“I think it would be better if you found another place to stay,” Kate said.

Jess digested the news. “Why?”

“Because we’re dangerous to each other’s peace of mind. Because you’re going to be here another three weeks and I’m not sure I can hold out that long.”

“No,” he said.

She glared at him in frustration.

“I’m not going to run, Kate. You’re afraid of what’s between us. So am I. But we’re adults. We can handle it.”

“But what if, some night, we’re weak at the same time?”

Following an impulse stronger than common sense, he sat beside her then laid his hand along her jaw and turned her face to his. “Is this what you mean?”

Claiming her surprised mouth, he held the kiss to gentleness when everything in him clamored for urgency and hot, wild sharing.

“See?” Jess said, his breath coming more rapidly. “No problem.”

Dear Reader,

May marks the celebration of “Get Caught Reading,” a national campaign the Association of American Publishers created to promote the sheer joy of reading. “Get Caught Reading” may be a phrase that’s familiar to you, but if not, we hope you’ll familiarize yourself with it by picking up the wonderful selections that Silhouette Special Edition has to offer….

Former NASA engineer Laurie Paige says that when she was young, she checked out The Little Engine That Could from the library fifty times. “I read it every week,” Laurie recalls. “I was so astounded that the library would lend books to me for free. I’ve been an avid reader ever since.” Though Laurie Paige hasn’t checked out her favorite childhood storybook for a while, she now participates in several local literacy fund-raisers and reads to young children in her community. Laurie is also a prolific writer, with nearly forty published Silhouette titles, including this month’s Something To Talk About.

Don’t miss the fun when a once-burned rancher discovers that the vivacious amnesiac he’s helping turns out to be the missing Stockwell heiress in Jackie Merritt’s The Cattleman and the Virgin Heiress. And be sure to catch all of THE CALAMITY JANES, five friends sharing the struggles and celebrations of life, starting with Do You Take This Rebel? by Sherryl Woods. And what happens when Willa and Zach learn they both inherited the same ranch? Find out in The Ties That Bind by Ginna Gray. Be sure to see who will finish first in Patricia Hagan’s Race to the Altar. And Judith Lyons pens a highly emotional tale with Lt. Kent: Lone Wolf.

So this May, make time for books. Remember how fun it is to browse a bookstore, hold a book in your hands and discover new worlds on the printed page.

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Something To Talk About
Laurie Paige

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In loving memory, to “Big Sis.”

You were always there for us.

LAURIE PAIGE

says, “One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America (twice!), a mother and a grandmother (twice, also!). She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance, and has won awards from Romantic Times Magazine for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette. Recently resettled in northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes a book is born from a sentence or phrase I hear, or the lyrics of a song. Once it was an incident I read in a magazine while sitting in the dentist’s office. The Windraven Legacy was born while hiking in the Wind River region of Wyoming. After a hard climb on a trail that led up over a ridge, I stopped at the top and simply stared. Before me was a magnificent vista—deep blue sky, a mountain carved into a cirque by a glacier that had passed that way thousands of years ago, gleaming snow lying in the hollow scoured into the granite and a lake formed by the melting snow, all within a perfect postcard of a valley blooming with wildflowers and lined with pine and fir trees.

In this valley, now owned by the National Forest Service, I found an abandoned house, once part of a prosperous ranch. I sat on the porch steps and ate lunch while the wind whispered through the trees. I could almost hear the voices from the past, murmuring of love and happiness, of loss and despair. In a cottonwood along a nearby creek, a raven cawed. Another answered. Their calls were indescribably lonely. The story of the Windoms and Herriots took shape in my mind….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

Jess Fargo parked his pickup under the cool green shadow of a live oak arching over the gravel driveway and shut off the engine. The sheer bliss of not watching the road or squinting into the hot June sun lasted about two seconds.

Then the pain in his leg kicked in.

He cursed silently and long, but words didn’t ease the shower of hot needles aimed at a spot directly under his left kneecap. He willed the pain into submission.

“You want to stay here or go in?” he asked Jeremy.

“Stay here,” Jeremy answered in the shorthand of youth.

His son. Ten years old. Rangy as a winter deer. Silent. Resentful. A sackcloth-and-ashes martyr to parental whims.

His ex hadn’t wanted to let him see his son at all when they’d divorced five years ago. Then, two weeks ago, she shows up at the apartment, announces she’s getting married again and she can’t handle his son, so he’ll have to take the boy.

Bingo! He’s a full-time father again…with a shattered knee and uncertain prospects about his future.

Washed up. Has-been. He squashed the descriptive words as they seared across his brain.

Since he’d put in his twenty years and had been injured in the line of duty, he would have a pension from the Houston PD, so all was not lost.

Wasn’t life just too damn wonderful? Jess thought as he climbed down from the truck.

Standing on the springy grass, the dappled, afternoon light shifting in soft patterns across the green, he studied the house and gardens.

His years as a cop had taught him to ask another cop when he needed information. The house was precisely as described by the police detective in Wind River, Wyoming, where he’d stopped to inquire about a place to stay. Its location couldn’t be better for his purposes.

The yellow Victorian had black shutters and white trim. Its posts and spindles were graceful but sturdy. A porch, with a white wooden swing hanging from its rafters, wrapped across the front and disappeared around the side of the building.

The house, the valley, the snow-tipped mountain peaks poking at the sky—the whole area looked like the set for one of those ideal-family TV shows where the major sin was using someone else’s hairbrush without asking. On “mean street,” as cops called the ones where violence reigned, that could get a person diced into salad-size bits real quick.

A bitterness that had nothing to do with the postcard prettiness of the scene and everything to do with home and family and his own expectations of life rose in him.

He turned, wanting only to get out of there, then sucked air between his teeth as agony lashed at his leg. God, he hated being weak. He clutched the door handle of the pickup until the pain receded. When he could think clearly again, he acknowledged he needed a resting place. That’s why he was here.

The garage was nestled in the shade of two walnut trees, the door open, disclosing a beige four-door compact station wagon. It was the type of car a woman living alone would drive—dependable, not too big, but capable of carrying a rosebush home from a nursery or hauling boxes of clothing to the church bazaar, exactly the vehicle he’d have picked for Kate Mulholland, a “wonderful, but reclusive widow,” according to the detective.

The widow also had an apartment over the garage. Two bedrooms. Private. Away from noise and traffic and people. Perfect. His other reasons for choosing this locale, besides rest and recuperation, made it ideal.

But first things first. He’d better find the widow and see about the apartment. Just as he reached into the truck for his cane, a scream rent the air. He instinctively crouched.

Dropping the cane and grabbing his gun instead, he muttered, “Stay down,” to his son and headed around the side of the house at a fast hobble. And came to a dead stop.

The woman shrieked again as the garden hose, loose and writhing around on the grass like some kind of demented green snake, slung a stream of water over her face and chest. The stream hit the back steps of the house, slid across the kitchen windows, slapped him in the face and slithered back the other way, covering the same objects on the return trip.

Cursing, Jess looked around for the tap. However, the widow beat him to it. While he’d been getting his drenching, she’d run to the faucet. With several deft turns she had the monster subdued in a limp coil on the ground between them.

In the silence he saw a hundred things at once. The way her dark hair gleamed with fiery sparks in the late-afternoon sun. The transparency of her wet T-shirt and the bra that was clearly visible beneath it. The dark nipples of her breasts, beaded from the cold water. The drip of water down her faded slacks, which clung damply to her hips and long legs. The way her bare toes, with bright red nails crinkled as she pressed them into the serpentine green of the grass, as if she were embarrassed at being bested by the marauding hose.

Also, the dart of fear across her face as she faced him.

Her eyes, big and blue and truly beautiful, gleamed in the sunlight. Other emotions mixed with the fear and flitted briefly through their depths.

Slowly she raised her hands. “Don’t shoot,” she said, a hint of careful humor mixed with the wariness. “We’ll go peacefully.” With her foot she jabbed the hose as if it were her companion in crime. Her voice was pure honey.

The words hit home. He glanced at the gun with a scowl, then shoved it into the back waistband of his jeans. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was something real and urgent and compelling about her…and something elusive and mystical. He couldn’t explain it.

“Sorry. I thought you were being attacked,” he said, his tone harsh as he tried to close the breach in his emotional defenses with the anger that usually drowned out all else.

She gestured in apology. “You got wet—”

“It’s okay, Kate. Don’t fuss.”

She visibly drew back, her gaze suspicious. “How do you know my name? I don’t know you.” She picked up the garden rake.

“Detective Bannock sent me. She told me your name, what you looked like.” He spoke curtly, like a cop on a case. He tried to keep his eyes above her neckline. He cursed again. That didn’t erase the picture of her from his inner vision, though, or cool the blood that pounded hotly through him.

The last thing he needed was a fractious libido to go with his other problems. He glanced down at his soaked shirt.

Washed up. Has-been.

“Shannon sent you?” the widow asked.

“Yeah, she said you had an apartment I could rent. I’m Jess Fargo, Houston Police Department. I’ll show you my ID.” He reached slowly into his hip pocket for his wallet.

The water and the breeze produced a cooling effect. He could see goose bumps on her arms and neck. Her nipples were still tight. A shudder ran through him, reminding him of all the things he had once liked about a warm and willing woman. Well, he still liked some things…except the closeness sex demanded and the emotional baggage women wanted as a result.

He flipped open his wallet and held the badge toward her. When she didn’t move, he took a step. His left knee buckled.

Flinging out a hand for balance as he teetered awkwardly, he encountered the rake, then warm flesh. An arm wrapped around his waist. She dropped the rake and took part of his weight until he got his legs under him again.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Did you hurt your leg?”

“Got it shot up during an arrest last month. It isn’t real stable just yet.” He gritted the words as pain raced up his thigh and lodged in his spine.

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Her sympathy was real and immediate.

He directed an irritated glance her way, then lingered, fascinated by the fine hairs at her temples, each glowing like a dark ember as the wind tumbled them in the sunlight.

“You smell good,” he said, the words springing from a need inside him that he hadn’t known existed.

“Lemon basil, I suspect. I’ve been weeding it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Can you get up the steps? Or I’ll bring you a chair—”

“I’ll manage. Just let me hold on to you.”

“Of course.”

She was compassionate but brisk, and he was pretty sure she didn’t know about the wet T-shirt. Or what it was doing to him. If so, she had more guile than any woman he’d ever met.

“Lean on me as much as you need,” she invited while she eyed the distance to the house and obviously appraised their chances of getting there. “I’m pretty strong.”

She was. Beneath the curves, he could feel the ripple of toned muscles as she tried to take more of his weight. He held on with an arm about her shoulders, aware of one firm breast snug against his cracked rib, which had gotten its share of punishment in the shoot-out and ensuing tussle.

Her hold hurt yet felt so unbearably good he would have begged her to continue even knowing his rib was going to puncture his heart if she did.

He was startled at the admission. He hadn’t realized he needed contact with another human this badly—

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He stared into eyes so pure a blue they defined the color. “Your eyes,” he murmured, trying to find words for them.

She lowered the naturally dark lashes with their enticing curl at the ends, shielding her eyes from his gaze. “You’ll get used to them,” she said in an offhand manner. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

A groan forced its way between his clenched lips as he put weight on his throbbing knee. The run, then the sudden stop and his full weight coming down on the rebuilt bone and the synthetic replacement kneecap had probably undone a month’s worth of healing. He cursed silently, the sensual hunger at last beaten into submission by the pain of movement.

A cynical wisdom murmured that her guilt over his pain might be the best way into the apartment over the garage. He stumbled a bit as they struggled up the short set of stairs and wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or due to the weakness in his leg. She tightened her grip and cast him a worried glance as they eased into the house.

“There,” the widow said, lowering her arms to let him settle on a comfortable maple kitchen chair.

He didn’t let his arm trail across her back or hips as they disengaged, but he had a sudden, surprising sensation about how it might feel. Clenching his teeth, he tried to overcome the thoughts that stabbed at him as relentlessly as the hot needles in his leg.

“Would you like a glass of tea?” she asked.

“You have anything stronger?”

“Bourbon.”

“A double.” He wiped water and the sweat of painful effort off his face with a hand that shook. “Nothing like being as weak as a baby in front of a woman.”

He tried to smile in order to wipe the concern out of her eyes. Pity was the one thing he didn’t need and wouldn’t accept from anyone.

“That’s okay. Shall I fix an ice bag for your knee?”

“No, it’ll be okay.” He laid his gun on a pink-and-green-striped place mat on the table and leaned back with a bone-weary sigh against a cushion tied to the chair.

A chintz-and-china type, he decided, glancing around the spotless kitchen with its bright floral touches. Down-to-earth, too. She had the soft Western drawl he’d noticed in the female police detective. It was pleasant—

“Dad?”

Jess jerked around with a frown. Jeremy stood with his nose an inch from the screen door, gazing in at them.

“I thought I told you to stay in the truck,” he said, the sharp edge of his anger and pain boiling over.

The widow gave him a puzzled frown, then turned a dazzling smile toward the door. “Hi, come on in. It’s open.”

Jeremy stood on the step, his bony kid’s face set in a mulish scowl, and stared at him through the screen. Jess tamped down his temper. “You heard the lady. Come in.”

The boy slid inside and stood a foot from the door like a wild creature staying near his escape hole.

Jess felt the regret rise all at once, bitter with his own resentment in acknowledgment of lost opportunities with this person who was a carbon copy of his younger, once idealistic self. Pain hit him again, this time in his heart. No one had ever told him regret was so hard to live with.

His gaze collided with the woman’s. Her incredible eyes filled with pity. The cold shield of past humiliations snapped shut around him. He might be a has-been cop, but at least he wasn’t a falling-down drunk the way his own father had been. Saturday-night brawls had been the order of life in his youth. His son had never had to face that. The boy had had it easy compared to the neighborhood where he’d grown up.

He shook off the memories of the past and concentrated on the pain of the present. He struggled to pull the jeans leg up, but it was hopeless. The material was too tight, his knee too swollen.

“I’ll help, Dad. You’d better get some ice on that. Remember what the doctor said.”

Jess was surprised at his son’s concern, then doubly so when Jeremy dropped to his haunches in front of him and tried to help. “It’s okay, son. I’ll take care of it later.”

He glanced up to find his hostess observing him with a slight frown line between her eyes. A sense of her uneasiness came to him. “You’ll need an ice pack,” she said, and set to work with an unnecessary show of industry.

He hesitated, then retrieved a knife from his pocket and proceeded to split the jeans along the seam. The scar tissue, when exposed, was an angry red welt along the top and side of his knee. The flesh puffed out like an adder about to strike. So much for taking it easy for three months.

“Damn,” he said softly.

She turned to face him and dropped the container of ice she’d removed from the freezer. Ice cubes hit and skittered across the shining green-and-white kitchen floor.

“Oh, shoot,” she said in aggrieved tones, not looking his way. She scooped some cubes into a plastic bag, added some water and zipped it closed. Her face was pale.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He was puzzled at the tremor in her hand when she handed the bag to him. He saw her glance at his knee, then away. It was the scars that bothered her. Funny, but he wouldn’t have taken her for the squeamish sort.

While he placed the ice pack on his leg, she swept the icy debris out the back door. None of the wary humor he’d noticed earlier was visible. What was it with a woman who could face down a stranger with a gun but was profoundly disturbed at the sight of a few scars?

A woman who had been terribly frightened by something in her past, the cop in him answered. He hated it when women and children were hurt, often by the very men who were supposed to look after and protect them. Which was why he’d become a cop, he supposed.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said in the same soothing tone he used with victims of domestic violence, the same tone she’d used with him while facing his weapon.

“Of course not. I never thought you would.” She replaced the broom in the closet. Her eyes met his for a second.

The sparkle was back, and he breathed deeply as the tension in his stomach uncoiled. “The ice is helping. The swelling seems to have stopped, and the pain is easing up.”

“Good.” She poured a double shot of bourbon and set the glass on the place mat near the gun. “Would you excuse me? I need to change clothes.”

“Sure. We’ll be here.” He wasn’t going anywhere fast on that knee.

She smiled and nodded, then hurried out. He heard her footsteps on the stairs a second later.

Kate locked her bedroom door and dashed to the bedside phone. She called the number that went straight to Shannon’s line at the police department.

“Bannock, here.”

“Shannon—”

“Hi, Kate. No, I have not forgotten your birthday luncheon tomorrow. I even got you a card.”

“I’m expecting homemade cookies, too. Lots of ’em.”

“Oh, all right,” Shannon replied with pretend grumpiness.

“Shannon, did you send a policeman out to my place? A guy by the name of…” She couldn’t remember.

“Jess Fargo. Yeah. He needs a place to recuperate from an injury, wants to fish and relax in the country with his son, he said. I take it they arrived safely?”

Kate thought of the hose and the gun. “Well, yes. I just wanted to follow up on his credentials. I hadn’t planned on renting the apartment now that Valerie has married and moved out. I thought I’d have the summer to myself.”

Val, a local elementary school teacher, had snagged the only eligible doctor in town, much to several other citiziens’ chagrin. She and the doctor were on their honeymoon.

‘You’re turning into a hermit,” her cousin teased before turning serious once more. “About the cop. He really needs a place. He’s been driving for a couple of days and realized he was getting too tired to continue. He thought the fishing might be good around here.”

“Okay, that checks out. Thanks. I guess only a black-hearted witch would throw out an injured officer of the law.”

“Right. He’s handsome in a sort of world-weary, seen-it-all manner, huh?”

Kate heard the laughter in Shannon’s voice. “He’s cynical and probably hard-hearted. Talk to you later,” she promised and hung up. She headed for the shower.

The sight that greeted her in the full-length mirror on the door caused her to gasp and throw her arms across her chest in shock.

Even as she made the gesture, she realized the futility of it. Jess Fargo, and his son, had already seen her. Slowly she released the hold she had across her chest and sighed in dismay at the near transparency of her shirt and bra. Even her nipples were visible as two distinct dark pebbles under the wet cloth.

She sank down on the bed and pressed her hands over her face. The detective would think…he must think the worst.

But it wasn’t as if she had exposed herself on purpose. She hadn’t known he was coming.

Kate stood and muttered an expletive. She had spent eighteen months in therapy after her husband’s death, trying to get over the sense of shame he had forced onto her. If she so much as glanced at another man or spoke to a male friend, he’d accused her of vile acts—

No! She wouldn’t go back to that time and those feelings of helplessness and despair. She was not at fault here.

After taking a quick shower, she dressed in a broadcloth shirt, leaving the tails untucked, and blue slacks with an elastic waist. She pulled her damp hair through a stretchy band and secured it at the base of her neck. With pink lip gloss and a pair of white sandals she was ready.

Taking a calming breath, she marched down the steps. It wasn’t her fault, she repeated on the way, her mantra during the days, weeks, months, after Kris’s death.

Jess Fargo was where she had left him. That was a relief. She liked people who did as expected. His son had again taken up a position near the door. She felt the underlying tension between the father and son as her eyes met those of the boy.

It was like looking into her own soul. She recognized the resentment, the need to be wanted and, with it, the hope that still lingered in his young and bruised heart. Pain stitched through her in painful jabs even as she looked away and told herself she was imagining things.

Sympathy rose in her. The youngster needed something more from the man, perhaps more visible signs of his father’s love.

No! It wasn’t her business. She wouldn’t get sucked into their problems. She had found contentment. She wanted only to be left in peace. But she hated to see the boy so lost and unsure and resentful.

She sighed. There she went again—Kate, the tenderhearted, caretaker to wounded dogs, cats, humans.

Her throat closed. She had to swallow a couple of times before she could talk. “I spoke to my cousin, the police detective. She says you need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Yeah. Maybe a month.”

She frowned, then shrugged. A month wasn’t so long that their lives would become entangled. “There’s an apartment over the garage. You’ll want to see it first—”

“It’ll be fine.”

His interruption told her he didn’t care what it looked like. He needed a place to rest. Sympathy stirred again.

Jess Fargo’s problems were his own, she reminded herself sternly. Maybe this trip would work for him and his son, maybe not. She would keep her nose out of their troubles.

“I didn’t catch your name,” she said to the boy.

“Jeremy Fargo.”

“You in high school yet?” she asked. Actually, he looked to be about eleven, maybe twelve.

His smile was quick and shy and pleased. “I’ll be in sixth grade this fall.”

“He’s tall for his age,” his father put in. She watched him adjust the ice pack on his knee, then take a sip of iced tea after a glance at the empty bourbon glass.

Kate didn’t offer him more. She figured he’d had a medicinal dose and that was enough.

The words were on the tip of her tongue to invite them to dinner, though. She doubted the tough cop had shopped for groceries, and the ranch was a long way from Wind River and even farther from Medicine Bow, where a larger supermarket was located. She suppressed the invitation, knowing instinctively that this man was dangerous to her peace of mind. Hadn’t she learned anything from her marriage?

The memory of other summers flooded her heart with the bitter sadness of loss. It was a pain that never seemed to diminish but lingered always at the edges of her emotions, ready to catch her at moments of weakness.

Such as when she’d seen the scars on the detective’s knee.

Gunshot wounds. She knew them well. She knew the terror, the pain that tore through the flesh, and with it the knowledge that she had lost something more precious than her own life. She laid a hand over her abdomen where another heart had once beat with the quick expectancy of the very young.

Her child. Her son that would never be.

The emptiness rose like bile to her throat. Her arms, her heart, her home—empty of that sweet life that should have been.

Dear God, she silently pleaded, seeking relief from that terrible, terrible memory. She couldn’t go back to thinking about what might have been. With control learned at a price, she forced her thoughts to the guests in her kitchen.

Like Jess Fargo, there were scars on her flesh, but they didn’t compare to the ones in her soul.

“Come,” she said, standing abruptly, “I’ll take you to the apartment and let you get settled in.”

“I’ll get your cane, Dad,” Jeremy volunteered. He ran out, leaving a wake of silence behind him.

He was back in less than a minute. She headed out the door, leaving father and son to follow at their own pace.

Coolness eddied around her when she opened the door to the apartment. She turned on the refrigerator and hot water heater. After opening the sliding glass doors on to the deck over the garage, she stood there, letting the breeze blow over her as she gazed at the peaceful scene.

The deck commanded a wonderful view of the stock lake to the south of them, where cattle had gathered for an afternoon drink, and of snow-tipped Medicine Bow Peak to the southwest of them. Walnut trees shaded the area from the afternoon sun.

Hearing the hesitant step and the thump of the cane on the stairs, Kate again felt a tug of pity. The handsome, brooding Jess Fargo would once have bounded up those steps two at a time with the ease of a mountain elk.

Turning from the view, she noted the brief clenching of his teeth as he maneuvered up the final step and across the threshold, his grip on the cane evident. She wondered if he would ever move easily and swiftly again.

He paused, taking in everything about the apartment—the roomy kitchen, the living room through an archway, the homey furniture that had been handed down for generations.

There were also two bedrooms down a short hallway. The bathroom was tucked under the eaves at the end of the hall.

“It’s small,” she said, feeling a need to apologize.

“It’ll do.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the pine table that had belonged to her great-grandmother, his legs extended out in front of him.

“There are dishes, but I’ll have to bring you towels and linens—”

“We have sleeping bags and towels,” he cut in.

His lips were crimped at the corners, indicating pain or anger or both. She hadn’t thought about the difficulty of the steps for an injured person until he’d had to climb them.

“There’s a motel closer to town that’s reasonable in price. You wouldn’t have to go up and down steps.”

“I can handle the steps,” he informed her.

She recoiled from the bitter anger that flashed in his eyes, eyes that were the color of shadowed oak leaves, their muted green rimmed with a dark circle of gray.

“Then I’ll leave you to get settled. My number is on the pad beside the wall phone. Call if you need anything.”

“A key,” he said.

She was puzzled briefly, then she smiled tightly. “It’s on the hook by the phone. Folks rarely lock up around here.”

“That’s foolish. It can even be deadly. You don’t know who might come around.”

The disgust of the professional crime fighter at the willful stupidity of people grated over her nerves.

“Well, now that I have a police officer on the premises, I’m sure I’ll be safe.”

She flicked a glance at the son and was sorry for the tone she’d used. The boy was watching them warily, a young creature caught between two larger, opposing forces. As he’d probably been between his parents. Just a hunch, but Kate was pretty sure the parents were divorced. No wife had been mentioned.

“The fish start biting at first light,” she told him with a real smile. “The path to the lake starts at the end of the garden. Just go through the rose trellis and follow the trail. There’s a pier. Feel free to use it. Fishing poles are in the garden shed near the roses.”

“Thanks,” Jeremy said politely.

She left them to their own devices. Later that evening, sitting on the swing, she observed the light in the windows over the garage. Jeremy and his father had made several trips to the pickup truck with the camper shell. Foolish man, to torture his leg that way. She and Jeremy could have managed to bring everything up on their own.

Pride. Stubbornness. A chip on his shoulder. He was a man who needed to come to terms with life, a man who needed to reach out to his son, who had his own unfulfilled needs.

Foreboding rippled through her. A wise woman would stay out of the way of both father and son.

Chapter Two

But when had women ever been wise when it came to growing boys who, in their eyes, needed nurturing? Kate chided herself as she carried a basket of hot muffins and just-picked strawberries up the steps to the apartment. She had a mug of coffee and a pitcher of milk with her.

The door to the apartment was open when she arrived at the landing. Jess stood there, his face expressionless, but she sensed the scowl.

“I brought Jeremy some hot muffins,” she said.

A flicker of suspicion darted through his eyes, then was gone, replaced by an implacable wall of distrust that made her angry. He had levied a judgment against her for no reason, and she didn’t like it.

After an eternity he opened the screen door and let her in. “He isn’t up yet,” her new tenant informed her.

The scent of his aftershave stroked her senses. He was apparently just out of the shower, his dark hair still damp, his face smooth from a shave. He seemed as fresh as the crisp morning air that cascaded down from the lofty peaks overlooking the long, broad valley. The strain she’d noticed yesterday had eased somewhat from around his eyes. He looked rested, although not completely restored, and she realized how tired he must have been when he and his son had arrived.

Against her will, pity stirred as she stepped past him into the apartment. He had been injured in the line of duty and asked for nothing except a place to recuperate—and maybe a chance to reestablish a closeness with his son.

He wore a T-shirt and khaki shorts. His feet were bare. The bruises, the scars, the tightly stretched skin, all told of unremitting pain that had to be endured because there was no other way. The crimped lines at the corners of his mouth spoke louder than his fierce denial of need.

It was a thing she’d done for months on end—this holding back, this keeping within, all the misery that cried out from the depths of a person. She knew about things like that. Suddenly the tears were close to the surface.

Drawn against her will into a maelstrom of past emotion that she didn’t want or need, she crossed swiftly to the table and set the feast down. “I’ll just leave everything. I brought some milk.”

He made a sound that could have been a mumble of gratitude. She put the container of milk in the refrigerator. On the counter was a spoon and a jar of instant coffee.

“There’s fresh-brewed coffee, too.” She put the insulated mug on the counter beside the spoon.

“Thanks.” He waited by the door for her to leave.

The return path took her past him. Nervousness made her clumsy. She caught her sandal on the hooked rug in front of the door, causing a stumble. His arms were there to catch her in an instant, so fast that it took her completely by surprise.

The morning changed. First there had been the cold breeze, nipping into the apartment from the open door, then there was warmth all around her, like the sun enfolding her.

His hands spread heat into her arm and waist where he touched her. Through her slacks she felt the weight of his thigh pressed between hers, sending shafts of sunlight splintering through her abdomen. Her breath caught.

In the wary silence between them, she heard the sibilant hiss of air as he took a deep breath. She experienced the unexpected thundering of his heart. Unbidden yearning rushed through her, a flash point of need so powerful it left her helpless and subdued.

For the space of two heartbeats, she lingered in the embrace, unable to move. His pupils widened as his gaze locked with hers. The same terrible need blazed in him as in her.

Something inside leaped, startled as a young deer, then dipped crazily before righting itself.

They moved at the same time, drawing back, pulling away, dropping their arms, removing their hands from contact with hot, suddenly yearning flesh. The withdrawal signaled loss that she couldn’t comprehend.

He cursed under his breath.

She sighed with relief.

“Thanks for the food,” he said stiffly.

“No problem,” she replied. She fled down the steps.

“What’s this I hear about a good-looking stranger at your place?” Megan gave Kate a mock-severe stare, then spoiled it by grinning at Shannon.

Both Megan and Shannon were cousins to Kate from her mother’s side of the family. She and Megan lived on Windraven, the family ranch once managed by their grandfather. Megan lived in the big house with their grandfather, Patrick Windom, who had suffered a stroke a few years ago. Their grandfather was in a wheelchair and had rarely spoken since his son, Megan’s father, had died in an auto accident ten years ago.

“Don’t ask me,” Kate replied. “Shannon was the one who sent him and his son my way.”

“No wife?” Megan asked.

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Ah,” Megan said in understanding.

“He’s divorced. Look, I just tried to do a favor for a fellow officer,” Shannon defended herself. “When I checked him out, the sergeant in Houston told me Jess Fargo was a hero and that he’d been shot in the line of duty, protecting an innocent bystander in the street where the shoot-out occurred. His kneecap was shattered by a bullet, and even then he managed to stop the guy from taking a woman waiting at a bus stop as a hostage. Oh, and his ex is getting married again and dumped the son on him a couple of weeks ago.”

“He has scars,” Kate said, seeing the uneven pattern of the gun wound, the neat medical incisions and the crosshatched pattern of stitches. She laid a hand over her abdomen as a sharp echo of past pain flashed through her again.

Shannon’s brow crinkled in worry. “I’m sorry, Katie, I didn’t mean to make you remember.”

“You didn’t. I’m okay.” Kate summoned a smile. “And, as usual, I felt sorry for him and his son and let them have the apartment. I’m such a sucker for a sad story.”

Remembering how she and Jess had really met, she started laughing, a little shakily but with true mirth.

“It must have been a real tear jerker,” Megan said in a wry tone. “Do tell all.”

Her cousins thought her story about tossing the hose down only to have the shut-off lever hit the ground and stick in the open position, then the man showing up with a gun, looking ready to shoot anything that crossed his path and also getting drenched, was hilarious.

“A great beginning,” Shannon said, beaming at Kate. “I predict even greater things to come.”

“Huh,” was Kate’s reaction to that.

What a trio the cousins were, Kate mused as she read absurd birthday cards and opened lovely presents—a chemise top with a lace blouse to wear over it, shorts and a shirt to go with the other two pieces, and the promised bag of cookies.

Shannon’s parents had divorced when she was a kid, so she tended to herd people into family units, although she seemed leery of matrimony for herself. Megan had had to deal with the tragedy of her mother’s strange and unhappy death from drowning, plus the quarrels between her father and grandfather, then her grandfather’s stroke after her uncle Sean’s accident. Megan wanted everyone to get along and be happy.

Kate considered her own emotional baggage. She had always had a need to heal every wounded creature she met. Life, the very act of living, could be so very complicated and serious. Her husband had accused her of having a God complex.

She had tried to help him, to bring the joy of living back into his life, but she had failed. No, it was wrong to think that way! He had chosen his path. She had chosen to live. But she had lost their child and the ability to have more.

She’d also lost something of her faith in life, she acknowledged with a familiar stab of sadness and remorse. She could forgive Kris for shooting her, then himself, but she would never forgive the loss of the baby she’d carried for seven precious months—

“What?” she said, jolted from the past by a nudge.

“I have to get back to work,” Shannon reminded them. “Some people don’t have the luxury of doing what they want, when they want. Some of us hold down a real job.”

“You love it,” Megan declared. “You’d have to, to work in the domestic crisis unit for as long as you have.”

Shannon laughed, tossed her share of the bill on the table and headed out with a wave.

“Thanks for lunch and the presents,” Kate called after her. “Lunch and presents, too,” she said to Megan as the waitress refilled their tea glasses. “I hope you didn’t blow the budget.”

“I used my own funds,” Megan informed her. “I’m training three other colts along with Wind Dancer.”

“Mmm, you’ll probably want a raise. I think we could swing one, a small one,” Kate quickly added.

As bookkeeper for the five-thousand-acre ranch, she knew to the penny what everything cost. Keeping the place going was the goal of the three cousins. After Megan’s father had died in the auto accident and their grandfather had had a stroke immediately after the funeral, the three cousins, the last of their family, had banded together and determined to keep the ranch going. It hadn’t been easy.

Megan shook her head, her bright coppery curls bouncing with each movement. “I’m fine. With the policeman there, you’ll have income from the apartment. That will help you out.”

Kate realized she’d forgotten to mention rent to her new tenant. She wondered how much he could afford. “Yes. Every dollar counts, since the price of beef dropped.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if he spent the summer? Then you can get another teacher in there when school starts.”

“He’s only going to stay a few days, a month at the most.”

“That’s too bad.”

Kate wasn’t sure about that. “I have to run. I’m helping Rory set up his bookkeeping system.”

“Have fun.” Megan wrinkled her nose.

Bookkeeping was not Kate’s cousin’s idea of entertainment, but Kate liked it. She liked the order of numbers and the certainty of the balance sheet. She wondered if she liked those things because life had never seemed to add up, not to her. For instance, when did the good balance the bad? Shaking off the useless nostalgia, she stood. “Thanks again for the gifts.”

Kate stored her presents in the car, then drove over to the offices of Dr. Rory Daniels. Kate had known Rory all her life. After finishing veterinarian training, he had gone into partnership with Doc Bloom. He was an excellent vet and an expert on horses, advising Megan on the ranch breeding program.

Tall, racehorse trim, a year behind her in age, he had coal-black hair and light-blue eyes. While she explained the bookkeeping entries on the new computer system to him and his secretary, she noticed how handsome he was…but she kept seeing Jess Fargo….

When Kate returned home in the late afternoon, she found the coffee mug and milk pitcher on her back steps, along with a check for a month’s rent for the same amount she’d charged the teacher. He must have asked Shannon the rental price.

From her upstairs bedroom she could see Jeremy at the lake, sitting on the pier and staring into the water, looking forlorn. After changing clothes, she dug up some fishing worms and headed for the path to the lake with two poles.

“Hi,” she called out before stepping on the rough planks.

The boy’s head snapped around. For a moment she saw his misery, then the shy grin appeared. Her heart clenched in pity. Kids were hurt the most when a marriage failed.

He probably felt left out now that his mom had decided to remarry and had packed him off to his father.

“You from Houston, too?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Going to be a cop?”

He cast her a startled glance, then shrugged.

“I thought my cousin was loony when she went into police work, but she seems to like it and she’s good. The world needs people like that. Is your dad a good cop?”

Jeremy appeared shocked that she would ask. “The best,” he told her. “He got a medal from the mayor for saving a woman’s life even after he was shot.”

She nodded. The son’s pride in his dad and his admiration for the man were obvious. There was respect, too. That was good, but the youngster was lonely. His eyes, the same shadowy green as his father’s held emotion too deep for one so young. He’d seen a lot of life, this kid who tugged at her heart. She sighed and looked away.

The relationship between the father and son was none of her business, she reminded herself. Stay out of it.

But there was one other thing she wanted to say to her young guest. “My mother died when I was a senior in high school. When my dad remarried a couple of years later, I resented it. I thought it was somehow a betrayal of my mother, but I realized that life goes on, you know?”

Jeremy ducked his head and studied the water lapping against the posts of the pier. He nodded jerkily.

“I felt left out of their happiness. It was kind of hard until I got used to the idea. I was sort of lost and lonely.”

“My mom’s boyfriend doesn’t want me around,” he blurted out, his voice breaking on an upward note of distress.

“Hmm.” She waited a long minute. “He probably thinks the same about you—that you don’t want him around. Maybe he’s worried that she loves you more than she loves him. People are like that, you know, sort of insecure about things.”

A frown, very like his father’s, appeared on the smooth brow of the youngster. She figured she had given him enough to digest for now. Besides, she didn’t want to get involved with anyone else’s problems, especially those of a hardheaded detective who would be out of her life in a few weeks.

“I dug up some worms,” she mentioned casually, picking up one of the rods. “I have an extra spinning outfit.”

She put a worm on the hook and cast into the lake. Hardly a minute went by before she had a bite. “Bluegills. They get hungry about this time of day.”

Jeremy watched her catch a fish before he picked up the rod and tried his luck. He lost a half dozen worms before he caught on. When he brought his first fish in and removed it from the hook, she saw a different person, one who was laughing and excited and happy, the way a youngster his age should be.

“Hey, that’s a big one, a seven- or eight-incher. I think we’ll have fresh fish for supper tonight.”

The sober expression returned. “I don’t know if my dad knows how to cook fish.”

“No reason for him to have to. A person should be able to cook his own catch, my dad always said. We’ll fry ’em up at my place and invite your father to join us. Okay?”

His grin was huge. She saw the father reflected in the son, when Jess Fargo had been young and idealistic and enthusiastic about life. A sense of sorrow overcame her. She shook it off. Jess Fargo wasn’t her problem.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremy said. “Yeah, that would be great.”

“I’m Kate to my friends.”

No matter what she told herself for the next hour, she knew she was being pulled in like the fish on the end of her line. But there was a kid involved, and where kids were concerned, well, she couldn’t help but worry. So maybe she and Jeremy could be friends while he was there.

She counted the fish on their stringer. “We have enough. Let’s clean them.”

The boy followed as she led the way back to the garden and the compost heap. She removed a knife from her pocket and, on a big flat rock, cleaned her share of the catch, tossing the fish heads into a hole she dug at the edge of the compost. When she handed the knife to him, he followed her example.

At the house she dipped her fish into egg beaten with milk, then into cornmeal. While he got his share ready, she fried her catch in oil, then let him do the same.

“You want to invite your dad to join us?” she asked when she had fries and a salad ready to go with the fish.

Jeremy looked doubtful. “He was taking a nap when I went down to the lake. I think his leg was hurting awfully bad. He took two pain killers, then went to sleep on the sofa.”

“Shall I get him while you set the table under the oak tree?” She pointed at the picnic table through the window.

“Sure.”

“Paper plates are in here, forks in this drawer.” She pointed them out, then left, feeling quite irritated with the tough cop who didn’t want anything from anyone.

She marched up the steps and knocked sharply on the door frame. Through the screen, she could see Jess’s reclining form on the sofa. The television was on, the sound low.

He sat up abruptly, then swore as he swung his legs to the floor and put a hand on his injured knee.

“Supper,” she called out, keeping her tone cheerful.

“What?” He glared toward the door.

“Jeremy and I caught some bluegills. They’re ready to eat. At the picnic table,” she added, then hurried down the steps and back to her house.

“Is Dad coming?” Jeremy asked when she joined him.

“He’ll be along in a minute. He was still asleep. I had to wake him up.” She prepared glasses of raspberry iced tea. Handing one to Jeremy, she carried the other two outside.

She and Jeremy were seated when Jess came out of the apartment and limped down the steps with the aid of the cane. She pretended not to see his scowl. “Come and get it,” she advised, “before they get cold. We each get three.”

“Kate caught five and I caught four,” Jeremy told his father, surprising her with the use of her name.

Jess stood at the end of the table, taking in the food, then his son’s somewhat defiant expression. His hostess was busily spooning salad into a bowl. She didn’t glance his way. Which irritated the hell out of him.

Logic told him she had simply offered his son a chance to fish, then had let the kid enjoy the fruits of his labor. That’s what logic told him. His feelings were something else.

He was angry, as if she had entered into some conspiracy to win his son away from him. Guilt ate at him. He should have taken the boy fishing instead of going to sleep. The widow was probably trying to do a good deed for a lonely kid. He wished she would leave them the hell alone.

Her eyes became guarded when he took a seat next to his son, across the wooden table from her. He realized something of his feelings must have shown in his eyes. He forced a smile on his face and heartiness into his voice.

“Now this is what I call a real meal. You two caught these in the lake in—” He glanced at this watch “—couldn’t have taken more than an hour or so.”

“That’s right, Dad. You shoulda come down. The fish were really biting. I caught two with the same worm.”

Looking at Jeremy’s eager face, Jess felt the familiar twist of regret. He’d neglected his son since the divorce. It had been easier to stay away than fight with the boy’s mother over every single thing.

Excuses were a poor substitute for fathering, his conscience brusquely reminded him. Glancing up, he stared into eyes that were bluer than the summer sky. She saw too much, this reclusive widow who took the time to show a kid how to catch their supper. He bit back a curse at life’s complications, then helped himself to fish and fries.

“Here, Jeremy. This is the big one you brought in. You get to have him,” Kate said.

Their hostess forked the serving onto his son’s plate with an easy manner that implied a friendship was already established between the two.

He wondered how friendly she’d feel if she discovered he was there to investigate her family. One thing she didn’t know—her aunt, Megan’s mother, had been his sister. Half sister, actually.

Bunny and he had shared the same mother, but different fathers. His had been the drunk, hers the nice guy. But the good die young, and Bunny’s dad had died. Their mom had married his father a year later. His old man had been a loser.

Bunny had left home as soon as she got out of high school. She’d never returned. He didn’t blame her for that.

For the first year after her departure, he’d been so lonely he’d thought he would die. He’d loved her more than anyone. Later, he’d realized his big sis had been the one who had raised him. She’d sung songs and told him stories. Before she left, she had told him she would always love him better than anyone in the whole world. He’d lived on that love for years after his mom had died.

One thing—he’d always had doubts about that drowning accident. His sister had been an excellent swimmer. She’d taught him how, too, in the creek near their broken-down house. Also, there had been a man who had died, as well. Not her husband.

He couldn’t imagine Bunny not being faithful. She’d hated his father—her stepfather—for not being true to their mother.

There was a mystery tied to the scandal. He intended to find out what it was and what had really happened to Bunny, the only person he had ever trusted completely—

“Salad?” the widow asked sweetly, breaking into the dark thoughts that haunted him.

Kate would have been around nineteen, maybe twenty, when his sister and the man with her had died. He hadn’t learned about the deaths until he’d become a cop and started a search to find his missing relative. It was a shame Bunny’s husband, Sean Windom, had gotten himself killed in a car accident a few years later. Damned bad luck all around.

Jess wondered what Kate knew about the accident, but he wouldn’t ask. Not yet. First he wanted to do some undercover investigating before word got around and everyone closed up like clams at a change in the tide. He knew what these small-town people were like. They all banded together when trouble brewed and one of their own was involved. He wasn’t sure he suspected skullduggery, but it paid to be cautious.

“Thanks.” He managed a tight smile and took the bowl from her. She returned his smile in the same vein. It was as if she were taunting his determination to keep a careful distance.

She should have been inside his head last night. She might not be so smug if she knew the erotic thoughts that had run through his dreams, all of them about her and him.

“Good, huh, Dad?”

Jess relaxed somewhat when Jeremy broke the dangerous trend of thought with his innocent question. “Delicious.”

“I cooked the one you’re eating. Kate showed me how.”

“Well, that was…neighborly.”

He caught the smile she held back, and realized she knew he was fighting a totally irrational fury as well as an equally irrational attraction. He cursed silently, letting the bitterness flow, wanting it to drown the need this woman aroused, which he didn’t understand.

She was just a woman with gorgeous eyes that made him think of things he hadn’t let himself think on in years. He glanced around the yard, the garden, the supper the three of them were sharing in the warmth of the last rays of the sun. To an outsider he was sure they looked like the ideal family. Mom and dad and sonny makes three.

He had once wanted those very things, had dreamed of them, yearned for them, worked at making his life fit that ideal. That was when he’d been a stupid kid, one who thought he could make the world right. He knew better.

Kate and Jeremy were discussing the big ones that got away and arguing over whose had been the largest. He felt the pull of her deep within, in that place where he allowed no one.

No one.

He didn’t want any interference in his life, not at this stage of the game. He had all he needed to contend with at present, thank you very much.

Not that fate had ever cared much about his wishes.

Chapter Three

Kate heard the truck engine stop. Jeremy, turning the compost heap, looked up, too.

“That must be Dad.”

“Uh-huh.” She continued pulling weeds out of the row of lettuce while wondering about the detective’s trips. After four days of sleeping and lounging around, he had started leaving the ranch each morning at nine and returning around noon. This was the third day in a row for this behavior. She realized it was Thursday, and her guests had been in residence for a week.

And she was certainly no closer to knowing more about them. She refrained from questioning the son. It seemed sneaky.

For the past couple of days, the boy, instead of watching television, had taken to helping her in the garden while his father was gone. In the afternoons the two males fished or rowed around the lake in the john boat she and Jeremy had moved from the barn at the big house down to the lake at Megan’s urging. Her cousin had invited Jeremy to come up and ride with her when he felt like it.

Kate thought he was too bashful to go alone, but she hadn’t volunteered to accompany him. Jess didn’t seem to like seeing his son with her.

She felt the disapproving stare before she turned and met his eyes. Again she was reminded of shadows in a forest, deep green and filled with mysteries she knew nothing of.

“Hi,” she called out brightly, putting dazzle in her smile just because his expression was so dour.

He nodded. “Jeremy, I brought you a couple of burgers and some fries. You’d better eat while they’re still warm. The bag is in the truck.”

Jeremy leaned the shovel against the shed and loped off, casting a thanks to his father over his shoulder. Kate picked up the mound of weeds and tossed them on the compost heap. She realized she was hungry, too.

“Food sounds good. I ate a light breakfast.”

“You don’t need to skimp on food. You aren’t fat,” he said, his gaze harsh as he looked her over.

“I didn’t mean to indicate I was dieting.”

He raised one eyebrow as if questioning just what she did mean.

“What have I done to make you so disapproving?” she asked out of the blue, not realizing, until she spoke the words, how much his attitude irked her. “You look at me as if I’m a gangster who got off on a technicality.”

He shrugged. One hand rested on his right hip. He shifted his weight to that leg and rested the left one while he continued to peruse her old work shirt and the jeans which were out at the knees and full of holes elsewhere.

“Stay away from my son,” he said finally and turned his back on her, limping as he headed toward the apartment.

“What?” she said in disbelief. She jumped across three rows of vegetables, caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “Just what the heck did you mean by that?”

He rounded on her. “I mean neither I nor my kid needs you. We don’t need nurturing—”

“Maybe you don’t, but he does.”

“We’ll be gone as soon as I…” He stopped and eyed her with distaste. “By the end of the month,” he finished. “There’s no use in building attachments that won’t mean a damned thing.”

“You don’t want your son to have friends?” she demanded, incredulous at the idea. “Is that what you’re saying? You leave him here alone day after day and think he doesn’t need someone to talk to?”

A faint flush spread over his neck. “Staying here is his choice. As far as socializing goes, there’s no point in it, not with you or anyone here. We won’t be here that long.” He moved his arm, dislodging her grip.

“Maybe you don’t need friends, but he does.”

At his derisive snort, a devil took hold of her tongue. “Maybe he and Megan and I will become friends for life. Maybe he’ll come visit us in the summer—”

She got no further. He gripped her collar as if she were a suspect being brought to justice and yanked her on her toes until they were within kissing distance. But that wasn’t on his mind. He looked dangerous, threatening.

“If any of you does anything to hurt that boy, I’ll be all over you like a case of hives, you got that?”

She nodded slowly.

Jess saw fear flicker through her eyes before she tossed her head and flashed him an insolent smile.

“That was real original,” she drawled. “Something from an old detective movie you watched on TV this week?”

He had to give her credit for holding her ground, but that crack about his son needing friends got to him. He didn’t want Jeremy facing the same disappointments in life he had.

“I don’t want any expectations built up in the kid that won’t be met. Life is tough enough for the young.”

“The way it was for you?”

He cursed at the pity in her eyes even as he felt like crawling into those blue depths and drowning in the promise of fulfillment there. Damn. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. She made him think of things…well, he knew better.

Life held no surprises for him, good or bad. It served up the usual fare. He didn’t want his son to expect too much, then have his heart broken by lies and promises not kept.

“Just leave me and mine alone,” he reiterated and pushed away from her before he forgot the anger and yielded to the demands of his flesh. Need was in him, mixing with the pain of each step, driving him to fury….

He sighed and wiped the sweat from his face. Life had taken another swipe at him. He wanted Kate Mulholland with every fiber of his being. He wondered if she felt the same.

What the hell was he thinking?

Women. They made a man crazy. That’s what he needed to remember. That’s all. Nothing else.

Kate showered and dressed in a pair of old sweats and thick socks. The mountain air had grown chilly as soon as the sun had set. She dried her hair and slipped a terry-cloth band around her head to hold it back from her face.

Going downstairs, she padded out on the porch and sat in the swing. The fresh nip in the air toyed with her senses. The quarter moon was up. The western sky wasn’t quite dark. Touches of magenta and purple mingled with the blue of twilight.

Sprays of forsythia and flowering quince graced the rock garden she’d made at the corner of the old-fashioned porch. It was her favorite spot at her favorite time of day.

The swing gave off a soft but pleasant squeak with each backward sweep of the chain on its hook. She was comforted by the familiar sound. Tonight she needed comforting. For some reason, the past, with its harsh regrets, crowded her thoughts.

The sky darkened and stars crept out, shyly at first, then more and more until the heavens were filled. With an effort she staved off the old memories, induced by her tenants, she realized. Jess Fargo and his son reminded her of the possibilities of life, of the family she’d once assumed she would have. Shaking her head slightly, she pushed the cold emptiness of old dreams back into their cubbyhole.

Just as she was thinking it was time to go in to bed, a shadow appeared at the corner of the house, causing every nerve in her body to jump.

Jess limped across the grass and up on the porch. “That swing is driving me nuts,” he said by way of explanation. “I brought some grease.”

Without another word, he pulled a chair over to the swing, stood on it and oiled the hook. Moving back, he advised her to try it. The swing made no noise when she moved.

“Thanks,” she said, injecting sincerity into the word.

“It wasn’t for you. It was for me.” He moved the chair back to its position, then stood near the steps.

When he didn’t leave, she hesitated, then invited him to join her. Expecting him to take the chair, she was startled anew when he settled on the swing with a weary sigh.

“Your leg is bothering you?” she asked, sympathy winning out over other, harder emotions.

“Yeah, and then some,” he agreed wryly.

“I know,” she said softly, remembering the ache that lasted long after the actual pain disappeared.

“Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to sound weird this afternoon. It’s just that I’m worried about the boy. He’s having a hard time, and he’s…vulnerable.”

“He needs someone. You, I think. It’s good that you’ve been doing things together.”

“You think so?”

She was surprised at the hope in his voice. So the tough cop needed assurances, too. “Absolutely.”

After a few minutes he exhaled deeply and relaxed against the wooden slats. She started the swing to moving. They swished back and forth while crickets chirped and the wind whispered of secrets millions of years old.

She heard the lazy caw of a crow in the alders down by the creek. “The wind raven,” she murmured.

“What?”

Kate stirred self-consciously. “It’s an old story my grandmother told us. She said an Indian woman told it to her grandmother when she was a child. When the raven caws before dawn, when the wind blows down the mountain rather than up the valley, dire happenings are foretold. My grandmother’s mother heard the ravens before her husband and son were killed by a falling tree. My grandmother said she heard the crows down by the creek the night her baby died. And the wind was blowing.”

As if on cue, the cold night air swept around the eaves with a low moan. Her father had explained the house moaned because it wasn’t built right for wind, but as a child, she’d thought the wind and the house knew when tragedy was coming. The hair prickled on the back of her neck.

“Do you believe in myths?”

His voice was as soft, as sorrowful, as that of the wind, its deeper cadence blending with the whisperings of the river alders. The prickle became a tremor that raced through her.

“I believe there are things the mind can comprehend and others that only the heart knows and still others that no one understands.” She spoke barely above a whisper herself.

He moved, turning slightly as if to study her, laying his arm along the back of the swing, crossing his sore knee over the other while he watched her. She became uneasy.

“What bothers you about me?” he asked.

The silence grew—a mound of unsaid words between them. “Your unhappiness,” she said at last. “Your dislike and disapproval for no reason that I know of.”

“I don’t dislike you,” he said, so low she nearly didn’t catch the words.

“Your distrust…of women or everyone?”

His laugh was bitter. “Of life.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt it.” He was back to tough, cynical.

“I was married twelve years ago today. Barely past my twenty-first birthday.”

“It wasn’t a happy union,” he guessed.

“My father didn’t want me to, but nothing would have stopped me, not even a gypsy with a genuine crystal ball that showed me what my life would be like if I went through with the ceremony. I probably knew without the crystal ball.”

“But you did it, anyway.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“We fought the good fight, one might say, but it didn’t work for us. Not all the love or hope or faith in the world could change what was inevitable.”

“You divorced.”

“No. He died.”

“How?”

She heard the sharpened interest of the experienced cop in the question. She couldn’t decide how much to tell him or if she wanted him to know. Suicide. She hadn’t said the word in four years, and she wasn’t sure she could say it now.

“Suicide?” he said before she could get the word out, again in the deep tone that harmonized with the wind.

A raven cawed. Another answered.

“Yes.” The emptiness returned and with it the memories of a fate she had been powerless to change, although at twenty-one, she had thought she could. By the time she was twenty-nine, she had known she couldn’t.

“Go,” the raven called from the river bank. “Go.”

She rose and went inside without another word.

The wind came up during the night, sluicing down the mountain, pouring into the valley, bringing lightning and the promise of rain. At dawn the rain still held off, but the clouds lingered like a lid clamped over the land, holding in the growing tempest.

Kate rose and dressed in fresh jeans, tank top and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. The temperature was in the low fifties. She put on coffee, then ate her usual bowl of cereal.

Standing by the kitchen windows, she watched the wind toss the branches of the alders. The sky was dark, threatening. Along the edge of the mountain nearest her, she stared at the curtain of white without realizing what it was.

“Hail,” she said as the first white balls began to hit the glass and skip along the grass. She saw it tear through a leaf of a bush, then knock a flower off another.

The garden! The hail would ruin her carefully tended lettuce and beans and sweet peas. It would rip through the broad leaves of the cucumbers, squash and pumpkins. She slipped into old loafers and ran to the garden shed for the drop cloths that served multiple purposes around a ranch.

The wind beat at her, so hard it felt as if it would tear her clothes from her body. The hailstones, all nearly the size of marbles, hit with ferocious tenacity. She secured a corner of the drop cloth with a rock and tried to cover the row of lettuce. The wind whipped the material from her fingers.

“I’ll get it.” Jess reached across her and grabbed the flailing cloth and put it into place. “Get one of those big rocks,” he told his son.

Between the three of them, they got the most vulnerable vegetables covered. As they ran for the house, the rain started, lashing across the land in long, shimmering curtains.

“Wow, I don’t think the weatherman predicted that,” Kate said with a laugh once they were safely inside the kitchen. She tossed towels to her helpers, then dried herself off.

She checked her clothing to make sure she was decent. When she glanced up, Jess was watching her. The quickly hidden flare in his eyes told her he remembered their first meeting. His words of the night before leaped into her mind.

Desire flamed in her, echoing her restless night. She missed the heat, the pleasure of sex, the deep satisfaction and closeness afterward. In those early years of marriage, when hope still reigned, she had sought it eagerly. Later she had tried to use it as a bond to help her husband live in the present, but he had retreated more and more into the past, to places where she had never been and couldn’t go.

“I have coffee,” she said rather abruptly, turning from her guest’s steady perusal. “This feels like a pancake-and-sausage morning to me. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said enthusiastically, pulling the towel over his hair as if he were polishing a shoe. He glanced at his father. “Uh, if we have time.”

Only a curmudgeon could have denied the youngster’s eager hunger. Kate looked at Jess. The corners of his mouth tightened, but he nodded.

She threw her towel on top of the washing machine in the adjoining room, then started preparing the meal. Jess and Jeremy followed her example but took seats at the table. She served coffee to the older male and cocoa to the younger one.

After they ate, Jeremy asked to be excused. He wanted to check on his e-mail. Kate grinned as he thanked her, then bounded out and across the wet yard, jumping puddles. As soon as he was inside, the rain came pouring down again.

“This might last all day,” she informed Jess. “The roads won’t be passable at low spots.”

“So I shouldn’t go to town?”

“I’d give it an hour or so after the rain has stopped for the roads to drain.”

“I will. Today seems a good day for staying in and reading, anyway. You have any books?”

“In the study. First door on the right down the hall. Choose anything you like. I’ll bring fresh coffee.”

When she brought in their mugs, she found Jess standing in front of the bookshelves. He continued to read over the titles. “You have quite a collection of Western lore here.”

“My family has collected first editions for generations.”

“Some of these might be valuable.”

“The ones behind the glass doors are. The others aren’t. Except to me.”

He moved over to the glass-fronted bookcases. “Mark Twain. Bret Hart. What’s this? Mrs. Beeton’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book?

“Household hints from 1865,” Kate explained. “The author was English.”

He glanced through the volume. “It says here that all the household belongs to the husband, and the wife must look after his interests well. Sounds like a sensible female.”

Kate frowned in annoyance that he would happen upon that advice out of the whole book. He turned and she saw his smile widen as he took in her expression. She realized he was teasing her. Well, the tough cop had a sense of humor.

“Yes. My father pointed that out to my mother one time,” she admitted.

“What did she do?”

“Hit him with the dust mop.”

When Jess chuckled, Kate laughed, too. While he selected a couple of police procedural mysteries, she mused on their moment of laughter. It had been a long time since this house had heard the shared laughter of a man and woman.

And longer before it would happen again. She wanted no part of Jess Fargo. She left him in the den and returned to the kitchen, continuing her silent lecture on men and women and the whole absurd misery of it all.

Sitting at the kitchen table, watching the storm worsen, she tried to push the memories back into the past and lock the door. She had always been moody around the time of her wedding anniversary, but this year the hurt seemed nearer the surface.

Because of Jess?

Because somehow he and his son reminded her of all the bright hope she had once held dear to her heart. But she had learned that love wasn’t enough. It couldn’t change fate.

Touching her abdomen briefly, she experienced the pain of shattered youth and dreams, of accepting the reality, the nightmare, that her life had become…and yet, with the stubbornness of the young, she had dared hope….

Until that terrible, final day.

Needing to be busy, she set about rinsing the plates and putting them in the dishwasher. Her tenant limped into the kitchen, bringing three books tucked under his arm. She said nothing while he refilled his cup and laid the books on the table. He offered to help clean up.

“There’s nothing to do.” While he sat at the table, she wiped the skillet and grill with a paper towel and put them away. Restless, she made two cherry pies. With them in the oven, she, too, sat and stared morosely at the rain.

“You’re quiet,” he mentioned after a long silence. “And introspective. Are you thinking about your marriage?”

“About love.”

His face hardened.

“Yeah, I don’t think much of the emotion, either. It’s a trap for women—”

“You think it isn’t for men?” he said in a near snarl.

She shrugged. Their eyes met and held. Behind the smoldering animosity, she saw something else—the hunger, raw and naked, all male, but beyond that—the pure lonely need of one person for another.

She turned her head, refusing to acknowledge the mutual emotion. But it impinged on the mind just the same. It was the same need that gnawed at her.

A hand touched her chin, bringing her back to face him. “It’s there. We can deny it, but it’s there.”

His tone was harsh, and he didn’t look at all pleased.

“What?” she asked, lifting her chin defiantly.

“You know.”

The silence loomed between them again, silence that screamed with a thousand denials. Then, to her shock, he leaned forward and, light as a dewdrop, he touched his lips to hers.

Hot puffs of desire blew in and out of her. She pressed her lips together to stop the flow. He kissed her again.

She opened her mouth to protest. A mistake. He opened his lips at the same moment. Whether by design or accident, their tongues touched, lightly, hardly more than the flutter of an eyelash. But it hurt. Way down deep somewhere.

They each drew back, startled, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. A gasp, then a shaky sigh escaped her.

“Damn,” he said. “This isn’t… It isn’t enough.”

“I know,” she admitted weakly, hating herself for it.

His broad hand cupped the back of her head. He held her close, then his mouth was on hers, fierce, demanding, wanting, needing…and she was kissing him back the same way.

She entwined a hand into the thick, dark strands and took the kiss farther, deeper. He groaned and lifted her, turning his chair so he could place her on his lap.

“Your knee—”

“It’s okay. Don’t fuss,” he muttered against her mouth.

The kiss went on. Flesh pressed flesh, consumed the warmth, reveled in the close heat of passion barely held in check. His hands swept under her shirt and tank top. His touch was gentle but urgent on her back as he caressed up and down her spine.

When he moved forward, then pressed her breasts upward and dropped kisses along the curving mounds, she caught her breath as ecstasy flooded her. She rained kisses on his head and raked her fingers through his hair, then slipped them under his collar and down his back.

She wanted all barriers gone. With hands that trembled, she fumbled with his shirt buttons. He impatiently yanked it open, then pulled his T-shirt up and laid her hands flat on his chest and pressed them there.

“Touch me,” he whispered, as lost to the moment as she was. “I’ve wanted it since I first saw you. Maybe forever.”

“That makes no sense,” she said, trying to regain some control in the maelstrom.

He lifted his head, his expression grim. “It never does.”

But he didn’t release her hands. Instead he urged her to move them on him. She caressed him eagerly, forgotten pleasure rushing through her at the sensation of rough hair over the smoothness of skin beneath.

He kissed her again, hotly, deeply, his mouth moving over hers, his tongue seeking, demanding, then becoming playful as he enticed her to follow his lead. She didn’t know how long or how far they would have gone, except for the ringing of the phone. Every nerve in her body jumped at the sound.

“Easy,” he said, resting his forehead against hers.

The phone jangled again.

“It might be important.” She wanted him to say it wasn’t.

“Yeah.” He sighed, gently helped her stand, then did the same. “You want to get it?”

She crossed the room and answered.

“This is Jeremy. Uh, will you tell my dad the library called and they have the stuff from the archives he wanted to see?”

She ran a hand through her hair and tried to smooth it into place. “Okay. Do you need to speak with him?”

“No. I’m going to catch a movie on television now.”

They hung up and she delivered the news. The darkness returned to his eyes, displacing the fires of passion.

“Thanks. I guess I’d better wait until tomorrow to go to town.”

“That would be a good idea.”

He studied her for a long minute. “Yeah.” Then he went out the door.

Kate rubbed her fingers over her lips, which still felt hot and needy. Watch it, she warned herself. Just watch it. She went to the door. “What are you doing here, really?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Raindrops splashed his hair and clothing. “Resting.” He hesitated. “I’ll be gone at the end of the month.” It was a promise.

“Good,” she said, and was pretty sure she meant it.

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