“I don’t know you at all.”

Devon pulled her lower lip between her teeth after she spoke—as though she, too, wished to take back the words. She put her right hand on the floor to push herself to her feet.

Miguel closed his fingers around her forearm and held her beside him. “Devon, have you given any thought as to why you ended up in my bed that night?”

“Shock. Confusion. Sleep deprivation. I was a little out of my mind, I think.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, smiling, although it took some doing to produce a grin. Part of him wanted her to say it was because she was still madly, passionately, forever in love with him. “I think we both were.”

“I didn’t know if my grandmother was going to live or die. I needed comfort. You offered me that.”

“Devon, it went past offering you comfort five minutes after we left the hospital.” The words came out as a kind of growl and her eyes widened a little with dismay.

“I told you, it was an aberration. We were both a little crazy that night.”

Dear Reader,

Babies are such wonderful little creatures. Being able to contribute a story to a series dealing with the women who dedicate their lives to bringing babies into the world was a challenge we were happy to accept.

Midwives have helped women deliver their babies from ancient times, but in the past hundred years, at least in the United States, the craft has fallen into disfavor and is still viewed with skepticism by much of the medical profession.

Today many women are rediscovering the joy of delivering their children with the help of skilled midwives like Lydia Kane and the others at The Birth Place.

Lydia’s granddaughter, Devon Grant, has always known she wanted to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps, but she’s taken a different path to that goal, becoming a Certified Nurse Midwife instead of following traditional ways. Now she’s back in Enchantment working alongside Lydia, and old wounds and new secrets add to the tension between the women, tension that’s intensified further by their differing approaches to their age-old craft.

The reappearance of Devon’s teenage love, all grown up and even more handsome than before, only adds to the complications in her life—and then there are the children she’s taken under her wing at the risk of being arrested for harboring illegal aliens…and wildfire on the mountain…oh yes, and a baby born under the stars.

We hope you enjoy reading The Midwife and the Lawman as much as we enjoyed writing it. We’d also like to add a special thank you to the great authors in this series (Darlene Graham, Brenda Novak, Roxanne Rustand, C.J. Carmichael and Kathleen O’Brien) whose books preceded ours. It was an honor and a privilege working with all of you.

Sincerely,

Carol and Marian

The Midwife and the Lawman
Marisa Carroll

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Erika, Jennifer, Allicyn and Matthew and now for Becca and Nicholas, and always for Sarah

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

HE WONDERED if Devon would ever come to him again.

Enchantment’s Chief of Police Miguel Eiden put the decidedly nonregulation thought out of his head as his radio crackled to life. It was the day dispatcher, Doris Fernandez, checking in.

“Chief Eiden, did you copy the transmission from The Birth Place?”

He hit the toggle that opened the receiver affixed to his shoulder, frowning a little at the use of his title. Until a few weeks ago Doris would have called him Miguel. Then he’d still been one of the guys. Now he was the boss, and things had changed. “Roger that, Doris.” He’d picked up Devon Grant’s conversation with her grandmother, Lydia Kane, on the scanner speaker. He hadn’t responded, though. That was the last thing Devon would want.

“Shall I send out a ten-fourteen?” Ten-fourteen was code for a police escort.

The only other officer on duty this shift was Hank Jensen. Hank was six months out of the New Mexico Police Academy. It would be lights and siren all the way back to The Birth Place. Devon would be furious. Madder than she’d be if he showed up. “Negative, Doris. I’m heading back into town. I’ll meet her at the Silver Creek Road intersection.”

“Affirmative. I’ll notify the clinic that you’re available.”

“I’ll give you an ETA after I connect with Ms. Grant. Eiden out.” He stood up but didn’t leave the shade of the brush arbor where he’d been sitting with his grandfather, Daniel Elkhorn. “Gotta go, Granddad. Devon Grant doesn’t want to be delivering a baby in the back of her Blazer any more than I do. I’d better see she’s got a clear run the rest of the way into town.”

His grandfather stood, too, unfolding his barrel-chested, six-foot frame from his lawn chair, and took a limping step forward. “This’ll be the second baby in two weeks that she’s talked the mother out of delivering at home. Not the best endorsement for her grandmother’s clinic.”

“How’d you know that?” Miguel looked at his grandfather over the top of his sunglasses.

“Heard it down at the Legion.” Daniel stared back at him from eyes that had faded from black to brown with the passing of years, but still seemed able to see right through him. His skin was bronzed and creased as an old leather jacket. His hair was more gray than black now. His nose jutted out from his face like a hawk’s beak. Miguel had inherited that nose. “’Course you already know that. You helped her get Ophelia Pedroza to The Birth Place, too, didn’t you?”

“It was a breech birth. I don’t blame Devon for not wanting to deliver Ophelia way the hell out on the reservation with only an assistant midwife for help. And now Lacy Belton’s running a fever. Sounds like it could be serious.”

“Or she could’ve caught a cold from one of her kids. Makes no difference. Lydia Kane will be fit to be tied that Devon’s done it again.”

Miguel didn’t have an answer for that. He opened the door of the Dodge Durango the town fathers had seen fit to buy for the chief who’d preceded him and swung inside. The air conditioner wasn’t working again. The vehicle had been sitting in the sun and the interior was like an oven. It was nearing ninety this July afternoon, a higher than normal temperature for the altitude. He rolled down the window and made a mental note to have the SUV serviced, which ensured another hour of doing paperwork.

“I’ll check back in tomorrow if I can, Granddad. And if you see anyone else prowling around the barn, you stay put inside, you hear? You’re not the only one who’s had things come up missing. It could be just kids from town or the reservation raising hell, or it could be illegals making their way north to Colorado. Either way, you don’t need to do my job for me. Give the station a call. I’ll get someone out here, pronto.”

Daniel lifted a hand in acknowledgment—or dismissal, more likely. Sixty years ago he’d island-hopped his way across the Pacific, one of the famous Marine Navajo Code Talkers. Before that he’d grown up on the Navajo reservation when living off the land was the only option for most Native Americans. Even crippled by arthritis and nearing eighty, he was fearless and a crack shot. He wouldn’t stay locked inside his trailer waiting for his grandson to come to his rescue. He’d confront the person stealing the eggs from his chicken coop and carting off things from the pile of darn-near junk behind his barn.

Miguel made up his mind to increase the patrols in this part of the township, and the old ghost town of Silverton, a mile farther into the hills. It would mean overtime for his small force, and more than likely another go-around with the town council over the cost. He must have been crazy to take over the job when Chief Hadley up and retired after his wife hit a million-dollar jackpot on an anniversary trip to Reno.

He checked the dashboard clock as he headed back out the dusty track that connected his granddad’s place with the main road. It would take him fifteen minutes to reach the rendezvous, but once he crossed the creek he’d have a good overview of Desert Valley Road—the route Devon would have to take to bring Lacy Belton off the mountain.

By the time he got there, he wouldn’t have to worry about air-conditioning. He had no doubt Devon’s frosty welcome would cool him off just fine.

DEVON SCOWLED IN ANNOYANCE. Even with half of Arroyo County to patrol, it would have to be Miguel who showed up to accompany her back into town. Not that she needed an escort. Lacy was doing just fine in the back of her Blazer, and her husband, Tom, was right behind them in his pickup with their two kids, Luke and Angie. But once she’d radioed that she was bringing her patient into the birthing center to deliver, the outcome had been inevitable.

Devon eased over to the side of the road. Miguel was standing, arms folded, beside the big brown Durango emblazoned with the Enchantment Police Department logo. His gray Stetson shading his face, he straightened as she rolled to a halt and lowered her window.

“Everything okay, Devon? Where’s your backup?” Miguel knew The Birth Place midwives usually worked in pairs for a home birth.

“No one was available.” Lacy was one of Lydia’s most loyal patients, and she’d insisted her baby be born at home. So Devon had agreed to attend the delivery alone. Reluctantly. She was a registered nurse and a certified nurse-midwife. She couldn’t quite meet Miguel’s gaze. She’d choked again and he knew it. “Lacy’s running a fever. I felt it would be better if she delivered at The Birthing Place.” She was taking the safest course for her patient. She didn’t need to feel defensive, but she did.

“I picked up a bug from the kids, that’s all,” Lacy said from the back seat. She was a little thing, but she’d already had two successful pregnancies. She began to pant, making puffing sounds through pursed lips. Devon glanced at her watch, timing the contraction. “Wow. That was a doozy.” Lacy leaned back against the seat as the contraction eased.

“We need to be on our way.” Lacy was only about five centimeters dilated, but as this was her third child, her labor would probably progress quickly. The sun had already wheeled far over into the western sky. Once it dropped behind the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, darkness would fall like a blanket.

Miguel studied Devon from behind the concealing sunglasses for a few more unnerving moments before nodding his agreement. His khaki shirt and pants were as crisp and wrinkle-free as if he’d just put them on. He looked as if the heat didn’t bother him a bit. When she was sixteen and hopelessly romantic, she’d thought his apparent disregard of physical discomfort must be the result of his Navajo and Spanish-conquistador heritage. Now she’d realized it was just as much a function of his stubborn Scot/Irish/German genes. “I’ll lead you in.” He turned away, gave Tom Belton a thumbs-up and folded his length into the seat of the SUV.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Lacy’s contractions were a steady four minutes apart. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright with fever, but she wasn’t unduly stressed. Miguel pulled into the small parking lot at the back of the adobe-style clinic. Devon parked in the space beside him and climbed out of her truck to help Lacy from the back seat. The graveled path into the clinic was screened from the view of the parking lot and windows so that a woman in labor could walk directly into the birthing rooms unseen, even if she was wearing only a bathrobe.

It was one of the many thoughtful details that stamped the clinic with Devon’s grandmother Lydia’s unique touch.

“Do you need any help?” Miguel asked, coming to stand beside her. Devon had to tilt her head a little to meet his gaze. He’d taken off the sunglasses and she got the full dose of his deep-brown eyes. His straight dark hair held unexpected hints of copper and gold. At least it had in that long-ago summer when she’d given him her heart—and her virginity. These days he wore it military short, a reminder that he was a Marine reservist, as well as a policeman.

Lacy waved Miguel off. “I’m okay.” But she accepted Devon’s arm around her swollen waist.

Tom Belton wheeled into the last parking space in the small lot. He’d gotten held up at one of Enchantment’s few stoplights. The children came tumbling out of the truck and ran to her.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Lacy’s son asked.

“I’m fine. I just need Daddy to put his arm around me and help me inside.”

Devon stepped aside to let Tom support his wife. She looked up and saw her grandmother standing, tall and straight, just inside the open door that led to the birthing rooms. Lydia’s hair was pulled back into her usual bun. She wore khaki slacks and a rough-weave cotton shirt with an open neck and sleeves rolled up to her elbows. On the days she was seeing patients, she often wore long, flowing skirts and rings and bracelets of silver and turquoise. But not when she was attending a laboring mother.

A stethoscope hung around her neck, and under it Devon could see the rare, rose-onyx pendant Lydia was never without. If you looked at it closely, you could just make out the design of a Madonna and child, in the pink and rose swirls at its heart. Except for a few new lines around her mouth and a shadow of fatigue in her blue eyes, Lydia showed no visible signs of the heart attack she’d suffered six weeks earlier.

Behind her grandmother Devon noticed the clinic’s accountant, Kim Sherman. Devon still found it hard to believe that the somewhat abrasive and aloof young woman was really her cousin, the daughter of the baby girl Lydia had been forced to give up at birth years before Devon’s own mother was born. The discovery had been a shock, but learning Lydia had kept her daughter’s birth a secret all those years didn’t surprise Devon as much as the others. Lydia was good at keeping secrets.

And because Lydia kept secrets, Devon had secrets, too.

“Lydia, I’m glad you’re here,” Lacy said, and the relief in her voice was so evident Devon felt color rise in her throat and cheeks.

“Let’s take your vital signs and check you out, then we’ll decide whether to call Dr. Ochoa and head over to Arroyo,” Lydia said in her bracing, no-nonsense voice.

Hope Tanner Reynolds, Lydia’s assistant, joined them. “Hope, will you help Lacy get settled? Tom, you and the children are welcome in the birthing room, as well. I need to speak to my granddaughter and then I’ll be right with you.” The door closed behind them. “Do you have reason to believe Lacy’s fever is caused by something more serious than a cold?” Lydia asked without preamble.

Devon took a moment to compose her answer. She always felt as if she was back in college taking an oral exam when her grandmother queried her about a birth.

“Miguel, would you like something cold to drink? Or a cup of coffee?” Kim asked, covering the small, telling silence that followed Lydia’s question.

“I could use a glass of ice water,” he responded, taking his cue.

“That’s an even better choice. I was just getting ready to empty the coffeepot. It’s been simmering away all afternoon. It’s probably the consistency of roofing tar by now.”

“Then I’ll definitely stick to ice water.”

He followed Kim down the hall, leaving Devon and her grandmother alone.

The clinic was unusually quiet. The office staff had gone home for the evening and there were no expectant mothers in the whitewashed waiting room comparing symptoms, while their children squabbled over the toys in the sunny corner opposite the fireplace, no women in labor being cared for in the other pastel-colored birthing rooms.

“She probably has some run-of-the-mill virus that poses no harm to her or the baby,” Devon responded at last. “But without tests I can’t rule out a urinary-tract infection or Group B strep, even an amniotic infection, although I don’t think that’s the case. In any event, intravenous antibiotics would be the safest course to follow.”

“We don’t do IVs here.”

“I know. That’s why…”

Hope opened the birthing-room door in time to overhear the last of the exchange. Hope had been a labor and delivery nurse before she returned to Enchantment with her sister. She had recently become a licensed midwife under Lydia’s tutelage. She was newly and happily married to Parker Reynolds, the clinic’s administrator, and helping him raise his son, Dalton. But eleven years earlier, things had been very different. Hope had been a seventeen-year-old runaway from a polygamous religious cult, pregnant and alone. On the night Hope’s baby was born, Devon, only a teenager herself, had overheard her grandmother agreeing to sell the infant on the black market. Paralyzed with shock and betrayal at her adored grandmother’s unethical actions, she had done nothing to save her friend’s baby. Hope had left the area a few days later, and Devon hadn’t heard from her again until Hope had returned about a year ago, apparently reconciled to the loss of her child and ready to move on with her life. It seemed Hope had forgiven Lydia for what had happened, but Devon could not so easily forget what her grandmother had done.

She’d kept the secret of that night sealed in her heart for more than a decade, confronting her grandmother with her knowledge only when Lydia decided to step down from the center’s board of directors and asked Devon to take her place. Lydia had refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, insisting she’d done what she had to do to save the center and begging Devon to believe her when she said that Hope’s baby had gone to a good and loving home. The issue remained unresolved between them, straining her relationship with her grandmother almost to the breaking point.

“I have a suggestion,” Hope said, taking on the role of peacemaker between them as she so often did these days. “It’s not routine, I know, but couldn’t Joanna Carson order antibiotics for Lacy? She takes care of both Lacy’s kids. She knows her as well as any of the OBs.”

Devon relaxed a fraction. Hope was right. It was a little out of the ordinary to ask a pediatrician to prescribe for a woman in labor. But it was a way out of the standoff.

Lydia’s expression remained tight. She fingered the pendant at her neck, a nervous gesture she’d acquired in the stressful weeks since Devon had agreed to move back to Enchantment and practice at the clinic. “I don’t see any other solution, short of sending Lacy to the hospital. Dr. Ochoa would certainly not be receptive to coming here to start the IV.” Carlos Ochoa was one of the OBs who backed up The Birth Place midwives at Arroyo County Hospital. Their professional relationship was cordial but not close.

Hope shot Devon a glance that said as plainly as words not to mention they were both qualified to administer drugs by IV if the doctor so ordered. That was not Lydia’s way.

“I’ll call Joanna,” Devon said, reaching out a hand toward her grandmother. A hug or a touch had always been the signal they used to convey an apology when they’d clashed during Devon’s growing-up years. And they had clashed, often. They were too much alike, Devon’s mother, Myrna, always said. But Lydia didn’t see, or chose to ignore, her granddaughter’s tentative gesture. These days the distance between them was too great for a simple ritual to make things right.

“I suppose you must,” Lydia said, “if Lacy can deliver here. It will be less stressful for her and the baby.”

Devon nodded. “Good. That’s settled, then. Let’s get back to our mother.”

Lydia smiled at Hope and reached for the door-knob. She didn’t give Devon a backward glance.

IN ANOTHER HOUR it would be daylight. Lydia turned away from the window. Lacy Belton, her new daughter asleep in the crook of her arm, dozed on the high bed. Nearby, her husband was stretched out in a recliner that the parents of one of her mothers had donated to the center. The older children were curled up in the corner on an air mattress.

The delivery had taken longer than she’d anticipated, but everything went smoothly. Another life brought safely into the arms of a loving mother, one more small atonement for the sin of giving her own firstborn away.

Feeling every one of her seventy-four years, she turned her thoughts from the past—she knew from long experience there was no comfort there. It was so quiet now she could hear the beat of her heart. Steady and strong. No pain, no shortness of breath. Just weariness, and the ever-present weight of despair. How was she ever going to make things right with Devon? If she’d known that long-ago night that Devon had overheard her making arrangements with Parker Reynold and his father-in-law to buy Hope’s baby, could she have done something, anything, to mitigate the damage?

Probably not. Devon was as stubborn and bull-headed as she was. And what she had done was wrong, criminal even, though it had all turned out right in the end—Hope had been reunited with her son. But at seventeen, would Devon have been able to understand her grandmother’s motivations, her desperation? She might have. If only I had known she was there, hiding, listening to every word.

Hope opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Everyone asleep?” she asked in a whisper, moving closer in her soft-soled shoes. At Lydia’s nod, she said, “Come and have a cup of tea.”

Lydia cast one last look at the sleeping family, then walked with Hope to the staff room just down the hall. Tom could find her easily if Lacy or the baby needed her.

“Where’s Devon?” she asked, blinking a little at the light Hope flicked on.

“I sent her home. She’ll have to do most of the prenatal visits tomorrow because you’re sleeping in.” Hope motioned Lydia to a seat and poured her a cup of her favorite herbal tea.

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. The cardiologist gave you permission to come back to work part-time. Part-time doesn’t mean eighteen-hour days.”

“I feel fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Hope said bluntly. She took a seat beside Lydia, her own mug cradled between her hands. “We can’t go on like this, Lydia. The tensions between you, Devon and me are spilling over into our work.”

“I’m tired. I really don’t want to discuss this tonight.” Her voice sounded like a tired old woman’s even to her own ears.

“You won’t want to discuss it tomorrow or the day after, either.” Hope’s tone remained quiet but firm.

“I tried to explain to Devon why I did…what I did.” The guilt of it still lay heavily on Lydia’s soul, and she couldn’t say the words aloud without pain. She couldn’t say, I sold your baby to Parker Reynolds. “She still holds me responsible.”

“She will always hold you responsible, unless you tell her the whole truth.”

“No. I can’t. Not after all this time.”

“Lydia, Parker and I both agree Devon should know that Dalton is my son. You can’t let her go on believing I don’t know where my child is. My uncle is in prison. I’m not afraid of him anymore. I release you from the promise you made me to keep Dalton’s identity secret.” She reached out and covered Lydia’s hand with her own. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “I thought you’d told her the truth about his adoption months ago.”

Lydia pulled away from the gentle touch. She set the mug down with more force than she should have. Tea sloshed over the rim onto the plastic tabletop. She blinked back the sting of unfamiliar, unwelcome tears. She never cried. “It’s too late. Don’t you see? Talking about it isn’t enough. It won’t turn back the clock. It won’t make Devon respect me again. It won’t make her love me again.”

CHAPTER TWO

MIGUEL SAT with his booted feet propped on the porch railing of his cabin. He’d “borrowed” a set of old, high-backed wooden kitchen chairs from his parents’ garage just so he could do exactly what he was doing now. There was no way you could tip back on two legs and take in the sight of the Sangre de Cristos on one side, and Enchantment nestled in its valley on the other, in a plastic lawn chair. None at all.

He took a swallow of his beer. It was warm. He grimaced and poured the rest over the edge of the porch onto the ground. He liked a beer now and then, but it had to be cold. He didn’t drink much. Not with a father and brother who were both recovering alcoholics. He had too many strikes against him with his genetic makeup not to be wary of following the same path.

A hawk cried as it circled overhead. Off in the distance a dog barked, or maybe it was a coyote, although coyotes didn’t usually come this close to town. Below him, on the narrow winding road, he saw lights flicker on in a couple of the minimansions that had been built out this way in the past decade.

His cabin wasn’t in the same league with those homes. Log sided, it had four rooms and a bathroom downstairs, and space for two more bedrooms and another bathroom beneath the steep-pitched dormer roof, if he ever had the time and money to finish them. But it was his. And so were the five wooded acres it sat on. His heart and his roots were here. The high country, the thin, clear air, were in his blood.

Hunter’s blood, Daniel called it. The Elkhorn clan had been hunters since the Diné, as the Navajos called themselves, had come into the Glittering World. Or so the legends told. But Daniel had left the Arizona reservation and moved to Enchantment when he married Miguel’s Mexican grandmother and took over running her father’s hardware store.

His father, Dennis Eiden, on the other hand, had wandered into Enchantment in the sixties, a war-weary vet out to see the country he’d fought for before settling down. He was a blond, blue-eyed farm boy from Ohio, but one look at Elena Elkhorn and he had stayed. He married her, moved her to Albuquerque. Worked days and went to school nights until he got his teaching degree, then brought her back to Enchantment to settle down and raise a family. He was retired now, throwing pottery and selling it for good money at a gallery in Taos.

And working to stay sober. Just like Miguel’s older brother, Diego, a Bureau of Indian Affairs cop on the big reservation in Arizona.

The sound of a familiar engine coming up the road in the twilight wormed its way into Miguel’s thoughts. It was Devon’s Blazer. He was so attuned to its vibrations that he even woke up in the middle of the night if she drove by to attend a birth.

He dug a plastic bottle of raspberry-flavored iced tea out of the little cooler where he’d stowed his beer and swung his legs off the railing. He jogged down the drive past the stand of pines that shielded his home from the road and waited for her. He wasn’t expecting her to come up to the cabin without an argument, but he had a backup plan if she put up too much of a fuss. He patted the pocket of his shirt. It was still there, the sheet of paper with the guest list for Nolan McKinnon and Kim Sherman’s wedding-rehearsal dinner. As best man and maid of honor respectively, he and Devon were hosting the damn thing as their gift to the couple. If it was up to him and Nolan, it would have been barbecue and beer, the same as the couple had planned for the reception. Catered by Slim Jim’s, the best damn barbecue in the state.

But it wasn’t up to him and Nolan.

Devon slowed when she saw him standing by the side of the road. She wanted this party to be perfect to show Kim she was welcome in the family, and she was making herself into a nervous wreck to accomplish that goal. She rolled down the window and looked up at him, no hint of a smile showing on her face. Miguel felt the absence of that smile like a cloud blocking the sun on a cool day. He loved Devon’s smile, a slow curving of her lips that grew and widened until it wreathed her face and sparkled in her eyes. “What is it, Miguel?” she asked, weariness underlying her words.

He held out the bottle of flavored tea. “I thought you might like a glass.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, no. It’s been a long day. A long two days, and I’ve got tons of things to do up at my place.” Devon had moved into a tiny cabin a thousand feet farther up the mountain. At night he could just make out her bedroom light from his kitchen window.

“We’ve got a ton of things to do here, too.” He pulled the sheet of paper out of his pocket. “The chef at Angel’s Gate needs to know our final numbers and whether we’ve decided on the chicken or the fish.” Angel’s Gate was the multimillion dollar ski resort that had opened that spring in the mountains above town.

She flexed her long, tapered fingers on the steering wheel. She had small wrists, dainty and feminine, and slender arms. But she was stronger than she looked. She had to be to catch babies for a living.

Her facial features resembled her grandmother’s, but she wasn’t as rangy and rawboned as Lydia. Devon was soft and curved in all the right places. She molded herself to him when she lay beneath him. Her honey-blond hair spilled over her shoulders and curled itself around a man’s fingers, caressed his cheek when he kissed her throat or traced the roundness of her breast with the tip of his tongue—

“Have you eaten?” He hadn’t meant to bark the question at her, but he had to get his mind on something else—fast. She jumped a little in her seat.

“What? Yes. I had an apple and some crackers with peanut butter.” She looked a little confused.

“How long ago was that?”

“Between Lena Morales and Winona Preston’s prenatal visits. About eleven, I guess.”

“It’s almost eight. We can’t be talking food and menus with you wasting away from hunger. That’s no way to make an informed decision. C’mon up. I’ve got chicken salad and flat bread. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. I didn’t do the cooking. My mom did. Old family recipe.” It was time they got out in the open what had happened between them that night six weeks earlier. She’d been scared and exhausted when he’d come across her in the hospital waiting room the second night after Lydia’s heart attack. He’d only meant to offer her something to eat and a place to kick back and relax for a while. It had ended up being much more than that. “It’s only for a sandwich, Devon. You don’t have to be afraid I’m going to try and get you into bed again.”

Her gray eyes met his brown ones without flinching. “I’m not afraid. But I really am too tired to deal with this.” She waved the paper at him.

Miguel straightened, putting a little distance between them. It had been his fault that night. He’d let the situation get out of hand when she’d been frightened and alone. Hell, who would have guessed the same fire that had sparked between them as teenagers would flare out of control all these years later? Their coming together had been spontaneous and white-hot, unplanned and unprotected. At least they’d dodged the pregnancy bullet. Although the thought of his baby growing in Devon’s belly was a consequence he would have welcomed, it would only have made a complicated situation impossible. He reached out and plucked the sheet of paper from her hand. “Okay, I’ll tell him half chicken and half fish and we’ll just let people fight it out at the buffet table.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Then we’ll order one of each for everyone.”

“That’ll cost a fortune.”

“Money’s no object.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Then come in and let’s take our best guess on who wants what.” He stepped back so she could pull into his driveway. She hesitated as though she might still refuse. He held himself still, kept his expression neutral. It had taken him six weeks to get her alone again. He was an officer of the law. He was a U.S. Marine. He had self-discipline. He could do this. He could keep his fly zipped and his hands to himself—if he really put his mind to it.

“THANKS. I NEEDED THAT.” Devon pushed her empty plate away. She’d thought she’d be too nervous to eat, returning to the scene of her complete lapse from sanity, but she’d managed just fine. Miguel’s mother was a great cook, and her chicken salad, Southwestern style, was the stuff of dreams. She’d eaten the sandwich and a dish of fruit salad besides. She picked up her glass of iced tea and took a look around.

She’d only been in Miguel’s cabin that one time, and never in the kitchen. It was neat as a pin. The cabinets were pine and so was the paneling on the walls. The floors were tiled in the same soft sandstone color as the countertops. A traditional adobe fireplace was set in one corner with a drop-leaf pine table and two chairs in front of it. From where she sat in one of those chairs, Devon could look out the window and see part of a cabin farther up the mountain. She hadn’t realized Miguel could see her place from here.

Her gaze swung from the view to the man sitting quietly in the other chair, making notations beside names on the guest list. He was frowning slightly while he wrote, winged eyebrows drawn together over eyes as dark as night, eyes that only hinted at the heat and light at his core. She slapped a lid on her thoughts. She wasn’t going to go there.

“Okay, I’ve done the math. Put me and Nolan down for chicken. And your grandmother?” He gave her a quizzical look and she nodded. Lydia didn’t like fish. “My mom and dad will probably want the salmon.”

“Mine, too.”

“Your grandfather Kane isn’t coming, right?” he asked next.

“His health isn’t good.” Lydia and Devon’s grandfather had been divorced for many years. He’d never known about Kim’s mother, the child Lydia had given away at birth years before he met her. But he was a kind and loving man who would welcome Lydia’s grandchild into his family, Devon knew. “Kim and Nolan are going to take Sammy to visit him before school starts.”

“What about your uncle Bradley and your cousins?”

“Uncle Bradley and Aunt Irene will be here. Derek and Jason can’t make it. They’re coming for Christmas instead.”

“Fish or chicken?”

She blinked. “I have no idea.” She should call her mother and ask, but if she did that, Myrna would insist on coming out to help plan the party. That was the last thing Devon needed. Her mother had a heart of gold, but she was also domineering and opinionated. She loved to run the show, and usually did. The few days she’d been in Enchantment after Lydia’s heart attack had been a strain on everyone involved.

“Let’s say one of each then. Fish for Father Ignatio. His cholesterol is sky-high.” He made a check on the paper. “That leaves you and the bride. Which is it?”

“Chicken for me,” Devon said.

“And Kim?”

“I don’t know.” The trouble was, even though Kim had asked her to be her maid of honor, she didn’t know her new cousin at all.

“Ask her in the morning.”

“Okay, I will.”

Miguel tallied up the numbers. “That’s almost a fifty-fifty, providing Kim goes for the salmon, and I bet she will.” He was probably right. He was Nolan McKinnon’s best friend, so he had a direct line into Kim’s likes and dislikes.

“The salmon’s five dollars a plate more. Maybe we should just go with the chicken.” Devon winced when she heard herself speak the thought aloud. Being responsible for keeping the clinic afloat was beginning to color her thinking in all sorts of ways.

Miguel grinned across the table at her. “Do I detect a little penny-pinching here?”

“We agreed on a budget, remember? I don’t want to go over. And aren’t Navajos supposed to not be interested in money?”

“The Diné are interested in harmony. Too much money puts you out of harmony with yourself. I don’t have that problem.” He grinned. “I hear the salmon is excellent. And hey, nothing’s too good for Kim and Nolan, right?”

“Right.” She smiled her agreement. It was nice to have someone to help make the decisions.

A pager went off. Miguel’s hand went automatically to his belt, Devon’s to the waistband of her pink scrubs. “It’s mine,” she said. “I left my phone in the car.”

Miguel waved his hand toward the wall. “Use mine.”

She stood up a little too quickly and had to steady herself with a hand on the tabletop.

“You okay?” He didn’t make even the slightest move toward her and Devon was glad. If he had, she might have let him take her in his arms and…

“Just tired.” She punched in the clinic’s number.

“The Birth Place,” a voice answered.

“Trish?” Devon was a little surprised the clinic’s receptionist, Trish Linden, was still on duty.

“Yes, I’m still here. Got some paperwork I wanted to finish up. One of your patients is on her way in. Carla Van Tassle. She’s spotting. Just a little, but she’s worried.”

Devon sorted through her mental case file until she put a face to the name. Carla was seven weeks pregnant with her second child. Lydia had delivered her first, a little boy, twenty-two months earlier. “I’ll be right there.”

“Wait a moment, Devon, your grandmother wants to speak to you.”

“I thought you were taking the day off,” Devon said, when Lydia came on the line.

“I did take the day off. I came in to catch up on some charting and to give Lacy Belton a follow-up phone call.”

“I planned to do that a little later this evening.” Devon felt her neck and shoulder muscles tighten. Lacy’s temperature had returned to normal and stayed there after she had received the IV antibiotics Joanna prescribed. She and her baby had left the clinic shortly before noon.

“I’m sure she would still appreciate your call. And you’ll probably want to set up a convenient time to check in on her tomorrow, anyway.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I just wanted to tell you that since I’m here already, I’ll examine Carla. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

Spotting early in a pregnancy wasn’t unusual, but Devon would have taken a blood sample, checked hormone levels, maybe ordered an ultrasound to be on the safe side. Not Lydia. Not at The Birth Place. Her grandmother had decades of experience, four thousand healthy deliveries to her credit. She relied on her instincts and her personal knowledge of each and every patient that passed through her care.

“I’ll be glad to come back.” Devon kept her voice even and pleasant. She was very aware of Miguel standing just a few feet away. She was usually pretty good at hiding her emotions—she had to be in her business. But he was also very good at reading people for the same reason.

There was a small silence before her grandmother spoke again. Her tone was unusually gentle. “Devon, I assure you I’ll transfer Carla to Arroyo County for an ultrasound if I think there’s the least chance this is serious. I’ll notify you immediately if that’s the case so you can be with her.”

Devon took a breath. This was Lydia’s way of apologizing for their disagreement over Devon’s handling of Lacy Belton’s delivery. If only they could do the same with the past. “Thanks, Lydia.”

“Good,” her grandmother replied briskly. “As I said, I don’t anticipate any real problem with Carla, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Why don’t you take the morning off, come in after your visit with Lacy?”

Devon opened her mouth to say she’d be in at her usual time, and then changed her mind. She could use a few hours to herself. “All right. I will. Good night, Lydia.”

“Good night, Devon.” She replaced the receiver.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes. One of my patients is spotting a little. She’s still early in her first trimester, so it’s probably hormonal. The cervix is very sensitive at this point, so it could also be that she and her partner were just a little too energetic in making love.”

Miguel lifted his hands in a time-out gesture. “Whoa. That’s enough.”

Devon laughed. “I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud.”

He was smiling, but he looked distinctly uncomfortable, and totally, breathtakingly male. Her stomach tightened in response and she felt her pulse speed up.

“That’s more information than I really need,” he said.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Are you heading back to the clinic?”

“No. My grandmother is going to check Carla over. She’ll call me if she needs me.” She caught a glimpse of the smooth, bronzed skin of his throat. She had kissed him there that night, and the taste of his skin had been like sunlight and sagebrush. She forgot what they’d been talking about. She forgot what she was going to say next. “I really should be going,” she finished in a rush.

“You don’t have to run off, Devon.” He kept the width of the table between them, but she felt as if he was only inches away. She wished he was only inches away.

“I…” She stopped and got hold of herself. “Would you like me to drop by and check on your grandfather while I’m out that way tomorrow morning?” They were neighbors. Neighbors did things like that for each other.

“The Belton place is five miles from Granddad’s.”

“I thought I’d drive on up to Silverton. I haven’t been there since I got back.” Silverton was an old abandoned mining town in the hills north of Enchantment. Horseback rides, picnics, a played-out silver mine and false-fronted wooden buildings slowly falling into ruin. It had been one of her favorite places as a girl.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. We’ve been getting a lot of calls about stuff coming up missing out that way. Probably just kids, but with the INS cracking down on border crossings, the Coyotes are working their way farther north all the time.”

Coyotes, the unscrupulous men who transported undocumented workers across the border from Mexico and sometimes left them to die a terrible death in the desert.

“I’ll be careful. Thanks for the warning.” But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to go.

Devon had gotten up as she spoke and was heading into the main room of the cabin, with its whitewashed walls and shiny, wide-planked wood floor. A big fireplace made of river rock stood against one wall, flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows. Hanging on the opposite wall was a gorgeous hand-woven Navajo rug in warm earth tones. Miguel’s aunt, Carmella Elkhorn, was a master weaver. The rug was most likely her work.

“Thanks again for the sandwich and the tea,” Devon said. “I’ll talk to Kim as soon as I check in tomorrow.” She reached to open the door.

Miguel circled her wrist with his hand. His grip was painless but strong. She would have had to use her other hand to pry his fingers loose, and she didn’t trust herself to touch him even that much. “We have to talk,” he said quietly. “And not about the party.”

She started to shake her head in an instinctive denial. They hadn’t seen each other a half-dozen times in the past ten years. Before that they’d parted in anger and hurt. Then the first time they were alone together, she fell apart in his arms and into his bed. He must think she’d lost her mind.

She wasn’t sure she hadn’t.

“I know we have to talk,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes. “But not now, please.” She was too vulnerable, her nerves rubbed raw by fatigue and the temptation of his nearness. “All I can say now is that I’m very sorry about…that night. And I promise you it will never happen again.”

CHAPTER THREE

“SHE’S ADORABLE, Lacy.” Devon handed the sleeping infant back to her mother reluctantly. She loved holding babies.

“She looks just like Angie did at that age.” Lacy settled the baby on her shoulder. “She’s nursing well, too. I was a little worried. I didn’t have as much milk as I needed for Angie. I had to put her on a bottle way sooner than I wanted to.”

“Any problems this time?” Devon asked, putting her stethoscope and blood pressure cuff back in her tote.

“Heavens no. My milk just gushes.”

“No redness or sore nipples?”

“A little,” she said with a grin. “She has an excellent sucking response.”

“Great. That’s what I like to hear. I’ll leave you some cream for the soreness. It should help.” Devon stood up and reached down to touch a fingertip to the baby’s silky cheek. “You did good, Lacy.”

“Thanks, Devon. Maybe we’ll do it again sometime.”

“You’re planning on having another baby?” When Devon let herself daydream about a family of her own, she always pictured herself with four children. She was an only child and had always envied big families.

Lacy nodded. “Not right away. But Tom and Luke want a boy to even out the numbers. And I like the idea of this little angel having a sister or brother close to her own age to grow up with. I hope The Birth Place will still be operating in a couple more years.”

“It will be.” Devon said what Lacy expected her to, but the truth was she didn’t know how long the clinic would stay in business if her grandmother retired. The other midwives were dedicated, but they couldn’t be expected to shoulder the responsibility of keeping the always cash strapped clinic afloat.

That would be up to her.

If she gave up her practice and her life in Albuquerque.

That was a big if.

“I’ll see you to the door.” Lacy put her hand on the arm of her chair as if to rise.

“Stay put,” Devon said, bending to pick up her bag. “I’ll see myself out.”

“Thanks. I’m still a little stiff.” Lacy settled back into the rocker. “Tom took the kids to town to buy gifts for the new baby with their allowances. They’re going to fix me a special dinner and then we’re going to pick a name for the baby.”

“Sounds like a wonderful evening.”

She smiled down at the sleeping infant. “It will be.”

Devon’s heart contracted. It always happened. She didn’t think she would ever grow blasé about watching a mother with her newborn at her breast. “I’ll stop back in a few days. We’ll fill out her birth certificate then.” The clinic usually did two follow-up visits after a birth, more if the midwife thought it necessary.

“Thanks, Devon. Say hello to your grandmother for me.”

“I will.” She let herself out of the cabin into the bright sunshine of the summer morning. The sky was so blue it hurt to look at it without sunglasses, but off to the south was a ridge of dark clouds. One of the thunderstorms she’d heard predicted on the TV the night before? This one looked to be a long way off, and moving away, so it shouldn’t spoil her trip to Silverton.

But first she’d stop and pay her courtesy call on Miguel’s grandfather.

Daniel Elkhorn had been working as a carpenter on a remodeling project at the clinic when she was fifteen. She had been born and raised in San Francisco, but long visits to Lydia in Enchantment were the highlights of her childhood. That was how she’d first met Miguel—he’d been helping his grandfather during summer vacation. Daniel had been patient with all her questions about Navajo customs and way of life. He never once asked her if her sudden interest in his heritage had anything to do with her very obvious crush on his grandson.

She had no trouble finding the turnoff to the Elkhorn place, although it had been a long time since she’d been out this way. Daniel lived in a mobile home, white with green shutters and a steep-pitched snow roof suspended above it on wooden posts. A small barn housed a couple of milk goats and a chicken run. A swaybacked roan horse grazed in a fenced pasture that would be in shade when the sun dropped behind the ridge line. A dusty, dark-blue pickup was parked alongside a newer dual-cab pickup. She wasn’t Daniel’s only visitor, it seemed.

Sitting in plastic lawn chairs beneath a brush arbor was Daniel and a plump woman in traditional Navajo dress—long-sleeved blouse and long, pleated cotton skirt with a woven belt. Her hair, gathered into a heavy knot at the back of her head, was black, barely streaked with gray. Her jewelry was silver and turquoise. Devon recognized her as Elena Eiden, Miguel’s mother. She was holding a spindle, spinning yarn from a pile of sheep’s wool in her lap.

Elena put down her work and rose from her chair. “Devon Grant? Is that you?” She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand.

“Hello, Mrs. Eiden. Yes, it’s me.”

“How good to see you! Miguel told me you were back in Enchantment. I was planning to stop by the clinic. Dad and I have been in Arizona visiting my daughter and new grandbaby. We only returned to town a few days ago,” she explained, motioning Devon to an empty chair. “I have pictures for Lydia. She delivered her, you know.”

“I know she’d love to see them. We all would.” Devon felt gooseflesh rise on her arms. She might have been carrying Miguel’s baby, another grandchild for Elena, if the timing of their night together had been different. Not for the first time she felt a tiny pang of regret, not relief, when the thought crossed her mind.

“Father, you remember Devon Grant. She’s Lydia Kane’s granddaughter.” She spoke in English, although Devon suspected she and her father had been speaking Navajo when she drove up.

“Yah-ta-he, Grandfather,” she said, using the Navajo greeting he’d taught her years before.

“Welcome. It’s been a long time since you came to visit and ask questions about the Diné, Devon Grant.”

“Yes, it has. I don’t have time to come to Enchantment often anymore.”

“But now you’re here to stay, aren’t you?” Elena asked, resuming her spinning. She was a weaver, too, Devon remembered, though not as renowned as her sister-in-law.

“For the time being. I’ve taken a six-month leave of absence from my practice in Albuquerque.”

Daniel let a few seconds elapse before he spoke. It was a sign of politeness among the Navajo, making sure someone was finished speaking before jumping in. “Are you here now to learn more about the Diné?” His face was impassive, but a glint of humor sparkled in his faded eyes.

“I would still like to learn from you,” Devon said carefully, shying from his gaze. Obviously the man’s advancing years hadn’t taken a toll on his mind. He hadn’t forgotten that she’d been as much interested in Miguel as about Navajo lifestyles.

“You have followed the Navajo way in honoring your grandmother’s wish that you return to Enchantment.”

“I will certainly stay until my grandmother is fully recovered from her heart attack.”

“How is Lydia?” Elena asked.

“She’s regaining strength and is impatient to be back delivering babies full-time.”

“I heard you went out to the reservation to help Ophelia Pedroza. Not many whites will make that drive for any reason.”

This time Devon had no trouble meeting the old man’s gaze. “She needed me.”

“Miguel told me the baby was breech. That you had to take Ophelia to The Birth Place to deliver.”

Devon felt the familiar need to explain her actions and fought it down. The silence stretched out a little longer than good manners dictated. “It was a difficult birth. I’m not my grandmother. I don’t have her experience and expertise. For Ophelia’s sake and the baby’s, I felt they should be brought to the center.”

The two Navajos nodded acceptance of her explanation. Daniel changed the subject. “What brings you this far up the mountain? You didn’t come all this way just to say hello to an old man like me.”

“Well, not exactly,” Devon responded, smiling. “I’m also going to drive on up to Silverton. I haven’t been there in years. I used to love to go there.”

“Not a good place to go,” Daniel said bluntly.

“He’s right, I’m afraid,” Elena said. “Dad’s had stuff stolen and whoever’s doing it could be hiding out there.”

“Miguel mentioned it.” Devon wished she’d kept her mouth shut when she saw the flicker of interest in Elena’s face.

“Someone’s been in my chicken coop,” Daniel elaborated. “Couple nights ago they took off with a hen. It’s probably just kids, but if they go after my goats, I’ll shoot them.”

“You will not,” Elena said firmly. “You’ll call Miguel. And then you’ll call Dennis and me and we’ll come and get you, and you can stay at our place until they catch the thief.”

“I’ll stay here.” Daniel’s tone left no room for argument.

Elena’s lips tightened into a straight line, but she said no more, concentrating on tugging a strand of wool from the bundle of fleece on her lap.

“I’m only going to stay there a little while,” Devon assured them. “I just want to see if the place has changed.”

“There are ghosts there,” Daniel said. It was Navajo custom not to mention the names of the dead in case their malevolent ghosts were nearby. But Devon knew he was talking about Teague Ellis. Teague had been Enchantment’s bad boy a generation ago. He’d died in the Silverton mine before Devon was born, his body not found until years later.

“I’m not planning on going into the mine,” she said, rising from her chair.

“It’s still not a safe place to be right now,” Elena said. “Ghost or no ghost.”

“I’ll be careful.” Devon turned to Daniel. “It’s so good to see you, Grandfather.”

“Come back again, Devon Grant. I am here most days.”

Elena once more put down her spinning and followed Devon to her truck. “Thank you for stopping. My father enjoys the company. He misses my mother.” Elena did not mention her mother’s name in deference to her father’s beliefs. Elena herself didn’t follow the old ways. Her mother had been Roman Catholic and Elena had been raised in that faith. The heavy silver cross she wore around her neck was proof of that.

“I’ll stop by as often as I can.”

“Thank you.”

Devon waved a last goodbye to Miguel’s grandfather, then climbed in her truck and headed up the mountain, following Silver Creek. There was only a trickle of water now. The snow melt was long over and there’d been little summer rain to keep it running free and strong.

The turnoff to Silverton was almost invisible if you didn’t know where to look. But she did. She kept Silver Creek on her left and watched for the landmarks she remembered from her teens, the twisted ruin of a huge cottonwood tree on one side, and a big limestone boulder on the other. There was a sign, too, leaning and faded. If you weren’t looking for it, it was hard to see. She nosed the Blazer onto the old roadway and shifted into four-wheel drive.

The Silver Jacks mine had never been large or profitable, and Silverton had flourished as a community for only twenty years or so. It didn’t exist on any maps, and few tourists found their way up here. Even most of Enchantment’s teenagers tended to stay away. It was too far from town to be convenient for a lovers’ lane, and since the way in was the only way out, it was even more inconvenient as a place for underage teens to drink beer or smoke marijuana. The thrill wasn’t worth the price of getting caught.

A mile or so past the turnoff she rounded a big outcropping of rock and saw the narrow valley that housed what was left of the town. The creek ran along one side of what had once been a street, and dilapidated wooden buildings lined the other side. Here and there one-and two-room cabins with caved-in roofs rose out of the tall grass and young aspens that had grown up around them. Above the town she could see the dark opening of the Silver Jacks mine.

Devon parked the Blazer off to one side of the track, reached behind her and pulled a small collapsible cooler from the back seat. She lifted the hatch and dug a flashlight out of her midwife’s kit. She would need it if she wanted to look inside the mine entrance. She walked over to the porch of one of the derelict false-fronted buildings and sat in the shade. The sun was warm on her jean-clad legs, and she could smell the scents of dry grass and pine resin in the cool, thin air. She leaned gingerly back against the weather-beaten porch post, testing its strength.

She listened to the water dance over the stones in the creek bed, watched the sunlight filter through the branches of the cottonwoods that lined its banks and felt a measure of peace. She remembered coming here the summer she was eighteen, trying desperately to understand the dark changes that had come over Miguel when he returned from duty in Somalia. Now, more than ten years later, she understood those changes, what war and death could do to a man. But then she hadn’t been wise, only desperately in love, and his withdrawal had broken her heart.

She slipped the cooler strap off her shoulder, deciding she’d eat after she explored a little, picked up the flashlight and started walking along the faint path that led to the mine entrance. She wouldn’t go inside, of course—it wasn’t safe—but with the beam of the flashlight she could see well into the interior. She wondered if it was still the same as it had been a dozen years ago, a mine entrance straight out of a Wild West movie, wooden supports framing a narrow, gaping hole in the ground that somewhere not too far inside, ended in a deep drop-off where Teague Ellis had died.

Devon stopped walking. A cloud had passed over the sun, darkening the little valley, reminding her that daylight ended early here even in the summer and that dangerous strangers might be close by. The sun came out again, colors regained their brightness and the birds their songs. She turned away from the creek toward the mine, letting her curiosity override her caution. The ground before the entrance was devoid of vegetation. Odd bits and pieces of rusted metal lay half buried in the stony ground. A few old barrel staves stuck up out of the dirt like the rib cages of dead animals. Anything of value, including the silver, was long gone.

Someone had put up a barrier to deter the curious from entering the mine since the last time she was here. A screen of metal mesh, the sort used for a dog run or a schoolyard fence, had been stretched across the opening and secured with heavy wooden two-by-fours nailed to the mine’s supporting posts. But one of the two-by-fours had been pulled away at the bottom corner, and the wire mesh bulged out, leaving an opening big enough for a small person or a large animal to crawl through.

Had a coyote made the old mine its den?

Or perhaps a Coyote of the human kind?

Devon looked down and saw footprints leading into the mine. She stopped moving, stopped breathing. This would probably be a good time to turn around, get back in her car and drive away. Then she heard it. A sound like a dry, racking cough followed by faint sobbing, as though a child were crying, weak and fearful. She looked down at the footprints once more. They were very small.

Devon refused to listen to the voice of reason that was telling her only a fool would step foot inside that mine with simply a flashlight to defend herself. But she couldn’t ignore a child crying. She jerked on the wire mesh and it moved grudgingly outward, enlarging the opening enough for her to get through without crawling on her hands and knees. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness beyond the oblong area of sunlight just within the opening. A small flurry of movement ahead and a little to the left attracted her attention. “Hello? Who’s there?” The crying stopped, but another bout of coughing broke the quiet. “I won’t hurt you. It’s all right. I’m here to help.”

She switched on the flashlight and took several steps, almost tripping on a bundle of thin blankets spread over what appeared to be an old mattress. She looked around. The flashlight beam picked out a lawn chair by the mattress, one of the aluminum ones with plastic webbing that folded flat, in the same green-and-white pattern as the one she’d been sitting on at Daniel’s place. Beside it sat a rusty camping lantern and a couple of plastic plates and foam cups. Next to those were two plastic, gallon milk jugs filled with water. A fire pit had been made in a natural depression in the mine floor.

The sniffling sound came again, followed by a hushed whisper. Devon couldn’t make out the words. She thought they might be Spanish, though. “Please come out,” she said in that language. “I won’t hurt you.” More rustling, as though someone was trying to crawl away. She narrowed her eyes. An area of darker shadows loomed on the mine wall. She moved a little more to her right and realized it was an opening to a smaller tunnel branching off the one she was in. Cool air brushed across her face and breasts. Perhaps it wasn’t a tunnel, but an air shaft, maybe even the one Teague Ellis had fallen to his death in. Devon dropped to her knees and trained the flashlight on the hole.

Two sets of dark eyes stared back at her from frightened faces. They were indeed children. Girls. Sisters, probably, from the similarity of their facial features. The elder held the younger cradled in her arms. “Go away,” she said in Spanish. “Leave us alone.”

One look at the little girl told Devon she was the source of the coughing. She was wearing jeans and a dirty Scooby Doo T-shirt. Her face was flushed with fever, her eyes glittering with tears. Her hair, black as night, was a filthy tangle around her face. The older girl’s hair was not quite as tangled, but just as dirty. She was wearing a thin, shapeless cotton dress and cheap sneakers.

And she was pregnant. Very pregnant. Even holding the smaller child close to her body couldn’t hide that.

Were the children illegal aliens hiding out from the authorities as they made their way north? Were the men that had brought them here still around? She hoped not. The child coughed again and she banished thoughts of Coyotes. “Soy una enfermera.” Devon’s Spanish was not as good as she needed it to be. She switched to English. “I’m a nurse. Let me help you.”

No response. Devon balanced the flashlight on a ridge of rock beside her, then hunkered down and held out her arms for the younger child. Suddenly she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and froze. Had she guessed wrong? Was the girls’ Coyote still here, after all?

“Jesse,” the little girl whispered.

Devon turned her head. A boy, as ragged and dirty as the girls, stood over her. He looked to be about fifteen, not yet a man, but almost. He was thin to the point of emaciation. He wore jeans and a faded red windbreaker over a ragged Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. Her little cooler was slung over his left shoulder, as were the two fleece blankets she’d left folded in the back of her truck.

“Get up,” he said in English.

Devon stood, her heart beating hard. He held a length of two-by-four like a baseball bat. He could kill her with a single blow and they both knew it.

“I’m a nurse. I—”

“Get away from my sisters,” he shouted. “I’ll take care of them. Just leave the flashlight and go. Get out and don’t come back!”

CHAPTER FOUR

DEVON HAD NOTHING to defend herself with but the flashlight, and it would be no protection against the two-by-four.

“Get out of here,” the boy repeated.

“Your sister needs help. She’s ill.”

“I’ll take care of her.” He swayed on his feet.

Devon spoke with all the authority she could muster. “Sit down before you fall down.” She reached out and grabbed the two-by-four from his hands. The unexpected movement and the strength of her grip surprised the boy enough that he let go, stumbling backward over the thin mattress and sitting down hard.

Devon rocked backward, too, but didn’t fall. She trained her flashlight on the two girls, still huddled in the darkness of the smaller opening. “It’s okay. You can come out now.”

The older girl did as she was told, pulling the younger with her. Devon moved a few steps away so they could go to their brother. “Put your head between your knees if you feel faint,” she told him.

“I don’t feel faint,” he said, sneering.

“Well, you look faint. Go on, do as I said.”

“No.” But the defiant word ended on a moan and he dropped his head between his upthrust knees.

The older girl lowered herself awkwardly by his side and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Jesse, are you sick, too?” She spoke in English so Devon responded in the same language.

“I think he’s just hungry. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

Jesse didn’t answer. The girl looked at Devon and shrugged thin shoulders. “It has been two days for my brother. Yesterday Maria and I ate the last of the chick…the food.”

So that was what happened to Daniel Elkhorn’s stolen chicken. “Your brother needs to eat. There’s fruit and a peanut-butter sandwich in the bag on his shoulder.”

“Sylvia,” the child, Maria, whispered. “Tengo hambre.”

So now she knew their names, Jesse, Sylvia and Maria.

“Quiero plátano.”

“There’s a banana. And grapes and an apple.”

Jesse was upright once more, still pale, his mouth set in a tight line. Sylvia tugged the strap of the cooler off his arm, removed the lid and held out half the peanut-butter sandwich to him. He waved her away. “You two eat the sandwich. Just give me some water.”

Sylvia bent forward to whisper in his ear, her gaze skittering over Devon before she lowered her head, and when she was done he devoured his small portion in two bites. Devon hadn’t heard what she said, but had no trouble guessing she had urged him to eat to keep up his strength so that they could escape as quickly as possible.

She wasn’t about to let that happen.

Maria held out her half-eaten banana. “My throat hurts.” Again she spoke in Spanish, the language she was obviously most comfortable with.

“I know, sweetie. I have medicine in my car that will help her feel better.” Devon directed her words to Sylvia and Jesse equally. Brother and sister glanced at each other and then Jesse nodded slowly.

“You can help her.” He used both hands to lever himself up off the old mattress. Devon wondered if it, too, like the chicken and probably the lawn chair, had been stolen from Miguel’s grandfather.

Devon held out her hand to the little girl.

Jesse put himself between them. “We’ll all go,” he said.

Devon nodded. “Okay.”

She moved toward the opening of the mine shaft, half expecting to turn around at the entrance and find they’d all disappeared again. But they followed her in silence through the wire screening and down the path to her truck.

Devon lifted the hatch on the Blazer and opened the combination lock on her midwife’s box. The box contained everything she needed for a delivery—oxygen, masks for the mother and baby, suction equipment, a laryngoscope to open an airway for the baby if necessary. A second smaller box held her anti-hemorrhage drugs and the equipment she needed to do the necessary newborn tests. She handed Sylvia a sack of hard candy from one of the top compartments and another bottle of apple juice.

Sylvia nearly snatched the sack from her hand but murmured, “Gracias,” as she did so. Devon held out her hands to Maria, showing her a bottle of Tylenol. “This will help you feel better.”

Maria looked at her brother. Jesse narrowed his dark eyes but nodded permission. The little girl came forward and Devon gave her a Tylenol to swallow with the juice Sylvia handed her. Then Devon lifted the little girl onto the tailgate. She weighed next to nothing. “I’m going to listen to your lungs,” Devon explained. She glanced back at Jesse. “Does she understand English?”

He nodded. “Yes. But she doesn’t speak it very well yet.”

“She was going to be in special English classes in first grade but—” A sharp word from Jesse cut short what Sylvia might have revealed.

Devon pretended not to notice. She’d already come to the conclusion that the children must have spent considerable time in the States, for both Jesse and Sylvia spoke with little accent. She put the tabs of her stethoscope in her ears and put the disk against Maria’s chest. “Take a deep breath.” The little girl pulled in air, but the breath ended in another cough. Devon moved the stethoscope to the right side and repeated the directive, then she straightened, draping the stethoscope around her neck. The little girl was congested, but not dangerously so. With rest and food she would be fine in a couple of days.

But not if she stayed in the damp and dirt of the abandoned mine.

Maria needed more than a fever reducer and a few ounces of liquid. She needed to be warm and safe. She needed to be where Devon could administer antibiotics if she needed them. “Jesse, your sister needs to be away from this place. Both of your sisters. And you need food and rest, too. Isn’t there someone I can contact to come and help you?” She felt like an idiot as she spoke. Would these children be in the situation she’d found them in if there was anyone who could care for them?

“We have no one,” Jesse said flatly. He looked more like an old man than a young boy. His dark eyes were sunken into his head, a faint stubble of beard shadowed his chin, and deep lines bracketed the corners of his mouth. “They sent our mother back to Mexico. She died there.”

They, Devon deduced, meant the INS, la migra. “How did you get here?”

“We have a truck,” Maria piped up. “But it’s broken.” She pointed in the direction of one of the ruined buildings near the mine shaft.

“¡Silencio!” Jesse hissed.

Maria began to sniffle and hung her head. Devon put her arms around her thin shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug.

“Just leave us some of the pills for Maria’s fever and go away,” the boy said, hostile once more. “We’ll be fine.”

“I can’t do that. Maria is too ill. She could develop pneumonia. You know what pneumonia is, don’t you?”

His head came up. “Of course I do.”

“Let me take Maria to my house and care for her.” Devon tightened her embrace of the child. “She needs rest and care. You all do. Come with me.”

“No. Like I said, just give us some of those pills and you’ll never see us again.”

“What about Sylvia? A few pills won’t help her when she has her baby.” Devon was at a loss for any other way to break through his resistance.

Sylvia looked stricken at the mention of her pregnancy. She crossed her hands over her belly, not in the instinctive, protective contact with her unborn child that was common to women the world around, but in shame and misery. Sylvia’s child was not wanted, had probably been conceived in ignorance or even fear. Had she been raped? Devon hoped with all her heart she had not. Teenage births, especially without prenatal care, could be dangerous for mother and child under the best of circumstances. If the pregnancy was a source of misery and fear compounded by neglect and malnutrition, the outcome could be tragic.

Devon made up her mind. There was no way in the world she was going to leave the ghost town without the children. But if she made any attempt to contact the clinic or Miguel, they would overhear and probably take off running. She had no doubt they’d been hiding in Silverton long enough to have staked out a number of hidey-holes. The ghost town didn’t draw a lot of visitors, but it wasn’t totally isolated. To remain undetected for any length of time, they had to have been clever and resourceful.

And if she left with the children and then contacted the authorities, what would become of them? Would they be separated? Deported? Or left to the system of overworked, underfunded advocates for whom they would be just one more set of statistics when all was said and done? She made and held eye contact with Jesse’s suspicious gaze. “If you come with me, I won’t speak a word to anyone about the three of you.” She had nothing to convince him of her sincerity but her words.

Suddenly her radio came to life. “This is Birth Place base to unit two. Devon, are you there?”

She moved around the fender of the truck to answer Trish Linden’s query. In the side mirror she saw Jesse swing Maria up off the tailgate as Sylvia scooped up the sack of hard candy and the bottle of Tylenol.

She thumbed the toggle. “I’m here, Trish.” She broke the connection momentarily and held out her hand. “Wait, please.” Jesse had already carried his sister several yards back up the path to the mine, but Sylvia stopped at her plea. “Just for a moment.”

“Devon?”

“I’m still here, Trish. What’s up?” Devon hoped her voice sounded normal. Deliberately she turned her back on the three children, praying they wouldn’t run.

“Are you anywhere near Silverton?”

“I’m right in the middle of it.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. I’m going to patch you through to Chief Eiden. He wants to talk to you. I don’t do this very often,” Trish continued, “so if I screw up, just hang on, okay?”

Miguel couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to communicate with her. A series of clicks preceded the sound of his voice. “Devon, do you read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I thought you were going to stay away from Silverton.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“See anything odd up there?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.” She turned to face Jesse and his sisters. The trio stood watching her with dark and suspicious eyes. At least Jesse and Sylvia were watching her that way. Maria had laid her head on her brother’s shoulder and looked half-asleep. The Tylenol was probably kicking in, reducing her fever enough to allow her to rest comfortably. It would only last a few hours and then the fever would be back, climbing and becoming dangerously high if she weakened any more from lack of food and water.

“I was going to drive up there, but there’s a report of a couple of lightning strikes over near Wolf Canyon I need to check out. Don’t want any fires getting out of hand around here.” Thunder rolled down the valley and echoed in the cracks and crevices of the mountain, adding urgency to his words.

“There’s no sign of anyone having been here lately.”

“Thanks, Devon. You’ve saved one of my guys some time, and wear and tear on the squad cars. Eiden out.”

“Did you copy all that, Devon?” It was Trish’s voice again, slightly distorted by background static.

“I got it all, thanks, Trish.”

“Thank goodness. I never quite know whether I’m doing it right,” Trish fussed. “I just wanted to tell you not to hurry back if you’re enjoying yourself. Your two-o’clock called and said her car has a dead battery. I rescheduled her for tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Trish. I’ll see you at three. Devon clear.” She released the toggle and put the radio receiver back in its clip on her visor.

“She called that guy you were talking to ‘Chief’,” Jesse said. “Does that mean he’s an Indian, not a cop?” His lip curled in a sneer. He tightened his arm around Maria. Sylvia began inching away again, moving farther up the path.

“He’s both actually,” Devon said.

“You lied to him about us.”

She nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Why had she done that? She hadn’t wanted to lie to Miguel. She wasn’t a deceitful person, and she valued honesty in others and in herself. But she didn’t regret her action. “I gave you my word,” she said.

Jesse held her gaze a few moments longer, then nodded. “We’ll go with you.”

DEVON RESTED HER HEAD against the glass of her bedroom window. It was very late, long after midnight. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. She looked down the mountain, noticing for the first time that if the branches of the trees outside her window moved just right, she could see a gleam of light from the direction of Miguel’s house. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

He was up late, too, it seemed. Probably because he’d been on patrol around the country looking for signs of wildfire started by the thunderstorms that had rumbled through the valley, producing sound and fury, but not much rain.

She straightened and walked out into the main living area of the cabin. The room was small, but the soaring ceiling gave the illusion of space. Adjacent to her bedroom was a bathroom with both a shower and a tub and a stacked washer and dryer. She could hear the dryer humming away now. She might as well see if the load of towels was dry. She couldn’t sleep, anyway.

Next to the bathroom was an eat-in kitchen. She’d stopped by both the grocery and the minimart to stock up on food for the children. She hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion where she usually shopped by buying too much food. The clerk would wonder why a woman who lived alone and ate Lean Cuisine more evenings than not would buy two gallons of milk, two dozen eggs and three loaves of bread. Her refrigerator was full for the first time since she’d moved into the place.

The dryer buzzed and she hurried to silence it. Above her, in the loft, the three children were sleeping, Jesse on an air mattress on the floor, the girls in the sleeper sofa beneath the window. After she’d broken radio contact with Miguel, she’d gone back to the mine with Jesse and his sisters and helped them pack their few belongings and carry them to the old stable where they’d hidden their truck.

But that was as far as she’d gotten. Jesse had refused to let her inside the badly listing building with its empty windowpanes and sagging roof, guessing correctly that she would see the license plate and use it to learn more about them.

They’d ridden into town on the floor of the Blazer, and she fed them cold cereal and scrambled eggs and toast as soon as they’d gotten safely inside her house. By the time she’d found clean clothes for the older siblings—a pair of faded scrubs for Jesse and a high-waisted denim jumper for Sylvia—and one of her smallest T-shirts for Maria, and shown Sylvia how to run her washer and dryer, she was fifteen minutes late for her three-o’clock prenatal. Lydia had not been pleased, but there was nothing she could do about it.

She returned from the clinic at seven to find the children scrubbed as clean as their clothes. Thankfully their hair had only been dirty, not infested, so a trip to Taos for lice shampoo wouldn’t be necessary. She couldn’t buy that at the pharmacy across from Elkhorn’s Hardware any more than she could buy two gallons of milk and three dozen eggs in one stop. People would notice.

She pulled warm, clean-smelling towels out of the dryer and carried them to the couch in front of the fireplace, which she’d filled with silk ferns for the summer. She began to fold them, still thinking of the three children. Keeping them safe and fed and secret was not going to be easy. They were runaways. Probably illegal aliens. She still didn’t even know their surname or their ages.

Keeping their whereabouts a secret was breaking the law. Something she had never done in her life.

But she had given her word to three desperate and scared children. And she was determined to honor it. Even if it meant she must keep on lying to everyone she knew.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I BROUGHT YOU SOME TEA.” Kim Sherman smiled as she held a steaming mug out to Devon a couple of days later. “I thought you might need a boost.”

“I do.” Devon smiled back at her cousin, although it took some effort to get her tired facial muscles to produce the desired response.

“I won’t keep you from your work.” Kim stepped away from the table where she’d placed the mug. “I just wanted to let you know I talked Lydia into going home. I also checked to make sure everything’s turned off, put away and locked up except the front door.”

“Thanks,” Devon said, taking a sip of the tea. “Especially for getting Lydia to go home. She’s been here since seven this morning.”

“I know. I’m sure her doctor wouldn’t approve of the hours she’s been working.”

“Exactly. I’m glad she listened to you.” She was glad, but she also felt somewhat envious of Kim’s relationship with Lydia. It was so much better than her own.

“Anything I can do for you? Any billing? I have twenty minutes or so until Nolan and Sammy pick me up.” Sammy was Nolan’s seven-year-old niece, an energetic tomboy he’d been raising since her parents’ tragic deaths. Kim eyed the pile of charts on the table. When she’d first come to work at The Birth Place, her office door had always been firmly closed. But since she’d fallen in love with Nolan McKinnon and been accepted as Lydia’s granddaughter, she no longer barricaded herself behind a closed door.

She had also abandoned the well-worn gray cardigan, buttoned to the throat, that she had worn so often in the past. Her clothes were still conservative and businesslike, but the colors were softer, brighter. She’d exchanged her dark-rimmed glasses for contacts, and now Devon saw her own gray eyes staring back at her.

Her eyes, and Lydia’s.

“I’m almost ready to call it a day, too. I’m finishing my report of Jenna Harrison’s delivery.” Devon was working in the all-purpose area of the clinic that served as a storage area and break room. She didn’t have an office of her own, and had, in fact, resisted broaching the subject. For once she did, it would mean that she was staying at The Birth Place for good. Admitting that her life, such as it was, and her practice in Albuquerque were a thing of the past.

She hadn’t thought much of either in the past few days, she realized.

Kim moved closer, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Mother and baby are doing fine, I hope.”

Devon didn’t have any problem finding her smile this time. “They are.” Then the smile disappeared. “It was touch-and-go there for a while.”

“You mean she was in danger?” The death of Nolan McKinnon’s sister and her baby seven months earlier, although unavoidable, had weighed heavily on the staff and, in Devon’s opinion, had been a contributing factor in Lydia’s heart attack. Devon bent her head to her notes for a moment before looking up at her cousin again. “Not life-threatening. But I was afraid we would have to transfer her to Arroyo for a C-section.”

“But you didn’t have to transfer her. And I’m sure she thinks her son is worth it.”

“I’m sure she does.” Lydia had never doubted that Jenna, an older, first-time mother, could complete the labor and delivery without intervention. Devon had not been as serenely confident as Lydia. She never was. When Jenna’s progress stalled at eight centimeters and remained there for several hours, Devon wanted to urge her grandmother to move Jenna to the hospital.

But she’d kept her mouth shut, and now she was glad. Lydia had suggested one more session in the huge Jacuzzi that half filled the birthing suite. The warm water and subsequent reduction in pressure on Jenna’s lower body had done the trick. Her contractions once more became productive and less than an hour later, her squalling, red-faced and utterly beautiful little boy had made his entrance into the world.

Jenna and her son had remained under the watchful eye of the midwives the rest of the day. Devon had just finished helping her strap her son’s carrier into the safety seat of the Harrisons’ minivan for the trip home.

“Devon, may I ask you a favor?” Kim sounded oddly hesitant.

Kim had never asked Devon for a favor before, other than the honor of being her maid of honor. Devon put down her pen and gave her cousin her full attention. “Of course,” she said.

“I…I’d like to invite someone to the rehearsal dinner if you don’t mind. Two people actually.”

“Oh, Kim. Did we forget someone? I’m sorry. I don’t know how this happened.”

Kim waved off Devon’s attempted apology. “No, no. It’s my foster parents. I…I lost contact with them years ago when they had to move out of the state. Nolan tracked them down for me. And, well, we’ve been corresponding. I haven’t told anyone else about them yet. Even Grand—even Lydia. I wanted to make sure they were interested in seeing me again.” For a moment the lost little girl her cousin had been looked out from Kim’s eyes. But the ghost was there for only a moment and then it disappeared. “They’ll be traveling through the area, and they want to meet Nolan and Sammy. I’ve invited them to the wedding, but I’m sure they’ll understand if—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they’re more than welcome.”

Devon half rose from her chair and Kim took a small involuntary step backward, then smiled. “No hugging. You midwives are great ones for hugging.”

“We are, aren’t we. No hugs until the wedding, I promise.” Devon felt laughter bubble up, and then a quick tingle of anticipation as she contemplated discussing the addition to the party with Miguel. She hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since she’d spirited the runaway children into her home, and the strength of her sudden longing to remedy that situation caught her by surprise. “I think it’s wonderful you’ve found your foster parents again. Do you think they’ll want the chicken or the fish?”

THE BIRTHING CENTER appeared deserted as Miguel turned into the parking lot. He eased the big SUV around to the back and noticed Devon’s Blazer still in her space. The high-altitude twilight was fading fast, taking the heat of the summer day with it. The sky was clear as blue glass, no sign of clouds anywhere. The leaves on the aspens beyond the parking area were curled on the edges from lack of moisture. The grass beneath his feet felt brittle when he stepped on it. It was only a matter of time before some fool threw a lighted cigarette out of the window of his truck, or a careless hiker started an illegal campfire, and they would be staring a wildfire in the face. And with almost two years of drought behind them, it would probably be a hell of a fire when it got going.

Devon had left a message on his answering machine about the party. Something about two more guests. Probably Kim’s foster parents. Nolan had told him he’d tracked them down a couple of months ago. He didn’t know much about Kim’s childhood, but it must have been tough on her as a kid, her mother dying when she was small, being shunted from one foster home to another. He’d grown up in an intact family, even if his dad did drink too much, and he had aunts and uncles and cousins all over the county, as well as in Ohio. Family was important to the Navajo. In fact, one of the worst things his grandfather could think of to say about someone was that they “acted as if they didn’t have a family.” But Kim had had no one to look out for her growing up. No wonder she sported as much emotional armor as an armadillo.

He checked the back door of the clinic. It was locked. He left his vehicle where it was and walked around the side of the building. Quietly he turned the handle on the front door. It opened easily and he stepped inside. No one was at the reception desk, but a light came from the records room behind it, and in the break room across the hall.

A movement from the far corner of the waiting room caught his attention. It was Devon, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the children’s play area. At her back two big plastic toy boxes were piled full of stuffed animals and pull toys. A wooden table was covered with puzzles and coloring books. A bookcase under the window held what seemed to Miguel to be hundreds of picture books. Devon had a pile of them in her lap, and a couple of dozen more heaped around her.

He stayed where he was in the shadow of the deeply recessed door and let himself enjoy the sight of her. Her hair was caught up in a twist on top of her head, but it was so fine that strands of it floated around her neck and shoulders, catching the lamplight like spun gold. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the thin cotton of her scrubs. They were blue today, and over the top she wore a printed lab coat covered with fat, naked babies frolicking on fluffy pink clouds.

He suspected that wearing hospital scrubs and a lab coat, even one with fat naked babies on it, was an act of rebellion for Devon. All the other midwives followed Lydia’s lead, opting for the earth-mother look—peasant skirts or jeans, sandals or clogs. Not Devon. She was a medical professional with her own style, and she wasn’t about to give it up, no matter how often she butted heads with her formidable grandmother.

She raised her hand to cup the back of her neck and arched her back, as though to ease tired muscles. She’d arched her back that way when she’d climaxed that night in his bed, her body tightening around him and spurring him on to his own release. He felt a surge of blood to his groin and decided he’d better make his presence known before his imagination produced a result that would be hard to ignore and damned near impossible to hide from Devon.

He closed the door behind him with enough force that she looked up in alarm, clutching the picture books to her chest. “Miguel! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I didn’t sneak up on you. I moved into an unknown situation with due caution. No telling what kind of suspicious character might be hanging around in here.”

“I’m the only one here,” she said, and he could tell she was trying hard not to respond to his teasing.

“That’s what I mean. Suspicious character.” He crossed the tile floor and dropped to his haunches beside her. “Stealing books from the kiddies? I might have to cuff you and haul you down to the station for that.”

A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead. “I’m not stealing. I…I thought I’d sort through a few of the worn ones and get some replacements the next time I’m in Taos.” She still clutched the books to her chest as though she thought he might take them away from her.

He tossed his hat onto a nearby chair, then levered himself into a sitting position, with one knee drawn up for his forearm to rest on and the other leg stretched out alongside her. “Can’t the books wait for another day?” He waggled his index finger at the overflowing bookcase. “There are more books than a dozen kids could read in a week on those shelves.”

She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “People bring them in. They donate them. There are duplicates.” She did look tired. Faint circles were smudged under her eyes, and lines bracketed the corners of her mouth. She’d been at the center since five in the morning. He’d heard her truck go by as he was getting in the shower. It was after seven at night now. He should quit teasing her. He changed the subject. “I got your message on my voice mail. What’s up?”

She brightened immediately and her smile slammed into his heart. If he hadn’t already been sitting on the floor, he would have had to find a chair. “Kim’s found her foster parents. Or at least Nolan has.”

“That’s great. Nolan told me a couple of months ago he was going to try and contact them, but he didn’t have much to go on. He said Kim hadn’t heard from them for at least fifteen years.”

“She asked if she could invite them to the rehearsal dinner. Of course, I said she could. I hope you don’t mind that I did it without consulting you.”

“Did you find out if they want the chicken or the fish?”

“Miguel.” She slapped playfully at his hand. It was the first time she’d touched him since the night they’d spent in his bed, and he found that it challenged his self-control as much as or more than her beautiful smile.

“Actually, I did ask her which they might prefer. It was a stupid question, because she hasn’t seen them or spoken to them since she was a little girl.”

“But I bet she had an opinion, anyway.”

She grinned. “Yes, she did. She thought we should play it safe and go with the chicken.”

“Two more chicken dinners, it is.”

“You don’t mind that I okayed their coming without consulting you?”

“I think I’ve just been insulted.”

Her eyes widened and her grin vanished. “I didn’t mean—”

He had to be careful how much he teased her. She was still very touchy about her growing relationship with her cousin. “This is Kim and Nolan’s party. I’m happy she’s found the couple that meant so much to her after her mother died. You did exactly what I would have done.” He leaned forward and was saddened that she drew back, even if it was only a fraction of an inch. “Surely you know me better than that after all these years, don’t you, Devon?” He hadn’t meant to take the conversation into personal territory, but the words had refused to stay unspoken.

“I don’t know you at all,” she whispered, and pulled her lower lip between her teeth as though she, too, wished the words unspoken. She put a hand on the floor to push herself to her feet.

He stopped her by wrapping his fingers around her forearm, holding her beside him. “Devon, have you given any thought to why you ended up in my bed that night?”

She drew in her breath sharply, then said, “Shock. Confusion. Sleep deprivation. I was a little out of my mind, I think.”

“Maybe,” he agreed with a small smile. Part of him had wanted her to say it was because she was still madly, passionately in love with him. “I think we both were.”

“I didn’t know if my grandmother was going to live or die. I needed comfort. You offered me that.”

“Devon, it went past the comfort stage five minutes after we left the hospital.” The words came out as a kind of growl and her eyes widened a little.

“I told you, it was an aberration. We were both a little crazy that night.”

Devon had been out of his life for a decade. But the moment she’d walked back into it, he was the same moonstruck teenager he’d been a dozen years before. There was something he had to know. Something he wasn’t sure she herself knew yet. “Are you planning on staying in Enchantment?”

“I haven’t made up my mind. Lydia and I have such differing styles, there are days when we can’t say two words to each other without getting into an argument.” She dropped her head and began tracing circles on the cover of one of the picture books. “My practice and my life are in Albuquerque.”

“Does that life include a man?”

Her head came up. “Do you think I would have slept with you if there was?”

“You might have if you were as frightened and lonely as you said you were.” The question had been nagging at him over the past weeks. He didn’t want to think about another man making love to her. She was his. She had been since she was sixteen and she had let him make love to her for the first time—the first time for both of them, although he’d never told her that, either. Damn, he was losing his mind. He didn’t have a single claim on her. He’d never told her he loved her. Instead, sore in heart and soul when he returned from the mess in Somalia, he’d pushed her away so hard she’d never come back.

Maybe if he’d been older, more mature, he could have handled it better. But he’d been almost as young and green as she was, idealistic and filled with foolish notions of romance and happily-ever-after. He’d expected her to know, without his saying a word, how troubled and disillusioned he was. How the things he’d done or couldn’t do had tarnished his soul. He’d counted on her, and the love he felt for her but had never been able to express, to somehow magically heal him. Of course it hadn’t. So he’d pushed her away and curled into himself in misery. And broken her heart.

He should tell her now about the hurt and horror of that godawful place and what it had done to the naive, gung-ho kid he’d been, how it had torn him up inside for more years than he wanted to remember. Maybe then they could get past it, move on to the beginning of a future together. But it didn’t seem right to talk of death and destruction in this place of hope and beginnings.

She waited so long to respond to his comment that he thought she wasn’t going to. At last she said, “There was someone, but we broke up months ago. At Christmastime.”

She had been in Enchantment for Christmas. It had been the first he’d seen of her in a long time when, decked out in his dress blues, he come by to retrieve the carton of toys the center was donating to Toys for Tots. She’d said hello, that it was good to see him. And her smile had rocked his world just as it had since the first day he’d seen her, a gawky, golden-haired, horse-mad fifteen-year-old. He’d managed some kind of reply and thanked his lucky stars he’d been in uniform. It put a little needed steel in his backbone.

“What was he?” he asked now. “Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief?”

“You’re the only Indian chief I know. He was a doctor. Third-year cardiology resident.”

“Your idea or his to call it quits?”

She sighed. “Mine. He was a great guy, but not the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” Who was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? A small-town cop with a few rough edges?

He had to ask one more question. “Did you love him?”

“No,” she said quietly. “And no more questions from you.”

“Okay, it’s your turn. Ask away.” He found himself holding his breath. Would she ask why he’d broken her heart so long ago? Would she give him the chance to explain?

She didn’t bring up the past. “No need to. Your life’s an open book in this town.”

He gave an exaggerated groan, hiding his disappointment. “Hell, I should have known that.”

“Your mother wants more grandkids, so she’s hoping you’ll find the right girl to marry soon. I heard that from Trish Linden. And rumor over the tea mugs has it Theresa Quiroga left town after you broke her heart.”

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