That couldn’t be her.

Jessica Moran had been pudgy and hopelessly homely. The woman who emerged from the flowers was as lithe as a wood sprite. And when she saw him her eyes went very wide. Then she glanced over her shoulder, looking like a deer who wanted to bolt.

“I’m hoping you can help me,” he said. “I’m looking for—”

But the words didn’t come. He felt the shock of her eyes. They were the kind of eyes a man never forgot, ever.

Even way back then, when she had been a few pounds overweight and plain, he’d looked into her eyes and felt enchanted.

Enchanted enough to say, “I’ll call.”

And, of course, then he’d come to his senses. And never called.

He could see the memory of that long-ago promise not kept flit through the clear surface of her eyes, and he knew why she had wanted to run.

It wasn’t because she thought he was a stranger. No. It was because Jessica Moran knew exactly who he was.

Dear Reader,

If you can’t beat the summer heat then join it! Come warm your heart with the latest from Silhouette Romance.

In Her Second-Chance Man (SR #1726) Cara Colter enchants us again with the tale of a former ugly duckling who gets a second chance with the man of her dreams—if only she can convince him to soften his hardened heart. Don’t miss this delightful story of love and miracles!

Meet Cinderella’s Sweet-Talking Marine (SR #1727) in the newest book in Cathie Linz’s MEN OF HONOR miniseries. This sexy soldier promised to take care of his friend’s sister, and he plans to do just that, even if it means marrying the single mom. A hero’s devotion to his country—and his woman—has never been sweeter!

Talk about a fantasy come to life! Rescued by the handsomest Native American rancher this heroine has ever seen definitely makes up for taking a wrong turn somewhere in Montana. Find out if her love will be enough to turn this bachelor into a husband in Callie’s Cowboy (SR #1728) by Madeline Baker.

Lilian Darcy brings us the latest SOULMATES title with The Boss’s Baby Surprise (SR #1729). Dreams of her handsome boss are not that strange for this dedicated executive assistant. But seeing the confirmed bachelor with a baby? She doesn’t believe it…until her dreams begin to come true!

We hope you enjoy the tender stories in this month’s lineup!

Mavis C. Allen

Associate Senior Editor

Her Second-Chance Man
Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Books by Cara Colter

Silhouette Romance

Dare To Dream #491

Baby in Blue #1161

Husband in Red #1243

The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-to-Be #1319

Truly Daddy #1363

A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388

Weddings Do Come True #1406

A Babe in the Woods #1424

A Royal Marriage #1440

First Time, Forever #1464

*Husband by Inheritance #1532

*The Heiress Takes a Husband #1538

*Wed by a Will #1544

What Child Is This? #1585

Her Royal Husband #1600

9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong #1615

Guess Who’s Coming for Christmas? #1632

What a Woman Should Know #1685

Major Daddy #1710

Her Second-Chance Man #1726

Silhouette Books

The Coltons

A Hasty Wedding

CARA COLTER

shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.

She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

For an awful moment, Brian thought the puppy had died.

He glanced at his niece, sitting on the passenger side of his 1964 orange Ford pickup truck. Her hair—dyed an unlikely shade of black—fell in a limp veil, shielding her profile from his probing gaze. Beneath the thin straps of a tank top—also black—her bony shoulders were hunched forward as if she was protecting herself from a blow.

Even after six months of sharing a house with one, Brian Kemp—a bachelor—was no expert on the mysteries of teenage girls. He had been told they were remarkably resilient, and yet his niece, bent over that puppy with her hands quiet and tense in the golden fur, did not seem resilient. In fact, he was not sure if he had ever seen a more fragile sight.

He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until the dog drew in a long ragged gulp of air, and then he did, too.

“Are we there?” Michelle whispered, with none of that normal, I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything hardness in her voice.

“Nearly,” he said, hoping it wasn’t a lie. He hoped he had remembered the correct turnoff. There were many such turnoffs between Victoria and Duncan, cutting inland away from the ocean. Telling her that he knew someone who might be able to help had been a dumb and desperate measure.

Now they were on this dirt road lined with heavy timber, in the embrace of deep forest. The timber thinned and then gave way unexpectedly. The road was lined on either side with roses. The bushes were huge, with flowers—a cascade of pink and yellow and red. Brian didn’t remember the roses. He thought it might have been winter when he last ventured down this road.

But now, in the last days of June, the flowers bloomed in untamed abundance. Their intoxicating scent poured through the open truck windows, wrapped around him, and filled him with the most dangerous of things—hope.

The vet had said to forget it. The puppy was not thriving. He would not live. He had recommended a merciful end.

Michelle had turned away at that pronouncement, tears spilling black down her cheeks as their hot saltiness melted her heavy-handed mascara. Brian had tried to touch her and take the puppy, but she had closed her body around it like a shield, refusing to part with it or be comforted. She had rushed by him and gone to sit in the truck.

Brian Kemp was not a man who asked favors of the universe.

But at that moment, watching through the window of the vet’s office as his niece sat hunched in the truck, he realized that she was still such a child—barely thirteen—and he felt a sense of failure and helplessness that were not totally unexpected. Hadn’t he known right from the start that he was probably not a good choice for the job of guardian? He had a track record of failing to bring happiness to the female of the species.

He was a cop, and even though Victoria was not a huge city—with a population of only 300,000—Brian dealt with his fair share of tough and terrible stuff. That was his job. He considered himself good at it. His lack of sensitivity was something he’d considered an asset in his life—right up until now. Now he realized that nothing about handling tragedy and chaos on a nearly daily basis had given him even the smallest inkling of how to handle a young girl’s breaking heart.

So, standing alone at that window, he had been humbled and amazed to find himself saying out loud, just as if something or someone was listening, “I don’t know what to do.”

It was a horribly hard admission for a man to make. But especially for one who prided himself in knowing how to take charge of even the most disastrous of situations. The truth was that most of the disasters he dealt with weren’t in any way personal. In fact, he was something of an expert at avoiding anything that smacked even slightly of the R word—as in relationships.

A man with no track record when it came to others did not a good guardian make. But six months ago his niece had been orphaned when her parents—Brian’s brother Kevin and Kevin’s wife Amanda—had been killed in a car accident. Brian was Michelle’s only living relative. She’d arrived, not as the little girl of Brian’s once-a-year Christmas memories, but as a young woman full of the hostility that comes from losing too much.

A desperate man, Brian had surprised her with the puppy two weeks ago, hoping it might give her something to do over the quickly approaching summer holidays and, deep inside he hoped it might be some sort of answer to the problems in their relationship. It had looked like it might, too.

After pretending indifference for five minutes, Michelle had named the golden retriever O’Henry, and the pair had become inseparable. The dog slept tucked under her arm. Brian caught her trying to smuggle it in her bag to school. Sometimes he heard her laughing, and it wrenched his heart that she wouldn’t do it in front of him, as if laughter was something she needed to feel guilty about.

Now, this tiny puppy, the life preserver Brian had tossed to his niece, was going to be taken from her, too?

“So, if you know what to do, show me. Please,” he had said, and then frowned at how the words sounded suspiciously like a prayer. His frown deepened when a memory tickled his mind. Of another girl, a very long time ago, bent over another dog.

She might not even live down this road anymore. It had been at least fourteen years since he had been here. They had both been in high school. A lot could happen in that many years.

The road opened abruptly into a clearing, and Brian felt his mouth drop open. It was the same place, but transformed, whether by season or by time he was not entirely sure.

The road of his memory had not ended in a place like this. This road, the one his desperate heart had led him down, ended in enchantment.

The clearing was filled with flowers, topsy-turvy, cascading, peeping, climbing. Long grasses were braided with dainty yellow blooms. There were clumps of reds and oranges, towers of blues and indigos. He recognized some of them—the deep purple of Canterbury bells, the sassy white of daisies—but most he could not name. Colors, wild to mild, danced together, and scents sweet and sharp mingled, tickling his nostrils and his mind.

Off to the side of the blissful abundance and embraced by the deeper greens and shadows of towering cedars, was a cottage. It squatted on a stone foundation, small, steep-gabled, green, blending into the space around it.

Even Michelle momentarily forgot her distress over the puppy. “Oh-my-god,” she said, her favorite expression. “It’s awesome.”

“You almost expect seven little men to come trundling out, don’t you?”

He’d managed to say the wrong thing again, because his niece shot him the ever popular you-are-hopeless look. Did she think he had mistaken her for a baby because of the reference to Snow White? He wanted to ask, to try and cross this minefield between them, but she had already fenced him out and returned her attention to O’Henry.

A miniature pickup truck—red and shiny—marked the parking area, which was a half-circle of gravel. Brian pulled in beside the vehicle and cut the engine. Bird song, riotous with joy, filled the air. A butterfly flew in one window of the truck and out the other. He watched its crooked, floating flight.

“Is that her?” Michelle asked.

He turned his head toward his niece. She was looking out the near window and he followed her hopeful gaze. Then, despite the tranquility of the scene, he felt his own heart plummet.

So, she was not here. He should have guessed that fourteen years was too long to expect a person to stay in one place. He should have guessed that a new owner, with an eye for creating beauty and a green thumb, had taken over. He should have guessed that his memory of a hardscrabble little cottage and weed-filled acres had been more accurate.

For that couldn’t be Jessica Moran, rising out of the flowers with her straw sunhat askew.

Jessica had been a short, pudgy girl, hopelessly homely, her hair a peculiar shade of red that had hung long, with untamable bumps and waves in all the wrong places.

The woman who emerged from the flowers was as lithe as a woodland sprite, her naked shoulders slender, tanned and toned. She wore a white sleeveless tank that molded to her small shapely chest and hugged the line of her flat tummy. She had on those pants that men didn’t quite get—something between shorts and slacks that ended just above a shapely calf.

Capris, he remembered Michelle correcting him with a roll of her eyes when he had called them pedal pushers.

The slacks were white, too, or had started out that way, but were now smudged dark at the knee.

The woman took off her hat as she came toward them, and her short hair sprang free and danced around her head in a fury of cheerful-looking auburn curls.

She had a basket over her wrist that overflowed with freshly cut flowers and greenery. Under different circumstances, he might have appreciated her loveliness and that of the scene a great deal more. But all he could think now, was, It wasn’t her.

He got out of the truck, and she skidded to a halt. Her eyes went very wide, and then she glanced over her shoulder, looking like a deer who wanted to bolt back into the safety of the deep green forest that surrounded this little meadow.

He was a big man, and he knew his size could be intimidating, especially to a woman who was in the middle of nowhere and not within shouting distance of a neighbor.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said, and leaned against his open truck door. He let it provide a slight barrier between them, making no move toward her and keeping his voice deliberately deep, calm and soothing. “I’m hoping you can help me. I’m looking for…”

But the words didn’t come. She tilted her chin and moved toward him again. He stopped speaking and studied her, feeling the shock of her eyes. They were green and deep, as refreshing as a midsummer dip in a calm, forest pool. They were the kind of eyes a man never forgot, ever.

Even way back then, when she had been a few pounds overweight, plain and beyond the pale of the high school hierarchy, even then he had looked into her eyes and felt enchanted.

Enchanted enough to say, “I’ll call.”

And, of course, then he had come to his senses. And never called.

He could see the same memory of that broken promise from long ago flit across the clear surface of her eyes, and he knew why she had wanted to run.

It wasn’t because she thought he was a menacing stranger. No, it was because Jessica Moran knew exactly who he was.

But she still moved toward him, halting close enough that he could smell the spice and lemon scent of her above the flowers. She squared her shoulders, pointed her chin, and came forward the final few steps, grace and confidence having swept away the clumsy, awkward girl he remembered. She hooked the basket over her forearm and extended her hand.

Her face was narrow, elfin, and dominated by the huge, soulful pools of her unforgettable eyes. Freckles dotted her nose. Surely, she had not always had lips like that, as plump and inviting as a ripe strawberry?

“Brian,” she said, and her voice was clear and melodious. Now he remembered her voice, too, remembered how it had been part of the enchantment. “I was so sorry to hear about your brother and Amanda.”

Her hand in his was small but surprisingly strong. He felt the oddest desire to linger over the handshake and explore the energy coming from her, but she pulled her hand back after the briefest of touches.

He recalled that his sister-in-law, Amanda, had been in the same grade as Jessica at high school. He could not imagine that Amanda, or her best friend Lucinda, had ever offered Jessica anything except small, not-so-subtle cruelties.

Lucinda was the girl who had kept him from ever making that call.

Something about Jessica’s graciousness made his voice stick in his throat. He now remembered things that he should have remembered long before coming down this road.

“Jessica,” he said, finally finding his voice and trying to hide his discomfort and his shock at her amazing metamorphosis. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“I’m sure I’ve changed a good deal since we last saw each other. What brings you here?” Polite, but nothing more.

He hesitated. Now would be the time to admit that he’d made a dumb error and just head on back down her driveway. Instead, he heard himself saying, “Do you remember that time I hit that dog at the end of your driveway, and we brought it here?”

Something flickered behind her eyes—it looked suspiciously like pain—and she nodded, a trifle curtly.

He cursed himself for coming here, for following a desperate whim.

He was glad that Michelle chose that moment to slide from the truck, her little bundle cradled in her arms, her eyes huge, begging. “Can you fix my puppy?”

Jessica gave him a startled look and then turned to the girl. Her eyes widened and she held out her hands. Michelle surrendered the weak puppy, and Brian could not help but frown remembering how his niece had refused to turn it over to him.

Jessica took the puppy, and he could see the tenderness of her touch as she cupped its body, ran her hands over it and then rested them above a heart beating too rapidly. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she shot him another look. He saw a flash in their green depths.

Anger.

Not that he could blame her. He had come with an impossible task. He had placed her in a terrible situation. He could see, from the tiny muscle working frantically in her jaw, that she did not hold out much hope for the dog, and that she knew it was really a young girl’s heart that he had placed in her trust.

But there was none of that anger as she turned and with a movement of her shoulder invited Michelle to follow her down the winding cobblestone path that led to the cottage.

Tiny purple violets grew among the cobbles and every time he crushed one under foot he was enveloped in the soft fragrance of it.

“I’m Jessica,” she said over her shoulder to his niece. Her voice could have coaxed wild birds from their nests. “You look so like your mother, Amanda. I knew her in high school. She was beautiful, and so are you.”

He realized he’d been so thrown off balance by the appearance of the new and improved Jessica Moran that he’d forgotten introductions.

Jessica’s tone was so genuine that Michelle blushed and preened despite herself.

The sad truth was that his niece was far from beautiful, especially given her fondness for too much makeup. She dyed her hair that bleak shade of black. She was too thin, and she was having an outbreak of acne.

And yet Jessica’s tone made him look at his niece again. He saw something different than he had ever seen before. The deep blue of her eyes, the sweep of her cheekbones, the slender column of her neck.

He felt his hackles rise. Was Jessica that much of a magician that she could make a man see things? Or was he just looking harder since he had obviously made such a poor judgement about Jessica herself in those awkward years of adolescence?

“This is my niece, Michelle,” he said belatedly.

“My dog’s name is O’Henry.” Michelle gave him a look that said the dog was the important one and Brian had gotten it all wrong. So, what else was new? As far as he could tell he hadn’t gotten one thing right since his niece had arrived. With the notable exception of the dog.

“After the writer?” Jessica asked.

Writer? He looked between the two females, baffled.

“Yes!” Michelle looked thrilled. So, Jessica got it right, first try.

Brian had assumed the dog was named after a brand of chocolate bar. He’d gone so far as to assume that Michelle liked them. He’d bought her one and slipped it into her lunch as a surprise. Another obvious error, since the lunch kit came back with the small gift of chocolate untouched.

“What do you like best by him?” Jessica asked. “No…let me guess. The Gift of the Magi?”

“Oh,” Michelle breathed, delighted. Something leaped in the air between his niece and Jessica, and the hackles on his neck rose again.

Back in high school they had called Jessica a witch and a weirdo. But he had known the truth, even though he had not come to her defense. She was not a witch, or a weirdo. Nor was she a magician.

She was a healer.

He had the uneasy feeling that he had not come here for the dog. In some way he did not fully understand, his request for help had brought him here.

For his niece.

And just maybe for himself.

He snorted out loud at the fanciful turn of his thoughts. He blamed it on the garden, the birds, her eyes and then shrugged the thoughts away before the unwelcome and less than pragmatic way of looking at things had a chance to attach itself to him, like a burr to the underside of a hound.

A perfectly wonderful day, ruined, Jessica thought, cupping the nearly lifeless body of the puppy in her hands as she pushed open the back door to her cottage with her shoulder.

Brian Kemp. Her very worst nightmare had now come back into her life. And how dare he be better looking than ever?

He was more somber now. The boyish recklessness had been chased from him. And he had lost all that adolescent slenderness and become the man whose promise she had seen a very long time ago. His chest was deep and powerful. His arms rippled with well-formed muscle. His legs were long and straight, the hardness of them evident even through the soft fabric of old jeans.

That dark swatch of brown hair still threatened to fall over one eye, and his eyes remained a place of mystery, as brown as melted chocolate, hinting at a depth that had not materialized when he was a boy. Jessica refused to give in to the subtle seduction of contemplating whether it had materialized later in his life.

His mouth, then, had always had a faint curve upward, as if he were ready to laugh. Now she noticed how the line of it was hard, the upward quirk missing. There were other lines in his face: squint lines around his eyes, the start of a furrow in his forehead.

And yet, if anything, he was even more handsome than he had been in youth. Something in those lines suggested great strength and character. But, of course, she had mistakenly thought she had seen those qualities before.

Jessica glanced around her kitchen and repressed a sigh. The cottage was old, and her attempts to spruce it up by painting the cabinets a delicate shade of periwinkle blue and stripping the wide oak boards of the floor and refinishing them did not hide the fact that the cupboards had gaps and the floors sagged.

Plus, this area doubled as her office and the work area for her mail-order seed and herb business. Drying plants hung upside down from the ceiling. Heaps of mint and sage crowded her countertops and kitchen table. Her mismatched chairs, one painted yellow, one bright red, had been pulled back from the scarred wooden table so she could move around it easily. The desk in the corner—an antique rolltop and the only really decent piece of furniture in the room—was almost lost under stacks of orders and paperwork.

If a person was trying to impress, this room would probably not forward their cause. But Jessica could not remember the last time she had felt the need to be anything but herself.

She had left that painful teenage world—full of angst, self-doubt and pain—so far behind her that it was easy to imagine it had never existed.

Until a six-foot-something reminder appeared in her driveway. She was pretty sure that was even the same truck.

“Why did you bring O’Henry here?” she asked the girl, keeping every hint of her resentment for Brian’s unexpected and unwelcome reappearance in her life from her voice.

The child reminded her of a bird with a broken wing, hurt and fear broadcasting past the mask she had painted on her face.

“My uncle said he had seen you do a miracle once.” Her voice was more that of a child who still believed in the impossible than a young woman who had lost so much.

A miracle? How could Brian bring this poor sweet, damaged child here with such an expectation?

Despite her irritation with him, Jessica kept her tone light. “If I had those kind of powers, I would have turned your uncle into a toad.”

The girl regarded her steadily, and then asked, deadpan, “You mean you didn’t?”

Despite the gravity of the situation, or maybe because of it, a little giggle escaped Jessica. And then Michelle. And then they were both laughing.

“Hey, I don’t find that funny.”

Which, of course, only made them laugh harder.

Brian tried to look insulted, but Jessica could tell he was relieved to hear his niece laugh. She didn’t like the small ripple of tenderness this made her feel for him.

How nice it would be if he just remained the black-hearted popular boy who had promised to call the school’s worst social misfit and then reneged.

But he seemed so much more human now, than he had been then, far less godlike. His eyes, in the light of her kitchen, had a deep sorrow in them. And it was evident, from the sideways glance at his niece and the puppy, where those furrows on his forehead were coming from.

He had lost his brother and his sister-in-law and had become an instant parent to a teenager. Life extracted revenge, but somehow she found no comfort in the fact that he had suffered.

Jessica cleared a space at her table and made a nest for the puppy in an old towel. Michelle crowded close to her. “The vet told me he didn’t want to live,” she whispered, and Jessica glanced at her to see her shoulders hunching. Her voice cracked as she continued, “How could he not want to live when I love him so?”

If only love had the power to make things as a person wished, Jessica thought, and despite herself sent a sideways look at Brian.

Years ago, as a lonely high school senior who had fit in nowhere, she had fallen in love with popular, gorgeous Brian Kemp. But all the force of that love could not persuade him to do the thing he had promised. One small phone call.

A chance. She had been sure that, if given a chance to show him who she really was, he would love her. Instead, he had loved Lucinda Potter, or so it had seemed from the hungry kisses Jessica had witnessed them exchanging behind the Coke machine in the main foyer.

Instead, she reminded herself briskly, he had given her the best of opportunities. She had learned very young that she would have to love herself. No prince riding in on a white charger could make her life wonderful, she would have to do it. And she had done just that.

And now, she had to share some of that wonder with this troubled young girl and never mind the man who had brought her.

“The vet was wrong,” Jessica said firmly. “Every creature wants to live. Even a bug.”

“That’s what I thought,” Michelle said, her voice stronger.

Jessica closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. It was a more difficult task than normal. Her kitchen seemed far too tiny with Brian’s bulk in it. Over the powerful scents of mint and sage, she could feel his restlessness and detect his presence.

Powerful. Masculine.

She opened her eyes to see him prowling restlessly, looking at her plants and jars with a scowl on his face.

“Brian, why don’t you wait outside for a minute?”

Rather than looking insulted, he looked relieved. She felt his energy leave the room with him.

She composed herself after he left by taking a deep steadying breath. She held her hands above the small, dangerously-close-to-death dog. Slowly, her mind emptied of all thought and filled with pure and brilliant light, a spectrum of colors, dancing. Her fingertips began to tingle. All else faded, except the energy moving between her and the puppy.

Finally, she opened her eyes and gazed down at the little dog. She touched him with great and reverent affection.

“Is he going to live?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, unwilling to give the girl false hope. “But there are a few things I’d like to try. I’ll give him some of this.” She chose a small jar from a case of them and squeezed a few drops into his mouth.

“Is that like medicine?” Michelle asked.

“Something like that. We’ll pick some fresh herbs from the garden and make him his own concoction.”

Brian was outside, sitting on her favorite bench. Someday, there would be a small pond there. The rocks and mortar waited there for her to find the time and the energy to undertake such a big project.

Meanwhile, Jessica could only hope the memory of his sitting there—his handsome face lifted to the sun, his hair touched by the wind, his posture so relaxed—was not going to spoil that spot for her.

He didn’t appear to notice them, and so she took Michelle to her herb garden and began to pick, explaining each plant carefully to the surprisingly eager young student.

“Well?” he said, coming up behind them, quiet and graceful for such a large man.

“It’s too soon to say,” Jessica said, with a shrug. “I’d like to keep him for a day or two.”

“What’s wrong with him? What can you do for him that the vet couldn’t?”

“There are many possibilities,” she said stiffly. Why had he come here if he planned to scoff and be cynical? “You are, of course, free to take him back to the vet if you want.”

“No!” Michelle said, and gave Brian a look that could have stripped paint. “The vet wanted to put him to sleep.”

He looked between the two of them, and Jessica had the feeling he was deciding she and Michelle made a dangerous combination. Her suspicion was confirmed by his next words.

“Michelle, how about if we leave O’Henry with Jessica? We’ll come back in a day or two and see how he’s doing.” He correctly interpreted the black look he was being given by his niece. “Of course, we’ll phone.”

It was written on his face that he was sorry he had ever come here, a regret that Jessica mirrored exactly. Her life was so nice, now. Predictable. Stable.

A man like Brian Kemp could turn that upside down without half-trying.

She waited for him to take his niece and go, but to her be-musement Michelle folded her arms over her chest and planted her legs in a fashion that gave her a surprising amount of presence.

“I’m not leaving.”

He ran a hand through his hair, looking at his watch. “Look, Michelle, I have to be at work in an hour, okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the child announced, her resemblance to her uncle pronounced with her face set in those stubborn lines. “I’m staying right here with O’Henry. And Jessica.”

Chapter Two

“Get in the truck.” Brian’s voice was low and dangerous. Jessica had heard he was a policeman in Victoria; his voice held deep and unquestionable authority.

His niece, however, looked unimpressed. “No.” Jessica knew now would be a good time to insert herself in the argument and tell Michelle she had to leave with her uncle. But she was no saint and to see the man who had humiliated her suffer at the hands of his headstrong niece was just a little bit satisfying.

In fact, Jessica had to stifle a laugh after seeing the look on Brian’s face. He obviously wanted nothing more than to pick up his ninety-pound niece and toss her in the truck. The lines of his face were chiseled with irritation. On any other man it might have marred his good looks, but not on Brian. With his brows lowered like that, and the line of his mouth grim, he had the look of a warrior.

Still, under the fierce mask, Jessica sensed something rather astonishing. Brian was purely, helplessly baffled. Despite the fact that he looked like the most self-composed man ever born—one who could handle anything life threw at him—he was at a total loss when it came to dealing with his five-foot-one-inch niece.

Tell Michelle to go with her uncle, Jessica ordered herself. She wanted Brian out of her space, the quicker the better. On the other hand, she didn’t feel inclined to make his life any easier, wonderful life lessons owed to him aside. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to stay on the sidelines and let them settle their own argument? Finding his helplessness mildly entertaining was only human, not mean-spirited.

“You can’t just stay here with a complete stranger,” Brian said to Michelle, “Not that you’ve been invited. And I have to go to work. So, march.”

“She’s not a complete stranger,” Michelle said.

On very short acquaintance Jessica knew Michelle to be the girl least likely to march anywhere, but she offered no comment.

“I don’t know the first thing about her,” he said, his patience obviously thinning even more. A muscle working in his jaw showed the fine, strong line to perfect advantage.

His niece was just as obviously not about to be intimidated by the facts, or by him. “You do so know the first thing about her. You knew where she lived. You knew her name. You knew…”

“Nothing important about her,” Brian interrupted, aggravated.

“Like what?” Michelle asked, her voice challenging.

The debate raged in the darkness of his eyes—reason with her, or put her in a choke hold? Reason won out, but not by much. It was evident he was not a man accustomed to having his authority questioned.

“I don’t even know if she’s married. I don’t know what she does for a living,” Brian said.

Jessica pondered what it meant that he wondered that about her first. She had not had to debate whether or not he was married. He wore no ring, but it was something more that gave away his single status. He looked like one of those men who have developed an allergy to relationships, carrying his independence around himself like an invisible shield. She was willing to bet that his most successful one was with his truck, which seemed to be the same one he had driven in high school.

Not exactly observations that painted him in a sympathetic light, though he also had the look of a man beleaguered. He was absolutely alone with the challenge of his niece, and it showed.

“She’s not married,” Michelle said. “Did you see any signs of a man inside that house? Size ten muddy boots at the back door? Smudgy handprints around the light switches? Dishes in the oven? Laundry waiting to be folded in the living room? Root beer rings on the coffee table?”

“Okay, okay, we get it,” Brian said, and despite Jessica’s desire to be entertained by his discomfort, she was a little embarrassed for him at this unexpected glimpse of his house.

But Michelle was not finished detailing how to spot a single person. “And what do you think her bathtub looks like?”

“I have no idea,” he said tersely.

“I bet there’s not a sooty ring around it.”

“There’s a sooty ring around my bathtub?” he asked, and glared at Jessica as if she had discovered it and chastised him for it.

“Every time you tinker with that ugly old truck.”

“My truck is not ugly,” he said dangerously. “It’s a classic. And to get back to the point, I didn’t look in Jessica’s oven, not that its contents could be taken as an indication of character. And I certainly didn’t look in her bathtub.”

Jessica’s plan to remain detached seemed to be crumbling. In fact, she was finding these tiny glimpses into the personal life of Brian Kemp utterly fascinating.

But only, she defended herself fiercely, because she could feel satisfied he wasn’t living nearly the life she would have thought. What would she have imagined? Ferraris, glamorous women, a whirlpool tub, no rings of soot or root beer. Maybe champagne.

“Well, if you did look in her oven,” Michelle informed him, “there wouldn’t be any dishes in it. Not like at your house.”

“Our house,” he corrected her.

“Whatever,” she said with perfect indifference.

Jessica noticed how the indifference stung him. Why did he send a quick sidelong glance her way? Did he care what she thought about where he stored his dirty dishes? Why? When her character was under question? But apparently he did care because he gave his niece his sternest look.

“Michelle,” he said, “having a conversation with you is like playing Ping-Pong with ten balls on the table at once. You seem to be deliberately missing the point, changing the subject and confusing the issue. It’s not about bathtubs. I don’t know Ms. Moran well enough to let you stay here. Not that you’ve been invited.”

“Can’t you tell everything you need to know by looking around?” Michelle said. “You said yourself it looked like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs could come singing out of the woods at any moment. This is not the home of someone of questionable character!”

“You’re going to be a lawyer,” he groaned. “I just know it.” Jessica noticed he sent another look her way. He was embarrassed, not only by his lack of control over his niece, but also about the fact that he was familiar with fairy tales. Well, it was true that he did look like the man least likely to be familiar with magical princesses.

Considering how much she had planned to relish his discomfort, she found her plan backfiring. She felt a little sorry for the man. Not much. Not enough to damage her resolve, just a thimbleful of pity.

“Even if Dopey or Snoozy or Sneezy or whatever comes forward with a character reference, you have not been invited. So…”

“A character reference?” Jessica repeated. He’d used up his thimbleful mighty fast. Of all the nerve! “May I remind you, you came here? Expecting a miracle? What kind of person wants a character reference from somebody they think can work miracles?”

She realized that, despite her vow to remain detached, she was feeling a passionate desire to pick up one of her garden shovels and clunk him over his handsome head.

“Nothing personal,” he said, as if that would take the sting out of it. “My job makes me cynical.”

“This is not the type of place an ax murderer lives,” Michelle informed him. “I bet she gardens for a living. Right?”

Maybe a shovel murderer, Jessica thought. “I’m a horticulturist.”

“You don’t know the first thing about murderers of any kind, Michelle,” he responded, coolly.

“And you have the inside track ’cause why? Handing out speeding tickets and eating doughnuts has made you an expert?”

Brian went very quiet. Jessica could see the muscle working in his jaw again, and she knew instinctively he was counting to ten.

Michelle seemed to realize she had overplayed herself, but her confrontational tone softened only slightly. “Are you worried she might be growing a little hemp among the roses? Is that it? Are you going to shine your flashlight in her eyes and say, ‘are your pupils dilated?’” She turned to Jessica. “He did that to me, you know.”

Jessica knew that to give Michelle the sympathetic reaction she was looking for might be a mistake, but she let her annoyance at Brian cloud her judgement. “Really?” she said indignantly. “That’s horrible.”

Brian shot her a look that was not the least bit hard to interpret, and then he returned his attention to Michelle. Despite herself, Jessica was beginning to find his restraint admirable, which was unfortunate, since she really didn’t want to find anything about him admirable.

“I said I was sorry I did that to you. Don’t you let go of anything?” he asked.

Not if it could be used to her advantage, Jessica realized. She found this interchange very telling, but she was annoyed by her own less-than-stellar ability to detach. She was not sure how she could want to hit Brian on the head with a shovel and feel just a wee bit sorry for him at the same time, but she knew it was the kind of complication that spelled danger for her quiet little life.

Still, he just had it so wrong. Michelle wasn’t the kind of girl who would unquestionably accept his authority. Had he been engaging in these power struggles with her for months? Had he won any?

“You knew Jessica in high school,” Michelle pressed. “You said you saw her do a miracle. Jeez, you’d probably ask Moses for a character reference, even if you saw him part the Red Sea.”

“I probably would,” Brian said, without apology.

Michelle changed tactics with head-spinning swiftness. Suddenly, she smiled sweetly, touched her uncle’s arm, blinked up at him.

“Please let me stay, Unkie. I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll help out. I’ll sleep on the floor. I have to be with O’Henry. I have to.”

Knowing it would be very unwise to take a side and knowing it would be even less wise to do anything that would put her in close proximity to Brian on a daily basis, Jessica still couldn’t stop herself. Because, the argument aside, she had heard the very real need in Michelle’s voice.

Jessica saw the truth, shining clearly, rising above all her confusion about Brian. The child needed to be with her dog.

And Jessica had to help the right thing happen. Yes, she had been hurt by life and hurt by love and some of that hurt could be attributed to this man in front of her. But had she let those hurts make her into the kind of a woman who could turn her back on what needed to be done for a wounded child?

Michelle was here, now, and so was the dog, and it was perfectly clear they both needed her. She couldn’t turn her back on that, even if it would make her life so much easier and less complicated.

“Okay,” she said. “Michelle can stay.”

Brian turned and stared at her. That muscle in his jaw was really very attractive, probably because it worked so hard.

“Excuse me? I don’t think that’s your decision to make!” Despite his level tone, he was furious, his eyes snapping with anger.

“I think it would be a good idea for her to stay. I have an extra room.” Jessica lifted her chin to meet his glare. She did not want or need this aggravating man’s approval. Not by a long shot.

So, even if the look he gave her made her want to retract the invitation and run, she would not give him the satisfaction of having that kind of power over her. Instead, she smiled as sweetly at him as Michelle just had.

“Now, I’ve been invited!” Michelle crowed.

Brian glared at his niece and then at her. Jessica was very glad she was not on the wrong side of the law at the moment. She had a feeling he’d have her up against the wall and in cuffs in a heartbeat. She wondered if he would search her.

The thought, so naughty and so out of character, was a stern reminder of why she should not have done what she just did: tangle her life with his.

“Could I see you privately for a minute, Ms. Moran?” he said through clenched teeth.

Michelle rolled her eyes. “This is where he takes you aside and grills you. He did it to my friend Monica’s mom before I could spend the night there. How embarrassing. ‘Mrs. Lambert, are there weapons in your house? Do you use illegal drugs?’”

“How do you know that?” he snapped at his niece.

“Mrs. Lambert told me. She thought it was funny. And cute. But I didn’t.”

He’d obviously had enough of the exchange with his niece because he gave her a look so smoldering that it bought her sudden silence. Michelle could not hold his gaze and scuffed at the dirt in front of her with the toe of her sneaker.

Jessica felt his fingers bite into her elbow. She should have been insulted by his rough touch, but, unfortunately, it made her think more very naughty thoughts and made her highly aware of the threat he was to her well-ordered world. She was unceremoniously hustled out of Michelle’s earshot.

He dropped his hold on her elbow, but it stung where he had touched, as though he had branded her with his anger. She found herself looking up into those chocolate-brown eyes. It felt like the years melted away, and she was sixteen all over again, her heart beating too fast, so filled with wanting that it hurt.

She reminded herself, firmly, that she had banished that girl who wanted things she could not have. Still, did he have to smell so good? So clean and purely masculine? Did he have to stand so close that she could count the lashes—thick and spiky—around his eyes?

His unsettling proximity made a dangerous question tease the corners of her mind. Could her adult self have what the younger version could not?

She was so different now. Slender. Confident. She might even go as far as to say pretty. Had she become the kind of woman who would stand a chance with him?

It was way too complicated a question. Wouldn’t a relationship with him be a betrayal of who she was now, not to mention of who she used to be? Oh, sure, he was big and muscular and good-looking and smelled of some kind of heaven. But who was he? If he was still the insensitive, self-centered jerk he had once been, why would she want his attention? Why would she want to stand a chance with him?

For the pure fun of it, a renegade voice inside her whispered. Come on, Jessica, wouldn’t it be just a little bit fun to flirt with danger?

Danger. That was what he represented to the sense of self she had developed over the past fourteen years. It felt like he could knock it all down with a wink, a smile, a kind word or a kiss.

She looked at his lips. “No!”

“Pardon?” he said.

She flushed, sure her cheeks would now match the color of her Agrippina China rose. “Uh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

“I hope about your answer to Michelle staying here.”

It was true. Michelle had to go. To keep her here would be intertwining her life with that of this man who so obviously still wielded some kind of power over the part of her that wanted the things that made a woman weak and powerless: a man’s smoldering lips, his hands, the touch of his skin beneath her fingertips, the dream of a soul mate.

And yet Jessica could not bring herself to retract her invitation to Michelle, even in the interest of her own self-preservation.

She had felt the neediness and loneliness radiating from that child, raw and painful. To turn her back on it would be like turning her back on her own younger self and on everything she believed.

Jessica’s motto was do no harm. To turn away from Michelle’s obvious need would be to do harm in a way she did not even fully understand.

“Your niece is welcome to stay,” she said firmly. She folded her arms over her chest and tossed her curls. “I think she should.”

His expression darkened, and his brows lowered. Unless she was mistaken, he was counting to ten again. She recognized the good in that. A certain animosity between her and Brian would be a defense against that ridiculous part of her that thought it would be fun to flirt with danger.

And he looked dangerous now, an angry light changing the landscape of his eyes to storm-tossed. The line around his mouth grew firm and hard, and he folded his arms over his chest. It made her own gesture seem silly. She doubted her movement had made her look the least bit massive or intimidating.

Of course, that was the point. He was trying to intimidate her. And it was working—not that she would ever let him see that. She tilted her chin a little more, gave her curls another careless toss.

But his voice, when he spoke, was hard and cold, the voice of a man too accustomed to giving orders and being listened to. Which of course only deepened her own determination not to see anything his way.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea if I let her win on this one.”

“Really?” Jessica said, and set her legs wide apart in a posture that mirrored his, exactly. “She looks to me like a kid who could use a few wins. If it’s not too hard on your ego, that is.”

“It’s not about my ego,” he said, every word bitten out.

“So, if it’s not about you, should I assume it’s about me? For some reason you’ve decided I can be trusted with a dog, but not with your niece, is that it? Was she right? Do you think I have a little hemp patch over by the compost?”

“That is not it! I don’t remember you being difficult!”

“You spent less than two hours with me, fourteen years ago. You never gave me a chance to show if I could be difficult or not.” But he remembered correctly. Oh, no, she had not been difficult. Not at all. She had been falling all over herself trying to get him to see who she really was. And for a mad moment, under the moon, she thought he had. She was certain of it. She had seen a light come on in his eyes, had seen him lean toward her, had felt his breath in her hair when he’d whispered, I’ll call.

“Jessica, I didn’t give you a chance because I was a dumb kid. I was superficial and self-centered, and I doubt if I’m much improved. But you’ll be thrilled to know there is justice. Here you are surrounded by sweetness and flowers, and I’m picking up drunks and spending half my life in a car that smells like puke and, well, worse things.

“You know what else? Not one of those kids who thought the world revolved around them has what you have here.”

“What do I have here?”

He hesitated. He looked around. His tone softened. “Michelle saw it. I can see it in your face. In this place. Some kind of peace.”

Ha. Until half an hour ago!

“So, since I’m Mother Theresa’s little sister,” though hopefully better looking, “what is the problem with having Michelle stay?”

“I never forgot what you did for that dog that night, and I need you to help my niece keep her dog, if that’s at all possible. And it’s not that I don’t trust you with her. Let me tell you, my job requires instant judgements of people. My life sometimes depends on whether I’m right or wrong. You have that look that is eminently trustworthy.”

“What look is that?”

“Oh, you know. The kind of miffed librarian look.”

“Really?” she said, and felt her lips pursing up just like a miffed librarian.

“Don’t take it the wrong way. There aren’t nearly enough people devoted to doing the right thing. Who are good. And kind. And gentle.”

“Don’t forget spunky,” she said, since he was making her sound about as exciting as A Child’s Little Book of Prayers.

“That remains to be seen.”

Did it? That could be interpreted in the very same way as I’ll call by someone with the least inclination for romance, which of course he had cured her of long ago. Thank goodness.

“I don’t want her to stay here with you in case the damned dog dies,” he said, his voice suddenly low, looking cautiously over Jessica’s shoulder. “I don’t think she can take much more.”

Jessica sighed. It really wasn’t about his ego. She could see the worry etched in his eyes.

Firmly, she said, “Brian, it’s not up to you to decide how much she can take, or can’t.”

“It’s my job now to protect her!”

The fierceness with which he said that actually made her feel the teeniest desire to be nice to him. Just for a few minutes. Until she got her way.

“There are some things that aren’t even remotely in your job description,” she told him. “Believe it or not, the sun rises and sets without your help. You seem to have a few control issues. They won’t help you with Michelle.”

“Better than hocus-pocus.”

Her guard snapped firmly back into place. “That’s what I do. Hocus-pocus. You knew it when you came here.”

“A dog is different than my niece.”

“Brian,” she touched his arm, “you can’t protect her from life, not unless you’re prepared to lock her in a closet. Even then, a tree could fall through the roof.”

“Hey, guess what? I already figured out I can’t protect her. If I could, don’t you think her mom and dad would still be here?”

“Leave her here,” Jessica said. “We’ll heal the dog, or we’ll help him die. Either can be an incredible experience. Trust me. Just a little bit.”

He looked at where her hand rested on his arm, and she went to move it away, but he laid his own hand over top of it. She could feel the leashed power in that hand, feel her own yearning.

“Okay,” he said, his voice low and gruff.

“Okay,” she said.

“Maybe she’s better off out here,” he conceded reluctantly. “I hate leaving her alone when I’m on night shift. She says she’s too old for a baby-sitter.”

“She is. She could be baby-sitting herself, for heaven’s sake.”

“Well, not for anyone who liked their baby.”

“She does okay with the dog.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s just me that she’s mean as a rattlesnake to.”

“Probably.”

“So,” he said, “are there weapons in your house? Or illegal drugs?”

“I’m the miffed librarian, remember?”

He touched the side of her cheek with the palm of his hand. The gesture was unexpected and made her heart race anew. He studied her.

“That was a mistake. More like Tinker Bell, with fairy dust.”

“Does that bring us back to the illegal drugs?” she asked, trying to hide the way his hand on her cheek made her feel. Feminine. Beautiful.

He seemed to realize he was touching her face, so he dropped his hand and then shoved it in his pocket. “I have this parenting book that I read under my covers with a flashlight and it says not to be afraid to ask. You know. About the drugs and weapons.”

“Brian,” she said taking pity on him, “it won’t help you to be a cop around your niece. I understand that you care about her, and that’s why you conduct these inquisitions before you let her do things, but even that crack about the baby-sitting shows you don’t trust her judgement. Doesn’t the book say anything about that?”

“I haven’t got to that part yet. I’m not much of a reader.” He shook his head sadly. “I had no idea she named the pup after a writer. I bought her the candy bar after she named him that. I didn’t know why she didn’t eat it.”

Jessica felt a terrible stab of tenderness for him. He was trying so hard.

A shiver went up and down her spine, but she shied away from the thought that followed it. No, she owed him nothing. For the child and the dog she would do her best.

But Brian Kemp? Healing him was way out of her league.

Still, what could it hurt to offer an opinion?

“I just feel,” Jessica said, choosing her words carefully, “you would make more headway with Michelle if you were able to tell her the truth.”

“About?”

“The way you feel about her. Instead of grilling her friends and looking at her pupils with a flashlight you need to tell her you love her more than the earth, and that you’re worried about her.”

He actually flushed, a lovely shade of crimson that moved up his neck. “If I told Michelle that, she’d tell me to take a leap. And then she’d go dye her hair green and say, ‘Do you still love me now?’”

“And wouldn’t you say yes?”

“No. Okay. Maybe.”

“Let her know you love her.”

“She’ll use it against me.”

“You look like a big, strong guy. You can probably handle it,” Jessica said dryly.

“You know, the truth is not always the best policy. For instance, when you do an interrogation, you always tell the bad guy that his friend spilled the beans, so he might as well give. It’s generally a bald-faced lie, but sometimes it works. So, it’s a lie but it accomplishes something good.”

“Well, yes, maybe on the bad guys, which your niece isn’t.”

“She seems to think I am! You haven’t been living with us for the last six months. She doesn’t like me much.”

Jessica reminded herself, firmly, that his healing was not her business. On the other hand, there would be places, and probably many of them, where his healing and Michelle’s would be interwoven like threads in a tapestry.

“Look what happened the last time she loved,” Jessica reminded him softly. “They died.”

“Are you telling me she’s scared of caring about me?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yes.”

“She sure as hell doesn’t act scared. What makes you think she’s scared?”

Because I loved once, too. Oh, yes, it was a teenage love, more a fantasy than a reality, but that hurt made me afraid to give my heart again, too. How much worse must it be for Michelle?

“Good old hocus-pocus,” she lied.

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