He’s more than a man—he’s a fabulous father!

AVAILABLE JUNE 2009

1) Anything for Danny by Carla Cassidy

2) Father in the Making by Marie Ferrarella

3) Most Wanted Dad by Arlene James

4) The Nine-Month Bride by Judy Christenberry

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2009

5) Instant Father by Lucy Gordon

6) Daddy Lessons by Stella Bagwell

7) Most Eligible Dad by Karen Rose Smith

8) First Time, Forever by Cara Colter

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2009

9) A Father’s Promise by Helen R. Myers

10) The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life by Marie Ferrarella

11) Falling for a Father of Four by Arlene James

12) Caleb’s Son by Laurie Paige

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2009

13) Waiting for the Wedding by Carla Cassidy

14) Daniel’s Daddy by Stella Bagwell

15) Always Daddy by Karen Rose Smith

16) The Billionaire’s Baby Chase by Valerie Parv

Dear Reader,

One of the reasons I enjoyed writing First Time, Forever so much is that the hero is younger than the heroine. The age difference between Evan and Kathleen is seven years, which, coincidentally, is the age difference between my real-life hero and me! What our incredible time together has taught me is that when you say yes to the song of your heart—never mind all those rules—it keeps you forever young. Oh, the hair still has silver threads in it, and the wrinkles appear, but the feeling in your heart of being alive—on fire—gets stronger, rather than diminishing.

When I wrote First Time, Forever I wanted it to be a book that honors the fire in each of us, while at the same time honoring our longing for the traditions that have carried us safely this far—marriage and family.

My greatest hope is that this book will bring you to a place of laughter and tenderness, tears and triumph.

With my sincerest best wishes,

Cara Colter

MILLS & BOON

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First Time, Forever

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CARA COLTER

lives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. The mother of three grown children and a grandmother of one, she is a recent recipient of a Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers. You can contact her, or learn more about her, through her Web site at www.cara-colter.com.

To Richard, who makes my life so much

“richer” in every way.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Chapter One

Evan Atkins had the book hidden behind a copy of Sports Illustrated. He drank his coffee and frowned at the words, trying to concentrate, but finding it difficult with all the commotion at the Hopkins Gulch Café this morning.

The café had six tables, two booths and a lunch counter. There were coffee cups half filled, and bacon and eggs half eaten at nearly all those tables, but the seats, save for the one Evan inhabited at a booth, were empty, abandoned.

The guys were three deep at the window, trying to get a look at the Outpost, the town’s general store, across the street. A strange car was parked out front, a U-haul trailer behind it. The car had caused this great stirring of interest when a pair of strangers had emerged from it. Both of them had looked around briefly, and then disappeared into the Outpost.

“If they were just askin’ for directions,” Sookie Peters said wisely, “they would have left the engine running.”

“Did you see her?” Jack Marty asked for about the sixtieth annoying time. “She looked just like Julia Roberts. I swear. Well, maybe a little older. And not scrawny like Julia.” He said this with easy familiarity, as if Julia were his second cousin.

“Nah, she dint,” Sookie said. “More like the other one. The one from the movie about the bus. That’s who she looked like.”

“Sandra Bullock?” Cal, Sookie’s brother, hooted. “She did not!”

“Oh, what do you know?”

The banter went back and forth, Evan furrowing his brow and trying to ignore the nonsense as best he could. All those guys at the window should take a lesson from him. Good things did not necessarily come in pretty packages.

Millie came and refilled his coffee cup. He didn’t quite get the Sports Illustrated up fast enough or high enough, and she caught sight of the book hidden behind it, crooked her head, read the title, and smiled.

If she told the guys he was never going to live it down.

Potty-Training for the Hopelessly Confused.

But she just smiled, in that way he was never going to get used to, as if being a single dad made him adorable to the female populace, like a teddy bear.

“Where is Jesse this morning?” she asked.

“I dropped him off at Beth’s Day Care for a while.”

“That’s good. He needs to be with other kids sometimes.”

“So I’ve been told.” Evan scowled at the book. Step Five: Pray.

He thought that was a mighty strange step to include in a book on potty-training, not scientific at all. On the other hand, when his son had gone missing and he had done everything he knew how to do, applied all his intellect and strength and devotion, everything, to getting Jesse back, and nothing had worked, isn’t that what his days had become?

Please God, please God, please God. If You can’t bring my baby home, look after him. It would shock those guys at the window to know he had done that, prayed every day, but he’d been shocked himself the first time those words had gone through his head. Shocked, and then surprised, the words bringing him the only measure of peace he’d had in those desperate years.

Jesse was home now. Okay, it had taken two years, but then Evan would admit to being somewhat rusty in the prayer department, since he’d spent most of his youth moving in the other direction, hell bound.

Still, a two-year wait was a might scary thought in terms of potty-training.

It was very hard to formulate a proper potty-training prayer with all the commotion at the window.

“What do you suppose she’s doing over there?”

Millie, known for her foghorn voice, called out, “You know Pa hasn’t been feeling so hot. They tried to sell the place, but now they’re just hoping to get someone to run it for them.”

“That would mean she’d have to live here,” Mike Best pointed out sagely.

The crowd at the window contemplated that for a few minutes of blessed silence that allowed Evan to review his prayer. He decided to keep it simple. God, help. Satisfied, he looked back at the book.

And realized he had read it incorrectly.

It didn’t say pray. Step Five said play.

He read carefully: Be sure and make potty-training fun. A game.

The guys at the window started up again, sounding like a gaggle of old hens excited about an unexpected windfall of worms.

“Hey, there’s the kid. He’s coming out by hisself, though.”

“Don’t he look like trouble?”

“Aw, you don’t suppose she’s married, do you? She must be. That kid is hers. Is the spitting image of her.”

This observation seemed to put a momentary damper on the ardent bachelors at the window.

“He does have the look of her.”

“Guys,” Evan finally called, beyond impatience, “would you give it a rest?”

A few of them turned and acknowledged him with grins that were not in the least contrite, but basically they ignored him.

He did his best to shut them out.

But it penetrated his gloom about potty-training when one of them said, “I guess Mr. High and Mighty over there wouldn’t care that the kid is looking at his truck.”

Evan rattled the magazine. So what if someone was looking at his truck? It was a damned attractive truck, far worthier of a fuss than a strange woman passing through town.

“Guess old Mr. Lonesome over there wouldn’t care, either, that the boy’s looking over his shoulder right now. I don’t like the look on his face, either, not one little bit.”

Evan pretended he wasn’t listening, but the truth was they had his attention now. He was pretty protective of that truck. A fact they all knew. They were probably ribbing him a bit, trying to get him over there at the window to moan and groan over a complete stranger, just like them.

“It looks like he’s writing something on it.”

Well, okay, he hadn’t been through the car wash for a while. Maybe the kid was writing a message in the dust. Big deal. Hardly headlines. Not even for Hopkins Gulch.

“Is that a nail he’s using?” Sookie asked, amazed.

“I do believe it might be. Oh, that’s an S for sure,” Jack said.

Evan was up out of his booth now.

“Yup. And that’s an H.”

Evan crossed the café in one long stride and shoved his way through the guys to the front of the window. Just in time to see the little creep putting the finishing touches on an I. On his brand-new midnight-blue Dodge Ram Diesel extended cab pickup truck.

The guys were all staring at him, silent, horrified, knowing that that unsuspecting child’s life as he knew it was about to end.

He pushed back through them and went out the door and across the dusty street in about one-tenth of a second.

The kid didn’t even have time to put a dot on that I. Evan spun him around, and shoved him hard against his truck.

He was only about twelve. A good-looking boy, even though his features were contorted with fear and anger.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my truck?” Evan demanded.

The boy sputtered and squirmed and began to turn red, but he didn’t give anything that could qualify as an answer, so Evan twisted his shirt just a little tighter.

“Unhand that boy at once.”

The voice was soft, sultry as silk, and with just a hint of pure steel in it.

Evan kept his grip on the boy’s shoulder but spun on the heel of his cowboy boot to find himself staring into the most gorgeous set of brown eyes he had ever seen.

His first thought, foolishly, was they’d been wrong. All the guys had been wrong. There wasn’t anything he’d ever seen in a Saturday night movie that even came close to this.

She was beautiful, her hair long and dark brown like melted chocolate, pulled back into a stern ponytail that ended between her shoulder blades. Her skin was the color of a peach, and had blushes in all the right places. Her eyes were so dark they were almost black, some flicker of anger in them hinting at a nature more hot and passionate than the primly buttoned lace-collared blouse was saying. Her cheekbones were high and proud, but her nose was a dainty, tiny thing, with a funny little smattering of freckles across it, and her lips were full and luscious and practically begged for kisses.

Begged.

But he was a man who had paid an enormous price for not saying no the last time lips had begged for kisses, and so his voice was frosty when he answered her.

“Ma’am?” he said.

“I said take your hands off my boy. What do you think you’re doing?”

He shook his head, trying to think what he was doing, trying to shake the vision of her away so he could think clearly.

Her boy.

Vandalizing his truck. That was it.

“Yeah, take your hands off of me,” the boy said, sneering.

Reluctantly he did.

The boy smirked, brushed at his sleeves deliberately, and then, like something unfolding in slow motion, reached over and wrapped his fist around the truck antenna. Before Evan could even think, he’d snapped it off.

Fury, hot and red, rose in Evan, not just because of the boy’s flagrant lack of respect for his property but because of the soft gasp of shock and horror he heard from the woman. He shot her a quick glance and was dismayed by the transformation in her.

Cold, angry beauty he could handle with one hand tied behind his back. But now she was fundamentally altered as she stared at her child as if he had turned into a monster before her eyes. There was the faintest glitter of tears, of embarrassment and dismay, in eyes that he suddenly saw were not all brown, but partly gold. Her full bottom lip was trembling. And then she caught a glimpse of the nice letters scratched out with a nail in his brand-new paint, and he watched the color drain from her face.

“How could you?” she whispered to her boy.

“It wasn’t hard at all, Auntie Kathy,” the boy snapped at her, with disrespect that made Evan angrier, if that was even possible, than the damage that had been done to his truck. Even so he registered the “Auntie.” She was not the young hellion’s mother.

By now most of the guys from the café had gathered around and were watching with unabashed interest, nudging each other with satisfaction now that the kid had pushed Evan a little further.

Evan knew he had a well-deserved name as Hopkins Gulch’s bad boy. He was a man with a reputation. Tough as nails. Cold as steel. Wild as the winter wind. A man who wasn’t pushed. Quick to anger. Quick to take a dare. Quick to settle things with his fists. Quick to just about anything, if it came to that.

And he knew he looked the same as he always had, so these men he had grown up with assumed he was the same.

But he was not.

The wildest boy in town had wound up with the wildest girl in the world. Nothing less than he deserved. But the child had deserved something else. The change in Evan had begun the day his son had been born.

And deepened with every day that his boy had been missing.

Evan moved toward the kid. He had no intention of hurting him, would be satisfied to throw a scare into him good enough that he’d be an old man in a rocking chair before he ever messed with another man’s truck.

But for a moment, his eyes locked on the boy’s and he saw something. Something he didn’t want to see. He skidded to a halt, and stared at those large gray eyes.

There was defiance in them, for sure. And a little deeper than that, fear.

And a little deeper than that…there was need. Need so raw and naked it killed the anger dead within Evan.

He ran a hand through his hair, and looked at the woman, a mistake, since it only confused him more.

“You just passing through?” he asked her, hopefully. She couldn’t possibly be planning to stay here—a tiny spec on the map, an equally long distance from either Medicine Hat, Alberta, or Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

She dragged her gaze away from the boy who was sullenly inspecting the toe of his sneakers. “Actually, no. I’ve been hired at the Outpost. Of course, I’ll pay for the damage to your truck. Right now. I’ll—” She started fumbling with her pocketbook. “I’ll write you a check. If you’ll accept one from an out-of-town bank, for now. I—”

“No.” Evan almost had to look over his shoulder, so dumbfounded was he that the emphatic no had issued forth from his mouth.

Because he knew, absolutely, that the thing to do was take her check.

Or let the cops handle it.

He needed to be in his nice new truck, driving away from her. Fast.

“No?” she repeated, the pocketbook hanging open, her hand frozen in its desperate search for a checkbook.

“No,” he repeated, knowing he was going to do it. The good thing, the decent thing. Damn, sometimes it was hard. The easiest thing in the world was to be a self-centered SOB. He knew; he’d had lots of practice.

But if Dee had run forever with Jesse, if she hadn’t died in an accident, this could be his boy standing here, nine or ten years in the future. If Evan was going to be the father his son deserved, he had to learn to do the right thing. Every time.

He suddenly felt calm and detached and like a voice deep within him, a voice he had learned to respect long ago, when the bull charged, when the brakes failed, when the thermometer registered thirty below and the cows still had to eat, when his son was gone and he just needed to get through one more day without losing his mind, that voice was telling him what to do.

He addressed the boy, low and firm, like he talked to a green colt, who was rebellious and scared, but wanted, in his heart, to know nothing more than he could trust you and you would never hurt him. “That five seconds of fun you just had is going to cost you about two weeks of moving manure. School’s out for the year, right?”

“What?” the boy sputtered. “Why would I move manure for you?”

“Because you owe me, and that particular subject apparently holds some fascination for you since you feel inclined to write about it on the sides of people’s trucks.”

There was a murmur of surprise from the assembled crowd. Evan knew he was considered a man of few words, and most of those unprintable. But he heard the approval there, too, in the way he’d handled it.

“I’m not moving no manure.” Only the boy didn’t say manure.

Evan knew he had enough on his plate. His own son was just about to turn three, a stranger to his daddy, still in diapers, still sucking a soother, still crying himself silly if he got separated from his toy purple truck. Add to that a farm to run, doing his best to cook nutritious meals, laundry to do…how could he even be thinking of taking on anything else?

“Yes, you are.” That was his voice, all right. His horse breakin’ voice. Calm. Steady. Sure. A voice that did not brook defiance, from animal, nor man. Nor child.

“Make me.”

“All right.”

The boy’s aunt finally spoke. Evan hazarded a look at her and saw, to his relief, her bottom lip had stopped quivering. Hopefully she wasn’t going to cry. Her voice was soft, like velvet, the kind of voice that could bring a weak man to his knees.

Something he had learned his lesson from already, thank God, being weakened by feminine wiles.

“Moving manure?” she said uncertainly. “But we don’t even know you.”

He stuck out his hand. “Evan Atkins,” he said.

“Kathleen Miles,” she returned, accepting his hand with some reluctance.

Her hand in his was about the softest thing he’d ever felt, and he snatched his out of her grasp after one brief pump.

“Now we know each other,” he said. He heard the cold note in his voice, turning it to ice, and recognized it was a defense against the sudden racing of his heart. Wouldn’t do for her to know about that, no sir. She looked as if she was going to protest, but he cut her off. “Where’s the boy’s folks?”

“I’m his folks,” she said stiffly.

“And you’ll be working at the Outpost, for the Watsons?”

“Yes.”

“You can ask them if it’s safe for your boy to come work for me. They’ll tell you.”

“Oh.”

He turned again to the boy. “And your name?”

“None of your business!”

“Okay, none-of-your-business, I’ll pick you up right here at five-thirty tomorrow morning. If you make me come looking, you’ll be sorry, you hear?”

He noted the boy’s aunt looked astounded when he offered a sullen “I hear.” Apparently thinking he’d given in too easily, the boy then added the word he had nearly succeeded in printing on the side of the truck.

She gasped again, but Evan just smiled and leaned close to the little delinquent. “If I ever hear you say that word again, I’ll wash out your mouth with Ma Watson’s homemade lye soap. You can’t believe how bad it tastes.”

Ma Watson, five foot one, in a man’s shirt, with her gray hair neatly braided down her back, had appeared on the sidewalk. She chortled now, and said, “And if anyone would know it would be you, Evan Atkins. Seems to me we went through a little stage where I felt it was my personal obligation to this town to have you spitting suds every ten minutes or so.”

Her comment broke the tension, and a ripple of laughter went through the assembled crowd, or as close as Hopkins Gulch ever came to a “crowd.” They began to disperse.

“Evan,” Ma said, sweetly, “can you show Kathleen over to her house? I just had a customer come in.”

Evan glanced at the store, pretty sure the door had not swung inward in the last ten minutes or so. Still, he couldn’t very well call Ma a liar in front of her new employee, and besides, for all she sounded sweet, she had just given an order, drill sergeant to buck private.

The old gal had really done more than anyone else in this town to try to show a boy going wild the difference between right and wrong, and enough of her tough caring had penetrated his thick skull to keep him out of jail over the years.

Once, when he was sixteen, she had said to him, “Evan, each man has two knights within him, a knight of lightness and a knight of darkness. The one you feed the most will become the strongest.”

At sixteen, he had found the words laughable, thought they had gone in one ear and out the other. But in actual fact, those words had stopped somewhere between those two ears, and for some reason now, ten years later, he found himself contemplating them, embarrassed almost by his longing to choose the right one.

“Evan?” Ma said.

Besides, Medicine Hat was a long haul for groceries. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll show her the house.” He assumed that meant have a quick look around inside and make sure a rattlesnake hadn’t cozied up in some dark corner for the winter. He also assumed Ma wouldn’t want him to share that little fact of life in Hopkins Gulch with her new employee just yet.

“Kathleen, dear, you take your time getting settled. Let Evan and the boy bring the heavy stuff in. I’ll see you here at the store tomorrow.”

Evan took a deep breath, intending to point out that showing Miss Miles the little empty house Ma owned, three blocks from here, and moving her into it were really two separate tasks. One look at Ma and he bit his tongue.

Why was it that woman could turn him into a twelve-year-old with his hand caught in her candy jar in a single glance? Why was it she made him want to be the white knight? A joke, really. He was just a farmer, and part-time cowboy, in muddy boots and torn jeans. He turned on the heel of one of those boots, got in his truck and watched in the rearview mirror as the beautiful Miss Miles herded the boy into her car and pulled in behind him.

She had a beautiful figure, full and lush, a figure that could make a man like himself, sworn off women, reconsider, start to think thoughts of soft curves and warm places.

Evan, he told himself, it only leads one place. It starts with an innocent thought: I wonder what it would be like to kiss her. The next thing you know, Potty-Training for the Hopelessly Confused. He realized he left his damned book in the café, and hoped that Millie possessed enough mercy to hide it for him until he had a chance to get back in there and pick it up.

He was angry, Kathleen thought, as she pulled to a stop behind him, and watched him hop out of his truck.

Well, who could blame him? The most noticeable thing about his vehicle now was the two-foot high S H I printed on the side of it.

Still, she didn’t have much experience dealing with angry men. And certainly not ones who looked like this. Even with that menacing scowl on his face as he waited on the sidewalk outside the gate of a yard, Evan Atkins was gorgeous.

He looked like a young Redford, with his corn silk and wheat colored hair, though his grayish-blue eyes held none of Redford’s boyish charm, only a hard and intimidating hint of ice and iron. His features were chiseled masculine perfection—high cheekbones, straight nose, wide mouth, firm lips, a strong chin.

He was average height, maybe five-eleven, but the breadth of his chest and shoulders had left her with the impression of strength and leashed power. He was narrow at his stomach and hip, and his long, blue jean-encased legs looked as if they’d wrapped themselves around a lot of horses. And probably quite a few other things, too.

Kathleen decided Evan Atkins was not a safe man for her to be around. Lately she had noticed that her mind wandered off in distinctly naughty directions with barely the slightest provocation. Part of being old, she was sure. Not just old, but an old spinster.

She was kidding herself. It was because of Howard announcing his intention to marry someone else. Hope quashed.

“Thank you,” she called to him, half in and half out of her car. “Is that the house? I can manage now.”

He didn’t budge.

The house was hidden behind a tall hedge. Throughout the long drive here she had been so eager to see the accommodations that came with her new job. Now she had to get past the guard at the gate. Now she wasn’t nearly as interested in that house as she had been a thousand miles ago. He had a kind of energy about him that made everything else seem to fade into the distance, uninteresting and unimportant.

“Three days is too long to drive,” she muttered to herself.

“Auntie Kathy, you’re getting old,” Mac informed her, an unfortunate confirmation of her own thoughts. “You’re talking to yourself.” He glanced at the man standing at the gate, wriggled deeper into his seat in the car and turned a page of his comic book.

She made herself get all the way out of the car, and walk toward Evan.

“Really,” she said, “Thank you. You don’t have to—”

He held open the gate for her. The opening was far too narrow to get by him. She practically touched him. She caught a whiff of something headier than the lilacs blooming in wild profusion around the yard.

“I’m sorry about your truck,” she said, nervously. “Mac decided he was going to hate it here the minute I told him we were moving. I think he can get himself run out of town on a rail.”

“I guess if this town could survive me as a twelve-year-old, it’ll survive him.”

She realized she liked his voice, deep and faintly drawling, and something else.

“How did you know? Twelve?”

“Just a guess. Where are you coming from, ma’am?”

She realized what the “something else” was in his voice. It was just plain sexy. The way he said ma’am, soft and dragged out at the end, made her tingle down to her toes. She snuck a glance at him. It occurred to her he was younger than she. That should have made his raw masculine potency less threatening, somehow, but it didn’t.

“Vancouver,” she said. “We’re relocating from Vancouver.”

“That’s one hell of a relocate.”

“Yes, I know.” Though he didn’t ask, she felt, absurdly, that she had to defend herself. “The ad for the position at the Outpost said this was a great place to raise a family.”

He snorted at that.

“Isn’t it?” she asked, desperately.

“Ma’am, I’m the wrong person to ask about families.”

“Oh.” She snuck a glance over his broad shoulder at the house, and tried not to feel disappointed. It was very old, the whole thing covered in dreadful gray asphalt shingles. The porch looked droopy.

Feeling as if she was trying to convince herself she had not made a horrible mistake, she said, “Vancouver is starting to have incidents with gangs. There are problems in the schools. Children as young as Mac are becoming involved in alcohol and drugs.”

Of course she was not going to tell him the whole truth, her life story. That her boss, Howard, whom she’d once been engaged to, was going to marry someone else.

A little smile twisted his lips. “You don’t say?”

She bristled. “You’re not suggesting my nephew might be involved in such things just because of that incident with your truck, are you?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t know the first thing about your nephew, except he seems to have a talent for spelling. But I know I wasn’t much older than that when I first sampled a little home brew, right here in Hopkins Gulch.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“Kids as wild as I was find trouble no matter where they are,” he said, apparently by way of reassurance.

“And are you still wild, Mr. Atkins?” she asked. Too late, she realized she sounded as prissy as an old maid librarian.

He seemed to contemplate that for a moment, his eyes intent on her. “Life has tamed me some.”

There was something vaguely haunted in the way he said that, something that made him seem altogether too intriguing, as if the steel and ice in his eyes had been earned the hard way.

She reminded herself, sternly, that she was completely unavailable to solve the puzzle of mysterious men, no matter how compelling they might be. She had a boy to raise. When her sister had died, Kathleen had vowed she would give that job her whole heart and soul. Howard had broken their engagement over her decision, and after that she had decided that Mac didn’t need the emotional upheaval that seemed to be part and parcel of relationships.

It really wasn’t until Howard had announced his engagement a month ago at the office that she had realized she had held the hope that he would change his mind, or maybe even that he was waiting for Mac to grow up, that later would be their turn.

What had she thought? That he would wait until she was really old? And probably saggy, too?

Like this old house. She forced herself to look away from Atkins, to take note of the yard that was now hers. Behind it, through a hedge of more lilac, Kathleen could see the prairie, huge, undulating, without a tree or a shrub or a flower for as far as the eye could see. The yard itself was ringed with blooming lilac bushes. The flower beds had been long neglected and the grass was too high, but the yard was large and private and she could tell just a little bit of tender loving care could make it lovely. There was the garden space, at the side of the house. She took a deep breath of the lilac-scented air.

“What is that smell?” Mac asked, catapulting through the gate.

“Lilacs,” Kathleen told him.

“I think I’m allergic.”

“Mrs. Watkins told me there’s a pasture right on the other side of the hedge if you happen to decide you want a pony,” Kathleen said, hoping to find one thing he could like and look forward to.

“A pony?” he said, giving her a slightly distressed look, as if she had landed on earth after being hatched on a distant planet. “Is that, like, a brand of skateboard?”

She saw Evan duck his head, but not before she saw the quick grin. It changed his face, completely. Completely. He had beautiful teeth and deep dimples. He could look very boyishly attractive, after all.

“A pony,” she snapped. “Like a horse.”

“I’m allergic to horses, too,” Mac decided, and then added, sending Evan a sidelong look, “And also manure.”

Evan ignored him. “I’ll just take a quick look inside the house for you.”

“Why?”

“It’s been empty a spell, I think. You never know what might have taken up residence.”

She stared at him in horror. “Such as?”

“You never know,” he repeated, deliberately unforthcoming.

“Like a homeless tramp?” she asked unsteadily.

“No,” he said, his mouth quirking reluctantly upward at one corner. “Hopkins Gulch doesn’t have any homeless tramp problems.”

“Mice?” she pressed.

“Well, I was thinking of, uh, skunks, but sure, mice.”

She scanned his face, suspecting he wasn’t telling her the full truth.

“I’ll bet that place is full of mice,” Mac said, sensing a weakness. “I’ll bet they’ll be running over our faces at night when we try to sleep. I’ll bet we’ll find little paw prints in the butter. I’ll bet there are dinky round holes in the baseboards, just like in the cartoons. I’ll bet the only thing that keeps the mice under control are the skunks. I’ll bet—”

“I’d say that’s enough bets,” Evan said quietly, glancing at her face.

Mac looked mutinous. “It’s a very old house. Probably even older than you, Auntie Kathy.”

She felt Evan’s gaze on her face, again, but he made no comment on her age in relation to the house.

Mac flopped down on the grass, rolled his eyes, grabbed his throat and began gagging. Whether it was in reaction to the lilacs or the house she decided it would be wise not to ask. Following Evan’s lead, she ignored Mac who was now writhing dramatically, and went up the creaking steps.

The door swung open, and her first impression was one of gloom. Fighting not to show her disappointment, she followed Evan through the empty house. He was wearing a chambray shirt and faded jeans. This back view showed off the broadness of his shoulders to breathtaking advantage. The jeans were soft with wear and hugged the taut line of his backside and the firm muscle of his leg. He made all the rooms seem too small. He’d brought that smell right in with him—clean skin, faint aftershave, man-smell.

He opened the closets and looked through the cupboards. She didn’t follow him into the basement, but he came back up the stairs, and proclaimed her new home varmint free.

Mac, obviously disappointed that his lilac-induced collapse on the front lawn had failed to convince anyone of his distress, came through the door, a sour expression on his face.

“What a dump,” he proclaimed. “This whole town is like the dumpiest dump that I’ve ever seen and I hate it here.”

Evan ignored him. “Ma’am, do you need a hand with your things?”

This was offered only politely.

“No, thanks,” she said proudly.

She wanted the man out of her house. So she could concentrate. So that she could deal with Mac, figure out what had to be done to make the place livable, and then shut herself in the bathroom and cry.

Chapter Two

“Thank you for giving it a fair chance,” she said icily to Mac, after Evan had left. “I cannot believe you behaved like that. Broke Mr. Atkins’s antenna off his truck, wrote that word. What on earth has gotten into you?”

Mac looked at his toe, clad in expensive sneakers that he had to have, and that seemed to have brought him joy and contentment for exactly ten seconds, and then shoved his hands deep into his pockets before he shot her a look loaded with defiance. “I hate it here, that’s why. I want to go home.”

“This is going to be home,” Kathleen said with determination. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom in the room, and she noticed the floors were old gray linoleum, peeling back in places, the walls needed paint desperately, there were spiderwebs in the corners. She went over and tugged at a blind. It rolled up with a snap, and the sunlight poured into the empty room, but did nothing to improve it. This was going to be home? She thought of her and Mac’s cozy little apartment in Vancouver and felt heartsick.

“You won’t believe how rotten I can be,” Mac warned her.

She let none of her own doubts show. She said calmly, “Then you will just have to get very good at shoveling manure. I’ll bet there is no shortage of that around here.”

“Well, you got that right,” Mac said heatedly. “How could you do this to me? You’ve ruined my whole life. Me. Mac Miles in Poop Gulch, Saskatchewan.” Only he didn’t say poop.

“The first thing I’m going to do at work tomorrow is find out about that soap,” Kathleen said.

“And what am I supposed to do while you’re at work?”

“You already sorted that out, Mac. You’ll be shoveling manure.” Only she didn’t say manure, either.

He stared at her, obviously stunned that his aunt would use that word. He changed directions swiftly. “I suppose you thought that guy was good-looking.”

And for the briefest moment, she saw the little boy in him, and saw how scared he was. He was sad and scared and he was too anxious to be a man to say so.

“Oh, Mac, come here.”

He came, and even allowed her to put her arms around him and she found herself saying, “Everything will be fine.” With him snuggled against her, those words felt true, and it actually did feel as if it could be home here.

Mac tolerated her embrace for three seconds or so, then pulled away and walked down the narrow hall. “I guess I’ll have this room,” he said after a minute. “Auntie Kathy, you never answered me. Did you think that dust hopper was good-looking?”

“Dust hopper?”

“The goof with the truck.”

She didn’t answer, appalled by this creature who was her nephew.

“I thought he was real ugly,” Mac said. “Real. And way too young for you. Way.” He slammed his bedroom door.

She thought of him sitting in that empty room, nursing his own bad humor, and sighed. She looked around again at her homely house, and went into the bathroom. More aging linoleum. She thought of Evan Atkins being way too young for her, and him not even commenting, when he’d been given the opportunity, that the house was obviously years older than she was.

Howard’s new fiancée was young, blond, perky.

You broke up with him five years ago, Kathleen reminded herself savagely. You’re over it. She barely locked the door before the tears started to fall.

It had been a stupid thing to do, to take a job in a place she had never heard of. Stupid, stupid. Stupid. When she’d been hired sight unseen, when that letter had arrived, she’d actually thought, naively, whimsically, that it had been heaven sent. She had told herself this was her chance to start anew. To be somebody new. Somebody who worried less and laughed more. Who did daring and bold things—like moved to a town they had never heard of.

Kathleen allowed herself to snivel for ten minutes, and then came out, knocked firmly on Mac’s bedroom door and told him they had a great deal of work to do to make this house into their home.

Stupid or not, they were here, and she had to make the best of it.

She unlocked the U-haul and after some rummaging handed Mac a broom. When he rolled his eyes, she said, “Be thankful it’s not a shovel.”

“I don’t like this house,” Mac said.

“It didn’t live up to my expectations, either,” she admitted, “but I can make it clean, and in time it’ll be cute, too.”

“Oh, cute.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Did you think he was? Cute?”

“No,” she said, “not at all.”

Her response was completely honest. Evan Atkins cute? It would be like calling a grizzly bear adorable. Howard had been cute with his big brown eyes, his curly hair, his little potbelly.

Mac was clearly relieved with her answer.

She spent the rest of the day feverishly cleaning the little house from top to bottom, scrubbing walls and floors and appliances. Mac was surprisingly helpful, but only until his boom box came out of the trailer. By nightfall, Kathleen had only the energy left to move in two mattresses and a box of bedding.

“You don’t have to get up with me in the morning,” Mac told her. “You look really tired.” When she got up in the morning, he was gone, but he had found the coffeepot and made coffee for her. Just when she was about to lose hope in him, he would win her back by doing something sweet and thoughtful like that.

She walked the three blocks to work, noting they comprised most of the town. She spent the day at the Outpost, learning the inventory, which was extensive, and prices, and how to use the archaic cash register.

She was amazed by the number of people who came through the store, until Ma told her they were coming from miles around to check her out. She was asked on six dates before noon! It did wonders for her flagging spirits, even if she did say no to all of them.

At four she headed home, exhausted, knowing she had that U-haul to unload. Still, she had all the ingredients for Mac’s favorite spaghetti supper, and couldn’t wait to fill up that little house with the good smells of garlic and tomatoes and pasta.

But by five o’clock Mac still wasn’t home.

She scanned the road yet again. She thought she had heard a truck, but it proved to be a large farm vehicle.

Mac had left at five this morning. Twelve hours? Didn’t that seem a little long to work a twelve-year-old?

It occurred to her he might have been in an accident.

She laughed nervously at that. It would be the worst of ironies if she moved from busy Vancouver to sleepy Saskatchewan, mostly for Mac’s sake, only to have him maimed or killed in an accident.

Of course, she had never actually seen Evan pick him up. What if he had gone to the highway and hitchhiked away? What if even now—

Stop, she ordered herself. This was what her book on positive thinking said she must not do, think in negatives, create whole scenes and scenarios. The book, she recalled, instructed her to try to turn her negative thoughts around, to think now, of something positive.

She tried to picture Mac having a wonderful day. She pictured him on a farm. She pictured him chasing through tall grass after a butterfly, having just the kind of day she had pictured when she’d applied for this job.

She went back and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Why had she made so much?

Kathleen Miles, you are not inviting that man in for dinner.

Just then she heard a truck pull up. She set down the spoon in such a hurry it splattered sauce on her white blouse. She ran to the front window.

The right truck. She went out of the house and onto the porch.

Mac got out of it and slammed the door. He marched up the walk, his back straight, his clothes absolutely filthy, a pungent aroma following him.

She glanced anxiously at his running shoes.

Clean.

“How was it?” she asked him.

“How do you think?” he snapped.

“Oh.”

“Hey, none-of-your-business.” Evan Atkins had gotten out of his truck and was coming down the walk toward them.

Mac turned and glared at him.

“Same time, same place,” Evan said.

Mac gave him a dirty look and when it didn’t phase Evan, he gave it to her instead. Then he muttered a word she couldn’t quite make out and the porch door slammed shut behind him.

Evan Atkins continued down the walk toward her.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and suddenly felt very aware of the little splotch of spaghetti sauce on the front of her. She wasn’t going to let him see that she felt vulnerable!

He walked with the easy assurance of a man completely comfortable within his own body, a man sure of himself. His self-certainty annoyed her even more in the face of her own lack of it.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him none-of-your-business,” she said, far more sharply than she intended, sounding exactly like the aging spinster she was. “His name is Mac.”

“Actually, I know that. I’m just waiting for the invitation to come from him.”

His voice was low and calm, a faint thread of amusement running through it, though he wasn’t smiling. Did he find her amusing? Probably that spaghetti splotch. He stopped, rested one foot on her bottom step and looked up at her.

“Where on earth have you been?” Her voice was still sharper than she intended, but definitely the tone of a woman who planned to be taken seriously.

His eyes widened. “Ma’am?”

His eyes were dark ocean-blue, with flecks of the most intriguing gray.

“He left at five-thirty this morning!”

“My place is a good half hour drive from here, ma’am. That’s an hour round trip. I had a lot of work to do today. I couldn’t just stop everything to drive him back into town when he thought he’d had enough. Which was about five minutes after he started.”

“Twelve hours is a long time for a little boy to work.”

“He’s not that little. Besides, we stopped for lunch.”

“I don’t even think it’s legal to work a man that long!”

“Well, ma’am,” he said, a bit of a fire lighting in those cool ocean eyes, “if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t even make a dent in that anger he’s carrying around.”

“Mac is not angry!” She had no idea why she said that, when it was so pathetically obvious he was.

“Scratching that particular word in the side of a person’s truck can’t exactly be interpreted as ‘I come in peace.’”

“I don’t think he better work for you tomorrow.”

“Now, ma’am, it’s really none of my business, but I think that would be a mistake.”

“Really?” she said haughtily.

“I don’t think you want to be teaching that boy that he can behave any old way he likes, and that there won’t be any consequences for it. Mama Bear will bail him out.”

He was right, and they both knew it.

Still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying, “And you’re an expert on raising children, are you?”

She was sorry the minute she said it, knowing she was taking out all her anxiety about her move and Mac on him, and that he didn’t deserve it. Besides, as soon as she said it, in his eyes she caught a glimpse of a pain that was as raw as an open wound.

But his voice was steady, and completely unflappable. He answered slowly, measuring his words. “No, I’m sure not that. It just seems to me if you bail him out now, you’ll be bailing him out in quite a different way in the future.”

She took a deep breath, realized she was being both cranky and unfair and that he was right and she was wrong. She was completely unable to admit that. “I was worried about him. I was worried when he was gone so long.”

It was Evan’s look of genuine distress that soothed some of the irritation she had been feeling.

“I didn’t mean to cause you worry. I guess I should have called.” He smiled, shook his head and said, “I feel like I’ve said those words a few times before in my life.”

She just bet he had. Those charming dimples had probably won the hearts of hundreds of women who had waited by their phones with bated breath for his call. That never came. She planned never to be one of them. Never. That was one very good reason she couldn’t invite him to share spaghetti with them.

“I guess I thought I’d keep him out of your hair while you were at work,” he said.

He’d been doing her a favor, or thought he was, and she was giving him a hard time about it?

“He’s not such a bad kid,” she said defensively, and then realized, suddenly, how ridiculous she must seem—a mother bear protecting her cub, just as he had said.

“Ma’am, I can see that.”

“You can?”

His smile deepened and she was now certain she did not like his smile. It made him, in an instant, in to one of those men who can have anything. Anything. Had she really cooked that dinner just for Mac? Was she feeling prickly as a pear because her nerves were leaping with awareness of this attractive stranger resting his boot-clad foot on her front step?

“In the odd moment. I had him bring the mix out to my calves. I wish you could have seen the look on his face.”

“I wish I could have seen that, too.”

“Well, maybe you will one time.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.” But since that would mean tangling her life a little more with Evan Atkins she decided she wouldn’t. She had pinned her hopes on Howard, and he had let her down, and the hurt was terrible.

And Howard wasn’t nearly as…compelling as the young, and gorgeous Mr. Atkins. In fact, Howard suddenly seemed very blah, boring. If a blah and boring man could hurt her so much she really didn’t want to think what an exciting and passionate one could do.

“How did things go your first day on the job?”

“Oh. Fine.” What made her think he was passionate? The smoky look in his eyes? The uncomplicated sensuality of his lips?

“Everybody within a hundred miles dropped by to say howdy?”

She felt some of the stiffness leave her and she laughed. “A thousand, I think.”

“Ma’am, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Quit calling me ma’am!” Why did her tone have to be so querulous with him? “Please.”

“All right.” He waited.

She blushed, as if she had just turned sixteen and not thirty-four. “Kathleen.”

“Well, Kathleen, I’ll bet your dance card is full right up for the next year or so.”

“Pardon?”

“They all ask you out? The bachelors of Hopkins Gulch?”

“Oh. A few of them. I don’t do that. Go out.”

“You don’t? Why not?”

Why not? There was no Howard to be loyal to anymore. What kind of woman was loyal to a man for five years after he’d broken up with her? A dolt, that’s what kind.

“I don’t think it would be good for Mac.”

“How’s that?”

“In my experience—” admittedly limited, though she didn’t say that “—romance seems to be distinctly upsetting.”

“Distinctly upsetting,” he repeated thoughtfully. “I’d have to go along with you on that one. By the way, does Mac really have allergies? To horses?”

“No. Did he tell you that?”

“Deathly, according to him. One whiff of horse and immediate anaphylactic reaction. Said he forgot his kit at home. Like a beesting kit, only a horse whiff kit.”

She was staring at Evan trying to hide her horror. When had her nephew become such an accomplished liar? She didn’t even know Mac knew the word anaphylactic.

“I take it,” Evan said at her silence, “it would be quite safe to have him feed the horses tomorrow?”

“Quite safe,” she murmured.

“If he comes.”

“He’ll come.”

“I’ll be here at five-thirty, then.”

“All right.”

He turned and walked away. She was fascinated by the way he walked, loose-limbed and confident, like a man who owned the earth.

“So, what should I call you?” she called after him.

He stopped and looked back at her. “This is a pretty casual kind of place. Evan would do fine.”

“Thanks, Evan, for looking after his shoes.” Was she actually trying to keep him here? If she didn’t watch herself, she’d be inviting him in for supper in a minute.

He gave her a lopsided grin that chased the shadows from his face and made him look charming and boyish and about a hundred years younger than she.

“Did you really pay two hundred dollars for those shoes?”

“Not quite,” she said, “but close.”

He shook his head incredulously. “Why?”

“They’re magic shoes,” she said with a sigh. “They were supposed to make him happy.”

“If you got that in writing, I’d take them back.” He turned then, went down the walk and got into his truck.

She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from stopping him one more time, asking him if he’d like to join them for spaghetti.

It wouldn’t be a date. Not even close. Just a neighborly kind of thing.

Not wanting to look pathetic, she did not watch while he drove away.

She went into the house just as Mac came out of the shower, toweling his head. The freckles had darkened across his nose, and his cheeks were full of color from the sun.

“I really hate that dust hopper,” he told her. “I worked hard enough today that I shouldn’t have to go back.”

“Well, you do,” Kathleen said, glad that her resolve had been strengthened by her talk with Evan.

“He worked me really hard, and didn’t give me enough to eat or drink. I think there are laws against treating kids like that.”

“There are laws about damaging people’s property,” she said sternly. She tried to get him to think positive, just as the book said. “Tell me one good thing that happened to you today.”

He scowled at her. “There wasn’t one.”

“Oh, come on. Tell me about the calves.”

“They’re really stupid and they stink. Just like his kid.”

“His kid?” Kathleen asked, stunned.

“Yeah. He has a little boy named Jesse. He’s nearly three and he wears diapers. Is that normal?”

“I’m not sure.”

“He doesn’t talk much, especially when the Gestapo is around.”

“Who doesn’t talk much? And what Gestapo?”

“The baby doesn’t talk much. And the Gestapo is the dust hopper you think is so cute.”

“I never said I thought he was cute.” She was sure she was going to blush and give herself away, so she turned quickly. Over her shoulder she said, “Don’t call him that again. Gestapo. That’s dreadful.”

“Well, so is shoveling for no pay. That kid can’t say r. Is that normal?”

“I don’t know.” Why was it making her feel so inadequate that she couldn’t answer his questions? Making her feel as if she had missed something. A baby of her own. Another dream Howard had stolen from her. If she waited until Mac was grown up, another six years at least, wouldn’t it be too late then? She’d be forty!

“It doesn’t seem normal. He says wabbit for rabbit. Could I say r?”

“I don’t ever remember you not saying r.”

“That’s good because it sounds really stupid.”

“Where’s Jesse’s mom?”

“She died in a caw.”

“Oh, Mac.”

“It really stinks, doesn’t it, when mom’s die and leave their kids? At least he has a dad who cares about him, even if he is the Gestapo.”

Spoken carelessly, it failed to hide his pain. He was still grieving the loss of his mother, even though it had been nearly five years now. And his father. Kathleen felt a nameless fury. He’d never even seen his son. Abandoned her sister and his unborn child as soon as he’d learned she was pregnant.

And of course, then there had been Howard, who had told her, shortly after her sister’s death, “It’s Mac or me.” Not quite in those words, of course. Howard was always so good with words. Educated. Sophisticated. Things that had impressed her once.

“I care about you, Mac,” she said firmly. “I love you more than a leopard loves its spots.”

Mac couldn’t resist the game. “I love you more than a toad loves its warts.”

And suddenly the anger melted from his face, and he was just her sweet little boy again. And he said, “Did you make me spaghetti for supper?”

“Just for you.” Why did that sound like a lie?

He smiled. “I love you more than a pizza loves pepperoni.”

It seemed to Evan that all of life really turned on a hair. He glanced in the back seat, where Jesse was fast asleep in his car seat. A little puddle of drool was forming on the tiny Western shirt Jesse had spotted at the Outpost several days ago. It had been on a mannequin, and Jesse had stood in front of it, silent, his eyes large with wanting. It had broken Evan’s heart that he didn’t ask. He’d bought it for him anyway. Now he was having trouble getting the shirt off his son long enough to put it in the washer.

He looked back at the long ribbon of road and thought, a choice made here, a split second there, and everything changes.

He’d met Dee at a rodeo, she a top-rated barrel racer in sequins and tight jeans, he a not so highly rated bull rider with quite a bit more nerve than talent. She had short blond curly hair and huge brown eyes, and a tiny china doll figure that belied the power she showed on a horse. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She was also the only woman he’d ever met who could match him drink for drink, who could party all night and go all day. Maybe he should have taken that as a danger sign, but he hadn’t.

Now, he wondered sometimes, if he’d gone to a different rodeo that day, or stayed at home, or had a flat tire, or taken a wrong turn, maybe he would have never met Dee. Maybe that little life in the back seat would have never happened.

All of life turned on these split-second decisions that a man had no hope of recognizing at the time he made them.

And here he was again.

His life turning on a hair.

If he hadn’t been in town yesterday, his life wouldn’t be intertwining with hers, with Kathleen Miles. If Mac had snapped off a different antenna, everything would be, well, different.

He wouldn’t be driving home to his empty house, thinking about the smell that had been wafting out her open porch door. Something mouthwatering. Italian. And thinking about that U-haul out front, still as full as it had been yesterday.

“Evan, don’t even think about turning this truck around,” he ordered himself.

Just as firmly he told himself he was not thinking of Kathleen Miles romantically. Not at all. He was a man who had learned his lessons about romance. What had she said?

Oh, yeah. Romance was distinctly upsetting. Apparently she had learned her lessons, too.

So, why, if he had learned his lessons, had he been absolutely compelled to ask her if she’d been asked out? He knew she would have been. Those guys that had lined up three-deep at the café window yesterday would have lost no time in getting over to the Outpost to check her out today.

Her response to them was none of his business. None. Still, there was no denying he felt happy that they had all struck out with her.

Not, he thought darkly, that Sookie Peters was going to take no for an answer. Kathleen was too beautiful. Sookie would be back over at the Outpost tomorrow, probably with a little bouquet of flowers, and lots of sweet talk. Kathleen didn’t date? That wouldn’t be a problem for Sookie. He’d think of a way for it not to be a date.

In fact, Sookie probably wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. He was probably at her place right now, unloading that U-haul, and getting himself invited in for a homemade dinner. That wouldn’t be a date, would it? No, sir, that would just be being neighborly.

Dinner. Evan tried to think what he had at home that would qualify and hit all four food groups at the same time. Frozen pizza. Canned stew. Before Jesse he would have thought a food group was the fries next to the burger on his plate. But that lady lawyer in Swift Current had told him, when Dee’s parents had been acting as if they were going to challenge him over guardianship, that he would have to be really aware of things like that. Nutrition. Child psychology.

He suddenly felt achingly lonely and overwhelmed.

“Don’t you dare turn the truck around,” he said to himself. “You can’t just show up at a woman’s house at dinnertime, hoping she’ll feed you.”

In exchange for unloading her U-haul, the other voice said indignantly.

The kind of thing a white knight might do, except a real knight wouldn’t expect dinner.

Sighing, recognizing all life turned on a hair, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it, Evan Atkins slowed, stopped and turned his truck around.

He told himself that she looked like the kind of woman who might know a thing or two about potty-training.

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