of endless blue sky and color-splotched mountains definitely spirit-lifting. Not to mention head-clearing.

“Huh,” Elektra said, adding, “Hold on, baby.” Following the whirring of the credit card machine, Winnie heard E’s “Y’all have a safe trip, okay?” before she came back on the horn. “So tell me something…would you have gone out there if you’d’ve known June had passed?”

“I don’t know,” Winnie sighed out, frowning as the pump kept going…and going…and going…“All I know is, whatever’s gonna happen tonight, is gonna happen. Robbie and I are either gonna click or we won’t.”

Silence. “You could leave.”

“No,” Winnie said quietly. “I can’t. Not now.” When a great sigh sailed over the line, she said, “Aidan’s right, E—Robbie’s a lot less likely to freak when he finds out who I am if he already likes me. Right?” The pump finally stopped, exhausted; blowing out a relieved sigh of her own, Winnie plugged the nozzle back into place and took her receipt, not having the courage to look at it. She got back into her truck, dodging Annabelle’s kisses. Would she could do the same to Elektra’s heavy, meaningful silence. “It’ll be okay, E,” she said.

“Uh-huh. And maybe this’ll be the week I finally win the lottery.”

“Maybe it will, you never know. Gotta go,” Winnie said over the old engine’s growl. “They’re really serious about no driving while using a cell up here—”

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”

A pause. Then: “Be careful.”

I am, dammit, Winnie thought, tires crunching gravel as she pulled onto the road leading into Tierra Rosa, even as another voice snorted, Like hell.

“Who asked you?” she muttered.

Twenty minutes later she was back in town; starving, she swung by Garcia’s, to be greeted by a still perky but slightly subdued Thea.

“Well, hey, again…Winnie, right? What can I get you?”

“Steak and cheese burrito to go.” Thea yelled her order toward the kitchen, then turned back, questions blatant in amber eyes as Winnie paid. Ignoring them, she instead looked around.

“Great place.”

“Thanks. Not that I can take any credit, I just work here.”

A customer came up to the register to pay; Winnie noticed the blonde’s hands were shaking when she made change from the twenty. When he’d left, Winnie leaned in and whispered, “You okay?” and Thea’s eyes snapped to hers. “It’s just I couldn’t help noticing this morning…” She felt her face warm. “None of my business, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, I’m…touched that you cared enough to ask. Not that I’m gonna unload on a complete stranger, but…” Her mouth curved. “Thanks—”

“Thea! Order up!”

The waitress hurried to the rear to pick up Winnie’s wrapped lunch, handing it over just as a couple came in, cutting off any chance of further conversation.

Just as well, probably, Winnie thought as she got back into the truck, fending off Annabelle, who was also partial to steak and cheese burritos. The plan had been to head straight back to the house for a nap that would hopefully make up for her lost sleep the night before. Not stop at the pumpkin patch she’d passed earlier. Except who could resist the afternoon sun blazing across pumpkins as far as the eye can see?

Certainly not her.

Now, what she thought she was gonna do with them, she thought a half hour later as she lugged a half dozen of the suckers out of her truck bed, she had no idea. Especially considering she’d be back in Texas long before Halloween. And, once she’d rearranged them several times on the porch until she and Annabelle were satisfied, she realized they clashed terribly with the bright pink cosmos. Still, Winnie had always been impressed with how things could work together in nature that you could never pull off in, say, your own house. Or on your body, she thought with a grimace, recalling more than one unfortunate outfit she’d thought the very height of fashion at the time.

A breeze whooshed through the trees, like a soft laugh. Winnie took a deep breath, than another, letting the wind suck the tension right out of her, as she decided the earthy orange and purply pink actually looked pretty damn good with the vibrant blue trim on the doors and windows. So there.

At last she wolfed down her burrito, chasing it with a glass of milk, then collapsed across the unmade bed, barely kicking off her boots before she’d passed out. And who knows how long she might have slept if somebody hadn’t knocked on the door, maybe an hour later. Finger-combing her hair and trying to shake off the dregs of sleep, Winnie plodded in socks to the door, just as whoever was on the other side knocked again. A lightish knock, not the pounding one might expect from, say, a six-foot-something grumpy Irishman.

Throwing caution to the winds, she swung open the door to face a very disgruntled nine-year-old in a dusty hoodie standing on the porch, his bike collapsed in the dirt a few feet away.

“So who are you, anyway?” Robbie said, with the exasperation of somebody who’d been thinking about this for some time.

Chapter Four

Robbie didn’t know why somebody staying in the Old House bugged him so much. Especially since the lady’d said she was only there for a week. And she seemed okay and all, when he’d met her in the store. But why was she staying here? He asked Flo, but she was no help. All Robbie knew was that the lady’s being there felt worse than when Florita would come into his room without knocking.

Because this was where he could think about Mom all he wanted, sometimes even talk to her—even though he knew he wasn’t really talking to her, he wasn’t some dumb little kid who believed in ghosts—but he could say things to her he couldn’t to Dad, like about how much he still missed her and stuff. It was even okay if he cried, because there was nobody around to see him. Of course he thought about Mom up at his real house, too, or when he was out walking in the woods or riding his bike, but this was different.

All day at school, he kept thinking about how it felt like this lady was coming between him and Mom, even though he knew that was stupid. Poor Miss Carter, she’d had to tell him to focus like a million times.

So as soon as he got off the school bus, he decided to just go ask her himself. As soon as he did, though, he felt really dumb. Especially since the lady got this strange look on her face.

“My name’s Winnie,” she said, smiling and coming out onto the porch. She didn’t shut the door behind her or anything, but Robbie still felt like he was being kept out, which made him mad. Only then she said, “I’d invite you inside, but I’m sure you know you shouldn’t do that with a stranger,” and it freaked him out, a little, that she’d kinda read his mind. “You’re Robbie, right?”

He nodded, then said, “Why’d you come?”

“I saw a piece in a magazine about Tierra Rosa, and it looked so nice I decided to come see it for myself, and since you don’t have any motels or anything—”

“I don’t want you here,” Robbie said, his face getting all hot; as he looked away, the dog came up to him and licked his hand, like she understood how bad he felt.

Instead of getting upset or mad, though, Winnie slipped her hands into her pockets. “This is your hideout, isn’t it?”

Robbie’s face got hotter. Ten times worse, though, was feeling like he was gonna cry. “Sorta.”

“I didn’t know,” Winnie said softly, calling the dog to her. Not looking at him. “When I made arrangements to stay here, I mean. I had no idea this was your place.” She got quiet for a moment, then said, “I won’t be here long, though. I promise.”

“You said a week, back at the store.”

“I might leave sooner. I haven’t decided yet.”

Something in her face made Robbie feel like he was looking in a mirror, like she was as sad as he was, but trying real hard not to show it. Which made him feel bad, because it wasn’t like her fault or anything. Then he noticed the pumpkins.

“If you’re not gonna stay, how come you got all these pumpkins?”

Winnie laughed. “It was just one of those impulse things.”

“What’s that mean?”

“When you do something without thinking it through.” She sighed, then ruffled the dog’s fur. “I do that a lot. It’s a bad habit.”

Staring at the pumpkins, Robbie said, “Halloween useta be my mom’s favorite holiday.”

“Yeah? Mine, too.”

“You gonna carve faces in ‘em?”

“Probably. When I get back home, closer to Halloween. If I cut ‘em now, they’ll shrivel up too fast.”

“Yeah, I know.” He paused. “My mom died. Right before Halloween last year.”

“Oh, honey…I’m so sorry,” she said, like she really meant it. “My folks died, too, when I was about your age.”

He looked at her, curious.

“How?”

“In a car crash,” she said softly.

“Oh.”

He’d never known anybody else whose parents had died when they were still a kid. Maybe that’s why she didn’t go all stupid and act all embarrassed and stuff like a lot of other people did, either treating him all fake nice or refusing to look right at him. Before he knew what he was doing, he sat on the step beside her. The dog brought him a stick to throw.

“What’s her name?”

“Annabelle. Although sometimes I call her Dumbbell.”

Robbie almost laughed. He threw the stick for the dog, then heard himself say, “When Mom was sick, I’d come here a lot.”

“Just to be by yourself?”

“Yeah. And now it’s almost like…”

“What?”

He shook his head. He couldn’t believe he’d almost told her about feeling like Mom was here now. Like she’d moved into the Old House after she’d died. “Nothin’,” he said, shrugging. “I forgot what I was about to say.”

“I do that, too,” Winnie said. Robbie looked at her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Lots. It used to drive my grandmother crazy. She raised me after my parents died. She’s dead, too, now. Hey—you want a banana? Or a granola bar? I mean, if you think it’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” He thought. “Could I have both?”

“Sure,” Winnie said, getting up, her voice kinda shaky when she told the dog to stay outside with Robbie.

Her eyes burning, Winnie collapsed against the wall next to the door, the plaster rough through her cotton top as she willed the shakes to stop. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she wasn’t supposed to fall so hard, so fast…

Oh, for heaven’s sake, girl, pull yourself together. Jerking in a sharp breath, she crossed to grab a couple of bananas and a granola bar off the table, then headed back outside. Half of her wished like hell her son would be gone, the other half…

The other half was laughing its fool head off.

Robbie had just tossed the stick for Annabelle again when she walked out onto the porch. He took the banana, started to peel it. Desperately trying for nonchalant, Winnie lowered herself beside him again, peeling her own, trying not to react to his innocent, dusty scent. The confusion seeping from his pores.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

“You got any brothers or sisters or anybody?” he asked around a full mouth.

“Nope.”

He looked at her. “You mean you’re really all alone?”

Thanks, kid. “I really am.”

Robbie frowned at his banana for a moment, then took another bite. “I have a Mam and Pap in Ireland. That’s what they call grandparents there. But I’ve only seen them a couple of times, and once was right after I was ‘dopted, so that doesn’t really count.”

The damn fruit was burning a hole in her stomach. Please don’t say anything more about being adopted, she prayed. Please. “It probably does for them.”

“I guess.” Robbie finished his banana, then ripped the wrapping off the granola bar. “Chocolate chips! Cool.”

“You didn’t strike me as a raisin kind of kid,” Winnie said, laughing when he made a face.

Annabelle sat in front of them, polite but doleful. “Can I give her a piece?” Robbie asked.

“She’d be cool with it, but chocolate isn’t good for dogs. So, no.”

The child gnawed off the end of his bar, frowning. “You know what really sucks?”

Winnie held her breath. “What?”

“The way people keep all the time saying that Dad’ll probably get married again some day, and then I’d have another mother.” When he looked at her, she could see how close the tears were to falling, and her heart broke. “And how dumb is that?”

“Pretty dumb,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t notice how shiny her eyes probably were, too. “Because nobody can ever take your mom’s place, right?”

“No way. I mean, when your mom died, did you ever think about having another one?”

Winnie shook her head. She’d been devastated when her parents died, naturally, but after all this time it was more about remembering the pain, not feeling it. “Not that there would have been any chance of that, but…no.”

“Dad would never marry somebody else. He’s too sad. And anyway, Florita says he’s such a grouch nobody else would have him.”

The laugh popped out before she knew it was there. Still, she said, “Sometimes when people are really sad, they get angry. So your dad might not be like that forever.” Then again, Aidan Black seemed to positively enjoy his crankiness, like a cup of good, hot coffee on a chilly day. She reached down to brush clay dust off her boot. “I bet your mom was a real special lady.”

Robbie frowned. “Why do you think that? Did you know her?”

“No. But it takes a special mom to raise a special kid.”

He frowned harder, almost comically. “You think I’m special?”

Dangerous ground, honey, she heard in her head. Proceed with extreme caution. “Well, I don’t know you very well, either, but I’m pretty good at reading people.”

“Reading people? Like a book?”

“Sort of. Except instead of reading words, I get these feelings about who people really are by watching their faces, listening to their voices, paying attention to how they act. I’m not always right, but mostly I am. And I’m guessing…” She looked at him with narrowed eyes, thinking, Will you even remember this conversation a year from now? Will you remember the crazy lady with the hyperactive dog and too many pumpkins on her porch? “That…you get in trouble sometimes, but never anything too serious. Just regular stuff, like most kids. That you probably do okay in school, but you like weekends better. That you still miss your mama a lot, but maybe…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“No, seriously—what?”

His eyes were so blue, so earnest. So damn much like hers. “That maybe it’s hard for you to tell your daddy how you feel?” When he turned away, she sighed and said, “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t’ve said that. It’s that impulsive thing again. Saying something without thinking it through?”

Robbie scrubbed one shoulder over his eyes. “No, it’s okay.” Then he squinted up into the trees, mumbled, “I gotta go,” and sprang from the step and over to his fallen bike. He yanked it upright and straddled it. “C’n I come see you again tomorrow, maybe?”

Winnie folded her hands in front of her so tightly they hurt. “I thought you didn’t want me here?”

The kid blushed. “I guess it’s okay if you hang around.”

“Oh. Wow. Thanks. But…” Her heart cowered. “I think I’ve changed my mind. So I’m probably leaving in the morning.”

“But you’ll come back, right?”

“Oh, sugar…” Don’t, she thought, blinking back tears. Don’t…

Slowly, she shook her head, startled out of her wits when a hurt, angry “Fine! Do whatever you want to!” exploded out of the kid’s mouth, at the precise moment they both heard his father’s barked, “Robbie! What in the devil’s name are you doing here?”

Winnie jumped to her feet as Robbie started, just as Aidan emerged from the woods at the side of the house. And even through unshed tears, Winnie could tell he was one seriously pissed hombre.

Aidan barely caught Winnie’s surreptitious swipe at her eyes before he refocused his attention on his son, who looked more confused than guilty.

“Nothin’. I just…” He glanced at Winnie, then back at Aidan. “I just wanted to find out who she was, that’s all—”

“It’s okay,” Winnie started to say, but Aidan shot her a quelling look that, amazingly, actually shut her up. Then he looked back at Robbie.

“You know better than t’go anywhere without first checking in with Florita or me,” he said quietly. “Flo was beside herself with worry. So you get yourself back up to the house, right now. And except to go to school, don’t plan on leaving it for at least t’ree days.”

“Dad!”

“Go on.”

Grumbling, the lad took off; when he’d disappeared from sight, Winnie said, “That was a little harsh, wasn’t it?”

Aidan pivoted, almost grateful for a reason to be angry with her. “For breaking the one rule Junie and I insisted on from the time he could walk? I don’t think so. And where d’you get off criticizing my decisions?”

She dug in her pants pocket for a tissue, blew her nose. “Sorry,” she mumbled into the tissue, then crossed her arms. “You’re right, it’s not my place. Although if you notice I didn’t say anything in front of R-Robbie.”

Aidan looked away. “I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least.”

“Yes, you should,” she said, sounding stronger. “I swear I had no idea you didn’t know where he was—”

“And didja think I would have allowed him to come here?”

“How the hell should I know, Mr. Come Up to the House For Dinner Tonight—?”

“Didja tell him?”

“That I was his birth mother? Of course not,” she said in the manner of a woman who’s had it up to here. “I’m not that stupid. Or selfish. Or a liar. I said I wouldn’t say anything, and I didn’t. Besides, if I had, don’t you think that would’ve been the first thing out of his mouth when he saw you?”

“But he said—”

“He asked who I was. So I told him my name, I didn’t figure that could hurt anything. Especially since you told me he didn’t know.” Although she appeared to have recovered her equilibrium, her body language positively screamed her turmoil. An intuition confirmed when she added, “Maybe dinner tonight’s not such a good idea.”

“And here you’d sworn you’d changed,” Aidan said over an unaccountable surge of anger.

Her eyes widened, until, suddenly, he saw realization dawn. “I honestly didn’t think I’d feel any real connection,” she said in quiet amazement, looking away. “Not after all these years. And certainly not after two short conversations. ” She swiped a hand across her nose. “So, yeah, I guess I’m right back where I was eight and a half years ago.” Her eyes veered to his. “He’s a really great kid.”

Aidan swallowed. “You can thank June for that.”

She studied him for such a long time his face began to heat. “I wish I’d known her better.”

“You had your chance.”

“I know,” Winnie said softly, then released a breath. “I’m leaving in the morning. I won’t bother you again.”

The rush of relief wasn’t nearly as sweet as he might have expected. But then, nothing was these days. And probably never would be again, he thought as she added, “If Robbie wants to see me when he’s older—”

“How will you explain?”

“That we’ve already met? I don’t know.” She forked her bangs off her forehead. “If I’m lucky, maybe it won’t matter by then.” A chagrined half smile touched her mouth. “Sorry for the trouble.”

Unable to speak for reasons he couldn’t fully explain, Aidan simply nodded, then turned toward the path. He’d been so thrown, when he’d discovered Robbie’d gone missing, that he’d taken off on foot without thinking. Now he faced one helluva hike back up the mountain—

He frowned, noticing the pumpkins lined up on the porch. Not as many as June would have gathered, but enough to prick the treacherously thin membrane containing the memories. He twisted back around. “Did Robbie say anything else? Aside from asking who you were?”

Winnie gave him a strange look. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Neither do I, really. It’s just…I don’t know what he’s thinking anymore—”

The words had fallen from his mouth without his brain even giving a nod of approval. As if Winnie herself had somehow pulled them out of him. But that was crazy. Impossible. His gaze shifted again to the pumpkins, glowing in the last rush of daylight, and he could have sworn he saw faces in them already. Or at least, one face in particular—

“If you want to know what we talked about,” Winnie said softly, “maybe you should ask him yourself.” Then she disappeared inside the house before he could say, Have a safe trip.

Not that he would have, but he would have liked the chance.

That distant rooster’s crow keeping her company, Winnie thunked yet another pumpkin into the truck bed the next morning, her stomach none too chipper about the carton of Snickers ice cream she’d forced into it the night before in some lame attempt to staunch the ache. And not just for herself, or even the child she’d given up the right to call her son years before, but for the agony in Aidan’s eyes. The fear, that having already lost his wife, he might lose his child, as well.

Even if she doubted he knew that’s what he was feeling. But he was definitely aware of the communication break-down. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Oh, and like you do?

Winnie sighed. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. She supposed she could call the man and say, “Two words: family counseling.” And she might yet…once she crossed the Texas border. Even so, whatever these people needed, she wasn’t the one to supply it. And not only because her timing couldn’t have been worse, but also because…

Because she couldn’t handle it.

Just like she hadn’t been able to handle it before, when she’d backed out of their arrangement. Aidan was right, she hadn’t changed at all. Or a’tall, as he might say.

She’d been half tempted to toss everything into the truck and take off right then and there, until reason prevailed and she realized she was far too emotionally drained for the long drive back, especially at night. Although—breathing hard, she glared at the thirty-pound monster pumpkin still on the porch, decided Forget it—considering how badly she’d slept again, she might as well have left last night. If she had—

“C’mon, girl,” she called to the dog, then climbed up behind the steering wheel after her.

—she’d be home by now. Home, with all this craziness behind her—

“What the heck?” she muttered when she turned the ignition key and got…nothing. Not a growl, not a rumble, not even a burp.

She tried again. Still nothing.

Her eyes shut, Winnie slumped back in her seat. Muttering bad words. While she wasn’t the most mechanically inclined chick in the world, even she knew a dead battery when she heard it. Or in this case, didn’t hear it. But how could that be? She’d just had a tune-up before the trip, she hadn’t left the lights on or anything…

So much for her dramatic exit. Okay, not so dramatic, it wasn’t like she had any witnesses, except for the pumpkins and the dog. But still. In her head, it had been dramatic.

On a weary sigh, Winnie fished her phone out of her shirt pocket and punched in Aidan’s cell number. Nothing there, either, not even voice mail. The man truly took reclusiveness to new heights. And she had no clue what his house phone was, or if he even had a landline.

On another, even wearier sigh, she banged open her truck door, slid to the ground, waited for the dog, then began what turned out to be a surprisingly long trek up the leaf-strewn dirt road, the crowing growing louder with each step.

Chapter Five

“Day-um,” Winnie muttered twenty long, panting minutes later, when she came upon the multilevel, timber-and-glass-and-tin-roof mountain hideaway set in the fowlinfested clearing, every surface either blending into or reflecting its surroundings. Not the place to be in case of a forest fire, she thought over the frenzied clucking of chickens with a Border collie in their midst, followed closely by, Then again, some things are worth the risk.

And standing here gawking at it wasn’t getting her home.

She and Annabelle waded through the chickens—well, Winnie waded; Annabelle did her slinking herding thing, only to discover that chickens didn’t herd—then climbed the stone steps leading up to the wide-planked porch. Winnie pressed the doorbell, twisting to admire the incredible view while she waited for Florita to answer. A few seconds later, she heard the door open behind her, followed by a chilly pause.

She turned. Not Florita.

“You have chickens?”

“Flo has chickens,” Aidan grumbled.

“Speaking of whom…Where is she?”

“Out. Took her niece shopping.”

“Tess? The one who’s pregnant—?”

“What do you want?”

“Not a morning person, are we?” Aidan glowered at her. Winnie sighed, trying not to notice how well his paintsmeared, waffle-weave Henley clung to his torso. That his hair was still damp from his shower, all cherub-curly around his anything-but-cherubic features. That apparently her hormones and his pheromones were a perfect match. “My car battery’s dead,” she said, holding her breath. “I need a phone book. Or the number of a mechanic.”

“You don’t belong to an auto club?”

“Since I never go anywhere—up until now, I mean—it didn’t seem worth the expense.”

“Did you leave your lights on?”

“No, I did not leave my lights on,” she said, thinking, What is this, twenty questions? a split second before Aidan said, “So you jumped into your truck and drove all the way here without checking first to make sure everything was in working order?” and Winnie wondered if he had any idea how close she was to smacking him clear into next week.

“Okay, Aidan? This little detour was not on my agenda this morning, so I was already halfway to pissed when you opened the door. Of course I had the truck tuned up before I left. And the battery’s new, I had it replaced before right before the trip, I have no idea why it’s dead. So if you’d just hand me the phone book—”

“You walked all the way up here from the Old House?”

Apparently completely oblivious to her having just read him the riot act, Aidan was now squinting past Winnie’s shoulder. Wondering what sort of fumes he’d been breathing over the years, she muttered, “Short of saddling Annabelle, that was my only option…What are you doing?”

What he was doing was putting on a denim jacket and coming out onto the porch, closing the house door behind him. Then he kept going, turning when he got halfway down the porch steps to spit out, “Well? Are y’coming with me or not?”

She crossed her arms. “Excuse me—did I pass out for a second and miss a chunk of the conversation? Coming with you where?”

That got a put-upon sigh. “Back to your truck, of course.”

“And…why are you taking me back to my truck?”

Another sigh. “So I can have a look myself?” At her continued blank stare, he added, “Before you go and t’row your money at some yahoo who’d be only too glad to take it from you for basically nothing?”

Apparently, the more agitated he became, the heavier his accent got. It was almost cute, in a remarkably irritating kind of way. “Somehow you don’t strike me as the mechanical type.”

“Looks can be deceivin’. Now can we get a move on? I haven’t got all day.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—just give me the damn phone book so I can call a mechanic or somebody—”

“Don’t know where t’is,” Aidan said, continuing to his own truck.

On a sigh, Winnie followed.

Ten minutes later, the verdict was in.

“It’s not your battery,” came Aidan’s half-muffled voice from in the bowels of her truck. “It’s your alternator.”

“Are you kidding me?” Against her better judgment, she got right up beside him to have a look, staring so hard into the netherworld under her truck’s hood she could almost ignore the low, steady hormonal hum thrumming through her veins. Like getting too close to uranium with a Geiger counter. “So that’s what killed my battery?”

“It would seem so.”

Not that Winnie entirely knew what she was looking at, but at least she knew what an alternator was for. Of course, she knew what her kidneys were for, too, but she didn’t know what they looked like, either. With her luck, it would probably be cheaper to get a new kidney.

As though reading her mind, Aidan said, “The good news is, I can change out both and save you a bundle.” Although he didn’t sound like this was exactly good news for him.

“And the bad news?”

He slammed shut her hood, wiping his hands on an old rag he’d had in his own truck. “What makes you think there’s bad news?”

“Could be that dark cloud always hanging over your head.”

He looked at her steadily for a long moment—tick! tick! tickticktickticktick!—then let out the sigh of a man whose patience is being sorely tried. “If we set out for Santa Fe now, we can pick up the parts and I can have you on your way after lunch.”

“I hate to put you to so much trouble—”

“And we can stand here arguing for the rest of the mornin’, or you can stop being so bloody stubborn and we can get goin’.”

“Can Annabelle come, too?”

And yet another sigh. “Yes, Annabelle can come, too.”

“You really can’t wait until I’m gone, can you?” she said, reluctantly trooping around to the passenger side of his truck and climbing in. After Annabelle.

From behind the wheel, Aidan muttered, “Truer words were never spoken.” And yanked the shift into Reverse.

You have no idea, Aidan thought as they pulled out onto the highway leading to Santa Fe, how much I want you gone. How much damage those big blue eyes, that smart mouth, were doing. He had never thought of himself as the protective type when it came to women, not even before he met June, who’d prided herself on her self-sufficiency. At first Aidan had assumed that June’s being so much older than he accounted for her self-confidence, but the longer he knew her the more he realized that’s simply who she was.

And it wasn’t that Winnie was helpless, her obvious inability to pick a decent mechanic notwithstanding. Far from it. In fact, Aidan surmised that any man fool enough to play the Little Woman card with her would find both him and his card reduced to pulp. Still, there was something about the woman—

“You really know how to install a new battery and alternator?” she asked from the other side of the far-too-short bench seat.

—that would drive him completely ‘round the bend before lunch, if he didn’t keep his guard up.

“I really do.” From the seat behind them, her dog groaned. “My mother’s family’s farmed for generations. By the time I was fourteen I was an old hand at fixing tractors and such. And anyway, when you live out in the sticks you learn to take care of your own t’ings, not count on somebody else to do it for you.”

“Oh,” she said, then fell silent, thinking her own thoughts, and Aidan realized with a punch to his gut that the stillness was much, more worse than her blathering.

Desperate to flatten the silence, he said, “So. What will you do when you get back?”

“Please don’t feel obligated to make polite conversation,” she said, wearily. “I know you’re not really interested.”

Her rebuke stung far more than he would have expected. Even if she was dead-on in her assessment. “I’m sorry if I come across as somewhat…gruff. One of the hazards of keeping to myself so much.” When she didn’t reply, he stole a glance at her profile. “And that’s the best I can do for an apology, so if you’re expectin’ more—”

“I’m not expecting anything, Aidan. I never was.” She paused, then added, “I never do.”

“Have you really had it that bad?” he said, and her head snapped around. After a moment, she shook it.

“No, actually,” she said, suddenly guarded. “There’s just…been a lot of disappointments along the way. A broken promise here, a broken heart there…”

A soft laugh preceded, “But, hey—I’ve got my dog, right? And I’ve got friends back home, and a house and a business…things could be a lot worse.” She hesitated, then said, “For what it’s worth, I think I’m an okay person. Should the subject ever arise with Robbie,” she added when Aidan frowned at her. “I don’t smoke, don’t drink enough to count, don’t cheat, don’t gamble—at least, not with money—and when I say I’ll do something, I do it. Like my degree—took me six years, but I did it.”

“And you don’t strike me as the academic sort.”

Winnie snorted. “We’re talkin’ early childhood education, not a doctorate in advanced physics. Or obscure English authors of the eighteenth century. Not that it was a walk in the park. You have no idea the psychology classes you have to take, just to teach elementary school.” She laughed again. “Little kids are so neat. And while I’m waiting on having my own—”

At her breath catch, Aidan’s head swung around. But she lifted one hand in a clear attempt to ward off his concern.

“Sorry, that kinda took me by surprise. So. Let’s talk about you.”

“You already know everyt’ing y’need to know.”

“If you mean that meeting with the lawyer nine years ago, I’m thinking an update’s probably in order.”

“And if your car hadn’t broken down, you would’ve left without your ‘update.’ And probably none the worse for not getting it.”

“True. But obviously I wasn’t meant to go home this morning.”

“It doesn’t necessarily follow we were meant to bond.”

“Ohmigosh. Was that an attempt at humor?”

“No.”

She laughed. And Aidan sighed, because deep down he wasn’t a bad person, either, just one who preferred his existence as complication-free as possible. So while he took some small pleasure in Winnie’s better mood, he took none whatsoever in…all the rest of it.

“And here we are,” he said, immensely grateful.

He pulled off the highway into the Auto Zone parking lot, fully aware of Winnie’s smirk. They got out of the truck, their doors slamming shut in rapid-fire succession, Winnie striking out across the lot a few feet ahead. Aidan hustled to catch up, barely noticing the flash of red parking lights, the roar of the SUV’s engine, a split second before the driver—clearly not paying attention—gunned the huge black monster backward.

“Jaysus!” he bellowed, hauling Winnie backward against his chest an instant before the tank-size vehicle would’ve flattened her. Bastard didn’t even slow down.

“Are you all right?” he said in Winnie’s ear, her heart pounding against his arm where he still held her fast across her ribs, her scent storming the gates of his self-preservation, and through the rush of adrenaline a memory whispered, over his skin, through his blood.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said on a rush of air. A beat passed. “You can let go now.”

He did; setting herself to rights—a tug here, an adjustment there—Winnie glared in the direction of the vanished car. “Dirtwad,” she muttered, then continued toward the entrance. Except she suddenly spun on Aidan and said, “You are such a phony,” and he said, “What?” and she said, with much gesticulating, “You might talk tough and all, do the whole I don’t give a damn about people routine, like that’s supposed to scare people off.” She yanked open the store’s door before he could do it for her. “Except anybody with two eyes in their head can see it’s all just a great big act.”

Inexplicably furious, Aidan grabbed Winnie’s arm as soon as they were inside. She whirled around, her expression a combination of irritation and curiosity. But fear? Not a bit of it.

“Believe me,” he snapped, his own heart pounding five times harder than hers had a moment ago, “I give a damn. About Robbie, about the people who matter to me. Just because I prefer to keep that circle small doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people who are in it.” He let her go. “Is that clear?”

Their gazes tangled for several seconds before, word-lessly, she headed toward the counter in back. And as she did, Aidan became acutely aware that every set of male eyes in the place veered to her like divining rods.

His forehead knotting, he tried desperately to see what they found so damned interesting and failed miserably. Yes, he supposed she had a way of moving that was somewhat…arresting. And what man in his right mind wouldn’t notice her hair, shiny as wet paint beneath the lights? Or the way her worn jeans cupped her legs and bottom below that soft as cream velvet jacket? But aside from that…Winnie was nothing extraordinary. Certainly not the kind of woman to make a man’s eyes bug out.

And certainly there was absolutely no reason whatsoever for the bizarre spike of jealousy whenever one of the local yokels gave her the eye.

Oddly, she had no problem with telling the balding, potbellied clerk exactly what they needed. To the man’s credit, he at least waited until Winnie’s gaze drifted elsewhere before looking to Aidan for a nod of confirmation. Then he vanished into the back, only to return moments later. With only the battery.

“Sorry, we don’t have the alternator in stock. But tell you what, let me see…” He started tapping on a computer keyboard in front of him. “Uh…yeah, I can get one of my Albuquerque stores to send one up tomorrow, if that’s okay. Or I can put it on hold if you want to drive on down there and pick it up yourself.”

“Damn,” Winnie muttered, then turned to Aidan. “I can’t possibly ask you to drive to Albuquerque. The round trip would take, what? Two hours, at least?”

“Probably three, this time of day.” Aidan gritted his back teeth. “But I don’t mind. Really.”

“Of course you mind, it would mean giving up most of your day. And then I wouldn’t be able to leave before late this afternoon, anyway. Call me crazy, but I’m not real big on driving through vast stretches of nothing after dark.” She turned to the clerk. “Any other supply stores in town?”

“Sure thing,” the very helpful clerk—clearly as spell-bound as every other male in the place—said, hauling a phone book up onto the counter. “Why don’t you go ahead and call around while I take care of those folks over there, then let me know what you decide, how’s that?”

With a huge sigh, Winnie pulled out her cell phone and started calling. Five minutes and as many phone calls later, she gave Aidan wide, spooked eyes.

Because, for reasons known only to God, there was not a single alternator that would fit her truck within fifty miles of Santa Fe.

One more day.

That much, she could handle, Winnie told herself as they headed back to Tierra Rosa, Annabelle panting hotly in her ear. Her skin prickled with the memory of those strong arms wrapped around her, the feel of warm, solid male chest against her back, and she thought, Okay, so it’s been a long time.

Of course, she reminded herself, Aidan had only been saving her life, it wasn’t like he wanted to hold her or anything, so it didn’t count. Her hormones snickered and said, Oh, believe me, honey…it counts.

Winnie hazarded a peek at his profile as they drove—the set jaw, the dour expression, the eyes focused straight ahead—and tried to figure out why in the name of all that was holy she was attracted to the man. Not in any logical kind of way, but on some very basic level that could really mess with her head if she let it.

Oh, sure, he was good-looking—if you were into the werewolf wannabe look—but that alone wasn’t enough to attract her to somebody. Anymore. Yeesh, she couldn’t even remember when she’d last gone stupid over a bunch of muscles and a cute smile. Not that Aidan’s smile—if he had one at all—was cute, although she dimly remembered that he’d sure smiled plenty when they’d first met, trying so hard to convince her he and June would be perfect parents for her baby…

Boom!

And that, boys and girls, was the sound of the reality boulder crashing into the middle of her very wayward thoughts. Because the bizarreness of her attraction to Aidan Black notwithstanding, his being her son’s adoptive father sure as heck called a screeching halt to that little fantasy, didn’t it—?

“Yes?” Aidan said beside her, his clipped response to his cell phone jarring her out of pointless musings. “I’m driving, Robbie, if a state trooper sees me, I’m screwed…No, Flo didn’t tell me, she mustn’t have known, either…Yes, of course, I’ll be right there.”

He tossed the phone into a cup holder and glanced over as a host of “uh-ohs” sprang to life in the pit of Winnie’s stomach. “Apparently Robbie neglected to tell anyone he had early dismissal today. Since Flo won’t be back until later, I need to pick him up.” He scratched his chin. “He’s already been waiting for fifteen minutes.” His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “And the school’s on the way back to the property. If I drop you off first, it adds another ten minutes—”

“Not a problem,” Winnie said, her throat clenching much farther down than throats normally clench.

More flexing. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Aidan. I put my big-girl panties on this morning, I can deal with it, okay?”

At least, she’d do her supercalifragilistic best.

Backpack thumping, hair flying, Robbie streaked toward them the instant they nosed into the school parking lot…only to come to a complete halt when he noticed Winnie. And, presumably, Annabelle, who’d thrust her head out Winnie’s open window to do her is-life-great-or-what? barking/quivering thing. Not until the kid got closer did Winnie notice the tear-tracked cheeks, his earlier upset now apparently forgotten in the combination of shock and apprehension at seeing Winnie again.

All of which he conveniently set aside long enough to hurl a very indignant, “How come nobody picked me up?” the moment he scrambled into the backseat with the dog.

“Because nobody knew they let you loose early today,” Aidan answered mildly, steering the truck back toward the road, and Winnie focused in front of her, hearing her child, smelling his father, trying not to combust.

“There was a notice and everything! It was in my backpack!”

“And you’re sure of that, are you? Because I certainly didn’t see it when I went through your backpack last night. But it’s all good now, right?” Aidan said, tossing Robbie a quick grin toward the back, which Winnie caught, nearly choking on her own sucked-in breath.

Oh, dear God—she’d totally forgotten the dimples.

While she’d been doing all this stealth breath-sucking, Annabelle had been concentrating on making it all better, as Annabelle was given to doing, and the boy’s indignation/apprehension had given over to peals of laughter. That’s how kids are supposed to sound, Winnie thought, and then Robbie said, through the giggles, “I thought you were s’posedta leave.”

“My truck had other ideas, honey. So I have to try again tomorrow.”

His head poked through the front seats, earning him a growled, “Robson! Seat belt!”

As he wriggled back to click his belt in place, though, he said, “Is it okay if Jacob comes over later, like around two? He said his mom said it was okay if it was okay with you.” And it occurred to her that Robbie loomed much larger on her radar—for obvious reasons—than she did on his.

She saw Aidan’s eyes jerk toward the rearview mirror, the shock scoot across his features. Winnie could practically hear the whirring in his head, that he’d already lost his morning, and now, with Robbie unexpectedly home from school and Florita gone, there went the afternoon, too. But he only nodded and said, “Sure. Why not?”

So much for the three-day grounding, Winnie thought, smiling, until Robbie said, “Winnie, too? Like right now, I mean, not later.” She wasn’t sure who stiffened more, Aidan or her.

“Um…” he said, and Robbie said, “Please?” and Winnie twisted around to say, “Oh, sugar…I don’t know…I’ve already taken up a lot of your father’s time, he probably needs to get back to work…”

“It’s okay,” Aidan muttered, and Winnie’s eyes darted to his face, silently pleading, Work with me here. A tactic that only works if the other person makes eye contact with you. Which, damn it all to hell, Aidan wasn’t doing.

So, because Robbie was now promising to make lunch himself if his Dad had stuff to do, Winnie sighed and thought, What could another few hours hurt? and said, “I’d love to,” and Robbie let out a “Yes!!!” behind her that both warmed and nearly broke her heart, all at the same time.

What’s going through your head? Aidan mentally directed to Winnie, as he followed her and Robbie from room to room. If nothing else, he was impressed by her ability to roll with the punches. To smile and laugh when he sincerely doubted she felt much like making merry.

He should take notes, he grumpily mused, at the same time thinking there’s nothing like a surprise guest to make you see your house through fresh eyes. The kitchen was Florita’s domain; beyond that, although she did her best to keep the dust bunnies from achieving world domination, she’d long since given up the good fight against the clutter.

Not that Aidan and June had been slobs, exactly, as much as obsessing about housework simply hadn’t been high on their list—hence their decision to hire a housekeeper. Although the great room, and June’s studio loft above it, were no longer command central for whatever causes June had been championing at the time, the space still had that air of perpetual upheaval about it, toys and magazines and June’s vast folk art collection spread out helter-skelter over furnishings that seemed to go out of their way to not match.

And his unexpected guest wasn’t missing a thing.

It startled Aidan to realize how much it mattered, what she thought. That she’d undoubtedly be seeking reassurance, even if only subconsciously, that she’d chosen well.

Especially when they came to Robbie’s room. Would she see the overflowing bookshelves and massive dinosaur model collection and constellation-decorated ceiling as evidence that they had, indeed, given him advantages she could never have afforded…or that they’d overindulged him? That they’d kept him safe…or isolated?

Did she see Aidan’s desire to spare Robbie the truth of her identity as rightly protective…or lamely suffocating?

Was she thinking, Oh, good…I did the right thing?

Or, Oh, God…what was I thinking?

“Dad!” Robbie said, startling him. “Do you have to follow us everywhere?”

The dismissal smarted out of all proportion to its intent as a red-faced Winnie muttered, “You know, honey, your daddy probably isn’t comfortable with leaving you alone with me, since I’m still basically a stranger.” As then her gaze swerved to Aidan’s, her brows lifted as if to say, Entirely your call, buddy.

Then Aidan saw in his son’s eyes a plea he didn’t entirely understand. Or like, frankly. Because somewhere along the line, things had slipped completely out of his control…even if on some deeper, undefined level Aidan understood that the more he tried to hang on to that so-called control, the more it would elude him. June had always been the one disposed to take life as it came, to trust events to unfold as they should…the very character trait that had drawn him to her to begin with. And, perhaps, the one he’d missed the most since her death.

So he was more than a little startled to hear himself say, “Not a problem, I’ll be off then to start lunch. Are grilled cheese sandwiches and soup from a tin all right? I’m not exactly a wizard in the kitchen.”

And in Winnie’s eyes he saw an unsettling blend of gratitude, compassion and a determination to stay strong that wrenched something loose inside him. “Soup and grilled cheese’ll be just fine and dandy,” she said, smiling and kind and forgiving and patient and flexible.

In other words, a right pain in the arse.

Chapter Six

It was some time after Aidan went off to tend to their meal before Winnie really tuned in to whatever Robbie was saying. Clearly, Aidan was anxious about what might happen, that maybe she’d slip up, or that Robbie might blow. Heaven knows he had nothing to worry about on the first score, despite the near-constant ache in the center of her chest. But she knew there was no way of predicting a child’s reaction to a recent—or even not so recent—loss, what might set him off. Which was why there was no way she’d disrespect Aidan’s wishes, whether he trusted, or believed, her or not.

One more day…

“And up there on those shelves,” Robbie said, “are all the Lego sets I built. Cool, huh?”

Her gaze lifting to the high shelf that hugged the ceiling along two whole walls, Winnie nodded. “Very cool,” she said, thinking, Boy, kiddo—you really, really lucked out. Light poured through a pair of huge windows into a child’s dream of a room, three times the size of hers at home, a cross between a video arcade, museum and library. Not that she imagined Robbie had a clue how fortunate he was, since he had nothing to compare it to. Nor, it occurred to her, would he have known what he’d been missing, if she’d—

Uh, uh, uh.

She stopped in front of an eight-by-ten photo of Robbie and his parents, taken a few years ago. Like those Russian nesting dolls, a grinning Aidan had June wrapped in his arms from behind; an even more broadly smiling June held an obviously giggling Robbie the same way. Winnie’s gaze touched each one in turn, lingering a little too long on Aidan’s image.

“That’s my mom,” Robbie said beside her, holding some sort of flying contraption built out of a gazillion interlocking plastic bits.

“I figured. How old were you?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Like five? She wasn’t sick then, I know that.” He spun and sank with a bounce on his bed, the twin-size mattress covered with a wool blanket ablaze in a bold geometric pattern of bright oranges and yellows and reds. As the scent of browned butter drifted into the room from downstairs, he said, “Mom painted the stars and stuff on my ceiling all by herself.”

Winnie dutifully looked up. “Wow. That must’ve taken her a long time.”

“I guess. I was in the hospital with ‘pendicitis, she had it all done by the time I got back.”

A dull knife twisted in her own belly, that he’d had appendicitis and she hadn’t known. That if she hadn’t turned chicken, she would have. Annoyance churning around the knife, she looked over at his bookcases. “That’s a lot of books. Have you read them all?”

“Some. Mom and Dad read the others to me. Mom, mostly.” He paused. “Even when she was too sick to get around very much, she still read to me.”

The ache of loss in his voice brought tears to Winnie’s eyes, even as it hit her what this was all about. “It feels good to talk about your mom, huh?”

Turning the plane or whatever it was over and over in his hands, Robbie finally nodded, further confirming her suspicions when he said, “Dad doesn’t like it when I talk about her.”

“What makes you think that?”

The boy’s shoulders jerked. “I just know, that’s all.”

Winnie lowered herself to sit beside him. “What about Flo?” she said gently. “Or…maybe somebody at school?”

“Flo always looks like she wants to cry. And at school it’s like…” On a pushed breath, he set the plane down and looked at her. “Ever since Mom died, nobody treats me normal anymore. The grown-ups all act like I’m gonna go weird on ‘em or something, and the other kids…sometimes I think they’re scared if they say something to me about Mom dying, it could happen to them, too. It sucks,” he added on a long sigh.

“Yeah. It does.” It had been a lot like that for her, too, after her own parents died. Especially the part about not being treated normally, when the one thing a child most craves is exactly that—for things to start feeling normal again, as much and as soon as possible. She hesitated, then folded her arms across her midsection. “You really should talk to your daddy about how you feel.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” She ducked her head to look into his face. “Would you like me to say something to him for you? Would that help?”

A shrug.

“But if you can talk to me—”

“That’s diff’rent.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Another shrug. From downstairs, Aidan called them to lunch. “Robbie,” she said gently, getting to her feet. “I’m not…” She stopped, cleared her throat. “I’m not gonna be around much longer. You’ve gotta find somebody to talk to, okay? And maybe, now some time’s passed, your dad’s more ready than you think?”

“He’s calling, we better go,” Robbie said, tossing the plane onto the mattress and sprinting toward the door, leaving Winnie behind.

In more ways than one.

Ladling out the soup into three brightly painted bowls, Aidan glanced up when Winnie came into the kitchen. Alone.

“Where’s the lad?”

“Washing up,” she said, clearly avoiding his gaze.

“So…how did it go?”

“Give me a minute,” she said softly, picking up the sandwich plates from the counter to set them on the plank wood table taking up most of the room, then reaching over to fiddle with the dried flower arrangement that had been there forever. On a sigh, she straightened, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets, her gaze drifting toward the patio doors and the forest beyond. “Great house.”

“Is that your attempt at steering the conversation into safer waters?”

He heard a short, humorless laugh. “Right now I’ve got a hole the size of Montana in my chest. And I have no earthly idea how to fix it. So humor me. I say, Great house. And you say, Thanks. Or whatever, I don’t care.”

Even though there was no reason to feel even remotely sorry for her—after all, none of this would be happening if she’d stayed in Texas—some rusty, unused part of him did, anyway. At least enough to play along. For the moment. “I’m afraid it’s a bit messy—”

“Forget it, it just looks lived in, that’s all. Miss Ida’d have a hissy fit if her house wasn’t spotless at all times, but all that cleaning and polishing and straightening up always seemed like a huge waste of time and energy to me. What’s the point of putting things away if you’re just gonna use ‘em again in a few hours?”

“Exactly,” Aidan said, feeling better. Over the sound of running water from the hall bath, Robbie started singing at the top of his lungs. Winnie smiled.

“He always do that?”

“He used to,” Aidan said, pouring milk for Robbie, tea for them. “All the time. What he lacks in talent he makes up for in enthusiasm.”

Winnie quietly laughed, then fiddled with the end of her sleeve for a moment before saying, “Um…if it’d help, I’d be glad to hang around while Robbie has his friend over. Just until Flo gets back, I mean. To free you up so you can get back to work?”

“I couldn’t ask you—”

“Just to make sure the boys stay out of trouble. Believe me, they won’t want some dumb girl getting in their way. So there’s no ulterior motive here, I swear,” she said, her cheeks pinking. “And anyway, it’s the least I can do after all your help with my truck.”

Aidan watched her for a moment, then said quietly, “This is the first time since June’s death Robbie’s asked to have a friend over, didya know?”

“Ohmigosh…no. I didn’t.”

“So it won’t bother me to have another child in the house. Still…”

“Let me guess. June had always been the one to entertain the kids.”

His cheeks warmed. “I never really know what to do with them, y’see. So actually…I’m very grateful for your offer.”

“Then we’re all set. And it’s not like I’m trying to keep what Robbie and I talked about a secret or anything. It’s just…” She pulled back a chair from the table and plunked into it, pushing up her sleeves. “He says he can’t talk to you about June.”

“What?” Aidan’s brows slammed together. “Of course he can talk to me!”

“Well, he doesn’t think so. Kids are real sensitive, Aidan,” she said gently. “If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about her, he’s gonna pick up on that. I know, I know…I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” she said, looking miserable. “But it was either that or not tell you at all. And anyway, it’s not a criticism, believe me.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not. Everybody deals with grief in their own way. I clammed up, too, after my parents died. I had to work things out by myself. And my grandmother…” She huffed out another one of those mirthless laughs. “It seemed the only way Ida could deal with losing her daughter was to keep reminding herself what a disappointment she’d been.”

One hand reached over to straighten out a spoon. “But Robbie’s different. He needs somebody to listen to him. To share the memories. If that’s too painful for you, then maybe you need to think about finding somebody—”

“Wait a minute…are you sayin’ he’s talking to you about his mother?”

After a moment, she nodded. “How’s that for irony?’

“But I’m his father, for God’s sake!”

“My point exactly,” Winnie said over the sound of Robbie’s sneakered feet pounding down the hall, turning to smile for the lad as he burst into the room.

The light in the studio had nearly faded beyond usefulness when Aidan heard Flo’s heels clack-clacking behind him, followed by, “So what’s up with Winnie makin’ pizza in my kitchen with Robbie and some kid I don’ know from Adam?”

“About damn time you returned,” he groused, half to her, half to the painting as he wiped his brush on a rag. “And that’s Jacob. Who I know you’ve met before, because I have.”

“They all start to look the same after a while,” Flo said, the clacking—and her perfume—getting closer. “The red over here,” she said, flapping her hand at the right side of the painting. “It’s out of whack with the rest of it.”

“And you’re forgettin’ our agreement.” Aidan detested having people around while he was working, commenting on a piece that wasn’t finished yet. He had a hard enough time taking criticism after he’d wrestled the bloody things into submission—at which point it was moot, anyway—but editorial remarks while the work was in progress were absolutely verboten. Even June, who had actually let a filmmaker hang around her studio for a week—a thought that gave Aidan heartburn—had respected that Aidan did not work by committee. His housekeeper, however, had yet to evolve that far.

In fact, she shrugged and said, “An’ how is it that the woman you were ready to ship to another planet yesterday is cooking your dinner and watching your kid today?”

“Her car died. I said I’d fix it but the part won’t be in until tomorrow.”

“An’ that’s reason enough to leave her alone with Robbie? You trust her that much, that fast?”

“Yes.” Aidan frowned at the painting. “You really think there’s too much red?”

“Are you kidding? It looks like you slaughtered a pig in here. And I don’ know what you’re thinking, boss, but it don’ take no crystal ball to predict there’s gonna be broken hearts in your future. Or did you miss the way she was looking at Robbie?”

Of course he hadn’t missed it, that combination of amazement and regret that made his grilled cheese curdle in his stomach. And he didn’t know why he trusted her, why he was willing to take that risk. But the thought had come…if she had the courage to give herself this one day, what skin was it off his nose to do the same? To share with her what she’d so generously given to him and June?

“So how’s Tess?” he now said, getting up and turning his back on the painting. “Due pretty soon, isn’t she?”

“Two weeks. I helped her get the baby’s room set up, she was hoping maybe Rico’d get leave by now so he’d be here when the baby comes, but now it’s not looking good for him to get home before sometime in the spring. Amazing, with cell phones and computers and everything, how he can call home almost anytime he wants, all the way from Iraq. Not like when my Jorge was in ‘Nam, it’d be weeks, sometimes, between letters—”

“Does Robbie ever talk to you about June?”

Flo shut her open mouth. Opened it again to say, “I tried to goose him into talking about her—in the beginning, you know, even though it was hard for me, too—but he wouldn’t bite. I finally figured when he wanted to talk, he would. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Aidan said, staring distractedly at the painting. “Maybe you could make a salad to go with the pizza?”

“Yeah, boss,” Flo said in a funny voice. “I’ll go do that.”

Aidan frowned after her, thinking, What the hell…?

There’s not a woman alive, Winnie thought as she oversaw two pairs of little hands as they liberally sprinkled black olives and sliced peppers over the sauce-drenched pizza crust, who would’ve missed Flo’s you’re-encroaching-on-my-territory vibes. Although whether they were due to Winnie’s being with Robbie or being in Flo’s kitchen, she couldn’t say. Probably a bit of both.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Winnie now said as the woman went behind them with much sighing and eye-rolling and jewelry-jangling, scraping off cutting boards and wiping up flour and putting things back in the refrigerator. “We were gonna clean up our mess as soon as the pizza went in the oven.”

“It’s no bother, it’s my job,” Flo said, somehow managing to not look directly at her while keeping an eye on her at the same time.

Honestly.

“Is it ready?” Robbie said, radiating pride, and Winnie’s heart turned over in her chest.

“It’s ready.”

The pizza in the oven, Winnie sent boys and dog off to play while it was baking, then grabbed a sponge to clean the one spot the housekeeper had somehow missed. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but it was getting late and the boys were hungry—”

“And jus’ what do you think you’re doing?”

Winnie blinked. “Making supper?”

“Don’ you play that game with me,” Flo said, jabbing a long-nailed finger in Winnie’s direction. “Why are you making Robbie fall for you, when you know you’re only gonna leave an’ break his heart?”

When Winnie found her voice again, she said, “What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been here exactly one afternoon! I hardly think—”

“Then maybe you should think more. Especially before you act.”

Winnie folded her arms over her whumping heart. “It wasn’t like I planned on being here today! In fact, I was all set to leave this morning, only then my stupid truck broke down, so I came up here for a freakin’ phone book because there isn’t one in the house and where else was I supposed to go? Only Aidan said he didn’t know where it was—”

“It’s right there!” Flo said, exasperated, pointing to something that sure looked like a phone book, right underneath the telephone on the wall next to the fridge. “Where it’s been ever since I came to work here!”

“I’m only tellin’ you what he said,” Winnie said, thinking, Men, honest to God. “Anyway,” she continued while she was on her roll, “so then he took it on himself to play mechanic, which resulted in him taking me into Santa Fe, only nobody there had the part I needed. Then we picked Robbie up from school because apparently Aidan had no idea it was a short day and you weren’t around, and the kid wanted me to come to lunch and I would’ve backed out but Aidan said it was okay, okay? Not me. So once I was here I offered to watch the kids so Aidan could get some work done since he’d already lost half a day on account of that damn part, and then it got late so I went ahead and made supper because it seemed the logical thing to do. So if that makes me some kind of, I don’t know, manipulative hussy or something, well, ex-cuse me for living!”

Florita looked at her for several seconds, burst out laughing, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, it’s jus’ that I worry ‘bout them, you know? An’ I see you worming your way into this family, making pizza in my kitchen, an’ I think, this chick, she doesn’t have any family of her own—”

“And you think I’m trying to find an instant family here?” When Flo shrugged, Winnie sighed, figuring this rat terrier of a housekeeper was the least of her worries. “Trust me, nothing could be further from my mind. All I was doing was making supper. And then tomorrow Aidan will fix my truck and I’ll be outta everybody’s hair for good.”

Flo gave her a speculative look, then turned to the meatlocker-size refrigerator to get out salad fixings. “You made the pizza from scratch?”

If that was Flo’s attempt at being conciliatory, Winnie supposed she could climb down off her high horse for a minute or two. “I found flour and yeast and that pizza stone under the cabinet, so I made up a crust dough earlier. It was either that or meat loaf for fifty.”

Winnie saw the woman’s glittery mouth twitch as she dumped lettuce, tomatoes and a cucumber on the counter. “You should be married.”

“I’ll put it on my list. But this is your business how?”

“You’re in my kitchen,” she said, pulling several leaves off a head of romaine, “I get to ask the questions. Besides, it’s boring as hell up here, I got nothin’ else to do.”

Grabbing the cucumber and peeler, Winnie went to the sink to strip it. “What can I say, it just hasn’t happened for me yet.”

“Some pendejo dumped you?” she heard behind her.

“More than one, actually,” Winnie said, getting the gist.

“Pretty girl like you, I’m surprised the men aren’t lined up for miles.”

“I live in a town smaller than this one, Flo,” Winnie said, thinking, Pretty? “There’s not enough available men to line up for twenty feet, let alone miles. And half of those…” She shuddered.

“So you should move.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I couldn’t before now. And anyway, it’s not that easy to pull up roots that deep. Especially when you haven’t had two seconds to think about what comes next.” Winnie handed the now naked cucumber to Flo, then glanced outside just as the last rays of sunset gilded the landscape. “It’s really beautiful up here. Closest thing we’ve got to mountains back home is the occasional dead armadillo by the side of the road.”

“The winters can be a bitch, though.”

“Can’t be any worse than gettin’ a sand facial every time you walk out your door.”

Flo almost chuckled. “Tierra Rosa’s jus’ like any other small town, it’s got its good and its bad.”

“You’re still here.”

“Like you said…deep roots.”

Winnie slid up onto a stool across from Flo, propping one booted foot on the railing at the base of the breakfast bar, her arms crossed. “I gather June was from around here, too?”

A shadow crossed the housekeeper’s features before she said, “Nearby. Next town over. Her folks’re gone now, too.” Her knife passing through a tomato in slow motion, she added, “Sometimes, I can almos’ still feel her presence.”

“Whose presence? June’s?”

“Yes. Especially as it gets closer to Los Días de Los Muertos. You know about that?”

“The Days of the Dead? Sure. Well, a little. A couple Mexican families back home observe it. I never really got it, myself.”

“You think it’s spooky, no?” Flo said with a grin. “But it’s not like that for us, it’s a celebration. We don’t go all out the way they do in Mexico, maybe, but it’s still important. We get together, we remember those who’ve gone on before, we laugh, we tell stories, we show them we haven’t forgotten them, that they still live in our memories. Our hearts. So in a way, they really do ‘come back’ to visit us, you see? It’s a time to show we’re not afraid of death, because it can’t really take our loved ones from us. Not in the way that most matters.”

“Oh. When you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. But what if…?”

Flo’s eyes lifted to hers. “What?”

“Nothing,” Winnie said, refusing to let moroseness gain a foothold. Like wondering about people who die with no family. Who celebrates their lives? Who remembers them?

“You know,” Flo was saying, “everybody loved Miss June. She could cut a person down to size with three words if they had it coming, but Dios mío, I never knew anyone with a bigger heart.” Her mouth thinned. “I know people sometimes said things. Mean things. Because Miss June was so much older than the boss. But what does love know about age?” she added with a shrug. “About friendship. ‘Cause you never saw two people who were better friends. And I know he still misses her real bad.”

“I’m sure he does,” Winnie said, thinking, Okay, cutie, time for a reality check. That she was leaving the following day. That she was smart enough not to confuse chemistry and sympathy and loneliness with anything real. “You call him ‘the boss’?”

Flo smiled. “Miss June would call him that sometimes, just to get a rise out of him. They’d be arguin’ about somethin’, an’ she get this real amused look on her face, and go ‘Whatever you say, b-boss…’”

The last words were barely out of the housekeeper’s mouth before she dissolved into embarrassed tears. Winnie immediately went to her and wrapped her in her arms, getting the strangest, strongest feeling that if June had any idea how mopey everybody was around here, she’d be hugely pissed.

And that while Winnie was here, maybe she should see what she could do about that.

Chapter Seven

Winnie Porter was a strange bird indeed, Aidan decided as he sat across from her at the dining table, its dings and gouges probably hailing from New Mexico’s territorial days.

He’d hung outside the kitchen, listening to her and Flo’s conversation probably far longer than was politic, simply because he’d been too mesmerized to do anything else. Her moods apparently dipped and swerved like a roller coaster, with every bit of the accompanying dizziness and nausea. Women were hard enough to understand when they were levelheaded; one like Winnie…

“Why was six afraid of seven?” Robbie piped up, his mouth full of fresh, aromatic, bubbly-cheesed pizza.

“I have no idea,” Winnie said, aiming a wink in Aidan’s direction, and he thought, What? “Why was six afraid of seven?”

“Because seven ate nine!” Robbie said, both he and Jacob, exploding into knee-slapping laughter, which got Annabelle to barking and spinning in circles for no apparent reason. Winnie laughed, too, just as hard, even though Aidan sincerely doubted she’d never heard the joke before. Then she launched into a series of truly terrible riddles, half of which the boys already knew—which only seemed to make them laugh harder—and the laughter and the barking crescendoed until it seemed the very room would burst.

Winnie’s eyes touched his, begging him to join in.

Barely able to breathe, Aidan got up from the table to refill his tea glass, at which point he realized the jollity had apparently infected his housekeeper, as well. Now this is more like it, he thought he heard her say, although it didn’t really sound like her voice, it sounded like—

He shook his head to clear it. He was knackered, was all, having not slept well in months. Which probably accounted for why the room suddenly seemed brighter than he remembered, the reds and golds and rich blues vibrant in the warm overhead light. He squinted at the fixture: Had Flo changed the bulbs to a higher wattage?

His glass refilled, Aidan returned to his seat. Winnie looked up, grinning full out, breathless, her cheeks flushed, and Thank God you’re leaving and Too bad you’re leaving collided underneath his skull like a pair of daft footballers.

“Dad! Dad! Guess what Winnie taught us?”

“Three-card monte?” Aidan said drily, and Robbie said, “Huh?” as Winnie said, “Honestly, Aidan, give me some credit,” and Robbie said, “No—chess!”

Aidan looked at Winnie. “Chess?”

“Yeah, he had that beautiful set on the shelf in his room, I asked him if he knew how to play and he said no, so I taught him. Him and Jacob,” she said with the kind of smile for Robbie’s friend that young boys had been falling in love with since God did that little hocus-pocus thing with Adam’s rib.

Aidan swallowed down the flare of annoyance, that June had ordered the Harry Potter set for Robbie for his eighth birthday with explicit instructions that Aidan teach their son how to play. That Winnie knew how to play chess.

Not to mention everyone who crossed her path.

Except Aidan, of course. Aidan was immune to being played—

“It’s so cool,” Robbie said. “Almost as cool as Mario Galaxy—Hey!” he squawked as a bit of black olive bounced off his nose. “Who did that?”

“Who did what?” Winnie said, all innocence as she took a sip of her iced tea, and Aidan opened his mouth, only to close it again, refusing to let himself feel…

Alive?

“Somebody threw an olive at me!”

“It was you!” Jacob yelled, eyes alight, pointing at Winnie. “I saw you!”

“Was not,” Winnie said, picking a pepperoni slice off her pizza and chucking it at Jacob, which set off a whole new round of giggles. Then a mushroom bounced off Aidan’s forehead and the boys roared, and from the other end of the kitchen Flo threw her hands up and muttered something in Spanish that Aidan only half heard, and when he met Winnie’s gaze she cocked her head at him, grinning, her eyes full of mischief and mayhem, and he thought, No.

But not before the sucker punch hit. With far more devastation than the mushroom. Because from somewhere deep, deep inside him, a funny, fuzzy feeling bubbled up, like inhaling helium.

Go with it, babe…

Aidan picked up the artillerized fungus. “Lose something?” he said, his gaze locked with hers.

She grinned, full of herself. Smug. Dangerous. “Consider it a gift,” she said.

Only to shriek with laughter when he threw it back.

An hour later, Aidan sneaked a glance at Winnie’s face as his truck jostled down the mountain to take Winnie and Annabelle back to the Old House, then Jacob home. Behind him, the boys squealed every time the truck hit a bump. Beside him, Winnie smiled, thinking more secret Winnie thoughts. Aidan jerked his head back around, telling himself he wasn’t interested. In her thoughts, or…anything else.

Now there’s a lie for you.

Feeling his nostrils flare, a certain swift, hot kick to his groin, Aidan shifted gears as they navigated a particularly steep part of the road. Two years ago he wouldn’t have believed it possible that the time would come when he wouldn’t miss sex. Until June got sick, and things changed, and Aidan basically put his libido in cold storage.

Then June died, and what would have been the point in taking it back out?

Not that he didn’t occasionally still think about That Side of Things, as his mother would say. But not so much about having sex—or not—as how strangely easy it had been to simply disconnect one or two crucial wires. That he hadn’t felt deprived so much as disinterested.

Until tonight.

Which was making him confused as all hell. Not to mention cranky. Crankier.

The truck bumped up in front of the Old House; when Winnie opened the door, Aidan told the boys to sit tight, he’d be back straightaway, and got out before he caught Winnie’s look. Because he knew there’d be a Look.

Sure enough, as soon as they were out of earshot her eyes slid to his. “Walkin’ me to the door’s kinda overkill, don’t you think?”

“I’m just setting a good example for the lads.”

“Ah.” She pulled the persimmon-colored jacket closed, shivering; nightfall had sucked all the warmth out of the air. At least, that provided by the sun.

“I just…wanted to thank you for watching the boys. And for the pizza, it was great.”

“You’re welcome—”

“And for gettin’ Robbie out of himself like that.”

Her grin was cautious. “Yeah, nothin’ like a good food fight to shake things up. Although Flo may never speak to any of us again.”

Aidan smiled back, telling himself that her lips were just lips. That this was a helluva time for That Side of Things to kick in again. “She’ll survive. Besides, the dog cleaned most of it up already.”

“Good old Annabelle,” Winnie said warmly to the beast, who barked up at her. Then burped.

“It should’ve been me, though,” he said.

“To lick the food off the floor?”

“No,” he said on a half laugh, then sighed, raking one hand through his hair. Which really was getting too long. “To teach Robbie how to play chess.” He paused. “To make him laugh again.”

He caught her gaze dipping from his hair to someplace below his neck. “I didn’t mean to step on any toes, honest—”

“And I didn’t mean to imply you had. Well, not too much anyway. What I mean to say is, what’s important is seeing Robbie happy. How that came about is immaterial. ” Tamping down the tremor of disloyalty, he said, “I think June would be pleased.”

Her eyes lifted, glittering in the half-assed porch light. She nodded, then turned to unlock the door. “So. What time should I be ready tomorrow?”

“So you’re really going, then?”

Winnie twisted around, at least as shocked as he. Then she sighed. “I had a blast today, Aidan. I really did. But it wasn’t easy.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was,” he said, appalled to discover how badly he wanted to hold her. To rub her back and tell her it would be okay. “Well, then. Is eight too early?”

“No, eight’s fine—”

“I’m going t’do better, Winnie. With Robbie, I mean. Whatever’s still goin’ on inside my head, Robbie’s only a child. And I know he needs to be getting on with things. With bein’ a boy, enjoying life. If y’know what I mean.”

After a moment, she crossed her arms, shivering slightly, her eyes soft with concern. “This is only a suggestion, okay? But Flo was talkin’ about the Day of the Dead, about how it’s not morbid at all, but instead a way to celebrate those who’ve gone on. So maybe, I don’t know…you should think about you and Robbie holding some kind of vigil for June? Because maybe remembering will help ease the pain? Because…because if I were her, I sure as heck wouldn’t be happy knowing that you and Robbie weren’t.”

A sudden gust of woodsmoke-laced air made Aidan’s eyes burn, a shiver lick at his spine, even as those guileless eyes did their best to melt something long frozen inside him. “Y’might be on to something at that,” he said with a jerk of his head, then added, “It’s dipping into the t’irties tonight, are you sure you’ve got enough firewood?”

Winnie’s mouth pulled into a small, damnably understanding smile. “Plenty, thanks. So…see you tomorrow,” she said, slipping inside the house and shutting the door before he could make any more of a fool of himself than he already had.

Dad’s footsteps were so soft outside Robbie’s room he barely got his thumb out of his mouth in time. He knew he was way too old to be still sucking his thumb, but sometimes it made him feel less jumpy inside—

“Laddie?” Dad whispered, right by his bed. Robbie rolled; in the dark, Dad was a big blob, the light from the hallway making this weird glow all around him. “Ah. So you’re not asleep.”

Robbie shook his head, and Dad sat on the edge of his bed, making Robbie tumble toward him. They both laughed, a little. Then Dad leaned over him with his hands on either side of Robbie’s shoulders, making him feel safe. Now he could see his face, even if his hair hung down in his eyes. He was smiling. Sorta.

“Y’had a good time tonight, didn’t’ya?”

Robbie nodded. “It was…”

“What?”

“It kinda reminded me of before. With Mom.”

“I know. It did me, too.”

“Winnie’s really funny, huh?”

“That she is,” Dad said in a strange voice, then pushed Robbie’s hair out of his face. “I’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh. To be a little crazy.”

A little crazy? Before Mom got sick—even after, until she got really bad—Dad and Mom used to go nuts, cracking each other up all the time. Robbie remembered sometimes laughing so hard his stomach would hurt. Tonight was the closest he’d come to feeling like that in a really long time.

Dad’s mouth got all twisted. “It’s been hard on both of us, this last year,” he said, and Robbie nodded, not sure what he was supposed to say. But Dad wasn’t finished. “It occurs to me that maybe I’ve fallen down on the job in my duties as a father. It wasn’t something I did on purpose, I just…” He let out a big breath. “I just want you to know, you can talk to me. About…anything a’tall.”

“About Mom, you mean.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling a little. “About Mom.”

Robbie frowned. “I didn’t think you even thought about her all that much.”

“Oh, Robbie,” Dad said on another breath, this one even longer, “I think about your mother all the time. But it’s been hard for me to talk about her because it hurts so much. Do y’see?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about her. To me, I mean. To be honest, I don’t think Mom would be very happy about the way I’ve been acting since she died.”

In the dark, Robbie felt his eyes open wide. He couldn’t remember Dad ever coming right out and saying that Mom had died. In a way, he felt like this big rock had rolled off his chest…only to get stuck in his throat. Part of him wanted to tell Dad everything, about how he sometimes felt like Mom was in the Old House, about how he missed the way Mom would sing, really badly and so loud birds would fly up out of the trees. About how he remembered the time she burned the stew she was trying to make and the whole house got full of smoke and how much he missed the way they used to laugh all the time.

But he couldn’t get the words past that dumb rock.

In the dark, he saw Dad’s eyes go all shiny. Then he nudged Robbie over so he could lie down beside him, holding him against his chest.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready, laddie,” Dad whispered into his hair. “But whenever you are, I’m right here, I promise.” He kissed Robbie’s forehead. “How’s that?”

His eyes watery, all Robbie could do was nod.

The next morning, Winnie came out of the bathroom to find Annabelle whining in great excitement at the bottom of the front door, followed by the muffled sounds of somebody messing about with tools and such out front. Momentarily forgetting she was only wearing Ida’s ratty old chenille robe, she swung open the door to an arctic blast that swirled inside like a cat looking for someplace warm.

Madly toweling her hair before it froze, she called out, “It’s not even eight yet, so don’t tell me I’m late!” Then she frowned. “What are you doing?”

From underneath the hood of her truck, Aidan mumbled something about going into town early for the part, there’d been no need for her to go, too, before he popped into view, slamming shut the hood. He was all woodsy today, in a checkered jacket and cute little beanie pulled down over his waves, which she realized—too late—only made his jaw look even sharper and his mouth even more…eyecatching. “I’m just now done, actually. So you can be on your way anytime you like, the truck’s ready to go.”

Okay, by rights she should be leaping about with great joy, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Instead she squeaked out, “Really?”

Aidan frowned at her. She was finally beginning to understand that frowning was his normal expression, not to take it personally. “I t’ought you’d be pleased. Because this way you’ll be home before dark?”

Suddenly aware assorted important bits on her person were about to flash freeze, Winnie held up one finger and ducked inside to yank on some ten-odd layers of clothes, all the while reminding herself that if her reaction to Aidan last night as he stood there, looking contrite as hell and far sexier than was good for either of them, was any indication, she should be down on her knees in gratitude. Especially as those assorted important bits began to defrost and remind her—rudely—exactly how much time had passed since they’d been put to good use. Or any use a’tall, as he might say.

As she tugged on her boots, she idly wondered if she should be questioning her sanity. Then she comforted herself with the thought that she only had to hang on for a little while longer, and she’d be out of there with her dignity intact. Along with her heart and those assorted other bits.

Because, yes, leaving Robbie was going to be a bitch and a half, but the sooner she did, the better. Leaving his father, however, she thought as she scrubbed at her hair one last time with the dry side of the towel, wasn’t supposed to cause so much as a twinge of regret. A flutter of disappointment. A prickle of…whatever the hell was prickling.

Hoping her hair still-damp wouldn’t turn into icicles, she went back outside, where Aidan was talking into his cell. Frowning, of course.

“That was Flo,” he said, clapping the cell phone shut and striding back toward his own truck, all concentration of purpose. “It was half in Spanish, but the upshot was that Tess went into labor, Flo ran out to her car, remembered she was supposed to take Robbie to school, tried to get to her phone in her purse to call me and between not paying attention and the chickens and those stupid high heels she wears, she stumbled. And fell. And now she can’t bend her wrist.”

“Oh, no—!”

But Aidan had shifted into Man Take Action mode. “I suppose I’ll go back to the house and pick her and Robbie up,” he muttered as he yanked open his truck door, “drop Robbie off at school, then go get Tess and take them to the hospital—”

“Aidan!”

He stopped mid-sentence, giving Winnie a look that might have been almost comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious. And she could have said something like, Give everybody my love, then, or What a shame I can’t stick around and help out, but of course she couldn’t do that—

“What?” he said.

She cast a brief, longing glance at her truck, telling herself it couldn’t actually look crestfallen that, for the second time in as many days, plans had changed. On a heartfelt sigh, she returned her gaze to Aidan.

“I know you think you’re ‘The Man,’ but not even you can take three people to three different places at one time.”

A muscle popped in his jaw. “Robbie’s school’s on the way to the hospital and both women’ll be going there—”

“And last time I checked hospitals didn’t generally fix wrists in the maternity wing. Besides, who’s got Miguel?”

“Ah, hell, I forgot about him—”

“So I noticed.” She held out her hand. “Give me my keys. I’ll pick up Robbie and Flo, you go ahead and get Tess and Miguel, and we’ll meet up in Maternity. I know where the hospital is,” she said to his frown, “I passed it when I was out driving the other day.”

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