He’s not giving up his family without a fight

James Calhoun has never been able to resist Mara Tyler, or her knack for mischief. Her reputation as a reckless teenager drove Mara from their hometown. So Slippery Rock is the last place James ever expected to see her, and Mara’s timing couldn’t be worse. With the upcoming election for sheriff, she threatens the squeaky-clean image James needs to win. Because Mara has brought with her the result of their steamy affair: his two-year-old son, Zeke. After the initial shock, James is determined to have both his family and career. He just needs to convince Mara that her home is where it’s always been. With him.

“It isn’t just—” James blew out a breath. “I’m angry, yes. And confused. And...this changes everything.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Zeke doesn’t have to change anything for you. You can still run for sheriff. I think you’d make a great one. You don’t have to worry about supporting us, not on a county sheriff’s salary, because I have a great job with good benefits—”

James shut off the engine and got out of the Jeep, slamming the door shut behind him. Mara took a few steps back.

He advanced on her, pointing his finger at her chest.

“I’m not going to walk away and pretend I don’t know I have a kid in this world.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Slippery Rock! Although Rebel in a Small Town has both secret-baby and reunion-romance hooks, at its core the book is about accepting who we are, flaws and all. Mara and James both have preconceived notions about the other, and neither has been 100 percent honest. For baby Zeke, they’ll have to be honest, about what they want and about who they are.

Mara and James (and baby Zeke) stole my heart from the moment they appeared on my computer screen...and I hope they steal your heart, too.

I love hearing from readers. You can catch up with me through my website and newsletter at www.kristinaknightauthor.com or on Facebook, www.Facebook.com/kristinaknightromanceauthor, and if you’re a visual reader like me, follow my books on my Pinterest boards—you’ll get some behind-the-scenes information and lots of yummy pictures.

Happy reading!

Kristina

Rebel in a Small Town

Kristina Knight

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KRISTINA KNIGHT decided she wanted to be a writer, like her favorite soap-opera heroine, Felicia Gallant, one cold day when she was home sick from school. She took a detour into radio and television journalism but never forgot her first love of romance novels, or her favorite character from her favorite soap. In 2012 she got The Call from an editor who wanted to buy her book. Kristina lives in Ohio with her handsome husband, incredibly cute daughter and two dogs.

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For Shelby, Ace, Tyler, Josh and Kayla, you are my favorite little people in the whole world, and for Megan and Mandi, who were the first little people to steal my heart. Zeke is a little bit of all of you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Two years ago

“TONIGHT WE ARE going to take this slow?”

Mara Tyler couldn’t find the words to answer, so she only smiled, letting her hands trail over the broad shoulders of James Calhoun—the very last man she should be having a clandestine affair with.

The very last man for whom she should be having feelings of anything but the physical variety. Yet here they were, in Nashville. It had been nearly a week since she logged her last speaking engagement at the securities conference. James was supposed to have returned to their hometown of Slippery Rock, Missouri, three days earlier. He kept making excuses for why he was staying, but to be honest, Mara didn’t care.

They stood at the window overlooking downtown Nashville. Neon signs twinkled in the darkness, and masses of people wandered from bar to bar and lounge to lounge. They’d been down there with the crowd until a half hour before, just like any other couple.

They weren’t any other couple, though. He had been voted most likely to succeed in their high school class, was now a sheriff’s deputy and was next in line to become the sheriff. She had been voted most likely to blow something up, and although she’d changed, no one in their hometown would believe the girl who had broken several laws as a teen was now a respected securities consultant. Or that one of her partners in crime had been the sheriff’s son.

None of that mattered. They were in Nashville, not Slippery Rock, and none of this was real. It was just for fun.

James cocked an eyebrow, the back of his hand teasing the side of her breast.

God, this was so much fun.

“No answer?” he asked. “Then we’ll see how long you can take slow.”

He lifted her in his arms and laid her gently on the bed. Slowly he unzipped one knee-high boot, letting it clatter to the floor, and then the next.

Her hands found his shoulders, urging him up, but James seemed perfectly content between her legs.

With one hand he pulled the zipper of her skirt down, down, and with the other he teased the bit of exposed flesh between her skirt and blouse. Mara’s muscles clenched and she fisted her hands against the soft, hotel room duvet. James pulled the skirt from her hips, tossing it over his shoulder. Her silk cami followed, and she was nearly naked before him. Only the green lace boy-briefs and matching bra covering her.

Mara was torn. She wanted the lace gone, too, but she liked that dangerous look in his gaze. The look that said this was going to last a long time.

She wouldn’t mind if it lasted forever. She could stay in this hotel room or even a desert island forever, just as long as James Calhoun was right there with her.

That thought was nearly as dangerous as the look in James’s eyes, though, because this thing between them wasn’t real. It wasn’t forever. This was a fling. It was hard to remember that when his heat was burning her to the ground.

Time to get this thing between them back on solid, nonthreatening ground.

“When you said slow, I didn’t think you meant glacial,” she said and used his tie to urge him up. James planted a hand on either side of her, grinning.

“You say glacial, I say leisurely,” he said. Then he covered her mouth with his, and his legs tangled with hers.

Mara wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting to hold him here, right here, for as long as she could.

They had done this a hundred times, and still she wasn’t tired of it. Of him. Still, she wanted more of him. Wanted to feel the hardness of his chest against her, wanted the heat from his skin to warm her, wanted to lose herself in him until she forgot that no matter what happened in a hotel room in another city, it didn’t mean anything could ever happen between them in real life.

She didn’t want to go down that road quite yet, though, so she loosened his tie, pulling it from his neck, and then unbuttoned his shirt, letting her hands meander over the wide expanse of his chest for a few moments.

“I can go glacial, too,” she said, before pushing the shirt from his shoulders.

James reached for the buckle of his belt, but Mara put her hand over his and stopped him.

“Slow, remember?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “You were just complaining about the glacial pace.”

True, but now that she thought about it, glacial could be fun. As long as he was on the receiving end, just for a little while. She found the tie on the bed and held it up.

“Maybe you’ve convinced me that glacial has its interesting points.”

Mara pushed against his shoulders until James was flat on his back, and she dangled the tie from her fingertips.

“Hands up, Officer.”

James grinned, but he raised his hands above his head, grasping the spindles of the headboard in his hands.

“That’s ‘deputy,’ ma’am, not ‘officer.’”

“Deputy Calhoun, do you know why you’re being confined?” she asked mildly as she tied the tie loosely around his wrists.

“Speeding?”

Mara chuckled. “The speed limit in this room is ‘leisurely.’”

“And I was going glacially?”

“Something like that.” With his arms secured, Mara reached for the buckle of his belt. She slid the leather from the clasp, and then unsnapped his pants. She kissed his sternum, and couldn’t resist licking her way down his washboard abs.

“You going to—” he was grinning at her “—fine me, Deputy?”

Mara glanced up. His hands were clenched and his eyes were closed.

“Is this your way of asking for a ticket? You don’t want to plead your case?” Mara pushed his pants over his hips, and James kicked them to the floor. He wasn’t wearing boxers, and for a moment, Mara wasn’t sure what to do. She’d been expecting one more slow removal of clothing, and instead she saw him, thick and hard.

“I think I’ll just take the fine.”

Mara swallowed. The fine. The fine. She had no idea what to say next, how to keep this role-playing thing going when all she could think about was taking him in her hands. In her mouth.

Snap out of it, Mar, this is just fun and games.

She unsnapped the clasp of her bra, letting the lace fall to the floor, and then stepped out of her panties. Mara kneeled on the bed, putting her hands on either side of his head and straddling his hips before she took his mouth with hers. Screw the game, she only wanted James.

He pulled her body against his, the hairs on his chest tickling her breasts.

“Hey, I tied you up,” she said between kisses.

“You’d never survive in the wilderness with those knot tying skills. I’ll teach you a simple tie. For next time,” he said, pushing her to her back.

“Next time,” she said, and the words sounded dreamy to her ears.

Every time she met up with James, she told herself it would be the last time, but it never was. He was like that last bit of birthday cake—impossible to resist.

His mouth found her breast and Mara arched her back, wanting more.

“James,” she said, pressing her hips against him, urging him to hurry.

James reached into the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a foil packet. He tore it open with his mouth, and rolled the thin covering over his length.

And then he was inside her. Mara wrapped her legs around his waist, loving the feel of his body against hers, inside hers. This was all she needed.

James Calhoun was everything she wanted, even if she could never be the woman that he needed.

* * *

MARA WATCHED JAMES sleeping soundly on the hotel room bed. The lights were off, but the glow of the neon on the street below was enough to illuminate the room dimly. His mouth was open slightly, his left hand over his heart and his legs tangled in the sheets. The tie draped over the pillow. A lock of hair fell over his eyes. She pushed it back.

This wasn’t just fun.

She swallowed. She wanted to slide under his arm and rest her head over his heart. Wanted to lie there for hours, listening to his heart beating.

God, what had she done?

They’d been meeting like this, in hotel rooms around the country every few months, for nearly three years. Every time it had just been about the sex. Good sex. Excellent sex.

Why did she have to go and let her heart ruin it? This was a great arrangement. He liked his small-town life, and she liked her on-the-road life. They met up for sex, they each went back to their lives, and no one expected anything more.

She took a deep breath. She shouldn’t want more, so why did she? It wasn’t fair. She should have been able to love him and leave him, the way she had every other time they’d met.

Mara pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. James rocked his head slowly to the side, but he didn’t wake.

“I don’t want to mess this up,” she whispered to the man on the bed. The man who had been her best friend for most of her life. The man she should never have fallen in love with. “This will lead to broken hearts and anger, so I’m ending it now without the anger and without breaking anything. It’s better this way.”

She slid off the bed, picked up her satchel and laptop, and quietly left the hotel room. She would arrange for the hotel to pack her things and ship them to her office in Tulsa, because if she waited for him to wake, she wouldn’t be able to leave. She would tell him how she felt about him.

He might tell her he felt the same, but it wouldn’t matter. She didn’t want his kind of life any more than he wanted hers.

More than that, he deserved better.

He deserved someone who wasn’t broken.

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

MARA PULLED INTO the parking lot of Mallard’s Grocery in Slippery Rock, Missouri. The lot with its cracked pavement sat at the corner of Main Street and Mariner, a few blocks north of Slippery Rock Lake. The grocery store still had the image of a duck on its sign, the paint dividing the parking spaces was still off-center from the cement blocks at the head of each space, and the same cracked glass was in the revolving door.

Despite the light breeze along the shore, it was oppressively hot in the town center. She had forgotten exactly how muggy and uncomfortable a southern Missouri summer could be. Since slipping out of town the night after her high school graduation, Mara had allowed herself only a handful of visits, all around the holidays, when the weather was significantly cooler.

She turned off the ignition and tossed her keys into the large tote she carried for work. Although the store stood several blocks from the waterfront, where a horrible tornado had leveled several buildings a few weeks before, she could hear the hammering and sawing going on in the downtown area.

This section of town had experienced a few uprooted trees, but most of the damage had been to roofs and windows. The grocery store still had one big plate-glass window boarded over, and one of the cart corrals looked as if a tree had landed on it. Maybe one had.

She hadn’t expected to feel sympathy for the town when she decided to come back, but sympathy was the only explanation she had for the tightening in her chest. Closing her eyes, she took a few deep, centering breaths. The tornado was an act of God. It wasn’t her fault. Not like so many other happenings that had befallen this town because of her. Now she was in a position to help this place that had saved her as a child.

And ideally, while she was helping the town at large, she could fix a couple of personal messes, too.

Mara activated the locks on the SUV as she exited. A few cars and trucks sat in the lot, and she decided to begin her security sweep here rather than checking in with the office first. She didn’t need a store manager distracting her from her job with talk of how little crime they’d experienced. If the stores she visited weren’t in need of a security upgrade, she would not have been dispatched to their area.

On a small notepad, she jotted the locations of several security cameras situated to capture the inbound and outbound foot traffic to the store, but as she crossed to the rear, near the row of Dumpsters and a big cardboard baler, she noted only one camera. It appeared to be slightly askew, and she wondered if it worked at all. Not a great setup despite the low crime rate in Slippery Rock. She made a notation in the notebook.

Air-conditioning blasted her as she pushed through the two-sided revolving door into the store, a nice relief from the heat of the blacktop parking lot. The clerk, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair, ignored her as Mara passed through the automatic doors. The woman’s hair might have changed color since Mara left Slippery Rock ten years before, but that frown on her face was as familiar as the bored tap-tap-tapping of her fingernails against the counter. A teen with red-and-blue-striped hair—the high school colors—sat on the end of the check stand, chewing gum while he waited for a customer to come through the line. A few glass-domed cameras looked down over the front of the store, but again, in the back there was little security. She scribbled more notes. To test the system, she put a box of cookies in her bag along with a small carton of milk.

She waved to the clerk as she left the store. The clerk ignored her. No sirens sounded, and the teenage bagger remained at his perch at the end of the check stand.

Not good. No wonder the grocery store wanted an upgrade. They were probably losing a small fortune in junk food to kids who either didn’t have the money to buy it or simply didn’t want to pay. The fact that the beer aisle was one over from the cookies probably pushed their loss ceiling even higher. A man with only a couple of dollars in his bank account and a tremendous thirst for a Budweiser wouldn’t think twice about risking a run through the less-than-secure store.

Mara turned around and headed back inside, and as she stepped into the revolving door, buzzers began beeping, and the mechanical door stopped moving altogether, trapping her in between a wall of glass and the inner door. Mara tried to stop, but her shoe slipped against the floor, and she lost her balance. Her shoulder slammed into the glass, making her wince in pain. Mara regained her footing only to find she was trapped inside the door. She had never encountered a system that trapped only people who returned to a store with stolen merchandise. For that matter, she didn’t think such a system existed. Probably some kind of kink in the software.

The gum-smacking teen pointed a broom handle at her as if she were under fire, and the bored clerk talked animatedly into the phone, waving her hands as she said something Mara couldn’t make out from her side of the thick-paned door.

She motioned to her bag and tried to shout above the racket of the beepers. “I’m with Cannon Security,” she said, but the teenager kept wielding the broom handle at her like it was a machete. “I’m on a security check,” she said, trying again, but neither of the employees seemed able to hear her. Maybe the two of them didn’t want to hear her.

Damn it. She checked her watch. She needed to be at the bed-and-breakfast in twenty minutes, and she didn’t see that happening. Crap, crap, crap. She never missed Zeke’s postnap snack. Never.

A crowd gathered behind the check stand, mostly middle-aged women wearing jeans and T-shirts and probably boots, just like their husbands would. A few had small children with them and pushed the kids behind their carts as if Mara might be dangerous. “Turn off the buzzers,” she yelled, putting her hands over her ears.

The checker hung up the phone and came over to the glass. She said something that sounded peculiarly like “Criminals deserve discomfort” before backing away to the safety of her check stand. As if Mara was about to draw a gun or something.

“Now I know what the goldfish at the office feels like,” she muttered, still holding her hands over her ears. She pushed one foot against the inner and outer doors, but neither budged.

Finally the beepers stopped and everything quieted. Mara took her hands from her ears and tried the doors again. They didn’t budge. She repeated her call through the thick glass.

“I’m here on a security check. I need to speak with Michael Mallard.” The clerk shot a glance behind her toward an area marked Employees Only. No one appeared. The crowd began to disperse, lessening the goldfish effect.

She tugged at her earlobe when a low siren began to wail. Was this some kind of second-tier warning system? The clerk crossed her arms over her chest as if in triumph. The wailing became louder, and it wasn’t coming from inside the store. Mara pressed her face against the outer door, looking left and then right.

“No, no, no. Please, no.”

The siren grew louder, and a few cars passing on the street pulled to the side.

“Let it be a fire. Let it be a fire.”

But it wasn’t a red fire truck that entered the parking lot. It was a big black SUV with Wall County Sheriff plastered along its side. She was definitely not making it to the B and B for snack time.

As the SUV came to a stop, she could make out the driver, a large man with brown hair and big aviator sunglasses over his eyes—eyes she knew would be the color of molten chocolate. This man had been interrupting her dreams since she’d hit puberty and began to figure out why male and female body parts were made so deliciously dissimilar.

“Crap, crappity crap.”

* * *

JAMES PULLED INTO the parking lot of Mallard’s Grocery and sighed. He could see a tall, thin woman caught between the double doors, and she looked annoyed. Her long hair was pulled through the back of her Kansas City Royals baseball cap, which obscured her face. Probably another customer who’d reentered the store after making a purchase. He’d been called out here at least a dozen times since Christmas, when the store’s security system started going wonky. Not once in all the calls he’d answered had anyone actually been stealing from the store. Of course, that didn’t stop CarlaAnn from acting like she’d been deputized every time. And, crap, was the bag boy wielding a broom at the woman?

That alarm system was a menace. Mike should invest in better locks and leave it at that. There was no need for expensive—and defective—security systems in Slippery Rock.

He got out of the SUV, blistering afternoon sunshine reflecting off the pavement. Since the tornado, the summer temperatures had been relatively mild, but according to the local weatherman, this heat wave would continue for at least a week.

James knocked on the glass of the entrance, his attention focused on the woman still caught between the doors. She turned and faced the store, her shoulders and spine seeming rigid beneath the vibrant blue of the tank top she wore. Cropped jeans hugged the curves of her lower half, making his mouth go a little dry.

CarlaAnn, the clerk at the checkout, pressed the button that disabled the alarm, allowing the doors to whoosh open, but the woman caught inside didn’t budge until the door pushed her gently forward. She stepped from the doorway, holding on to her oversize shoulder bag with both hands, gaze focused intently on the empty aisle leading to the butcher counter. Maybe she wasn’t a typical customer. James put his hand on his holster just in case as he motioned for her to follow him to the check stand.

“We’ll get this straightened out in a moment,” he said.

“I wasn’t stealing anything. I had a reason for being in this store,” she said, and her husky voice sent a shiver down James’s spine. He knew that voice. Even after two years, he knew it.

“Mara?” He turned his shocked gaze to her. She’d let her hair grow, and she wasn’t the stick-thin girl he remembered either from high school or the day she’d walked out on him two years ago.

“I swear,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a box of cookies and a small carton of milk, “I have a really good explanation for this.”

Well, that much, at least, was familiar. Mara Tyler always had a good explanation, both before she acted and after the fact. While in high school, the six of them—he and Mara, her brother Collin, Levi Walters and the twins, Aiden and Adam Buchanan—had pulled a number of pranks on the town. They’d painted Simone Grainger’s phone number on the water tower after she dumped Aiden before the last basketball game of their senior year. They’d all brought dogs to school on the same day, and had switched the cables from the principal’s computer to the secretary’s. They repainted the downtown parking spaces and put up Tractors Only parking signs. There were countless other pranks, but each one had been orchestrated by Mara, and every single one of them he’d gone along with because he would rather have been with her than without her.

Whenever Mara came around, his law-abiding side warred with his reckless side, and usually the reckless side won, leaving his law-abiding self to clean up the mess.

Like the mess the two of them made graduation night.

Correction: the mess he’d made all by himself when he took one of her pranks to a whole other level.

No one except him and Mara knew exactly what happened that night, and he planned to keep it that way.

“Yeah, it just figures Mara Tyler would set off the store alarm.” CarlaAnn had joined them. “I thought I recognized her when she walked in, but I wasn’t sure until the alarms went off.” She shook her head, her shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair shaking from side to side. “This alarm system isn’t good for much, but it finally caught her in the act.” She stabbed a finger toward Mara’s chest. James stepped between them.

CarlaAnn was Simone’s mother, and she’d always blamed their group for the water tower incident—with just cause. A few weeks after that incident, Simone ran off with the biker she’d dumped Aiden for, and she had never returned to Slippery Rock. CarlaAnn blamed only Mara for that offense, and her blame had turned into a raging hatred before the six of them graduated.

“I have a perfectly good explanation for being here, and for setting off the alarms. I tried to tell you that through the glass,” Mara said, stepping around James’s arm. “I need to speak with Mike.” She glanced at her watch, and she tapped the toe of her shoe against the tile.

CarlaAnn crossed her arms over her chest. “Mike is on vacation. You’ll have to deal with me.”

Mara kept her gaze trained on the other woman for a long moment. CarlaAnn was the first to look away. “Then I need a phone number or email address where he can be reached.”

CarlaAnn pressed her lips together and scowled. “I don’t have either of those,” she finally said.

James noticed the crowd of shoppers gradually inching closer to Mara and CarlaAnn, probably expecting some kind of girl fight now that Mara had been identified. Small towns meant there was always a helping hand around, but they also meant long memories. Everyone remembered the water tower prank, among others. The love-hate relationship between Mara and the town had turned to flat-out hate after the fiasco of graduation night, though.

Since then, James had done his best to prove he was a man worthy of being the next sheriff. Mara setting off alarm bells at the grocery store would only reinforce their belief that she was a felony charge away from jail time.

He knew she wasn’t a felon, and their pranks had been generated out of boredom rather than malice, but that wouldn’t matter. Nor would the fact that James graduated at the top of his class in both college and the police academy. His anonymous restitution to the school would be irrelevant. None of those things would matter to the townspeople, just as those things didn’t truly assuage his conscience. He could only hope that someday the man he’d become would matter more than the boy he’d been. Maybe that was how Mara felt, too.

“We’ll take care of this, everyone.” He motioned to the crowd to continue shopping, then turned to Mara. “Why don’t you and I go into the office area and talk this through?”

Mara checked her watch again. “Can we make it quick? I, um, have an important, uh, conference call in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t you need my statement, too, Deputy Calhoun? Or is this a purely cursory investigation?”

James thought he heard a silent too on the end of CarlaAnn’s last question, as well, and remembered his mother confronting his father after CarlaAnn accused him of conducting a “cursory investigation” into Simone’s disappearance with the biker. James took Mara’s arm and pushed past CarlaAnn.

“Hey,” Mara said in protest, but he ignored her until the door to the back office closed behind them. “I’m not a criminal. And I have another appointment.”

“No, you’re a mischief maker. And important conference call or not, I’m going to investigate why you’re setting off alarm bells at my grocery store.”

“I thought it still belonged to the Mallard family, or have the Calhouns gone into groceries as well as law enforcement?”

“You know what I meant. This is my town, and the people here are my friends, my family. The businesses they run, I protect.”

“They were mine once, too.”

“Until the day you ran out on everything.”

Mara jerked her arm from his grasp. “You, of all people, know why I left.”

James clenched his jaw. Yeah, he knew. Only it hadn’t been her leaving ten years ago that he’d been talking about. She didn’t need to know that, though. He opened the door to the room that held the security equipment and motioned her inside. “Want to show me your reasonable explanation for stealing five dollars in snacks when I know for a fact that you don’t eat generic cookies and are lactose intolerant?”

“I can’t.” Mara looked uncomfortable. “But if you would let me get to my—”

“You’d better, or CarlaAnn out there is going to do her damnedest to make sure this misdemeanor offense not only lands on the crime blotter of the Slippery Rock Gazette but also sounds like a felony.” God, but she was cute when she was upset. Her face took on a pretty pink hue, and she wrung her hands together nervously. Mara was almost never nervous, so seeing her this out of balance was nice. Especially since she was so good at putting him off balance.

Mara motioned to the equipment on the counter. “The system doesn’t catch where I was in the store, and it misses a lot of the parking lot.” She pulled an ID badge from her bag, the move pulling her top taut over her breasts. James’s mouth went dry. Stupid reaction. He’d been hung up on Mara Tyler for most of his life, but he was not going to let himself get hung up on her again. He was a responsible adult with a responsible job, and she’d walked out on him two years ago without so much as a goodbye. He was over her.

“I work for Cannon Security.” She named a firm he had heard about during his training in Jefferson City a few years before. “Mike hired us to do a security overhaul, and I was here to conduct a cursory check before telling him what needed to be done. No one told me he was on vacation. I have emails on my computer at the B and B.”

“You work for a security company?” That was new. He had always figured Mara had gone into hacking or some other not-quite-legal profession. Although they’d had an on-again, off-again relationship, they never talked about anything important. She’d seen his badge, and knew he had always wanted to become the sheriff, but they had never talked about her plans. Or dreams. Hell, he couldn’t really call what they’d had a relationship. It was more like a five-year series of booty calls when she was near Slippery Rock or when he went to law-enforcement conferences in the cities where she worked. “I didn’t realize you were one of the good guys now.”

“Well, I don’t wear a cape, but I do have a lot of really cool techy toys that come in handy from time to time.”

Great, now he was picturing her in tights and a cape, and in his imagination her body looked so much better than any of the good guys from the comic books. Not that she was one of the good guys. Er, girls. Women. Whatever. He refocused as she continued talking.

“I do camera and detector installs, but I also write specific programs for some of our clients.” She sat at the counter and ran through the tapes from the ancient camera system.

The images were grainy and fuzzy, but he could tell they focused on the check stand and the front of the store. He moved closer, putting his hand over hers. Warmth from the touch spread up his arm, but Mara didn’t seem to notice. He shook himself. He was not going down this road, not again. Mara only ever saw him as a friend or a booty call, and even if that changed, his job didn’t. Her reputation wouldn’t. Getting tangled up with her again would be...irresponsible. James hadn’t been irresponsible, at least not inside the Slippery Rock city limits, since graduation night.

“This was to be a custom job because Mallard’s is the only store on this particular block. He has specific needs.”

So did James, not that his needs had anything to do with the images on the screens before them. Those needs had everything to do with the heat that seemed to seep into his skin from hers. He stepped back. “Like more cameras and a new door.”

“Yes, as well as computerized entry codes and new systems for opening and closing the registers. The store has lost a lot of revenue from shoplifters, but Mike also mentioned something about registers not adding up. It’s a big job.”

“And they picked you to run it.” He was impressed. Mara Tyler was not only a good guy but also a good-at-her-job good guy.

“Actually, I volunteered.” She stood. “I needed to make sure my family was okay after the tornado, and...” She paused. “It seemed like a good time to come home for more than a day at a time.” She twisted her mouth to the side as if she might say more.

James waited a long moment, but she didn’t continue. “I thought you hated Slippery Rock.”

“Sometimes the things you hate the most as a kid are the things you miss the most as an adult.” There was something in her voice that made him look at her more closely. This wasn’t personal—that couldn’t be it. But there was something different about Mara. Something had changed over the past two years, and that change was interesting.

Not that he would act on interesting. Still, it might be nice to have her around for a while, if for no other reason than to give uptight old CarlaAnn a hard time.

“Are you ready to face the music with CarlaAnn?” He checked his watch. “By my count, you have ten more minutes before the big conference call.”

Mara shrugged. “I kind of figured her antipathy toward me would have lessened.”

“You’ve forgotten how small towns work, haven’t you?”

Together they returned to the check stand, where CarlaAnn was scanning a woman’s groceries while the teenager bagged them. Once the woman had paid, James motioned CarlaAnn to the side.

“Meet the new security consultant for Mallard’s Grocery.”

“Well, doesn’t that just figure?” CarlaAnn said, annoyance in her voice. “Mike didn’t say anything about security changes.”

“I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he gets back.”

Mara moved to the check stand and took the cookies and milk from her bag. “To show there are no hard feelings, I’ll pay for these. It really was part of the initial security check.”

Reluctantly CarlaAnn scanned the items and slid them onto the conveyor belt. The teen put them in a small plastic bag.

“I’ll see you Monday morning,” Mara said, “and I’ll have my boss call your boss, just to let him know we’ve gotten acquainted.”

CarlaAnn harrumphed. James walked out of the store with Mara.

“It’s Tuesday,” he said. “Why wait until Monday?”

“Just an assumption that I won’t be able to get much done until Mike returns. And another assumption that he’ll come back to work on a Monday. My boss at Cannon will have contact information for him. If he isn’t back Monday, I’ll wait a little longer. I can do a lot of the programming from my computer at the B and B.”

“You aren’t staying at the orchard?” Usually only tourists stayed at the motel or B and Bs in town. He’d been so focused on his reaction to her, he’d ignored those other references to staying in town rather than at her family’s farm.

That uncomfortable look flitted over her face again. “I, ah, thought it might be simpler to be closer to Mallard’s.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a set of keys, which she began fiddling with. “You know, glitches and things.”

They arrived at her car, and James wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to ask how she’d gotten involved in the security industry. Wanted to ask why she hadn’t come back to town before now. Wanted to know what she’d been doing for the past two years.

He didn’t believe for a second that glitches and things were the real reason she was staying at the Slippery Rock Bed-and-Breakfast in town rather than in the ample space of the farmhouse at the orchard.

If she were a friend, he would push the issue. But she wasn’t a friend. Friends didn’t cut friends out of their lives the way she’d cut him out. James decided to let it drop. Mara might make his blood run hotter than Bud’s Fourth of July chili from Guy’s Market, but James was through allowing her to make him do irresponsible things, like trying to push his way into her life.

“I guess I’ll see you around, then. Try not to set off any more alarms, okay?”

She grinned, but that uneasy look remained in her clear blue eyes. James fought the urge to try to make that look leave her face. “I’ll do my best,” she said and slid behind the wheel of a navy SUV with darkly tinted rear windows. She gave him a finger wave as she pulled out of the parking lot.

Asking any of those questions would imply he was interested, and he wasn’t. Was not interested in Mara Tyler. At least, he shouldn’t be.

CHAPTER TWO

MARA HAD RENTED a suite at the Slippery Rock B and B. Well, suite was a bit of an exaggeration, but there were two rooms with an adjoining door. It was the best option she had. The only other hotel in town looked like it had been through a war, and she didn’t think it was entirely due to the tornado. This B and B was one of the few buildings on the west side of the downtown area that hadn’t been hit hard by the tornado. Joann, the new owner who had moved to town a couple years before, told her they lost the roof and a little bit of siding, but that was the extent of the damage. She didn’t question Mara about why she was staying at the B and B instead of the orchard—the question Mara knew James had been dying to ask at Mallard’s.

Mara opened the door to her suite with her happy mommy smile plastered to her face, ten minutes after Zeke’s usual wake-up. When Mara started to say something, Cheryl Johnson, Zeke’s nanny, shook her head.

“Still sleeping,” she whispered. “I think the drive tuckered him out.”

Mara crossed the room to the small Pack ’n Play she traveled with, wishing for the thousandth time that Zeke had a proper crib. Cribs didn’t transport well, not even in an SUV. Since her work required regular travel, this was the best solution. She ran her fingers lightly over the little boy’s brown hair. It was soft and silky and baby-fine, unlike the thick mass of hair his father had.

She blew out a breath. The office of Mallard’s Grocery hadn’t been the right place to tell James about Zeke. She knew that. So why did she feel so guilty about her silence? She’d come here to tell him about his son, to introduce them, and she would do it. But not when she was on the verge of being arrested for stealing a carton of milk and a box of generic cookies.

Mara took the items from her bag, put the milk in the small fridge inside the oversize bureau and tossed the cookies on top.

“Thanks for sticking around until I got back. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Are you kidding me? If today and tomorrow are the last days I have with Zeke, I’m going to pack as much of his sweet baby face as I can into them. Are you sure you don’t need me to stay? My contract with the school district in Tulsa doesn’t start for another two months—”

Mara held up her hand. “And you’re going to spend two of those weeks helping your sister plan her wedding, and after the wedding, you’re taking your father on that trip to Ireland he’s always wanted. Zeke and I will be fine.” She couldn’t ignore the little spike of fear that hit her belly, though.

She’d hired Cheryl to be Zeke’s nanny when he was three weeks old. Cheryl had traveled with them all over the United States, but earlier this year her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Cheryl wanted to be closer to her family, and Mara couldn’t blame her, especially with a wedding coming up and a parent whose health was in decline. She might not have the close familial ties her nanny had, but Mara could empathize.

Part of her hope for this trip was that she would be able to repair those ties with her own family. That, and tell James he had a son. She also planned to tell him she could raise Zeke on her own so he could continue with his postcard-perfect, fairy-tale life as the heir apparent to the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department and forget he’d ever been so reckless as to have an affair with her.

“But you’ll send me pictures, right?” Cheryl’s hazel eyes clouded with tears, and her voice cracked. Mara wrapped her arms around the woman who was her only friend.

“Are you kidding? Who else is going to understand just how cute the little monster is when he’s destroying his dinner like Godzilla destroyed Tokyo?”

“Okay. Okay then.” Cheryl pulled back, grabbed a tissue from the box on the bureau and dabbed at her eyes. “I swore I wasn’t going to get choked up. This isn’t forever. The contract is only for a year, and then, who knows? Dad will be settled by then. He might not need as much attention.”

“Sure,” Mara said, pushing more confidence into her voice than she felt. She had no doubt that she and Cheryl would stay in touch, but she was very doubtful this sabbatical would last only for the length of the school year. Cheryl’s father wouldn’t get better, and her sister would begin having children. Unlike Mara, normal people weren’t made to live out of suitcases in a series of boring hotel rooms. “Until you come back, I’ll text and email more pictures than you ever wanted to see. You’ll have to block my numbers to stop the flow of toddler silliness.”

Cheryl dabbed at her eyes again, but she seemed to have regained her equilibrium. “I’m going to collect those takeout menus the manager promised when we checked in.” She closed the door, and Mara was alone with her son.

She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. She could do this. She’d taken all the parenting courses, enrolled herself in therapy to deal finally with the baggage from her childhood. She was now in the same town with her baby’s father, and she was ready to tell him that he could have a place in his child’s life or not. Either way, she and Zeke would be just fine. Simple enough conversation.

Zeke made a small noise, and his little fingers began their usual scrape-scrape-scrape down the mesh sides of the playpen. His favorite stuffed toy, an ugly black-and-brown lemur, was wedged under his hip, but he wrestled it free and began talking in mumbles to it.

She was stronger now than she had ever been. She could do this.

* * *

“BUT WHY ISN’T she staying at the orchard?” James called himself ten kinds of fool for asking Collin the question, but he couldn’t resist.

He’d stopped by his house to change out of his uniform, but somehow the old jeans and gray T-shirt weren’t any more comfortable than the layers of stiff, starched cotton, body armor and gun belt he wore to work every day. The fact that Collin, Mara’s brother and one of his best friends, looked incredibly relaxed in a pair of cargo shorts and a similar T-shirt only made him more uncomfortable. He, Collin and Levi were sitting at their usual Wednesday night booth in The Slippery Slope, the waterfront bar. It still felt odd not to see Adam across the booth, but he was in the hospital recovering from the injuries he sustained in the tornado. The doctors weren’t certain he would walk again.

“She says it’ll make things easier with the odd hours she’s keeping working on the security system at Mallard’s,” Collin said. “And to be honest, I don’t need the distraction of my sister underfoot. I’ve got enough to do with the new plantings.”

Tyler Orchard had been hit hard by the tornado. Collin had lost about half of their apple trees and several peach and pear trees, too. Still, when family members visited Slippery Rock, they didn’t stay at a B and B.

“The orchard is all of a ten-minute drive to town,” James said. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

James hadn’t seen Mara since Tuesday morning—apparently she’d had no more run-ins with the wonky security doors at the grocery store—but he couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d worked with one of the construction crews this afternoon, putting up the new roof of the farmers’ market just down the street, and he could have sworn he saw her standing on the corner. Of course, when he took a closer look, he’d seen Mrs. Bailey, the Methodist minister’s wife. Mrs. Bailey was short, had iron-gray hair and carried a pocketbook from 1959. No sane man would mix her up with the tall, thin Mara Tyler carrying a canvas tote bag.

“What’s with the third degree over where Mara chooses to stay while she’s on a business trip?” Levi asked, coming to the table with a tray of beers and a bucket of peanuts.

James sat back as if he hadn’t just been interrogating one of his best friends about said best friend’s sister, while the best friend was unaware that James had been having an affair with that same sister. “No third degree, just curiosity,” he said, hoping neither Levi nor Collin would push the issue.

“Look, you have the black-and-white sitcom version of the perfect family. Having family stay with you is normal. The Tylers have never been anyone’s version of normal,” Collin said, but his words didn’t hold their usual rancor. Since he’d fallen for Levi’s sister, Savannah, Collin’s anger at his parents seemed to have dissipated. “If Mara says it’s easier to stay in town, I’m fine with that. If she decides to come to the orchard, we have plenty of room.”

“She hasn’t even been to the orchard yet?” Not going to see her family was weirder than weird. Who came home for work and didn’t immediately check in with the family? Sure, she’d been only a sporadic visitor, but he knew Mara loved her grandmother and her siblings. None of this made sense.

Collin, who emanated that happy-in-love countenance usually seen only on the guy characters in chick flicks, shrugged. “She called to let us know she was in town. She’ll probably be out this weekend.” He popped a peanut into his mouth and chewed.

“And you don’t find that just a little bit strange?”

“Not really. You know Mara. She does things at her own pace.”

“Usually that pace rivals the Indy 500 drivers,” James said, sipping his beer. It was one thing for Mara to check into the Slippery Rock B and B, but not even to go to the orchard to see her family? That was unlike the woman he’d known.

Of course, he’d never envisioned that woman walking out on him, changing her phone number or ignoring his emails, and she had done all of those things. Maybe he didn’t know Mara Tyler at all. James opened his mouth to say something, anything to get Collin to tell him what was going on, but Levi spoke.

“If we aren’t going to play, I’m going to head back. Pulling double duty with the cleanup crews and at the ranch is killing me. I had no idea twenty-eight could feel so old.” Levi wove a single dart through his fingers.

“We’ll play,” Collin said, and James nodded.

All three of them—hell, most of the people in town—were working around the clock to get the town back in shape. A few weeks before, Savannah and some friends from Nashville had hosted a benefit concert to help with renovations. Now the town was pulling together to complete the projects in the hope that the Bass Nationals would hold a major tournament at Slippery Rock Lake this fall. As part of the benefit, they’d held a smaller fishing event, but having their lake on national television would do a lot to promote tourism and show the world that Slippery Rock remained a good vacation destination.

The three of them played a couple of rounds of darts, but without Adam, their usual round-robin style of play wasn’t as fun, and Levi bowed out and left after the third game. Collin and James nursed their beers across the table from one another.

“Jenny called this afternoon. The doctors say he’ll need surgery eventually, but that Adam is going to walk again,” Collin said after a long moment.

That was the best news James had heard in a while.

“Any word on when they’ll release him?”

Collin shook his head. “Jenny said they needed more testing, and the doctors are still tweaking the treatment of the seizures. I thought I might drive up to Springfield to see him, but Jenny says he doesn’t want visitors still.”

“That’s not like Adam.”

“How would you feel about gawkers if a tornado left you partially buried under the rubble of a church? And if the head injury left you with seizures?”

James didn’t have to think about the answer. “Pissy.”

“So, we leave him be. We can bug the bejesus out of him when he’s home.”

Collin finished his beer, and James watched the clock tick off a couple of minutes. No songs played over the jukebox, and Juanita, the waitress, was snacking on the cherries and oranges Merle kept on the bar to garnish the fancy drinks. He wanted to ask about Mara again, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without sounding like a concerned boyfriend.

“You want to tell me why you’re so all-fired interested about where my sister stays this visit?” Collin finally asked.

“Curiosity. You know it killed the cat. Apparently it’s trying to kill a deputy sheriff now, too.”

“Acting sheriff, soon to be elected sheriff,” Collin added. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

James shook his head. His father, the current sheriff, was off work on disability and couldn’t come back to the department. He’d gotten caught in the tornado and broken a hip; Jonathan Calhoun wasn’t ready to step down from his position, but he had to. “You know my dad’s legacy speech.” James deepened his voice to imitate his father. “Three generations of Calhouns have protected this town from predators.” James finished his beer. “If I don’t become that fourth generation, I think he might disown me.”

“If you didn’t want to be sheriff, you wouldn’t care about being disowned.”

There was truth to that. He’d wanted to be sheriff for as long as he could remember, long before graduation night, and not just because it was his father’s dream. James finished his beer. “Sorry about the third degree.”

Collin shrugged. “Enquiring minds,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.

“Yeah, well. I have an early shift tomorrow, and you’ve probably got trees to plant or something.”

“I’ll be at the farmers’ market in the afternoon, finishing up the roof.”

“See you there.”

Collin left while James went to the bar to pay the bill. The four of them—three of them, he corrected himself—took turns paying rather than making Juanita print separate checks every Wednesday. Merle made change from the old-fashioned register. Then James walked onto the familiar street.

He could smell the lake and the pine trees surrounding it. He even thought he might smell the cattle from Walters Ranch, where Levi and his family lived, and the fruit from Tyler Orchard. He knew that was fanciful thinking, and he wasn’t a fanciful guy. He was straightforward. Conscientious. Responsible.

He’d spent nearly all his life trying to live up to the legacy his father established; the one time he’d stepped outside the boundaries, he’d nearly ruined his entire life. Put the local school in financial jeopardy. Stepping outside the bounds wasn’t worth it. He should have remembered that before he’d started meeting Mara on the sly years ago.

Maybe, with Mara back in town, he would finally learn that lesson.

CHAPTER THREE

“AND THAT—” MARA pointed to the tilted neon sign that read The Slippery Slope “—is the town bar where everyone goes on Friday nights. Of course, it’s only Thursday so no big crowds tonight.” One of the green Ps was burned out, along with the word The on the sign, just as it had been when Mara was a teen. Some things never changed. The thought was comforting, especially considering the amount of change she was bringing to Slippery Rock.

“There’s a church on either side of it and one across the street, too.” Cheryl laughed. “God, small towns are great.”

“If the beer doesn’t save you, the brimstone sermons might,” Mara agreed. It was Cheryl’s last night in Slippery Rock, and Mara had convinced her to come out and really see the town. She used an online service to find a local babysitter for Zeke, a teenage girl who didn’t seem to associate the Mara Tyler she was working for with Tyler Orchard outside town.

Mara and Cheryl had dinner at the Rock Café overlooking Slippery Rock Marina, and had been walking around for the past few minutes while Mara pointed out the local landmarks. They weren’t due back at the B and B for another hour.

“If you want to see real small town, you have to go inside the Slope. Mahogany everything, a jukebox from the 1970s that still has mostly old stuff on it and enough neon to light up downtown.”

Cheryl grinned. “I’ll buy the first round, and if I go for a second, remind me I’m driving to Tulsa at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning.”

“I make no promises,” Mara said, holding up her hand.

The bar was mostly empty when they walked in. A few old-timers sat at the tables scattered around the dance floor. No one noticed Mara and Cheryl as they entered. Mara went straight to the bar.

“Do you still have the best apple shandy in southern Missouri?” she asked the older man behind the bar.

Merle flipped the dishrag he always carried over his shoulder as a grin split his face. “Did you get kicked out the one time you tried to con some salesman passing through to buy for you? Never tried that one again, did ya?”

“I’m a fast learner, and now that I’m legal, I’ll have the shandy.” Merle came around the bar quickly and wrapped his arms around Mara’s waist, squeezing her tight. He’d been one of her grandfather’s best friends, and although he readily allowed her and the guys in back in the old days, he’d never served them. Not even the shandy, which was more apple juice or cider than beer.

“Me, too,” Cheryl added, hopping onto a stool at the bar.

“I’ll make it two,” he said. “I hadn’t heard you were back in town.”

That was surprising. Mara had figured CarlaAnn and her gossiping cronies would have spread the news of Mara’s near arrest all over town by now.

“I’m here for work,” Mara said.

“Come to think of it, some civic-minded soul might have mentioned you and a package of stolen cookies?” Merle winked at her as he slid the drinks across the bar. Mara shook her head. She would bet money CarlaAnn or another of her ilk were spreading the news.

“It was a misunderstanding. I’m actually working on Mallard’s security system.”

Merle shrugged and went back to work. Mara took a good look around. A few of the neon signs had changed, but the juke was the same, and the polished dance floor still gleamed in the dim light. Juanita roamed among the tables, waiting on her customers.

“This place is exactly what I thought it would be,” Cheryl said as she turned in her seat. She sipped from the frosty glass. “And the drink is better.”

“He won’t tell anyone his secret, and I’ve never had a better one. Not in any of the überhip clubs, not in the dive joints and not in any of those bottled options you find at grocery stores.”

The jukebox turned on and a wailing, twangy tune warbled through the bar’s speakers.

“You’re not really leaving at the crack of dawn, are you?” Mara asked.

“By ten, that way I’m home by early afternoon. No rush-hour traffic.” Cheryl didn’t like driving in heavy traffic. She’d gotten around as Zeke’s nanny because Mara usually chose to stay in downtown areas where everything was in walking distance.

“You’ll call when you get in?” Mara asked.

Cheryl nodded. “And you’ll call when...well, when the little man does anything of consequence? Or not of consequence?”

“Yes.” Mara would not get maudlin. Cheryl leaving was a good thing. She would love her job with the school district, the wedding planning and the trip with her father. Mara was a grown woman with a good job who could easily hire another nanny for her child if she needed to. Hiring someone as good as Cheryl, that was the problem. Of course, there was the other option. The staying-in-Slippery-Rock option.

She wanted... God, it didn’t matter what she wanted. It mattered that Zeke was well cared for, and she was equipped to do that caring, even after her job took her to another strange hotel in a distant town. A town that didn’t have a decent apple shandy, or a bar that might have been caught in a time warp.

She slid a few bills across the bar but didn’t finish her drink.

Staying in Slippery Rock wasn’t really an option, it was a pipe dream. A second thought, and this wasn’t the time for second thoughts. She’d given in to enough of them over the past two years. She’d nearly called James a dozen times early in her pregnancy, and again after Zeke was born. But telling the man he was a father over the phone seemed wrong, and she had known she wasn’t strong enough to do it in person. Even after her therapist assured her she should face this last demon, she’d told herself that she was too busy, that Zeke was too little, that “later” would have to do.

Cheryl’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You’re going to be okay, you know. You and Zeke, you and your family.”

“I know.”

“Don’t run, not now.”

Cheryl knew almost everything about Mara’s past. She knew about the pranks and graduation night; she knew about the neglect that marked Mara’s first few years of life. She knew everything except who the father of Mara’s baby was, but she had probably guessed it was someone from Slippery Rock.

Mara took a deep breath. “I’m not going to run. I ran from here once before, but I’m not going to run this time.” Mara took one more sip of her drink. “I just want to.” Because not telling James would be so much simpler than telling him.

James with the perfect family history, the perfect job and the ability almost always to do the right thing might never understand why she’d walked away from him. Why she had needed finally to confront those first few years of her life, and why she needed to do that without him in her life.

“Are you ready to leave?” she asked Cheryl. “We haven’t been to the marina yet, but you’ll see most of it from the street.”

Cheryl nodded, and as they started for the door, she left Mara with her thoughts, seeming to understand that she needed to think.

Samson and Maddie Tyler were horrible parents. They had been too wrapped up in one another to give any attention to their children. She could remember many times in whatever cramped apartment Samson was renting when she and Collin had stayed alone while their parents went out. When Amanda, their younger sister, was born, Samson and Maddie were gone even more often. Mara never doubted that her parents loved one another, but the lack of love they had for their children had scarred her. Even after the three of them came to live at the orchard with their grandparents, Mara would worry when Gran would go to the grocery store or when Granddad was late coming in for supper.

As a teen, she covered that worry with a carefree attitude, and in all of her personal relationships, she did a good job of keeping people at a distance. All except one: James Calhoun. She’d never told him the worst of what had happened before she and Collin and Amanda came to Slippery Rock, but she had told him other things.

It was a chance meeting during her first year in grad school and his year at the police academy when things between them went further than friendship. When she’d started thinking of James not just as one of her brother’s cute friends but as a man who made her stomach do funny little flips, and whose touch made her skin burn. After that first weekend, it had been hard to separate herself from him, hard to keep things light and easy between them.

How many times had she heard Maddie on the phone with one girlfriend or another, talking about how crazy she was for her husband, how he made her stomach clench and how his touch burned? Those were the same feelings she had for James, and the knowledge made her nervous.

James was part of the reason she chose the job with Cannon. He made her want things that she knew she couldn’t have, and if she lived on the road while he was tied to Slippery Rock, it was simpler to keep things easy between them. To convince herself that her feelings for him were the result of really good sex or the fact that seeing him only sporadically kept things fresh.

Mara didn’t want her entire life to be wrapped up in one person. She wanted a career, financial security and to know she could take care of herself. When she found out she was pregnant, she went from scared to terrified in a heartbeat.

“Which way?” Cheryl asked, pulling Mara out of her thoughts as they exited the bar.

“Right,” she said, and they started toward the marina. Mara pointed out the pontoon boats and speedboats in the marina and the ample dock space available. Obviously some of the tourists were still staying away after the tornado.

“The air is so clean here,” Cheryl said, breathing deep. “I’m going to soak in as much of it as I can before I head to Tulsa.”

“I’ve always thought they should bottle it. Pine and lake and, I know it’s only my imagination, but I swear there is a hint of fruit under it all.”

“I’m just glad there is no undertone of manure. Didn’t you say there is a big dairy farm here?”

“Other side of town, and out in the country so—” Mara walked into a solid wall of muscle as she spoke. A hint of sandalwood joined those other scents, sending her senses into overdrive. She knew that scent, knew the feel of the muscles under her hands. She tilted her head up and saw those same chocolate-brown eyes that had glared at her less than twenty-four hours ago. “Hi, James,” she said, stepping carefully away from him and his muscles.

“Mara.”

“Are you on patrol?”

“Do you need to be arrested?” His voice held a teasing note, but then his gaze caught on something—or someone—to her right and narrowed. “Hello,” he said, using the voice she associated with his professional side. Kind, courteous. The way he’d spoken to CarlaAnn at the grocery store, not the way he spoke to friends.

“I’m Cheryl—”

“This is Cheryl,” Mara said at the same time Cheryl stuck out her hand. “Cheryl is my n—” She hadn’t told James about his baby on the phone or in the middle of him almost arresting her, and she definitely couldn’t tell him about the child on the sidewalk after visiting a bar. “My friend,” she said, insisting to the quiet voice inside that it wasn’t a lie. Cheryl was her friend, in addition to being her nanny.

“I’m just in town for the night,” Cheryl added helpfully, “and Mara was showing me around a bit.”

Tension crackled between Mara and James. Even in the darkening evening, she could see his eyebrows draw together and his lips form that thin line they’d had at the grocery store the day before. Which was silly. It wasn’t as if Mara was not allowed to have a friend, or she and her friend had been doing anything illegal. Even if they had been, James wasn’t in uniform, which probably meant he was off duty.

“Another security expert for the grocery store?” he asked.

“No, I’m a na—”

“Cheryl works for a school in Tulsa,” Mara said. “She decided to hook up with me before she gets roped into her sister’s wedding plans.”

Cheryl raised an eyebrow at Mara’s explanation. Then understanding dawned in her expression. She turned her attention to the man before them, probably comparing his features to the baby waiting at the B and B. After a moment she nodded like she understood everything.

“I’m going to finish my walk while you two—” she pointed her finger between them “—get reacquainted.”

Mara wanted to call her back, but that was silly. She could exchange a few pleasantries with James in the twilight, with the last rays of sunlight shooting golden flecks into his brown hair. She swallowed.

“So, I guess CarlaAnn is outing me as a kleptomaniac around town,” she began, keeping her voice light.

James watched Cheryl walking down the street for a moment, and the interest in his gaze hit Mara hard in the belly. He couldn’t be interested in Cheryl. That would just be too... What did Mara care who he was interested in? She’d spent the past two years getting over James Calhoun. She didn’t want to get under him again.

“I guess going back into the store to reassure her Mike did hire you, or at least your company, and that you weren’t an actual shoplifter didn’t do the trick.”

“Did you really think the truth would stop CarlaAnn’s rumor mill? But, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.” His gaze remained trained on Cheryl. Annoyed, Mara snapped her fingers. “Hello, I’m over here.”

“What?” He turned to Mara as if realizing she was still standing before him. Just the confidence booster her vanity needed. “Sorry, I just... Is she...” He pointed to Cheryl, who was halfway down the block already. “Are you and she...”

“Friends? Yes, I believe I introduced her as my friend.”

“So that’s it.” The words sounded almost excited, and Mara couldn’t figure out why.

“That’s what?”

“You’re friends. That’s it.” James shook his head. “This is weird. Should I apologize?”

The conversation seemed to be going around in a circle that Mara couldn’t see.

“Aplogize for what?”

“You’re friends. And I kept coming around—”

“Yes, we’re friends. I don’t know what is it about that fact. And why should my having a friend mean you shouldn’t have come around?” This circle talk was making her dizzy. Maybe she hadn’t been ready for Merle’s apple shandy.

“Not that you have a friend. That you have a friend,” he said, emphasizing the word. “I always wondered what made you walk away like that. Now I know. It wasn’t me.”

Mara’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Not a friend. A friend. James thought she was, what, bisexual, and that made her walking out on him okay? “I don’t know what you think you understand, but you are completely and totally off base—”

“It’s okay to be a lesbian—”

“I’m not a lesbian.”

“Okay, a bisexual—”

“If that look means you think you might be joining in a little three-way action now that I’m back in town, think again, Deputy Doofus. I’m not bisexual and I’m not a lesbian. I am a straight, CIS-gendered female who likes men.”

James blinked. “But she’s... And you’re... You said she was here to hook up with you.”

“I didn’t mean hook up hook up. God, why do men assume women can be friends with one another only if they’re also hooking up?”

“It was a natural assumption from the way you introduced her.”

“Are you sure you passed that police academy test? Your deductive reasoning could use a little work.”

“Yes, I’m sure I passed it, and my deductive reasoning isn’t flawed. You insinuated—”

“—that she was my friend. She’s also my employee, and no, that doesn’t mean I pay her for sex.” Mara intentionally lowered her voice even though there were no other people on the sidewalk. “There is no sex between Cheryl and me. I thought you’d already gotten the memo that my preferences lean toward men.”

“I didn’t know friends randomly meet up with other friends in strange towns where one or the other of them is working.”

“Then you obviously don’t have very good friends.” Mara crossed her arms over her chest. “Or you live in a town with a single stoplight, and so do all your friends.”

“Touché.” James put his hands in his pockets. “You look good.”

“So now that I’m not an attached lesbian-slash-bisexual, you’re going straight into hook-up mode?”

James grinned. “It was a statement of fact,” he said, “not an invitation for either of us to go jumping into whatever lake we were swimming in up until two years ago.”

Two years ago. Zeke. Fatherhood. Arguing with James about her sexuality was another no-no in the parenthood talk they needed to have. “Yeah, well, that was a pretty deep lake.”

“I was thinking it was kind of shallow,” he said, reaching to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. “We kept things light and simple, and you walked away.”

She could feel his heat even across the distance between them. Wanted to feel the soft pads of his fingers against the skin of her cheek. Wanted to drink in that sandalwood smell that was James Calhoun. “I...thought you wanted simple.”

“What the hell did I know about what I wanted? Other than more time with you,” he said, and his brown eyes seemed to darken. Mara closed her eyes. She could lean forward just a little bit, could stand on tiptoe and her lips would meet his. She would have him, one more time, in her orbit. God, she wanted that.

She snapped her eyes open. That was not how this was going to happen. She was not hooking up with James one night only to tell him he was a father the next. She couldn’t do that, not to him. Not to Zeke. She was better than this, stronger than the kind of person who let herself get wound up in a man and forgot about all the responsibilities in her life.

Like the baby in her room at the B and B.

“Cheryl is my nanny,” she said, blurting the words out as she took a deliberate step away from James. His eyes widened and she immediately wished the words back.

“You have a nanny?” He cocked his head to the side, confusion evident from the slight drop in his jaw.

“Technically, my son has a nanny. I employ a child care provider who also happens to be a friend.”

“You have a son?” James pulled away from her, both physically and emotionally. She watched it happen in a smooth motion that started when his hand dropped from her hair and ended when his eyebrows beetled in that cold cop expression she’d seen the day before. The same cop expression his father used in any number of school assemblies and during “conversations” with her outside the principal’s office in high school. James was just as good at that condescending look as his father, but coming from Jonathan Calhoun, the look had never hurt like this. Like a bomb had exploded in her belly.

“He’s fourteen months old,” she said, forcing her voice to remain crisp and clear. She could pretend to be just as calculated and cold as he; she would not break in front of him. Mara closely watched his expression as he counted back. Fourteen months, plus nine for the pregnancy, would land him at the conference he’d attended in July in Nashville. She’d been writing a new security protocol for a musical publishing company in Nashville. That was the last time they’d seen one another until this week. Realization hardened his gaze into an impenetrable brick. “Yes,” she said, “I got pregnant in Nashville.”

James took another step back, putting more breathing room between them. “We used protection,” he said, his voice wooden. “Every time.”

“Condoms break. The pill isn’t one hundred percent effective. Even used together, things can happen.” Mara started to reach for him but quickly drew her hand back. He wouldn’t welcome her touch, not now. Maybe not ever again, and she was going to have to deal with that. She hadn’t wanted to tell him in the middle of the street, but she’d felt cornered. She’d used their son to put a wall between them, and she hated herself for that.

Her hands itched to touch him, to comfort him. She crossed her arms over her chest, and tried to put all the remorse she felt into her voice. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was almost five months along.”

“And, what, between that five-month mark and now you couldn’t pick up a phone?”

His expression closed. No anger, no annoyance. Not even panic at finding out he was a father. There was nothing, and the nothing made Mara’s chest ache.

“I couldn’t tell you on the phone,” she began.

James snorted derisively. “No, you didn’t want to tell me on the phone,” he said and spun on his heel.

“James, wait,” she called after him, but he kept walking. She couldn’t move. At the corner, he turned. When he was gone from her sight, it was as if an engine turned on inside, making her legs move to follow. She hurried after him, but he had disappeared by the time Mara reached the corner. “Damn it,” she whispered, and smacked her hand against the brick of the building. She winced and shook her hand. “Damn it.”

* * *

JAMES PACED THE living room of the small house he’d bought overlooking the lake. It sat on the far western edge of Water Street, and the view of the calm lake never failed to center him. To remind him of the things he wanted. A good career. A family. Making his parents proud. Being a good friend.

Tonight the calmness of the water mocked him. He had a son. A son he had never met because, when Mara walked away, he let her.

There were things he could have done to find her, but instead of going after her, instead of forcing her to talk to him, he’d let her walk away.

And tonight he’d walked away from her because he didn’t know what to do with any of this. Her coming back to town. How she made him feel, even after two years. The child he didn’t know.

Dear God, he had a son, and he didn’t even know what the child looked like. He didn’t have Mara’s phone number to call her to apologize.

To ask her if he could meet the kid. Did he want to meet him?

James didn’t have to think, he already knew the answer to the question. He wanted to meet his child.

The sky had turned a brilliant orange, the last rays of sunlight glinting off the surface of the lake like a million tiny diamonds. Like the diamond he’d bought two years ago. The one currently hidden in the oak credenza that had belonged to his great-grandfather when he was sheriff of Wall County.

James had fooled himself, thinking that the on-again, off-again relationship with Mara went off simply because of the distance. That weekend in Nashville, when they had wandered Music Row for hours, when their bodies had come together like puzzle pieces, had been different from their other encounters. Mara was softer that trip. She’d talked a little more about missing her family. He made the mistake of believing her homesickness was about him as well as her grandmother and siblings. A sunset not unlike this one had made him think of the family he wanted, and for the first time he added a face to the shadowy figure of the woman he’d always envisioned by his side.

It was always Mara.

And then she was gone, and a hotel bellhop arrived to pack her things. James had searched the airport and train station, but hadn’t found her. He’d called at least a hundred times before getting that first ‘this number is no longer in service’ message. That was when he tried email. Over and over and over until he realized she wasn’t going to answer.

James pulled open the small desk drawer next to the envelope slot. The little black jeweler’s box had dust on it, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off. Instead, he shut the drawer a little too hard, and a small corner of wood popped off the drawer face. He picked up the shard and tossed it into the trash can.

This was not what he wanted, not what he needed. Not now. Two years ago...he had been crazy in love enough to try to make it work, at least. But now there was too much at stake. James grabbed a beer from the fridge, then crossed to the back porch to drink and watch the sun go down. The beer was icy, the last rays of sun hot, yet they didn’t soothe him. He was still twisted up over Mara’s revelation.

He might still be attracted to Mara, but he’d gotten over loving her long ago. He was now the acting sheriff, and she’d nearly been arrested yesterday. It wouldn’t matter that she’d done nothing wrong. Perception was what mattered, and thanks to CarlaAnn the perception was that Mara Tyler was caught shoplifting her first day back in town.

Then, there was the complication from their graduation night escapade.

Over all of that was the baby. He wasn’t in love with Mara, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think only people in love could raise a child together, but did he even register in her thought process over the past year? He had gone along with Mara’s insistence of keeping things light and friendly. He hadn’t chased after her when she walked away. There was no way he could walk away from a child, though, and there was no way he could trust that Mara wouldn’t disappear on him again.

Everything about seeing her, about this situation was a mess.

The fact that Mara hid the baby from him for more than a year, and the fact that their years-long series of booty calls led to a baby? Those things would lead to gossip, and gossip about the present would quickly reignite gossip about the past, which could lead to his part in the school bus prank.

Thousands of dollars in damage had been inflicted on the bus fleet because, instead of just leaving the lights on as Mara had planned, James took it upon himself to deflate the front tires on several of the buses. The weight of the vehicles on the wheel wells had warped them beyond repair. The cost of the repairs pushed what would have been an annoyance for the school district into the realm of felony. James had anonymously paid restitution for the bus damage, and the statute of limitations was long past, so he couldn’t actually be charged with the felony. Still, who would vote for a sheriff who’d committed a felony—even an uncharged felony?

Who would want even a deputy with that kind of history, and without a job, what kind of father could he be?

He finished the beer and let the bottle hang from his fingertips while the porch swing gently swayed in the evening air.

There was the possibility the baby might not be his. James didn’t like to think of Mara with other men, but the fact was, the two of them hadn’t been in an exclusive relationship. They hadn’t been in a relationship at all. They’d hooked up throughout the Midwest whenever they were in the same areas. But then he returned to Slippery Rock and she went on with her hotel-hopping life. She could have had a man in every town.

James rolled his eyes. Now he was acting like some cheated-on wife in a bad movie. Mara was a lot of things, but she wasn’t the type to have a man in every city in the Midwest. If Mara said the baby was his, then it was, and he would have to deal with that. Would have to deal with the schmucks her parents had been and the damage they’d done to her. Would have to deal with her envy of his traditional childhood. Would have to deal with his parents, who had very specific ideas about what the life of James Calhoun should look like. He doubted those ideas included a woman like Mara.

The sun sank past the pine and spruce and oak trees lining the lakeshore, throwing the water into darkness.

What either of his parents thought about him having a child with Mara Tyler, though, didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had the child. Mara was the mother. James was the father. It might not be the family he’d envisioned when he bought this house, but it was the family he had.

He would figure out a way to make this work.

CHAPTER FOUR

MARA STOOD LOOKING around her suite at the B and B on Friday morning, trying to find anything that could delay her trip to the orchard. There was nothing. The beds were made, the breakfast dishes on the tray in the hallway. Zeke was clean and dry and happy. Cheryl had left a half hour before. There was nothing more Mara could do on the Mallard’s account until Mike returned from vacation on Monday. She straightened the shampoo and body wash containers on the small vanity.

She had been in town for only a few days but had yet to make the trip to the orchard. Had spoken to Gran and Collin briefly on the phone once, but hadn’t told them about Zeke. Hadn’t told them about James.

All that would change in less than twenty minutes. She could only hope they wouldn’t walk away from her as James had done last night.

There was a big chance they would, and that would be on her. Because she hadn’t told them how very much she had missed them over the past year and a half. She had just cut them out. She’d invented reasons to cancel trips to the orchard, skipping phone calls and video chats. She had avoided them just as she had avoided James.

Damn it, if she could do the past two years over, she would have done them differently. Scratch that—not just the past two. The past ten, because from the moment she left Slippery Rock for college, she had been avoiding any kind of emotional entanglement, especially those that might mean pain. She kept their interaction superficial on those quick holiday visits. If her time with them wasn’t light and fun, her family would realize just how much she wanted to be part of their unit, and that would make it harder to stay away. Back then, she couldn’t be part of them, though, not without putting James’s future at risk because of that stupid prank. With her out of town, the investigation into what had happened that night had gone cold. But the town had their assumptions and even those quick trips home at first had started the talk up again. Then, once she was pregnant, she couldn’t because that would entail revealing the baby’s father. Telling them about James would put her—and him—right in the middle of town gossip. Could land one or the other of them in jail, and what good would that do? Was there a statute of limitations on vandalism?

Mara crossed the room to fluff the pillows on the bed and watched Zeke for a moment. He was sitting up, banging his baby fists against the tiny piano keys on his favorite mirrored activity set. His hair was the same color as James’s, but his eyes were more hazel. He was a good boy, a smart boy, and he deserved a father who would love him.

James was meant to be a lawman, destined to be sheriff. At some point he would find a pretty woman who would make the perfect sheriff’s wife, who would work with local charities alongside the ministers’ wives. He deserved that kind of life and, while she might crave the June Cleaver fantasy of life, Mara knew fairy tales rarely came true for people like her. If James couldn’t love Zeke, then she would love Zeke enough for both of them. But James had to be the one to walk away, and not just because he’d been caught off guard by the news. She would have to talk to him again, and soon. Right now, though, she needed to talk to her family.

She would have to face not only her lies of omission to James but also her family’s judgment. And she could only hope the gossip about graduation night would stay buried. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter that she was now a security expert or that James was a fine sheriff’s deputy. The only thing that would matter to Slippery Rock was that they had put the school in jeopardy.

Once she repaired her relationship with her family, she would fix this thing with James. Would make him understand that she’d needed to get herself into an emotionally healthy place before she could face him. God, that sounded like a lame, made-up excuse. She really hadn’t thought this whole thing through. There were thousands of times she could have told James he was a father. Phone call, text message, Skype, social media. She had all his contact information.

And if those weren’t immature solutions to an all-too-adult problem, Mara wasn’t sure what was. Her therapist would have a field day with her trying to tell James he was a father by cell phone, social media or Skype. She might as well fully revert to her teenage self and break up with a guy by text message.

She considered contacting him to set up one of their clandestine meetings, and then telling him once she had him alone. That had seemed just as awful as telling him over the phone. So she didn’t call at all. The longer she’d put off contacting him, the harder that call became until she’d convinced herself she would simply go home to break the news. There had been plenty of reasons not to come to Slippery Rock—her work, her therapy, Zeke cutting teeth, having a bad cold. Damn it, it was Cheryl quitting that had finally started Mara seriously considering coming back. Not because she needed babysitters, but because of Cheryl’s commitment to her family. Mara wanted that connection, that commitment for herself. Then the tornado hit, and she’d known she couldn’t keep making excuses. She had to tell James. Had to face her family. She couldn’t continue to be the kind of runaway her own parents were.

James had already walked away, and, God, why suddenly did James not wanting to be part of Zeke’s life hurt so bad? Until she’d seen him do it last night, the possibility of him stepping out of Zeke’s life had seemed so much simpler than sharing parenting duties.

There was every chance her family would walk away, too.

“Okay, Mara, you have the plan. Now get out of this B and B and set things in motion,” she said, standing. She turned off Zeke’s activity stand, and he shook his fists at her in annoyance. “We have an appointment,” she said, and he grinned as if he knew what that meant. Probably it was just gas. He still smiled when he had gas.

Mara blew out a breath, picked up Zeke and slung the colorful tote she used as a diaper bag over her shoulder. She could keep looking for a reason to stay holed up in the B and B or she could be a grown-up and face the music with her family.

She was saving the rest of her conversation with James for another time, though. After last night, she was unprepared to tell him he had no responsibilities where Zeke was concerned. Where she was concerned. She gently tweaked Zeke’s nose.

“Okay, little guy, here we go. Don’t worry. They’re going to love you,” she said, hating the slight emphasis on that last word. Gran hadn’t turned her, Collin and Amanda away when they were little, but Mara was an adult now. An adult who shouldn’t have kept this part of her life secret for so long.

Zeke put his pudgy hands on her cheeks and mumbled something that sounded peculiarly like, “Don’t worry, mama.” It was impossible. Zeke had two words in his vocabulary at this point, and neither was don’t, worry or ma. He said dog periodically and had said ball a handful of times.

Still, his mumbling steadied her, and she rested her forehead on his for a moment, breathing in the scent of powder and lotion and little boy. After a moment, her stomach muscles relaxed, and breathing no longer felt as if she were dragging air through passages lined with sharpened sticks.

Downstairs, she locked Zeke into his car seat, then buckled herself into the driver’s seat. He waved his hands as he watched the world go by out the rear window. The narrow streets of downtown Slippery Rock rolled by, opening up to the wider state highway that led to the orchard. Despite being a weekday, there wasn’t much traffic on the road. She passed a couple of farm trucks and a few minivans, but the cattle and alpacas—she would have to ask Collin when alpacas had come to Slippery Rock—outnumbered the humans she passed. Everyone lifted their fingers in the familiar steering wheel wave she remembered from her teenage years.

No one staffed the small roadside stand her grandfather built the year Collin turned twelve and she turned eleven, and she pulled into the drive leading to the orchard.

A few stumps were still visible in the apple orchard, but saplings outnumbered the stumps. She spotted the red roof of the big barn in the distance, and as her SUV cleared the drive, the old house came into view. Red-roofed like the barn, the two-story farmhouse hadn’t changed. A porch swing rocked in the light breeze. The steps leading up to the door were lined with Gran’s snapdragons. The tall oak still stood in the middle of the drive with a rope swing hanging from a branch.

She’d learned to swing on the old tractor seat. Had pushed Amanda when she was little. Had hidden in the branches with Collin when their parents had shown up unexpectedly one spring. She and Collin had been petrified their parents would make them go to whatever cramped and dirty apartment they lived in, but a few hours later their parents drove away. Granddad came to sit in the swing, pretending to talk to himself as he reassured the two of them that they didn’t have to go anywhere.

She wanted to go inside. Wanted to push open the door and announce herself like she belonged there. Well, Gran had always said this was her home.

Mara gathered Zeke and the baby bag and walked up the steps and into the house. The same hardwood floors greeted her, the same overstuffed furniture. The TV was still in the corner near the fireplace, the sofa under the big picture window. To her left, the dining room led to the kitchen and the family room.

“Anybody home?” she called out, because usually there was some kind of noise inside the house, but today there was nothing.

“Back here, sweetheart.” She heard her grandmother’s voice from the kitchen and started in that direction. “Just putting a pie for the weekend farmers’ market in the oven. They’re finishing up the new roof this afternoon and—” Gran stopped talking when Mara crossed the threshold. “You have a baby.”

Gran’s blue eyes, so similar to Mara’s own, widened. Zeke waved his fist in the air, then buried his face in Mara’s shoulder. He was a happy, well-adjusted baby, but new people always made him a bit shy.

“I do.” Mara was unsure what to say, how to read the shock on Gran’s face. Good shock? She seemed a little pale, and the knuckles had turned white from their tight grip on the countertop. Gran broke her hip earlier this year, and Collin had been very worried. Mara didn’t want Gran to collapse. Maybe she should have waited until Collin was at the house before walking in. “Gran, why don’t you sit down?” Mara took her grandmother’s arm, leading her to the Formica-topped table while balancing Zeke on her hip.

Gran brushed Mara’s hands away. “You have a baby.” She squeezed Mara’s hand. “He has your grandfather’s chin.” Then she smacked her hand against Mara’s shoulder. She winced, more from surprise than pain. “Why didn’t you tell us, Butter Bean?” Her eyes narrowed and she glared at Mara for a moment, but behind the glare was something that looked a lot like love. Support.

This, this almost immediate acceptance was beyond any of Mara’s expectations. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was going to be okay. It would take time, especially with James, but things would work out. She could do this. She would do this.

“Mara?” Gran’s voice brought her back to the cozy kitchen, and she sat in the chair across from her grandmother.

All the reasons she’d kept Zeke from her family tumbled through her mind. She wanted to get herself together. She hadn’t told James. But all of those reasons skirted around the truth she’d been afraid to admit even to herself. And in this kitchen, the one where she’d eaten butter beans and declared they were the only bean she would ever like, where she’d cried when the school put her in the advanced program, where she’d run after every minor and major scrape in her life, she couldn’t tell a half-truth.

“I was afraid,” she said. She hadn’t even told the therapist about her fear. That Gran would think badly of her, that this would be the thing that caused her family finally to turn away from her. She knew it was silly. Babies brought families together, at least in books and on television. In her specific case, though, babies made adults do crazy, irresponsible, unforgivable things.

Gran’s soft hand cupped her cheek, and her expression softened. “Butter Bean, what did you have to be afraid of?”

So many things. That she would ruin her life or James’s. That Gran wouldn’t understand.

“That I couldn’t do it. That I wasn’t made to be a mother. That you’d be disappointed.” She paused, ran her hand over Zeke’s baby-fine hair and said, “That I’d leave all the child-rearing in your more-than-capable hands.”

Gran clucked at that. “When have you ever left anything you really wanted for someone else to handle?”

“I’m so like them, like Samson and Maddie, though. I like traveling, I like living out of my suitcase, I like not being tied down—”

“I could never be disappointed in you. Worried for you, yes. Disappointed? Not in a million years.” Gran seemed to consider her next words carefully. “I love my son, but I stopped...trying to understand Samson a long time ago. And you are like him, but in all the good ways. You inherited his excitement for the unknown, his natural curiosity. He could never seem to find a balance, but you? Sweetheart, you travel for work, but you’ve worked for the same company since college. You might not live here or visit often enough for my liking, but you call every week. You remember birthdays and anniversaries. You are a responsible, kindhearted woman, and I’m proud that I had a hand in raising you.”

Mara smiled and leaned into Gran’s gentle touch. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m here now. Zeke and I are going to stop being afraid of things. We’re going to face everything head-on.”

Gran put her hand over her heart and her eyes glistened. “Zeke?” The word was a whisper in the quiet room.

Mara nodded. “I named him for Granddad. Ezekiel Tyler—”

The back door opened before she could say his last name, which was probably just as well. Until she got things hammered out between her and James, it was best to keep that to herself. She turned and saw her brother, looking tanned and relaxed, in the doorway.

Collin looked from Gran to Mara and the baby. He blinked and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and then stood a bit straighter. Collin tilted his head to the side as if considering all the options for a baby being in their kitchen.

“I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you had something to tell us,” he said. Collin put the ball cap he wore in the orchard on a peg in the mudroom, then continued into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and took a long drink.

“Collin,” Gran began, but Mara stopped her.

“It’s okay. Yeah, pretty big news. Something I thought needed to be shared in person,” Mara said. Her voice shook only a little, and for that she was thankful. Gran was the first hurdle in her family; Collin would be the second and probably the biggest. She and he had been close until she became pregnant. “I have a son.”

“He doesn’t look like a newborn.”

Mara swallowed. “I know. I had some things... I needed to figure out a few things. Before I told you and Gran and Amanda.”

“And the things are figured out now?”

Mara opened her mouth to say yes, but she didn’t want to lie. “Mostly.”

“You’re okay?”

She nodded. “Good job, good health benefits.” Mara wasn’t sure what more she could tell either Gran or Collin without first talking to James. “And now I’m home.”

Collin put the water bottle down and crossed the room. He put his index finger under Zeke’s chin, and the little boy grinned at him. “He looks like Amanda did when she was a baby.”

“He has your grandfather’s chin,” Gran added. “And his name.”

Collin’s eyes widened, and Mara nodded. “I call him Zeke.”

“Hello, Zeke,” Collin said after a long moment. “I’m your uncle, Collin.”

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