Cal’s eyes sauntered back to her body, only this time she felt…worshiped.

So much so, that Dawn didn’t even object when he took a step closer, then closer still, to lay one large, gentle hand on her still-flat belly.

She swallowed. Twice. Once from a plain old-fashioned rush of awareness, the second time from something achy and weird that she couldn’t even define.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let me stay for your checkup, then we’ll spend a couple of hours together, just for us. How about it?”

For a moment she was sorely tempted, then her senses returned. “There is no ‘us,’ Cal. There’s never been an ‘us.’”

And quit standing there making this so damn hard. Quit making me long for things that can’t be.

Dear Reader,

What better way to start off a new year than with six terrific new Silhouette Intimate Moments novels? We’ve got miniseries galore, starting with Karen Templeton’s Staking His Claim, part of THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY. These three brothers are destined to find love, and in this story, hero Cal Logan is also destined to be a father—but first he has to convince heroine Dawn Gardner that in his arms is where she wants to stay.

For a taste of royal romance, check out Valerie Parv’s Operation: Monarch, part of THE CARRAMER TRUST, crossing over from Silhouette Romance. Policemen more your style? Then check out Maggie Price’s Hidden Agenda, the latest in her LINE OF DUTY miniseries, set in the Oklahoma City Police Department. Prefer military stories? Don’t even try to resist Irresistible Forces, Candace Irvin’s newest SISTERS IN ARMS novel. We’ve got a couple of great stand-alone books for you, too. Lauren Nichols returns with a single mom and her protective hero, in Run to Me. Finally, Australian sensation Melissa James asks Can You Forget? Trust me, this undercover marriage of convenience will stick in your memory long after you’ve turned the final page.

Enjoy them all—and come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance reading around, only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Staking His Claim
Karen Templeton

MILLS & BOON

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KAREN TEMPLETON,

a Waldenbooks bestselling author and RITA® Award nominee, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001 New York, NY 10279, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

Acknowledgments

Without the following people’s willingness

to answer what must have, at times,

seemed like the dumbest questions on earth,

this book would not have been possible:

To Nicole Burnham and Douglas Onsi

for help with Dawn’s career path

To Wendy Wade Morton, DVM, of Golden Gait Farms,

who’s always there to answer my horse-related questions

and to

Mike Jackson from the OK Dept. of Human Services

for his assistance with child welfare issues

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Chapter 1

None of this had been her choice.

Not the car, a leprous, pumpkin-orange GTO with one front fender painted, inexplicably, baby blue. Not the trip itself—as if she had time to schlep back to Oklahoma with all those pending cases sitting on her desk nearly two thousand miles away. And God knows—she waited out a wave of nausea—not the reason for the trip.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. The outcome might not have been her choice, but the events leading up to it definitely had been.

So much for living for the moment.

“No shame, no blame,” Dawn Gardner muttered as she drove up in front of the single-story, sprawling farmhouse, still cinnamon brown with white-and-dark-green trim as it had always been. Edging a lawn faded from the early September heat, the same deep-pink roses bloomed, as they always had, only now against a backdrop of tangled deadwood. Cottonwoods stirred listlessly in the breeze, as if worn-out from the effort of shading the house for a whole summer, their lazy susurration no competition for the late-afternoon drone of a bumper crop of cicadas. The mingled scents weighting the humid air—of horse and fresh cut hay, the sweet, heady tang of overripe fruit—assaulted both her reluctant memory and her hypersensitive nose, making her stomach pitch. Making her feel…untethered, like a soul in limbo.

A retriever mix, whose name she’d forgotten, his coat flashing gold in the late-day sun, sauntered over to the car with a halfhearted woof. She smiled, patting the door so he’d come close enough for her to pet. As she did, her gaze meandered to the front porch step, only one riser up from the yard. Memory nudged into view a pair of children, a boy and a girl, sitting there as they had hundreds of times. They might have been six or seven, the boy—much younger than his two older brothers, who were already in high school—boasting features that foretold of the handsome man he would eventually become, with heavy-lashed eyes, green as new grass, and thick blond hair that refused to be tamed. A little spoiled, perhaps, being the baby, but not a whiner. And not a tease.

About the same height as the boy then, with long strawberry-blond hair her mother refused to cut, the girl liked that about the boy, that he never put her down. While their mothers chatted in the kitchen, the boy would often take the girl with him while he did his chores around the farm, mostly feeding the animals—pigs, goats, chickens, rabbits. The horses. Since they were too young to be around the huge animals by themselves, sometimes his daddy would be with them, a tall man with a white crewcut, dark eyes and an easy smile who always had Tootsie Rolls in his overall pockets and called the girl “young lady,” but not the way people did when you did something wrong.

Sometimes she envied the boy his daddy, although she never let on.

Dawn’s inner ear perked up at fragments of a conversation she hardly knew she remembered, drifting over from the porch.

“Maybe Ryan and Hank don’t want to stick around, but I’m never gonna leave here,” the boy said, crunching into an apple from one of the trees off to the side of the house. Totally at ease with himself, in himself, he leaned back on his elbow, an expression on his dust-smudged face the girl would later peg as serene.

Even at that age she thought it was peculiar, not wanting to see what else was out there in the world, and she told him so. Her mama had taken her into Tulsa once when she was five, and all she could think about was getting to go back someday. Except Mama was always busy helping ladies have babies and couldn’t afford the time away very often, she said, in case one of the babies decided to come while she was gone.

The boy shrugged and took another bite of his apple. “Whaddya wanna do now?” he said. “Play with my trucks or somethin’?”

“Trucks are dumb.”

“Not as dumb as stupid old dolls.”

“Well, I don’t play with dolls, do I?”

The boy gave her a funny look. “But you’re a girl.”

“So? That doesn’t mean I hafta play with dolls. Besides, that’s sexist.”

“Ooooh, I’m gonna tell! You said ‘sex.’”

“I did not. I said sexist. That’s when somebody thinks you oughta like or do something because you’re a girl or a boy. Mama told me. An’ she said nobody should hafta act a certain way just ’cause people expect ’em to.”

The boy threw his half-eaten apple off into the yard. One of the farm dogs trotted over to investigate, but since it wasn’t meat, he let it be. “You’re weird, you know that?” the boy said. “And anyway, so why don’t you play with dolls?”

“I dunno. Maybe because I see so many babies and little kids when Mama takes me with her on her ’pointments? Babies cry a lot, you know. And make real stinky messes in their diapers. And their hands get tangled in my hair.” The girl sank her chin into the palm of her hand, waiting out the peculiar feeling she got sometimes, like an itchiness on the inside that you couldn’t scratch. It wasn’t fair, having to get up in the middle of the night to go with Mama when one of her ladies had her baby. But thinking about that made the itchiness worse, so she pushed the thoughts away and said instead, “We could read, maybe.”

“Reading’s boring,” the boy said, but the girl had a pretty good idea he said that because he didn’t read as well as she did. “I got a new puzzle. Wanna do that?”

“I don’t like working puzzles with you, you never do ’em right.”

The boy thought for a minute, then said, “We could go dig in the backyard if you want.”

“S’too hot.” They sat there for a long time, listening to their own thoughts—well, the girl was, anyway, she was never sure what the boy thought about, if anything—until she suddenly said, if for no other reason than the silence was beginning to hurt her head, “Brenda Sue Mosely called me a bad word today.”

The boy looked like this could be interesting. “What kinda bad word?”

“I can’t say it.”

“Sure you can. I mean, I won’t tell.” When she slanted her eyes at him, he crossed his heart. “Promise.”

So she leaned over and whispered the word in his ear, thinking she liked how he smelled, like earth and animals and apple, and how it made her feel safe for some reason. She’d heard the word several times before, but she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. She just knew it was meant to hurt her.

“Brenda Sue Mosely is stupid,” was all the boy said, giving the girl the impression he didn’t know what the word meant, either. “If she was a boy, I’d beat her up for you.”

“I don’t want you beatin’ anybody up for me, Cal Logan, you hear me? I can stick up for myself….”

“Dawn? What the hell?”

She jumped a foot, her memories scattering like the roaches in her apartment when she turned on the light in the middle of the night. Panic sliced through her, knotting her stomach. His long, denimed legs wading through an entourage of dogs of all shapes, sizes and parentages, a very much grown-up Cal Logan approached the car, his face creased with concern. A cool breeze ruffled that same unkempt hair, now darker than it had been as a child, and bam! Just like that, even though the thought of sex with anybody right now made her green around the gills, every nerve ending she had screamed, “Remember?”

Not fair.

All her life, Cal had been just Cal. Well, mostly. There’d been the odd tickle of fantasy from time to time, but then, what else was there to do in this town besides fantasize? Their single sexual encounter had been an aberration, a momentary detour off the Road of Reason. She knew that, he knew that, they’d discussed it like rational adults the morning after and she had put the whole episode behind her, chalking it up to One of Those Things. Thought she had, anyway. Her current, totally unexpected condition didn’t change the aberration aspect of this. His “just Cal-ness.”

Except, now, as her gaze slithered over the body that was no longer a mystery underneath his workshirt and jeans, she silently dubbed herself six kinds of fool. What on earth had she been thinking? That she could simply forget how good the man was in bed? How good he made her? That within twenty minutes he’d changed her mind about sex from whatever to whoa?

That she’d start salivating at the sight of him?

Be that as it may. Salivating didn’t change anything, other than perhaps raising her standards for future encounters. If there were any future encounters, which at the moment looked highly doubtful. One minute they’d been old, albeit lapsed, friends, the next they were lovers. Unfortunately, it was about this gaping hole in between. A hole they’d never, ever, be able to fill in a million years.

Except for this child they’d made that would now bridge that gap, in some ways, forever.

Just as Cal had bridged the gap between his house and her car. Dawn’s swallow wedged in her throat, mere inches above her heart. Then she noticed he seemed far more interested in the car than her. She couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or offended.

“This Scooter Johnson’s old GTO?”

“Uh-huh.”

Cal chuckled. With good reason. Her mother had taken the ghastly vehicle in trade for delivering the Johnsons’ second baby, but Scooter had definitely gotten the better end of that deal.

“Honey, even with you in it, that is one butt-ugly car.” His light mood abruptly departed, however, when he once again focused on her face. The man wasn’t stupid. And by the time she’d forced herself to open the car door, untangle herself from her long broomstick skirt and haul herself to her feet, she could tell from his expression that he’d jumped to the only conclusion he could have.

Hope struggled for purchase in worried green eyes. “Dawn? Why are you here?”

Dogs milled about them, panting and wriggling; birds chirped; yellowing leaves danced against a peaceful blue sky in a place as far away from the life she’d made for herself as the moon. And Dawn, who still had no idea what to think about any of this herself, hauled in a huge breath and said, “Remember the condom that broke?”

Then her knees gave way.

A few choice epithets flashed through Cal’s brain as he carted Dawn into the family room, that long, crinkly skirt of hers clinging to him like plastic wrap, her soft white blouse smelling of flowers. With a grunt he clumsily laid her on the old tan leather sofa that had stood in the center of the scuffed, slanted wooden floor ever since he could remember. Ethel, the Logans’ housekeeper for even longer, came streaking in from the kitchen, a glass of water trembling at the end of a spotted, chicken-skinned arm.

“I saw it all from the kitchen window. She sick or something? Oh! She’s comin’ ’round!”

Cal felt set apart, like he was watching one of those reality shows on TV, as Dawn stirred and grimaced and finally opened her eyes. Talk about your life changing in an instant. He had thought—hoped—when he hadn’t heard after a month, that they’d been lucky. Not that the idea of making babies with Dawn Gardner hadn’t crossed his mind a time or six over the past decade or so. He just didn’t figure the fantasy was reciprocated, was all. Actually, judging from the edge to her voice when she mentioned the busted condom, he was sure of it.

“Here, sugar,” Ethel was saying, simultaneously offering Dawn the water and wriggling her ample butt, stuffed as usual into a pair of jeans made for a woman a good size or two smaller, onto the edge of the sofa beside her. Cal noticed her peach-colored hair could do with a touch-up. “Drink this.”

Dawn obeyed, her waist-length braid slipping back over her shoulder as she struggled to sit up so she could take the glass. It was always easier to just do what Ethel asked.

“You look absolutely terrible, child,” Ethel said. “The heat got to you?”

Now fully upright, if still wobbly, Dawn glanced at Cal, then smiled for Ethel. “That must be it,” she said, taking a sip of the water.

Ethel crossed her arms over the sleeveless blouse crammed into those too-tight jeans and said, “Uh-huh,” which prompted Cal to ask if she didn’t have something she needed to be tending to in the kitchen, because he was not about to discuss this very private matter with anybody—not even Ethel—before he’d have five seconds to come to terms with it himself. News’d get out soon enough.

Still, he was hard-pressed not to wither under Ethel’s glare before she popped to her feet, spun around hard enough to make her tennis shoe squeak against the floor, and marched back to the kitchen. The silence left in her wake was so heavy, Cal half expected the room to tilt.

Dawn noiselessly set the glass down on the end table, then fingered the lace table topper, yellow with age. “I can’t believe this is still here.” She glanced around the room, frowning slightly at the collection of Early American furniture, the worn fake oriental rugs, the card table set up by the window with a half-finished jigsaw puzzle spread out on it. It occurred to him she hadn’t seen the living room the last time she was here, neither of them being much interested in a house tour just then. “Incredible. Everything’s exactly the same. From when we were kids, I mean. Even the piano,” she added with a nod toward the baby grand taking up the far corner of the room.

Cal linked his arms across his chest. “I like it like this.”

Her deep-brown eyes met his, her fingers curled around the edge of the sofa. That slightly pitying expression women got when faced with home-decor issues flickered across her features before she said, on a sigh, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, showing up out of the blue like this.”

Worry settled into the pit of his stomach like it planned on staying for a while. She looked like death warmed over, too pale, too thin, no makeup, bits of her tea-colored hair—still long, even after all those years of living back East—hanging like tipsy snakes around her face. And yet, even motionless, she seemed to vibrate with the same restless energy that had marked her as different from everyone he knew—especially himself—from the time they were kids.

“No problem. You feelin’ better?”

“As opposed to being dead? Yeah, I suppose.”

They needed to talk, he knew that, but he didn’t have a clue what to say. Or think, even. He kept trying to drive the words I’m gonna be a daddy through his skull, but they wouldn’t go. To be truthful, Cal had worked his way through a fair number of condoms in his time—he wasn’t much into torch-carrying—but this was the first time one had let him down. That it should do so at the precise moment somebody’s egg was moseying on down the pike was just not fair.

Panic raced through him like a brushfire.

He glanced outside, toward the barn and the pasture beyond. Toward that part of his life that was still what it had been ten minutes ago. It was selfish, yeah, but right now he needed to be somewhere where he felt like he knew what the hell he was doing. He looked back at Dawn, met her questioning gaze.

“I don’t suppose you’d be up to takin’ a short walk? Just to the pasture?”

Her answer was to take another sip of water, nod and get to her feet, that multicolored skirt floating around her ankles as she wordlessly followed Cal outside into the molten early-evening sunshine. The dogs massed around them, tongues lolling, butts wagging; Dawn spoke to each one, softly, her words still tinged with an Oklahoman tang, even after all this time. He also noticed, when he looked over, that her hair flamed.

And so did he.

No point denying either his memory of their encounter two months ago or his body’s reaction to her, he realized as they made their way to the pasture where several of his mares still grazed, yet to be brought in for the night. He knew she’d always felt uneasy in her own body, her legs too long, her breasts too large for her frame. So he’d been sure to show her that night—Cal had always been one to take advantage of an opportunity—the truth of the matter in as many ways as he could think of. Not that the size of her breasts mattered one whit to him, but he had to admit God had outdone Himself this time.

And maybe it wasn’t right, his thinking about her breasts at this moment, but it wasn’t like he could forget them, for one thing. And for another, he’d always thought of sex as kind of a mental comfort food. It was hardly all he thought about, but when things got tough, he found letting his mind wander down that path brought him a certain measure of peace.

“Cal? Wait a sec…”

He turned. Dawn was leaning against the trunk of a cottonwood, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth. “The odor,” she mumbled from behind her hands. At his probably perplexed expression—it was just a little fresh dung, for heaven’s sake, and the wind was blowing away from them at that—she added, “Everything smells…stronger right now.”

So much for peaceful thoughts. Not even thinking about Dawn’s breasts was going to do it this time.

“Oh. Uh…you wanna go back…?”

But she shook her head, pushing away from the tree and plastering on a fake smile. “Nope. All better. Let’s go.”

Never mind that she looked like she was gonna hurl for sure.

In the pasture, most of the mares, all pregnant, as well as the ten or so foals he was still hoping to sell before winter set in, stood in sociable clumps of twos and threes, like folks at a barbecue. Cinnamon, a sleek and sassy bay, pregnant with her ninth foal, ambled over to the fence, begging as usual. In this light, the mare’s coat and Dawn’s hair were nearly the same color.

Cal patted the mare’s glistening neck, chuckling when she nibbled at his hair. The mare whuffled, nodding toward Dawn, then back to him.

“Cindy, meet Dawn. She’s gonna have a baby, too.”

He saw Dawn’s attention snap to him, but by then Cindy had cantilevered her massive head over the fence for some loving. Dawn was smart enough, or needy enough, not to turn down the horse’s offer. She linked the fingers of one hand in the horse’s bridle, stroking the mare’s white stripe with the other, an expression on her face like she wanted to somehow sink into the mare’s calmness and never come out. One of the barn cats, out for his evening hunt, rubbed up against her leg, marking her.

“She’s gorgeous,” Dawn said of the mare. “They all are. What are they?”

“Horses.”

That got a laugh. Well, what you could hear around the snort. “No, doofus. I mean what…kinds. Breeds, whatever.”

He smiled. “Quarter horses, mostly. But I’ve got a couple of mutts, too—the chestnut back by the fence is part Tennessee walker. And we think Josie, there—the dapple gray—might have some Arabian in her.”

“How large is the herd?”

“On the permanent roster? Fifteen mares and a stallion I put out to stud. Plus the youngsters. All retired prizewinners or offspring of prizewinners. Good listeners with easygoing dispositions. And they all produce some real pretty foals.”

“And you’re doing okay?” The concern in her voice made him turn to meet her equally concerned eyes. “It can’t be easy,” she said gently, “making something like this work.”

“I won’t lie and say it is. Especially with foal prices taking a hit the way they’ve done the past couple of years. But the stud fees I get for Twister keep me afloat. In fact, I’ve almost finished buying out my brothers. By this time next year, this’ll be all mine.”

He watched her scan the new up-to-date barn replacing the old barns and outbuildings she would’ve remembered from when they were kids. “You’ve really found your niche in life, haven’t you?”

“I guess I have,” he said, trying to peg whatever he thought he’d heard in her voice, even though figuring out what went on inside women’s heads was definitely not his strong suit.

“There’s something, I don’t know, honest and basic about working with horses. You treat ’em right, they’ll return the favor and do their best for you. I get up in the morning, and even when there’s a boatload of work to do, or even when I’m worried about one of my gals for one reason or another, I look forward to the day. How many people can say that? And really mean it?… Dawn? You okay?”

Her forehead lowered to the mare’s muzzle, she muttered, “I’m sorry,” although almost more to the horse than to him.

“For what?”

She gave him a doleful expression.

“Not for being pregnant?” he said.

“Maybe,” she said on a rush of air. “I just keep feeling I should be apologizing for something. For falling into bed with you, if nothing else.”

“Hey. Unless I missed something, that was a mutual decision. One I sure as hell didn’t regret.” She canted a look at him. “No, not even now.”

“Never mind how stupid it was.”

“Is that what you’re thinking? That it was stupid?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well, that’s just nuts.”

“And now you’re pissed.”

“Hell, yes, if I’m readin’ you correctly. Just because neither one of us expected more’n that one night doesn’t mean it was stupid. Or meaningless.” He leaned his forearms on the top of the fence, trying to tamp down his irritation. Trying even harder to understand it. Cindy, realizing she was no longer the focus of the conversation, clopped off, her black tail swishing.

“Okay, so we got more out of it than we’d bargained. And yeah, I suppose I’m gonna be in shock for a while about that. But that doesn’t mean anybody has anything to be sorry for. Actually, if you’re lookin’ to blame somebody, it wasn’t you who forgot to check the date on those condoms, was it?”

A pained smile crossed her face. “Should I be flattered it had been that long?”

Cal hesitated, then said, “To tell you the truth…I grabbed one out of the wrong box. The one I should’ve thrown out when I bought the new one the month before.”

“You know, I could have lived without knowing that.”

“Thought women wanted men to be honest with them.”

“Not that honest.”

He glanced over. She was leaning against the fence much like he was, but everything about her was tight—her set mouth, her hands, knotted together in front of her, her shoulders, rising and falling in tandem with her shallow, hurried breaths.

Cal gazed back over the pasture, over what had been his life for more than ten years. Building up his breeding business had given him something to focus on after his parents died, something he could count on to bring him satisfaction and pleasure even when his personal life sucked. He would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he didn’t need this distraction, this monkey wrench in the orderly, safe, relatively painless life he’d made for himself. At the same time excitement tingled in his veins with the realization that the one thing that had eluded him so far—the promise of family—was suddenly within his grasp.

He stole a quick look at the side of Dawn’s face, her expression resolute. Well, the promise of part of a family, anyway. Where he saw hope, however, his guess was that she saw catastrophe. Where he saw opportunity, she clearly saw entrapment.

And her fears were doing a damn good job of kicking his wide awake.

“How come you waited so long to say something?” he asked softly.

“Denial,” came out on an exhaled breath. “I’d had a bad cold, thought maybe that screwed up my cycle.” She gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Okay, I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.”

The sun nestled a little closer to the horizon as they stood there, not looking at each other, not saying anything. One of the dogs sat down to scratch, jangling his tags; a couple of mares decided to get up a game of tag, their pounding hooves raising a cloud of dust. Cal kept thinking he was supposed to say something, to come up with some sort of solution. Instead, he could practically hear the wind whistling through the cavity where his brain was supposed to be.

“I guess you’re sure—”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure. And yes, I’m having the baby. And keeping it.”

Her eyes darted to his, then away, as his stomach screeched to a halt a breath away from splat! “So you never considered—”

“I didn’t say that.” At what must have been his horrified expression, she pushed out a breath. “To be honest, my first thought was this can’t be happening. And my second thought was how can I make it unhappen? So I went for a walk. A long walk. A walk that took me past a family planning clinic. On purpose. And I stood there, staring at the door, visualizing walking up the steps, making an appointment…” Her eyes went wide, the words shooting from her mouth like a flock of freaked birds. “I’d never even thought about having a baby, Cal! Let alone like this! Who knows what kind of mother I’ll make? For all I know, this could be a major disaster in the making—”

She let out a little yelp when Cal grabbed her by the shoulders. “And you can stop that kind of talk right now! You’re gonna make a dynamite mother. Maybe not a normal one, but a damned good one.”

She rolled her eyes, then said, “And you know this how?”

“Because I know you. Or at least, I did. And the Dawn I remember never did anything half-assed.” Purely from reflex, his thumbs started massaging her shoulders. Purely from reflex—he assumed—she shivered slightly. “I’d be real surprised to find out you’d changed.”

“Yeah, well, raising a kid isn’t the same as acing a course. Or even winning a case. Which I don’t always do, by the way.”

“But—” He actually caught the thought before it sailed out of his big mouth, but only long enough to examine it and let it go, anyway. “But you were all set to get married.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “That. As it happens, Andrew wasn’t all that hot on parenthood. And to be honest, I was ambivalent. About having kids, I mean.”

“You got any idea why?”

That got a shrug. “Maybe because so much of my work revolves around children. I don’t know.” At his frown, she said, “I do a fair amount of pro bono work for the firm, most of it involving family issues. Many of the kids I see have been knocked around pretty badly. By life, by The Man, by—all too often—their own parents. And the looks on their faces…” The expression on hers twisted him inside out. “Oh, God, Cal, they’d break your heart. The way they want to trust so badly, and are so afraid to…”

Tears shone in her eyes. “Everybody says, don’t get involved, don’t let it become personal. Except that’s the reason I became a lawyer to begin with, to try to make a difference. Lame as that might sound,” she added with a wry smile. “But having a kid of my own…” She let loose another sigh, this one long and ragged. “I’ve never been one of those women who gets all mushy when they see someone else’s baby or feel a pang of envy at seeing a pregnant woman, okay? I’ve never felt that having a child would complete me, because I never felt anything was missing to begin with. But here I am, pregnant. Pregnant and confused, and sick half the day, and scared. That’s about all I know. And that I had to tell you. Beyond that, it’s a blank. A very screwed-up, messy blank.”

Their gazes danced around each other for a second or two, then she took off for her car, leaving Cal so tangled up in his emotions, he had no idea which one prompted him to yell out, “We could get married.”

She spun around, her mouth open. Then she burst out laughing.

“It wasn’t that dumb a suggestion,” he muttered, closing the space between them.

She crossed her arms when he reached her, that pitying look in her eyes again. “Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

He told her, and she laughed again. The car door groaned when she opened it. “We’d never survive the next presidential campaign. Besides, even if I was sticking around, you know as well as I do shotgun marriages rarely work out.”

He couldn’t argue with her there. Of the three couples they’d gone to high school with who’d “had” to get married, only one was still together.

“Hold on.” He clamped hold of the top of the door. “What do you mean you’re not sticking around?”

Her brows shot up. “You honestly don’t expect me to move back here just because I’m pregnant?”

“I didn’t expect anything. But I sure as hell didn’t think you’d drop a bombshell like this and just take off again!”

“I’m not. I’ll be here until the end of the week.”

“Oh, well then. That’s different.”

“Dammit, Cal…” She smacked a loose hair out of her face.

“I know your life is here. But mine isn’t. And hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve invested far too much in my career, and Mama sacrificed too much to help me get there, to just drop it because I’m—we’re—going to have a baby.”

Her words only added to the debris-laden whirlwind swirling around inside his head. Yes, he’d always accepted, even if he hadn’t fully understood, that Haven could never provide Dawn with whatever it was that fed her soul, something he assumed she’d found in New York. And an hour ago he didn’t even know about this baby. Yet he already knew not being able to see this child grow up, day by day, minute by minute, would kill him.

“And if you think I’m gonna settle for being an e-mail daddy,” he said sharply, “you’re more off your nut than I thought. You can be a lawyer anywhere. Even here.”

“Right. As if there’s room for more than one attorney in a town with a population of nine hundred.”

“Hey, we’re up to nine hundred and nine now. At least three people had babies last year, nobody died and a new family with four kids bought Ned MacAllister’s property and are building on it. And besides, I hear Sherman Mosely’s thinking of retiring. That heart attack he had last year put the fear of God in him. So maybe there would be—”

“And what kind of work would I do here? Help people make out their wills? Write up contracts? My life isn’t something out of Ally McBeal. I don’t spend my days handling frivolous cases and my nights boogying in some bar.”

“I didn’t figure you did.”

“Then you should understand that I need to be someplace where I can make a real difference in people’s lives. Those kids I told you about? They need me, Cal. And if I make partner, I can help them even more.”

“In other words, Podunkville’s petty little problems don’t matter.”

“I didn’t say that! And I didn’t mean that. It’s just that…oh, hell—how can I possibly make you understand this without sounding like a snob? I’d feel stifled and useless here, can’t you understand that?”

Cal slammed his palm against the car’s roof. “And how the hell do you expect to raise a child together if we don’t live in the same place?”

“I don’t know! But I can’t just give up my life!”

“Your work comes before your child, in other words.”

“No!” Anguish swam in her eyes. “Oh, God, Cal—I may be totally clueless, and I’m still in shock, too, and I may not know what kind of mother I’ll make, but there’s a reason I never got beyond looking at the front door of that clinic! It takes my breath, how much I already love this kid. And I’m prepared to give it anything it needs. But is it so wrong to not want to lose myself in the process?”

He felt his eyes blaze into hers. “Is it so wrong for me to want to be a real part of my child’s life?”

“Of course not, but—”

“A kid shouldn’t have to grow up without its father, Dawn! And I’d think you’d be the last person to want to see that happen to your kid!”

Her face went rigid. Then she threw up her hands, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to talk about this anymore right now.” He didn’t hinder her when she climbed into the car. “Maybe tomorrow?”

His chest all knotted up, Cal propped his now-stinging hand on the roof. “You plannin’ on changing your mind overnight?”

After a moment, she shook her head again.

“Well, honey—” he let go and stood up straight “—neither am I. So I’d say we’re at an impasse, wouldn’t you?”

He watched her peel out of the drive, wondering if it would have made things better or worse to admit he was every bit as scared as she was.

If not more.

Chapter 2

After he’d put up the horses for the night and returned to the house, all he did was prowl from room to room. An activity which finally drove Ethel, who was crocheting something or other in the living room because the TV reception was better in here, she said, over the edge.

“For pity’s sake, boy! Either sit your backside down and talk to me or take it someplace else! And I already figured out she’s pregnant, so there’s one decision out of your hands.”

He stared at the top of her pin-curled head—she was already “in for the night,” as she put it. “How’d you know that?”

“Because it’s true what they say. About pregnant women glowing. Even if her particular glow looks more like it’s due to radioactive waste. Besides, why else would she be here?”

Cal sighed. Ethel clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her crochet hook a blur. Whatever it was she was making, it was frilly and the most godawful shade of pink Cal had ever seen. Suddenly she plopped the whatever-it-was in her lap and peered at him over her reading glasses, with as much concern in those button eyes of hers as if she’d been his real mother. Which, considering she’d pretty much filled that gap in his life from the time he was nine, wasn’t surprising. “Why don’t you go see your brother?”

“Which one?”

“Does it matter?”

He almost cracked a smile at that. “And what good would that do?”

“Other than getting you out of my hair? I have no idea.” She picked up her work again, weaving the hook in and out of all those little holes so fast it made him dizzy to watch. “But that’s what big brothers are for—to talk things over with. Now that the two of them’s finally figured out a thing or two about women, maybe they can share their wisdom. Besides, you’ll be tellin’ ’em the truth soon enough. Might as well get a jump on it.”

Well, maybe she had a point at that. Not that he relished the thought of being around either just-married Ryan or about-to-be-married Hank, but since he was fresh out of bright ideas, what did he have to lose?

“Don’t wait up,” he said, heading out the door.

“I don’t intend to,” she said, adding a row of lime green to the godawful pink.

He’d stopped by Ryan’s place first, but Maddie, his new wife—who, judging from the scent of warm fruit and fresh-baked pie crust rushing out the kitchen door from behind her, was busy making her next batch of pies to sell to Ruby’s Café—had said he was on duty at the clinic tonight until ten and was there anything she could help him with? But Cal said, no, he didn’t think so, and went on to Hank’s.

His oldest brother, an ex-cop, ran the Double Arrow Motel and Guest Lodge on the outskirts of town, a fixer-upper he bought as a sort of therapy after his first fiancée’s death a few years back. Not only had Hank made the dump into someplace respectable, but he even had a developer seriously interested in turning the place into a bona fide resort. And a few months back, damned if a second chance at love hadn’t come along and crashed his pity-party.

And then stayed until every last guest was good and gone.

Now living in a modest two-story house at the edge of the motel property, Hank seemed understandably surprised at Cal’s showing up unannounced, especially since the three brothers had grown apart after their father’s death when Cal was fourteen. Ryan’s and Hank’s trials and tribulations on the road to true love during the past year, however, had driven the three brothers to talk to each other more than they had in the fifteen years before that.

Now it was Cal’s turn.

Hank led Cal through the living room—painted some orange color that only Ethel could love—to the kitchen where he offered him a beer, which Cal gratefully accepted. Hank’s teenaged daughter, Blair, sat at the kitchen table, her coppery hair gleaming under the lamp as she pored over what looked like an album.

“Wedding invitations,” Hank said by way of explanation. He took a long swallow of his own beer and swept a hand through his short black hair. Falling in love with Jenna Stanton had worked miracles on a mug few people would ever have called good-looking, with its craggy features and twice-broken nose. Hank hadn’t even known about his daughter until a few months ago, when Jenna, a widow herself, had come looking for him after her sister’s—Blair’s mother’s—death and her subsequent discovery that Hank was Blair’s father. The romance had just been a real nice, and totally unexpected, bonus.

“Lord help us,” Hank said, “but I think we’ve got a wedding planner on our hands.”

“Da-ad,” the freckled teenager said, rolling her blue eyes and flashing her braces. “You think Jenna’ll like this one?” She turned the album around. Both men stared at the prissy invitation she was pointing to, trying to figure out what set it apart from the eight other equally prissy invitations on the same page.

“I suppose you’ll have to ask her when she gets back,” Hank said, clearly already well-versed in how to take the easy way out.

“Where is Jenna, by the way?” Cal asked.

“Back in D.C., taking care of loose ends before moving here for good.”

“Y’all decided on a date, yet?”

“Sunday after Thanksgiving, after Jen turns in her next book.”

Leaving Blair to her search, they wandered out onto the back porch. As one, both men sank into twin wooden rocking chairs Hank said Jenna’d ordered from some catalogue or other. Hank’s half-grown puppy, Mutt—the consensus was half black Lab, half German Shepherd—came bounding up the steps to them, planting his big black feet on Cal’s knee.

“I hear Dawn’s back,” Hank said nonchalantly. Cal might’ve laughed if his gut hadn’t felt like somebody’d filled it with a bucket of broken glass.

“You know, I’m beginning to think this entire town’s clairvoyant.”

“Nope. Luralene just happened to be standing in the doorway to the Hair We Are about the time Ivy and Dawn drove past this afternoon. I imagine the news has gotten clear to Claremore by now. Far as Pryor, at the very least.” Hank glanced over, his expression unreadable in the dim light coming from the screen door, then took another swallow of beer.

“What’s got everyone speculatin’, though, is why she’s back. Especially since she was just here in July.”

Cal stuck one booted foot up on the porch railing, pushing back the chair on its rockers as far as he dared. “Let’s put it this way—looks like you and Ryan aren’t the only ones to have fatherhood sprung on ’em this year.”

Hank had the beer can halfway to his mouth; now he lowered it, glancing back to make sure they wouldn’t be heard. “You got Dawn pregnant?”

“Yep.”

Hank sat back in his chair, taking this in. Rocked some more. Then he said, “Remember that night you cheated me out of twenty bucks when we were playing pool? And I asked you whether anything happened between you and Dawn when she was here on the Fourth, and you wouldn’t answer?”

“Well, now you know why I wouldn’t answer. And I did not cheat you out of twenty dollars. Not my fault you can’t play worth spit.”

Several seconds passed before Hank said, “So…what’s this mean? You two gettin’ married?”

“Nope.”

“She at least moving back here?”

“Nope.”

“And I take it you’re not sellin’ up and moving back east with her?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then what in tarnation—?”

“The way I see it,” Cal said, “is what we’ve got here is a baby on the way, a pair of parents who probably shouldn’t be having this baby together, and a whole bunch of questions without answers.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “Make for one helluva crappy night, let me tell you. Well, except for the baby part. I mean, I wasn’t exactly plannin’ on it right now, but it could be worse.”

Another several seconds passed before Hank said, “Yeah. It could be. She might’ve decided not to tell you at all. Then twelve or thirteen years down the road, you suddenly discover you have a kid.”

At that moment the kid in question banged through the screen door to say good-night, bending over to give her father a hug and a kiss before going back inside. Both men sat and rocked for a moment, the rockers’ creaking competing with a lone cicada buzzing its butt off.

“So what’re you gonna do?”

Cal sighed. “Damned if I know. Our goin’ to bed together was a fluke. Our havin’ a baby an even bigger fluke—”

“And you’ve been sweet on her your whole life.”

“You know, I’ve never given anybody cause to think that, so why—”

Hank just laughed. Cal rocked some more, thinking about that look on Dawn’s face when she was talking about those kids she worked with. “Her life’s back east. And there’s nothing Haven, or I, can give her that could even begin to replace what she’d be giving up.”

“Must’ve been some reason she got cozy with you.”

“Yeah. Boredom.”

“You know that for sure?”

Cal wiggled his bottle on his knee, frowning. “No. But maybe I’ve got better things to do than set myself up for a fall. There’s a reason I didn’t pursue her when we were in high school, you know. Even when we were kids, she practically buzzed with all the things she wanted to do, places she wanted to go. Causes she needed to champion. As we got older, it became crystal clear that Haven would never be enough for her. That I’d never be enough for her.”

“So you think she’s better than you?”

“No,” he said, irritation dragging out the word. “Just different. Life here suits me. It never did Dawn. And it never would. Especially now.”

“I see.” The floorboards squawked when Hank leaned forward. “So answer me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“All those gals you’ve dated over the years…how come you never settled down with any of ’em?”

“How the hell should I know? None of ’em…felt right, is all. Not for the long haul, anyway.”

“Uh-huh. As in, none of ’em were…enough for you?”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” Cal said wearily.

“Dawn’s a helluva lot more—” he banged the beer on the arm of the chair, fighting for the right word “—complex than I am.”

Hank laughed. “All women are more complex than men, bozo brain.”

“And who the hell are you to give me advice, anyway?”

Heavy dark brows shot up. “Hey. Nobody told you to come over here. All I’m saying is, don’t sell yourself short. So the two of you are different. Big deal. So’re Jenna and me. And look at our parents, for the love of Mike. A farmer and a classical pianist? Look—at least you’ve got a fighting chance to see your kid grow up. That’s more than I had. And if you don’t try…what’s the alternative?”

From inside, the phone rang. Hank bounded out of the chair, dog scrambling and screen door banging shut as he grabbed the portable off the hall table. “Well, hey there, yourself, honey,” Cal heard his brother say, and his heart did this stupid thumping thing in his chest. He stood, as well, waving so long through the door before heading back to his truck. Once back out on the road, though, Hank’s words hit Cal like a well-aimed spit wad.

Why had Dawn ended up in his bed that night?

And, more important, why had he let her?

The answer whalloped him so hard, he nearly drove off the road: because he figured nothing would come of it, that’s why.

Because he thought he’d be safe. That since there was no danger of her falling in love with him, the opposite was also true.

If he hadn’t’ve been driving, he would’ve banged his head on the steering wheel. God knows his brain could use a little loosening up, anyway. Because now, thanks to the most pitiful excuse for doing something since Adam’s blaming Eve about the whole apple business, he’d fathered a child. If he wanted any chance at all of being part of this child’s life, he’d have to convince the child’s mother to stay in Haven. And if the child’s mother—a woman he’d never allowed himself to work up strong feelings about for any number of reasons—did stay in Haven, what were the odds that Cal’s heart would mind its own business and stay out of trouble?

And maybe he should stop thinking about the what ifs— which was only depressing him—and start thinking about the what nows, a regrettably long list headed up by Figuring Out the Female Mind, with Dawn right there under subheading 1A. Knowing what needed to happen and how to make that happen were two different things. For this he needed an ally.

Preferably a female ally.

Preferably a female ally who knew Dawn pretty well.

Preferably a female ally who was probably no more thrilled than Cal with the idea of having this child—her first grandchild—live nearly two thousand miles away.

As for the rest of it… He supposed his poor heart would just have to muddle through as best it could.

Dawn was still sacked out when Ivy got back from seeing Faith Andrews, who was expecting her and Darryl’s fifth child around Christmas. In one way, Ivy was just as glad, since Dawn needed her rest. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it wasn’t only the pregnancy that had rendered her daughter virtually comatose for the better part of three days. Uh-uh—this was definitely the old “Oh, God—why me?” syndrome at work here.

With which Ivy was only too familiar.

After hanging the tote bag with all her work paraphernalia on the hook by the back door, she peeked in on Miss Sleepy-head, totally oblivious to the late-morning sun shining smack in her face, then tromped back down the short hall to the kitchen, her Birkenstocks slapping against her bare feet. Ivy’s little bungalow in the center of town wasn’t much to speak of—two small bedrooms, the living room, one bath and an eat-in kitchen—and for sure she was in no danger from being set upon by the House Beautiful people, but it was all hers, and there was a lot to be said for that.

She poured herself a cup of leftover coffee and stuck it in the microwave, smoothing strands of graying hair off her forehead. It killed her, seeing the pain her daughter was in, hearing the hopefulness in Cal’s voice when he’d called, knowing there wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to help either one of them. They’d gotten into this fix by themselves, and they’d have to figure their way out of it on their own, as well. That history should repeat itself with her daughter…well. But then, Dawn had been given to doing things the hard way ever since she was little. Wasn’t like her stubborn daughter would let Ivy take the burden from her shoulders, anyway, even if she could.

And the idea that Ivy could somehow run interference for Cal was downright laughable.

She jumped slightly when the microwave beeped, then retrieved her warmed-over coffee and plopped down at the kitchen table, flipping her long braid over her shoulder and yanking her bunched-up denim skirt out from underneath her whopper of a butt. Maybe things’d be different now for Dawn than they’d been for Ivy thirty years ago, but not a day went by that Ivy didn’t question if her having to sometimes drag Dawn out of bed in the middle of the night, or leaving her to her own devices in a strange house while Ivy saw a client through a protracted labor, hadn’t warped the child in some ways. And then there was that business with Charley when Dawn was eight…. Ivy sighed. Not that the child had ever complained, and she’d seemed remarkably adaptable to most every situation, but still—Ivy took a sip of her coffee—it was cause for worry.

“Whatcha thinking so hard about?”

Ivy’s gaze jerked to Dawn’s at the sound of her daughter’s sleep-graveled voice. And wasn’t she a sorry sight? Her hair was a holy mess, her right cheek was creased, and that nightgown wouldn’t pass muster as a dust rag.

“Wondering if I screwed you up,” Ivy said, flat out.

Dawn grimaced, gingerly lowering herself into the opposite chair. “No, I managed that all by myself. And if you go any further down this road, I may have to shoot you.”

Ivy took another sip of coffee. “Want some breakfast?”

“You must be kidding.”

“I hate to say this, but you look like you’ve been on a bender.”

“If only.” Dawn let her head fall forward onto her folded arms. “At least then I’d have some idea when everything would stop spinning.”

“You know, morning sickness is a good sign. Means the hormones are strong.”

Her head still down, Dawn made a “whoop-de-do” circle with her right forefinger in the air above her head, then slapped her arm back down on the table.

“How about some tea?”

“Trust me. Anything I try to put into this stomach right now is only going to bounce right back out.” One eye squinted open. “Were you this sick with me?”

“’Fraid not.”

“Figures.”

“Cal called,” Ivy said casually. “Again.”

That got a groan, then Dawn shifted to lay her cheek on her arms, staring up at Ivy with her hound-dog eyes. “This is going to sound terrible, but I almost wish I hadn’t told him.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I said ‘almost.’”

“You did the right thing. That’s gotta be some comfort, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

Ivy decided a different approach was in order. “You never told me, how’d your first prenatal appointment go?”

“It didn’t. I haven’t seen anyone yet.”

“You’re not serious?”

That got a very teenage-sounding sigh. “Mama, I just found out a week ago. I was up to my butt at work and was doing well to wrangle the time off to come out here. And finding the ‘right’ OB in New York is second only to finding an apartment.”

“What happened to the doctor you were going to?”

“Dead. No, it’s okay,” she said at Ivy’s gasp. “The woman was like 110. And she’d stopped doing deliveries twenty years ago. So I’ll have to start over when I get back.”

“I could do your initial workup,” Ivy said, running her finger over the rim of her mug. “Or Ryan, if you’d rather. Or you could find somebody in Claremore…”

“Fine. You can do it.” At what must have been the surprised look on Ivy’s face, Dawn said, “I do not have the energy for either a protracted argument or a trek to Claremore, and there’s no way I’m letting Cal’s brother give me an internal exam. I don’t care if he is the only doctor around.”

“Actually, he and a couple other doctors from nearby towns got a clinic going about twenty miles away, so you wouldn’t have to go as far as Claremore—”

Dawn gave her a black look.

“Well…” Ivy fought to keep a straight face. And to keep from asking her if she was sure. “Okay, then. Why don’t you go ahead and get a shower, then we can do it right after.”

“Whatever.” She dragged herself out of the chair and over to the refrigerator, which launched into a deafening, whiny hum when she opened it.

“Thought you weren’t hungry?” Ivy said as Dawn pulled out a carton of orange juice.

“That was five minutes ago. Things change.” She glowered at the avocado-green monster as the door slammed shut. “And you seriously need a new refrigerator. Wasn’t this one here when you bought the place?”

“Thought maybe I’d hang on to it long enough to be buried in it, save myself a few bucks.”

“And wouldn’t that frost a few folks,” Dawn said on a chuckle. She poured herself a glass of juice and sat back down at the table. “Why didn’t you ever tell me who my father was?”

Ivy nearly spilled her coffee. “What?”

“My father. I don’t even know his name, or if he’s in town, or if he’s even alive or not.”

Ivy carefully set down her cup, then said, even more carefully, “Would it make any difference if you did know?”

After a swallow of juice and a shrug, Dawn said, “Probably not.”

“Then why now?”

“I don’t know. I mean, why should I give a flying fig about a man who never wanted anything to do with me? But now, with the baby coming, I just got to thinking about it.” Her eyes narrowed. “You know where he is, don’t you?”

After a moment Ivy nodded, her heart knocking painfully against her ribs.

“But you’re not going to tell me.”

“I can’t.” She met her daughter’s gaze. “I made a promise.”

“Which means you can’t tell me his name, either.”

“No.”

“Well. That was elucidating. Did he even know you were pregnant?”

“Dawn, please—”

“Did he leave you when he found out?”

“Honey, there’s really no point to this. Your father and I…it was a mistake, okay? Not you,” she added at the raised brows in front of her. “Us.”

“Because…?”

Well, at least she could be honest about this part. “Because we…got together for all the wrong reasons. There never was a future it.”

“Like Cal and me, you mean?”

Ivy got up from the table to rinse out her cup. “No, not like Cal and you. And there’s no point comparin’ the situations, so don’t even try.”

“You mean, because Cal wouldn’t walk out on his child.”

“Seems to me it’s not Cal walkin’ out that’s the issue here.”

“For God’s sake, Mama!” Ivy turned to see tears cresting in her daughter’s eyes. “I do want to do what’s right, I swear! What’s right for everyone—the baby, Cal, me…dammit! Why can’t I get through a simple conversation without crying?” A tear streaked down her cheek. “I just don’t know what that is, okay? I mean, Cal and I have talked, what? Three times since I’ve been here? And we never reach any conclusion beyond the ‘fact’ that I’m being muleheaded. And don’t think I haven’t figured out the two of you are in cahoots!”

Ivy crossed her arms and took the offensive. “Okay, fine. I think he would make a damn fine son-in-law. So sue me.”

“Too bad you’ll have to find another daughter for that to happen.”

“He’s sure as hell better than that creep you were going to marry!”

Dawn’s laugh surprised her. “No arguments there. But this isn’t about Cal’s qualifications for husbandhood. He’d be a terrific husband. Just not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Lord, you’re as bad as he is! Have you not heard a single thing I’ve been saying since I got here?” She shot up from the table, forking her fingers through her matted hair. “I think I’ll go get that shower now, if you don’t mind—”

“Knock, knock…anybody home?”

Dawn shrieked and grabbed a kitchen towel to hold in front of her as Cal waltzed in through the back door as if he owned the place. She lobbed her mother what was supposed to be a searing look, which, combined with her campground-for-demented-squirrels coiffure, probably didn’t have quite the impact she’d hoped for. And, since she’d been 30,000 feet over Cincinnati when she remembered she’d never actually put her pajamas in her suitcase, was this the high school vintage nightgown with the holes in it? She wasn’t sure. She was sure, however, that she had a lot going on underneath that soft, clingy, might-as-well-be-Saran-Wrap fabric. More than usual. Another whole cup size more than usual, in fact.

Cal’s gaze raked lazily from toes to towel, at which point that damned dimpled smile of his—the number one cause of female hormonal meltdown in high school—slid across his just-shaved face. To add insult to injury, his eyes twinkled like new grass after a spring shower. And, yep, her nipples perked right up. Damn things had been betraying her around Cal Logan ever since her blossoming boobs had pushed them front and center when she was thirteen. It was as if he had this psychic connection with them or something.

And if Cal and she could somehow forge a relationship on that point—or points—alone, they might have something. Since they couldn’t, it was all moot.

“Why are you here, Cal?” And when had her mother vanished?

“Oh, no special reason.” More grinning, more tingling. He set a wrapped parcel on the counter. “I had to come into town, anyway, so Ethel figured y’all might like some of her apple cake….”

Food and gossip. The life blood of a small town.

“Then I figured I’d take you out for a while, since it’s finally cooled down some, give you a chance to see what the town’s like these days. And you can let go of the towel, honey, since I already know what it’s covering.”

Dawn clutched the towel more tightly, nausea momentarily distracting her from her duplicitous knockers. For the first time in weeks she was almost grateful she felt like crud.

“The last thing I want to do right now is go anywhere. Besides, I don’t imagine the town’s changed all that much since the last time I saw it.”

Cal’s hands slid into his back pockets. Like most guys out here, his belt buckle was shiny and silver and only marginally smaller than Texas. And Dawn noticed the bottom didn’t lie exactly flat against his belly. She jerked her eyes to his face—dimples and lazy grins were a lot safer than angled belt buckles—in time to hear him say, “And when was the last time you saw Haven?”

Cheeks burned. “Two months ago.”

“I didn’t say the last time you were here. I said the last time you saw it. As in, paid attention to what it’s like now. Not what you remember.”

She shut her eyes. Let’s see…she looked like hell, felt worse, and was standing in a socially unacceptable nightie arguing semantics with a man who made her hot just by breathing. And not even on her. Yep, she was officially having a sucky day.

“It doesn’t matter,” she finally said. “Mama’s giving me my first prenatal checkup after I get cleaned up.”

Immediately Cal’s expression changed, as something that looked close to awe obliterated every bit of the smart-aleckiness…and walloped her emotions right out of the ball park. Again his eyes sauntered back to her body, only this time, she felt…worshipped. So much so, she didn’t even object when he took a step closer, then closer still, finally tugging the dish towel from her hands to lay one large, gentle hand on her still flat belly.

She swallowed. Twice. One from a plain old-fashioned rush of awareness, the second time from something achy and weird she couldn’t even define.

“Tell you what,” he said, bending slightly to look in her eyes, and she saw not the man who rattled her hormones clear into the next county, but the boy with the courage to cry in front of her when his mama was dying. “Let me stay for your appointment, then I’ll take you over to Ruby’s for lunch and we’ll see how it goes from there. How’s about it? A couple of hours, just for us.”

Senses returned. She removed his hand—managing not to sigh—and crossed her arms. Under her braless breasts. Wrong. So she lowered her arms, feeling them bounce back into place. Terrific.

“There is no ‘us,’ Cal. There’s never been an ‘us.’ And there’s never going to be an ‘us.’”

And quit standing there making this so damn hard, with those damn sweet eyes of yours and that damn, double-damn, stupid, infuriating, unflappable grin.

Quit making me long for things that can’t be.

“But there is a baby,” he said. “Our baby. So I’m sticking around.”

“God. I’d forgotten how stubborn you are.”

“One of my more endearing qualities.”

She sighed. “There’s really no point, Cal. It’s not as if you can see or hear anything yet.”

He crossed his arms, the smile gone. “I don’t suppose I can stop you from going back to New York if that’s what you’re determined to do. But let me tell you something—when you are here, there is no way you’re keeping me from being part of your life as far as it concerns our child. So you might as well get used to it, right now, and save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.”

Hoo-boy. Major-deer-in-headlights time. If only…

If only what?

She had no idea.

Dawn blinked until the fog cleared and Cal’s calm, set-to-simmer gaze swam into focus. She blew out yet another sigh, her hands flipping up on either side of her head.

“Fine. Stay. But I’m not going anywhere afterward.”

Then Cal grinned, Dawn’s nipples went tra-la-la and she took off down the hall for that shower, in as dignified a manner as she could manage in a nightgown a breath away from disintegration.

“You might want to bring a sweater or something,” he called after her. “It’s kinda chilly out today.”

Chapter 3

“Just remember,” Dawn said as Cal held open the door to Ruby’s two hour later. “I’m only letting you do this because I’m starving. Got that?”

Her shampoo scent distracted him for a second, but he caught himself fast enough to both say, “Yes, ma’am,” and swallow his smile. She narrowed her eyes slightly, then turned to head inside. Only she wheeled back around so fast her hand whapped him in the stomach.

“And not one word about…you know.”

She’d been right, that there really hadn’t been much point to his sticking around for the exam, especially since Ivy threw him out before they got to the fun stuff, anyway. Except that being there helped make the whole thing feel more real, somehow. Dawn would probably have kittens if she knew, but he’d already been up in the attic and found the cradle he and his brothers had used as babies, the one his daddy had made the instant he found out he was gonna be a daddy, after nearly fifteen years of marriage. And when Cal thought about his own baby lying in it, looking up at him with a big, goony grin, he got all choked up.

When he thought about Dawn having the baby in New York…well, it just made him sick, is what. But he also had enough sense to know when to back off.

“I’m not stupid, Dawn,” he said, nudging her from behind before they attracted any more attention than they already were. As it was, the noise level in the diner—which at lunchtime generally hovered somewhere between deafening and mind numbing—dropped considerably at their entrance. Cal was tempted to call everybody on it, only he knew that would only make it worse. Besides, Dawn had gone still as a statue, one arm pressing against her stomach.

Damn. He’d forgotten what she’d said about strong smells. And the grease-to-air-molecule ratio in here was running, at a conservative guess, a good fifty-to-one.

“You okay?” he said quietly, taking her elbow whether she liked it or not. The look she gave him pretty much indicated she didn’t.

“What?”

“The smell,” he whispered. “Is it getting to you?”

Except for a couple of clips, her hair was hanging loose down the back of her light blue sweater, which was the same color as the flowers in another of those long, floppy skirts that looked like something her mother would wear. Just like the ugly, clunky shoes. The ends of her hair teased the top of his hand, sending memories racing around inside his skull for a second until he silenced them by focusing on the present.

“Lord, yes,” she whispered back. “I want every single thing on the menu. Oh, there’s a booth! Grab it!”

As the noise level gradually worked its way back up, Charmaine Chambers, Ruby’s newest waitress and the same age as Cal and Dawn, leaned over to wipe down their table, her initial—and customary—smile for Cal vanishing the instant she caught sight of Dawn.

“Special today’s a boneless barbecue rib sandwich,” she announced in a monotone, her breasts shifting restlessly underneath a baggy uniform that was so bright pink it hurt Cal’s eyes to look at it. She straightened, then poured them both water from a dripping plastic pitcher she’d grabbed from the nearby station. “You need a menu?” she asked Dawn, her words all tight.

Dawn flicked a glance at Cal, then pressed one hand to her chest. “Hey, Char! It’s me, Dawn.”

The brunette’s slate-blue gaze bounced off Dawn. “I know.” Her mouth twitched, but calling it a smile was pushing it. “Thought you were in New York.”

“I’m…here visiting my mother. How’re those gorgeous boys of yours?”

“They’re fine. You know what you want yet?”

Dawn shoved a hank of hair behind her ear, obviously wrestling to keep her thoughts to herself. “The rib sandwich sounds great. That come with fries?”

“And slaw, yeah. Soup’s extra, though.”

“What kind?”

“Split pea.”

“Really?” she said, her whole face lighting up. “Lord, I can’t remember the last time I had split pea soup. Could I get a double bowl?”

Wordlessly, Charmaine scribbled the order down on her pad, then took Cal’s, yelling them out to Jordy, Ruby’s husband, before stomping off to tend to the next customer.

Dawn sighed. Cal leaned over. “Don’t let her get to you—”

“It’s okay. We weren’t exactly best buddies when we were kids, you know.”

“Maybe not, but the thing is…she’s been having a hard time of it lately. Brody walked out about a year ago, leaving her with the kids. Ruby gave her a job ’cause she felt bad for her, but I don’t think waitressin’s exactly her thing.”

Dawn’s dark brows dipped. “Brody left her?”

The split had surprised Cal, too, especially since Charmaine and Brody had been tight as ticks since the seventh grade. That they’d managed to wait until after high school to get married had been a miracle in itself, although Cal knew for a fact they hadn’t waited about anything else.

“Yeah. Kids took it real hard, too.”

“I bet they did. Oh, God, Cal,” she said on a sigh, “how awful for her.” Her eyes following the waitress’s moves, Cal supposed, she asked, “Is she at least getting child support?”

“I seriously doubt it—”

“Dawn Gardner!” Ruby Kennedy said next to them, hands the color of bittersweet chocolate parked on seriously wide hips. “What on earth you doin’ back here so soon, honey?”

“Giving you a hug, that’s what,” Dawn said with a laugh as she clambered out of the booth and did just that.

After they’d hugged themselves out and Dawn was settled back in the booth, Ruby asked, “You order the rib sandwich, baby?”

“Like I was gonna pass up Jordy’s ribs,” she said with a grin. “Or the fries or the slaw or the soup.”

Ruby mm-mm-mm’d and said, “Why is it the skinny one’s’re always the ones who can pack it away? Me, all I have to do is look at one of Jordy’s ribs and my butt starts expandin’. Oh, and Maddie brought over a peach cobbler this morning that’s so pretty it’ll make you cry. You want me to save you some?”

“Whoa, whoa—” Cal raised his hand. “I don’t hear you offering to save me any!”

“That’s because, Mr. Me-Too,” Ruby said, “being’s Maddie’s your sister-in-law, I suppose you can taste her cobbler anytime you like—”

“Hey!” Charmaine yelled over by the display of gum and candy bars and stuff underneath the cash register. “You have to pay for that—come back here!” Cal looked over just in time to see a blond kid just this side of puberty tear out the door, nearly knocking over Homer Ferguson in the process.

Seconds later Cal was hot on the kid’s tail, his much longer legs catching up to the boy before he’d even reached the Hair We Are two doors down. He grabbed the skinny thing around the waist and plucked him right up off the ground, getting a barrage of elbows and fists and rubber-soled feet for his efforts.

“Lemme go! I didn’t do nuthin’!”

“You gonna run?” Cal said softly in the kid’s ear.

“What do you think?”

Cal let go, but not before getting a good handful of too-big T-shirt just in case the boy had any ideas about booking it. The kid took a swing at him, but he didn’t really put his heart in it. Besides, Cal ducked.

“I said, let me go!”

Still hanging on with one hand, Cal held out the other one, palm up. “Give me what you took.”

“I didn’t—”

“Now.”

The boy glared at him for several seconds, his breath coming in sharp bursts. He didn’t exactly look like he’d had a bath any too recently, but then, how many boys his age did? Finally the boy rammed his hand into his pocket and yanked out a slightly smashed candy bar.

“That it?” Cal asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“You don’t believe me, you can look for yourself.”

“Okay, you can ditch the attitude. Unless you like lookin’ ugly.” When the kid only scowled harder, it suddenly struck Cal where he knew him from. “You’re Jacob Burke’s boy, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have to tell you nothin’.”

Cal was sorely tempted to cuff the kid upside the head. Or feed him, one. “What’s your name?” he said gently.

More scowling.

“You can tell me now, or I can call your daddy—”

“Elijah.”

“That what they call you, or you got a nickname?” At the shake of the shaggy head, Cal grimaced at the Three Musketeers in his hand. “You mean to tell me you caused all this ruckus for one lousy candy bar? How dumb is that?”

“Yeah, well, it’s none of your business, is it?”

“You stole something from a friend of mine. That makes it my business—”

“Is he okay?”

Cal turned at the sound of Dawn’s voice, noticing a small crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings. For Haven, this qualified as excitement.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” He handed her the flattened candy bar.

“This, however, isn’t. Come on,” he said, tugging the boy in the direction of the diner.

“I ain’t goin’ back there.”

“Yes, you are. And when we get there, the first thing you’re gonna do is apologize for your momentary lapse of good sense. Then we’re gonna see what you can do for Ruby to make up for it.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of job, I’m thinking.”

“A job? No way! For one candy bar?”

“I’m a firm believer in nipping things in the bud, bud.” The small crowd dispersed when Cal dragged Elijah through the door, Dawn on their heels. “We’re back, Ruby,” he hollered from the doorway. “Where you want him?”

“Kitchen’s good,” she called from the back of the diner.

They all trooped back into Ruby’s gleaming kitchen, Elijah a trifle more subdued than he had been five minutes before. Especially when he caught sight of Jordy, Ruby’s bald, bad, six-foot-three, 280-pound husband. After a brief discussion, it was decided Elijah could mop the floor after the lunch rush.

“I don’t know how.”

“Well, I suppose you can learn, can’t you?” Ruby said, after which four people chorused, “You hungry?”

After Dawn and Elijah had packed enough away between them for a church potluck, Cal and Dawn took the boy and his bicycle, which he’d left in front of the hardware store, back out to the small farm he lived on with his widowed father. Who, as best they could figure out from Elijah’s grudging explanation, had been on disability for some time. He also told them he was home schooled, since his father needed him around to “help.” Help with what, was the question, since neither the small, drab house with its peeling paint and missing shutters, nor the bare dirt yard littered with junk and a couple of old pickups, indicated that any attention had been given to either for a very long time. Granted, Cal had seen worse, but the bleakness of the place turned his stomach. No kid should ever have to live like this.

“Mind if we come in for a minute?” Dawn asked, but the kid said no before the words were all the way out of her mouth.

“We won’t say anything about the candy bar,” Cal added.

“It ain’t that,” Elijah said, pushing open the back door of Cal’s extended cab truck. “It’s just…uh, Daddy’s usually asleep this time of day. An’ he don’t like bein’ disturbed.”

With that, he bolted out of the truck and across the yard, stopping for a second to pet a large mongrel dog tied up to the lone tree in front of the house before bounding onto the porch and on through the screen door.

Dawn kept her eyes on the house as they drove back down the dirt road leading to the highway. “I hate seeing kids left to their own devices like that.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s all right,” Cal said, briefly meeting her gaze when she finally brought it around. She blew out a sigh, then faced front, her brow knit, as the truck meandered over the gently rolling, lush green hills that Cal couldn’t imagine giving up for skyscrapers and concrete and rush hour traffic.

“Still,” she said, holding her hair with one hand so it wouldn’t blow to kingdom come. “Somebody should check up on him. From the county, I mean.”

“There’s no real cause, far as I can tell. I didn’t get the feeling he’d been abused. And he has to take tests or something if he’s being home schooled. If he doesn’t pass, they’d catch it.”

“But he’s so thin! A stiff breeze would blow the poor kid away!”

A smile inched across Cal’s face. “You’re obviously forgettin’ how skinny I was as a kid then. Just because he’s all bones doesn’t mean he’s not eating.”

“He stole, Cal.”

“A candy bar. Because he’s twelve and it was there and he saw what looked like a golden opportunity.” He glanced over.

“Didn’t you ever take something just to see if you could?”

“No! Never!”

“You were never even tempted?”

“Well…maybe. But I didn’t act on it.” She sucked in a breath. “Did you?”

“Yeah, once.”

“Oh, God.”

“Oh, unknot your panties. I was nine, for cryin’ out loud. It was maybe a few months after my mother died. I snitched a pack of gum from the supermarket checkout, pretty much like what Elijah did.”

“What happened?”

“Well, at first I felt like hot stuff because I pulled it off without Ethel catching me. But somehow the gum didn’t taste near as good as I figured it would. And I couldn’t sleep that night. So I finally confessed to Daddy.”

“Ouch. I can imagine how well that went over.”

“All he did was look at me. Like I’d let him down. Well, and march me back to the store to ’fess up to the manager, which was humiliating as hell. I was never even tempted to filch anything after that.”

“Never?” He heard the smile in her voice.

“Almost never, anyway.”

She laughed, but it didn’t last long. “Still,” she said, “it worries me. About Elijah.” He could feel her gaze on the side of his face. “I’d call Family Services myself, but I wouldn’t be around to follow up….”

He didn’t know which irked him more, her leaving or her pushing him to do something he didn’t think needed doing.

“Dawn, I hear what you’re saying, I really do. But I’m not gonna embarrass that kid, or his father, by calling the authorities on ’em when I don’t see any reason to. Looks to me like they’ve got enough to deal with without people sticking their noses in where they don’t belong.”

She pushed herself back against the truck door, as if needing to distance herself from him. “Problems aren’t always obvious, you know—”

“And living in the city for so long has made you see spooks lurking in every shadow. This isn’t New York—”

“Neglect is neglect, Cal. No matter where it happens.”

“You know what? If you’re so hot about this, why don’t you stick around and take care of it yourself?”

“Because I can’t, which you know. And how dare you try to blackmail me!”

Cal let out a nice, ripe cussword, to which Dawn spit back, “My sentiments exactly.”

Nobody said anything for another mile or two. Then she said, “I suppose I can at least make the initial call before I go back.”

Cal sighed. “You really feel that strongly about this?”

She turned to him, and he could hear her voice shake. “If you’d heard what I have, seen the effects of people looking the other way, you would, too. Working with these women and children hasn’t made me delusional, it’s made me think twice about taking things at face value. And I couldn’t live with myself if something happened that could’ve been prevented by a single phone call.”

He glanced over to see her mouth all set like it used to get when she was a kid. Aw, hell. “Tell you what. If I promise to personally check up on the boy, and his father, would that be enough to keep you from making that call?”

“Are you serious?”

“Are you out to see just how far you can try my patience before I lose what’s left of my mind? I wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t mean it…hey!”

She’d flown across the seat to hug him, nearly sending the truck off the road. “Thank you,” she murmured into his neck, her breath far too soft and far too warm for anybody’s good right now.

“Honey? Not that I’m not enjoying this, but I think that’s Didi Meyerhauser’s Bronco closing in on us, so you might want to—”

She was instantly on the other side of the seat like nothing had happened.

Not that anything had happened.

Exactly.

The preacher’s wife passed, waving. Cal and Dawn waved back, Cal suddenly remembering that Dawn used to be friends with Didi’s daughter.

“You seen Faith yet?” he said.

“Faith? No. Not sure there’d be any point. It’s been years since we’ve talked or written or anything.”

“Then I guess you didn’t know she and Darryl are having another baby?”

“Mama might’ve said something about it. Their third?”

“Fifth.” He grinned. “Now there’s one shotgun wedding that took.”

No response.

They drove past the turnoff that led back to the farm. For a second, he’d thought about asking if she wanted to come back, to see the cradle. But only for a second.

“So…Ryan and Maddie are doing okay, I take it?” Dawn asked.

Now, Cal knew it had not been her intention to hike up the temperature inside the truck several degrees. Except the last time Dawn would’ve seen them all was on July Fourth. The day he and Dawn made the baby. Which naturally provoked some real vivid memories of just how they’d made the baby, although to the casual listener—as in Dawn—his thoughts, like his words, were totally focused on Maddie’s youngest taking her first steps a few weeks ago, how his new sister-in-law had worked wonders to bring his reclusive workaholic brother out of his shell.

“And Hank and Jenna?” she said. “Mama told me they were getting married?”

He glanced over at her, his brain jumping its tracks as his gaze landed on her mouth. Which, when it wasn’t yapping a mile a minute and making him crazy, was soft and warm and—

He looked back, mentally flogging himself. This sex-as-mental-comfort-food business was fine to a certain extent, but at some point, a man’s gotta grow up and eat his vegetables.

“Right after Thanksgiving, yep.”

“I liked Jenna a lot,” she said, crossing her arms. “Her books are good, too. And I don’t usually read mysteries.”

“Her next one’s coming out in hardcover,” he said, thinking about that mouth. About how he’d kissed a fair number of women in his time, but Dawn…well, she was what you’d call a natural talent. “You know,” he said, because thinking about her mouth was making him feel reckless, “even though Jenna’s lived all her life in D.C., she doesn’t seem to have any reservations about moving out here.”

No response. Again.

One more little hill before they reached Haven proper. “I bet if you had a chance to know Jenna better, you’d really like her.”

Dawn laughed. Not what he was expecting. And she was hard enough to figure when she did something he was expecting.

“What?” he asked.

She said, “Nothing,” which would’ve ticked him off if she hadn’t immediately followed up with, “You’re going to make an amazing father,” which simply threw him.

To Nebraska.

“What makes you say that?”

“Deductive reasoning is kind of my stock in trade,” she said with a smile. “Watching how you handled Elijah, the way you related to him…” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her breasts lifting with the force of her sigh. First time in his life he’d ever thought of his peripheral vision as a liability. “At least I won’t have to worry about leaving our child alone with you. Me, on the other hand…”

The insecurity flickered in her voice for barely a second, just long enough to bring back another memory, this one of a eight-year-old girl, her chin defiantly tilted up underneath a quivering mouth, who’d refused to come right out and say how much it hurt when that man Ivy was supposed to marry suddenly moved away. Charley…Beeman, that was his name.

“What do I need a daddy for, anyway? And besides, Mama says a man just gets in the way of what a woman wants to do….”

Cal frowned, bringing himself back to the present. “Well, sweetheart, if things go the way I hope, you won’t have to worry about leaving him or her alone with me at all.”

Several beats passed. Then: “Stop the truck.”

“You gonna be sick?”

“Possibly. But not because of the baby.”

He pulled onto the shoulder; she jumped out and took off down the road. Cal stuck his head out the window. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Walking the rest of the way!”

Grumbling to himself, Cal got out and went after her.

“You know—” the words came in little puffs as he trotted along behind her “—the one thing I used to admire about you was that you never pulled this female crap.”

“Yeah, well,” she puffed back, “I’ve never felt this much like a female before.”

Along about this time, Cal happened to notice her behind had filled out some with the pregnancy, too. Not a lot, and not so’s anybody but him would notice, probably, but there it was, jiggling away in front of him as she strode, and while one part of him was pretty ticked at her behavior—he liked kids, but not ones his own age—she looked so damned silly and cute and sexy, hoofing it away like this, that, well, something crazy just bubbled up inside him and made him want to kiss her.

So he did.

After he caught her, that is.

She was too shocked to protest. At least, that’s what he was working with. Oh, there was a little mmphh on her part when their lips met, but he chalked that up to the surprise element.

Oh, yeah, she was a natural talent, all right. And she tasted like barbecue sauce and fresh peach cobbler, which Cal decided right then and there pretty much summed up his definition of heaven. Except he could have done without the mmphhs, which were definitely increasing in their intensity.

The fists beating on his shoulders weren’t doing much for the mood, either.

He let her go, grinning down at her.

She was not grinning back.

“And you did that why?” she said.

No way was he telling her about the bigger-butt revelation.

“Because I felt like it. And I had fun. Well, I would have had fun if you’d cooperated more—”

She burst into tears and sank onto the ground.

Cal squatted beside her. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

That got the head-shaking, air-batting routine, then a series of sobbed syllables not even remotely related to the English language. Figuring she probably wasn’t going anywhere in the next few seconds, Cal went back to the truck and retrieved two or three tissues from the smashed box in the glove department, then returned to where she was still sitting and handed them to her. When she was drier and—he presumed—more coherent, he said, “You wanna run that one by me again?”

A few rattly sighs, a few more eye wipes, and at last she said, “You are such an idiot.”

At that he figured he might as well join her in the dirt and weeds.

“You mean that in general?” he said as his backside touched down. “Or you got something specific in mind?”

“At the risk of this going straight to your head, if not elsewhere—” she looked pointedly at the elsewhere in question “—my being hot for you isn’t the issue here.”

“It’s…not.”

She smacked him in the arm, honked into one of the tissues, then gave one of those oh-God-deliver-me-from-the-clueless sighs. “You didn’t exactly have to talk me into your bed a couple months ago. If you recall.”

He squelched the laugh just in time. “Yeah, I seem to remember a certain…eagerness on your part. But I figured that was…”

“What? You figured that was what?”

“That you were still hurtin’ after that guy dumped you, is all,” he said gently, refusing to look at her. “And maybe you were looking for someone to boost your self-confidence back up a notch or two.”

Silence. Then: “I was a little…bruised, it’s true. But more because I was duped than dumped. Andrew and I broke up because our visions of marriage—or rather, his vision of what he expected of a wife—didn’t mesh. What pissed me off was that he didn’t bother to tell me this until after we were engaged. And I felt, I don’t know…betrayed as much as anything, I guess.”

“About what?”

She yanked a poor defenseless weed out of the ground, then shifted to sit cross-legged, making lines in the dust with the weed as they talked. “We were really compatible on so many levels. Similar tastes, similar viewpoints, similar personalities.” Her shoulders hitched. “He was…comfortable. After some of the so-called men I’d gone out with, it was a pleasure being with someone I never had to second-guess. Or so I thought.” Her mouth hitched up into a rueful smile. “When he proposed, my first thought was, No more stupid dates! No more worrying about making an impression!”

Cal frowned. “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a real good reason to marry somebody.”

“Trust me, after what I’d been through, it was a damn good reason. Anyway, I figured our lives wouldn’t change all that much after we got married, that we’d just be a typical professional New York couple. But it turned out…”

The weed snapped in two; she tossed it away and squinted into the sun. “He didn’t love me, I know he didn’t, but he still wanted more from me than I could possibly give. Looking back, I think he didn’t want kids because the competition would’ve made him crazy, because Andrew wanted to be my world. For me to love him in a way I knew I never could. In a way I know I’ll never be able to love anybody.”

Cal waited out the stab of pain before he asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded surprised, like she hadn’t expected him to challenge her. “Just the way I’m wired, I guess.”

“I see.” His insides churning, he focused on a clump of late-season wildflowers shivering in the breeze. “So…you’d rather be alone?”

She seemed to think about this for a second. “I’ve been on my own for a long time and I’ve learned to enjoy my own company. But I’m not a recluse. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry Andrew otherwise. I have nothing against male companionship. Or sex,” she said with a tilted smile. “I can even love, in my own way. Just not the way the rest of the population loves. Or wants to be loved.”

Cal wondered if she heard the sadness in her voice. Oh, she undoubtedly thought she was being…well, whatever people who came to conclusions like that were. Upfront? Resigned? Something. Frankly, Cal thought she was several sandwiches short of a picnic.

The thing was, though, it didn’t matter what he thought, did it? Because it was what she believed that mattered. It was like what Ryan said about attitude affecting a person’s health—people who expected to get sick generally did far more often than people who didn’t think about it too hard. So Cal could sit here and tell Dawn she was full of it until the cows came home, but as long as she was convinced she couldn’t love like a normal person, he’d be wasting his breath.

“So,” she was saying, “about that night. You were flirting, and I’ll admit I was still feeling a little off balance, and from everything I’d heard, I figured I probably wouldn’t regret going to bed with you.”

His eyes snapped to hers. “From everything you’d heard?”

“Hey. Women talk, too. And unlike men, we don’t embellish. Granted, my information was a little out-of-date, but…”

She shrugged. Cal looked back out across the road. A couple of trucks passed. Everybody waved. Cal figured Ruby’s would be buzzing to beat the band by tomorrow.

“In any case, I wasn’t pushing you away just now because I didn’t want to be kissed, but because kissing you is like opening a can of Pringles. Sour cream and onion. Or nacho cheese, in a pinch. If I start, I can’t stop until I’ve eaten the whole damn can.”

“So…what you’re saying is, all those rumors you heard about me…?”

“Weren’t rumors. Which is one of those good-news/bad-news kinds of things. Wanting to have sex with you isn’t the issue. But it would totally ball things up. And I think things are plenty balled up enough already, don’t you? And dammit, I’d kill for a can of Pringles right now.”

After a couple of tense seconds, during which Cal mentally beat back enough testosterone to fuel the sex drive of every man in the state, he stood, then extended his hand to pull Dawn to her feet. “C’mon. Here’s one problem I can solve.”

Fifteen minutes later, having bought, not one, but three cans of Pringles from the Git-n-Go and used the bathroom—both of which would have raised Angel Clearwater’s penciled brows if her tightly pulled-back hair hadn’t already made them an inch higher than normal—Dawn sat with her legs dangling off the lowered gate of Cal’s truck, having a scarffest. Without her saying anything, Cal’d pulled off the road to park underneath the whacky old cottonwood where they used to go when they were kids. Split by lightning long before they’d been born, it looked like a huge gray hand, its fingers bent toward the sky. It still put out more leaves than any other tree for miles around, though, the sunlight lancing through the sharp green, casting quivering shadows over the two of them, reminding her of other times. Happy times. Times she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember right now.

She hadn’t meant to blab about Andrew, especially considering she wasn’t exactly proud of her naiveté at having taken the man at face value. And God knows, if Cal hadn’t kissed her, she would never have brought up her, um, interest in him. But since he had, she figured she might as well disabuse him of the notion that he could seduce her into coming back to Haven.

“I was really that good, huh?” he said beside her.

She nearly choked. And nodded, since her mouth was full of chips. Just her luck to find the only man in the universe who could read a woman’s mind.

“So tell me…” Cal leaned back on one elbow, his hands folded across his hard, flat, definitely yummy tummy. “What is it about New York that would make you sacrifice this—” he swept one hand over his torso “—for that?”

There he went, being just Cal. Charming. Goofy. Making light of things.

Feeling suddenly and unaccountably tetchy, Dawn crammed more chips into her mouth and mumbled something about being sick and tired of everybody equating city dwelling to devil worship.

Chips flew six ways to Sunday when Cal grabbed her wrist. She jerked her head around to see his brows slammed together.

“Maybe I don’t understand why anybody’d want to live where you can’t go outside without a hundred people shoved up against your butt, but that doesn’t mean I think there’s anything wrong with people who do. All I did was ask you a simple question.” He released her. “Don’t go reading things into it that aren’t there.”

“Sorry,” she said softly, wiping her salty fingers on a tissue.

“Bad habit.”

“Preemptive strikes?” he said behind her.

She skootched around to rest her back against the truck-bed wall, flipping her skirt out over her legs. “I guess.” She sighed.

“I can’t even explain it.”

Cal looked at her steadily for a long moment, then said, “I’m not looking to judge you. I’m only trying to understand.”

“I know that. It’s just…”

“Honey? Why don’t you try just answering the question?”

His refusal, when they were younger, to let anything get to him used to irritate the life out of her. Now, however, even though his cocksure attitude only reinforced her conviction about how different they were, her battered psyche yearned to inhale his unflappability, like she’d done the Pringles a few minutes ago. Those cool green eyes said, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I won’t let you fall. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.

If only.

Those eyes, and his goodness, were treacherous. And it finally whapped her over the head that this was possibly her only chance to convince him, once and for all, to let her go.

Not only for her sake, but for his.

“To be truthful,” she said, “I didn’t know what to expect when I first got there. An eighteen-year-old hick in the big city?” She smiled. “I thought I’d be eaten alive. My first place was a shared room in a cramped apartment with five other roommates, and it took me twenty-four hours to get up the nerve to go out by myself. But within a week I was hooked.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there. I mean, in many ways New York is just like any other place, mostly filled with ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, cooking and shopping and doing laundry and eating out.”

“There’s just a lot more of them.”

“Okay, yeah. It’s crowded. But there’s this…energy that pulses through the city, you know? This sense of possibility, that any second, every second, something exciting could happen.”

His mouth curved just enough to show off the dimples. “Even when you’re doing your laundry?”

“I didn’t say it made sense. And it’s not easy living there, don’t get me wrong. It’s expensive and competitive and, yes, crowded. But God—I can go straight to a major museum from work, or get a half-price ticket to a Broadway show on the spur of the moment. And the music…” She leaned forward, her eyes shining. “The Metropolitan Opera, Cal. Think of that.”

He made a face. “That’s Hank. Opera’s not my thing.”

“Okay, fine. The Mostly Mozart Festival, then. The freaking New York Philharmonic. Live. In person. Free concerts in Central Park—”

“You’re still not makin’ any points here, sweetheart. Although Ryan would be in hog heaven.”

“And then there’s shopping. Bergdorf’s. Barney’s. Bloomingdale’s.”

He just stared at her.

“So maybe that’s not working for you, either. But just think—our child would be able to go to some of the world’s greatest museums on a regular basis, see shows and go to the ballet and…” She paused. “Wouldn’t your mother have been thrilled to know her grandchild would get to hear one of the greatest orchestras in the world on a regular basis?”

Cal pulled himself up to sit across from her, stretching out his legs so she could feel his sun-warmed jeans against her calves. “Did you know she spent a year studying at the Manhattan School of Music?”

“No! Wow. No wonder she was so good.”

He got this funny look on his face then, one that made her insides pitch, made her ache to put her arms around him and lay her head on his shoulder and comfort him, somehow. But comforting was what got them into this predicament to begin with. So instead she nudged his hip with her foot. Which was bad enough.

“I know this isn’t an ideal situation,” she said, talking through, over, around another kind of ache, “but once I make partner, I’ll be making pretty good money. And I can work from home at least a couple days a week, if I need to, so I’ll be there for our baby. And we’ll come back a lot, I promise.”

He sat there, silent, staring straight ahead, then suddenly scrambled out of the truck bed, reaching out to help her down, as well.

“Guess I’d better get you back to Ivy’s,” he said. “Gotta lot of work to do this afternoon.”

He said nothing else until he’d deposited her a few minutes later in front of her mother’s house, and then only to ask when she was leaving.

“Saturday. Cal—”

“Don’t make it worse, okay?” he said, then took off, leaving her standing on the sidewalk feeling like sludge.

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