Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Zena Valentine

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

That night, when she slipped between the sheets, she knew Hamish had slept in the bed while she was gone.

The sheets were clean and everything was in order, but there was something…. Just something. A faint scent of him from the blankets, maybe, or just the feeling that his large body had lain there last night and the nights before that.

She lay awake a long time with unwanted thoughts. Someday, Hamish would lie in this bed with his wife—another woman—and Brenda Jane Dolliver would be out of his life, only a memory.

She simply wasn’t wife material. Just as well. Even if she wanted to marry him, he wouldn’t have her….

Dear Reader,

The holiday season is a time for family, love…and miracles! We have all this—and more!—for you this month in Silhouette Romance. So in the gift-giving spirit, we offer you these wonderful books by some of the genre’s finest:

A workaholic executive finds a baby in his in-box and enlists the help of the sexy single mom next door in this month’s BUNDLES OF JOY, The Baby Came C.O.D., by RITA Award-winner Marie Ferrarella. Both hero and heroine are twins, and Marie tells their identical siblings’ stories in Desperately Seeking Twin, out this month in our Yours Truly line.

Favorite author Elizabeth August continues our MEN! promotion with Paternal Instincts. This latest installment in her SMYTHESHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS series features an irresistible lone wolf turned doting dad! As a special treat, Carolyn Zane’s sizzling family drama, THE BRUBAKER BRIDES, continues with His Brother’s Intended Bride—the title says it all!

Completing the month are three classic holiday romances. A world-weary hunk becomes The Dad Who Saved Christmas in this magical tale by Karen Rose Smith. Discover The Drifter’s Gift in RITA Award-winning author Lauryn Chandler’s emotional story. Finally, debut author Zena Valentine weaves a tale of transformation—and miracles—in From Humbug to Holiday Bride.

So treat yourself this month—and every month!—to Silhouette Romance!

Happy holidays,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

From Humbug to Holiday Bride
Zena Valentine

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mom and Aunt Vi. Thanks.

ZENA VALENTINE

has had a career goal since childhood to “have adventures.” Throughout her adventures in journalism, cosmetics, construction, parenting, corporate financial relations, photography, sports car racing, gardening, flying, cooking and real estate, she has carried a lifelong love of writing. She likens writing a romance novel to restarting an airplane at five thousand feet (“exciting”). Nowadays she divides her time between the north woods of Minnesota and the desert country of Nevada. Her journalist daughter and musician son are off having their own adventures.

Chapter One

Hamish Chandler had never felt quite so helpless. Or useless.

The young woman lay on the cranked-up hospital bed, its top slightly elevated, her dark hair matted, her tanned skin contrasting sharply with the shades and textures of white that engulfed her. “She is, uh, was, a photojournalist,” Mrs. Billings had said. “She rides horses, plays golf and tennis very well. And she skis.” And then Mrs. Billings had blushed slightly and added, “I think she breaks a lot of hearts, too, that girl.”

He couldn’t see that the young woman before him was anything like a heartbreaker, not with the bruises and scratch marks covering half of her face. She wasn’t skinny, probably because of her athletic ability. Even after three weeks in a hospital bed, there was substance to what he could see of her.

She was sleeping, and he felt a voyeuristic awkwardness in staring at her, yet he was unwilling to awaken her. The shape she was in, he thought, sleep must be a blessed escape.

“Please, please, see what you can do,” Mrs. Billings had pleaded with glistening eyes the day before. “I don’t think she’s much for religion, but maybe, after coming so close to dying, maybe…”

He could see the young woman had probably come close to dying if she was still in bad shape after three weeks of recovery. She lay so motionless, her limbs slack, her graceful, long-fingered hand resting palm up with her fingers curled on the pillow next to her head. He sank into the chair alongside the bed, filled with an odd longing to comfort her and take away the pain.

Visiting patients in the hospital was a regular part of his job, and he liked it because for the most part the people he visited seemed so pleased that he was there. Visiting her, however, had little to do with his job. He had come because Mrs. Billings had been so emotional. And insistent. “How do you know her?” he had asked his graying housekeeper. Over the years, Mrs. B had become more than a housekeeper. She had seen him through crises, sadness and death, and now she helped raise his daughters. She’d told him that B. J. Dolliver, the woman lying wounded in the hospital bed, had been a college classmate of her niece, Deborah.

“I knew all about her, even if I only saw her a few times when Deb brought her home for holidays. I feel, though, as if I know her well,” she’d added sadly. “It’s been easy to keep track of her since she left college.”

B. J. Dolliver, it seemed from tabloid reports, had at age twenty-seven collected nearly as many photographic awards as she had men. “She was really something,” Mrs. B had said. “When she was with us during vacations, Deb said there was never a dull moment with B.J. around.”

Their former close friendship, however, had not been enough for Deb to gain entry to B.J.’s room to offer comfort.

“Deborah’s a nurse and works in the hospital,” Mrs. B had said, “but B.J. won’t see anyone. Not even her own family. Her mother is dead, but her father lives on the West Coast. Deb thinks B.J. hasn’t told him.” Mrs. B’s eyes had been narrowed with concern. “Deb thinks because B.J.’s face was badly damaged, she doesn’t want anyone to see her. Deb could have just walked into her room anyway, but knowing B.J., she decided to respect her privacy.”

Mrs. B had described B. J. Dolliver’s brush with death after she drove her German sports car over a cliff, and the injuries that her orthopedic surgeon said would prevent her from ever walking again under her own power. “She’s spittin’ mad. Deb said the nurses don’t like to be near her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Hamish had concurred, then finally asked, “Exactly why do you want me to see her?”

There was a searching hesitation before Mrs. Billings had answered on a long, drawn-out breath. “Because when she finds out she’s never going to walk again, she’ll just go out and finish the job. Deb says B. J. Dolliver can’t live without the full use of her body.” She expelled the words as though the sentence would die unfinished if she stopped to breathe. Her last few words came out choked. “Frankly, I’ve always had a soft spot for B.J. She seemed to be so, well, so…alone.”

B. J. Dolliver’s parents divorced when she was a small child, and her mother died shortly afterward, Mrs. B had explained. B.J. was raised by her father, Patrick Dolliver, the owner of a country-wide, sports equipment franchise.

“She spent her young life trying to prove to that man that she’s as good as any of his jock heroes,” Mrs. B had scoffed. “And a lot he ever cared….”

So the Reverend Hamish Chandler, pastor of Trinity Union Church in Kolstad, Minnesota, familiarly known as simply the Kolstad Church, let his concentration fall once again to the woman lying on the bed. He wondered why this particular assignment had been put in his path, especially now, especially today, when the second anniversary of his beloved wife’s death had just passed.

He sat in uncomfortable silence, unable to look away from the battered body of the sleeping woman.

“Spinal injuries,” Mrs. Billings had said, obviously quoting from Deborah, the nurse. “Pelvis broken into pieces, too many to put ‘em all back together. Broken right shoulder, smashed right arm, facial lacerations.”

He saw the lacerations, the tiny scar on her cheek, the healing scrapes on her neck. Then he looked at her left arm, the good one resting above the covers with the fingers curled over her palm. He saw where stitches had been removed and where myriad small cuts had been left to mend without stitches.

His gaze roamed to the clear collapsing sack attached to the back of her right wrist, and the small trapeze suspended a foot above her chest. As a photojournalist, she had naturally been a physically active young woman with two strong legs and arms and the agility to climb and jump carrying the equipment of her profession. It was nearly impossible to envision her as Mrs. B had described, running and confident, capturing the world and its people through her lens.

He clasped his hands together between his spread knees and felt sadness overwhelm him for a vibrant life nearly destroyed. Nearly. But not completely, for she still lived, and was recovering.

He had seen worse, of course, during his violent life as a teen. Much worse. Before he was fifteen, he had come to accept that people were wounded, maimed and killed during the course of the fight for survival. Thank God that life was in the dark past, forever behind him.

What would he say to her? What was there to say? He didn’t have a clue what he was meant to do here, and yet he’d been sent, so there must be a purpose.

A flash of pink caught his eye and he turned to see a nurse slip quietly through the door, a pale pink sweater draped over her shoulders. She smiled at him and lifted the woman’s limp left wrist to take a pulse.

Her patient’s eyes suddenly flew open, staring in fear and confusion. Her body twitched once, and then again more violently, and Hamish heard a soft “No!” escape her lips before her eyes pinched shut in a harsh grimace. Her body arched, and she quivered in the grip of a suffering he could not fathom.

He saw the nurse’s hand rest gently on the patient’s abdomen, and she whispered something, while her other hand gestured in jerking movements for him to leave the room. He slipped out the door just as the woman’s groan broke into an eerie deep-throated howl that sent needles up his back. It was a lament of pain so deep he felt it had been wrenched from her very soul, and he found himself leaning helplessly against the wall outside her room until it subsided into soft gasps and moans.

The nurse rushed past him a few moments later. “Spasm,” she muttered.

Hamish stepped back into the room and moved to the side of her bed where she lay, face beaded with sweat, eyes glistening, her breathing ragged. “What can I do?” he asked.

“Go away,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and whispery. She closed her eyes to reject him, and he saw that she was forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly. He saw the pulse in her neck slamming rapidly under her skin.

He took the wet washcloth from the stand alongside her pillow and held it under hot water from the goosenecked faucet Then he squeezed it out and laid it across her forehead. He felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath when the cloth touched her skin. He felt her relax a little, then he used the warm, wet cloth to daub at her face.

“You new here?” she asked in the same hoarse whisper, her dazed hazel-green eyes fixing on him with an effort.

“Sort of,” he replied, giving her a weak grin.

“Lay it over my face. It feels good,” she whispered.

He did, as gently as he could. After a few seconds, the pulse in her neck began to slow, and her left hand came up and took the washcloth away. She flopped her hand backward and let the cloth drop so that Hamish had to jump to catch it before it hit the floor.

“Where’s your uniform?” she rasped.

He grinned, then watched her raise her left hand and fumble to reach the little trapeze overhead. “I’m not a doctor,” he said before reaching up to adjust the apparatus lower so she could reach it.

“Then go away,” she ordered, and turned her head away.

But when he looked down moments later, she was staring at him with barely suppressed rage and wariness. He looked away from her face. Why shouldn’t she be wary, lying helpless for three weeks flat on her back and knowing nothing would ever be the same? And he was a stranger to her.

“My name is Hamish Chandler. Deborah Billings’s aunt asked me to see you,” he said as he made a final adjustment to the trapeze. “Is that better?” He gave the apparatus a yank.

She frowned at him, then raised her left hand and gripped the bar. Her lips turned up at the corners, more of a sneer than a smile, but the change was encouraging nonetheless. She was a fighter all right, Hamish thought.

“You ought to be one,” she whispered.

He dug his hands into his pockets. “One what?”

“Doctor.”

“Yes, I appreciate your keen observation. It took a great deal of skill to do that properly.”

She didn’t acknowledge his attempt at humor. “And the cloth. Do it again,” she rasped.

He swished the cloth under the hot water and twisted out the excess moisture. This time he placed it in her left hand, and she flopped it over her face, slowly patting it over her features in circular motions, avoiding the small jagged scar on the right side. After it had cooled, she once again flopped it over the edge of the bed for him to catch if he could. He interrupted its fall and laid it on the stand close to her pillow. “More?” he asked.

“Got a mirror?” she asked, still whispering.

“Afraid not.”

“Look around. In the drawers over there.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Why?”

“Damn you.” She pressed her eyes closed for a few seconds. When she opened them again, they were blazing with frustration. “I want to see.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she whispered.

“You’ve been here three weeks, and I gather they haven’t let you see yourself. I don’t have the authority to countermand those orders, Miss Dolliver.”

She grimaced. “Who in the hell are you anyway? If Deborah sent you, you’re supposed to be cheering me up.” The words were spat with all the force it took her to get them out. Then she reached again for the bar above her, gripped it, then let it go.

“Deborah didn’t send me,” he said. “Her aunt asked me to stop by and see you.” He wondered whether he should explain who he was. He decided to go with full disclosure. “I’m pastor of the Kolstad Church.”

She muttered an expletive that he ignored. “I suppose you’re going to pray over me,” she jeered.

“I suppose I will.”

She reached for the bar again and gripped it until her knuckles were white, then released it, lowering her hand to her side. Her eyes were as hard as cold iron, but he saw something else barely detectable lurking there. It was fear.

She swallowed hard and winced. “So, why did Deborah’s aunt send you? If she did.” Her skepticism was as heavily evident as the dripping sarcasm. She closed her lids momentarily, then lifted them half-mast. “I remember Deb’s aunt,” she whispered affectionately.

“She’s my housekeeper, and she’s quite fond of you. Apparently, your friendship with her niece was significant to them both when you were in college.”

“Deb works here. She could visit anytime. But she’s a friend. She respects my privacy,” she whispered pointedly. “I don’t want visitors.”

He paused, letting the hospital noises from the hallway fill the space. “I know,” he said finally.

She glared at him. But he saw her struggling to be fierce, and he sensed something softer behind it all. She seemed hardly able to hold her eyes open.

“No visitors,” she rasped again. “Deborah knows that.”

“They care about you,” he said.

“Oh, damn,” she cursed softly, her eyes closing in a grimace.

He thought for a moment it was another spasm coming on and was about to bolt for the nurses’ desk. Then he realized she was distressed by something else. Once again he found himself the object of those eyes the color of fall grass.

“Why you?” she demanded.

He frowned, wondering why she was upset. What was she reading into his visit? While he wondered, she came to her own worst conclusion.

“What are they trying to tell me, sending a minister? Am I going to die? After all this, am I dying anyway?” He was struck by her bitterness.

“Of course not,” he said. “You’re getting better.” He wondered suddenly how the conversation had become so complex. “I think your doctor would have told you about your condition.”

“He says I’m…oh, what he really meant was I’m…crippled!” Hamish could barely hear the last word. He felt her horror and leaned forward to take her left hand in his. It was small and soft, cool and clammy.

“I don’t know your official prognosis,” he said as gently as he could, watching a large tear slowly squeeze out from under long, dark lashes and make its way toward her ear. “Please don’t read more into my visit than is intended.”

“Then why are you here?” she demanded.

He rubbed her small hand in his large one and looked at the many small cuts and scratches that were now healing. She didn’t pull her hand away, and he was strangely pleased by that, as if he needed the comfort of holding her hand as much as she might need his comfort in doing so.

“Ah, dear lady,” he said. “I’m not sure. Yet.”

He watched her lids fly open, sharp curiosity in her gaze. She was studying his face, her lips twitching with words she apparently wanted to say but was holding back.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “But I’m not even sure why I’m here except that I was touched by Mrs. Billings’s concern for you.”

“Touched,” she scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Touched.”

She let him keep her hand, and the action took the sting out of her words, as if her mouth had spoken and the rest of her denied what it had said.

Hamish identified with the bitterness and sarcasm he heard. It had been many years, but he remembered when he had greeted every stranger with contempt and mistrust, ready to fight against any real or imagined threat to his survival. That was life on the streets, every man for himself, trusting no one. Ever. Remembering how it had been then, he inhaled deeply and smiled a sad smile.

What, he wondered, could have brought her to such bitterness when she had so much in her life—luxury, adventure, success? Her bone-chilling resentment was coming from some place deeper than he could see.

“Are you here to convince me my recovery is hopeless?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“No, I haven’t heard your medical prognosis,” he said again.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, and pulled her hand away, reaching once again for the bar above her. He found it distracting the way she kept playing with the bar, gripping it, letting it go. But then, it was her only exercise as far as he could see. Nothing else moved. Only her left arm and hand. Her body twitched slightly. She paled and whispered, “Oh, God,” then quickly inhaled slow, deep breaths.

The nurse in the pink sweater slipped quietly into the room and lost no time in giving B.J. an injection in her left arm. “There,” she said, pulling down the wrinkled cotton sleeve that draped to B.J.’s elbow. “Hopefully that will keep those nasty spasms away. Just in the nick of time, too, I see.” She looked up at Hamish and smiled. “Are you a relative?”

Now that was a good question, he thought, and he struggled with an answer. “Friend” sounded false and patronizing, and “acquaintance” was too contrived. So he said simply, “I’m a pastor,” even though he was in a way pulling rank. He knew they hardly ever evicted pastors, even at the request of patients.

B.J. said nothing, but hardly seemed aware of him as she drew in an unsteady breath. Then she gripped his right hand and held it against her chest where he could feel the fast thumping of her heart and the stark tension in her body despite her recent dosage of medication. Her clasp was surprisingly strong, but clearly she was desperate and in acute emotional distress.

He waited a few minutes while the medication took effect. He studied the delicate bone structure of her stubborn chin and felt a twitch in his chest.

She opened her eyes. “He’s wrong,” she whispered finally. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to walk. And I’m going to run. I’ll show them they’re wrong.”

She was a fighter, and he was deeply grateful that she hadn’t wanted to give up and die as her friend Deborah feared, but was determined to make herself whole again. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could make a liar out of her physician. He willed with all his heart and spirit that she was right.

He felt her frustration and her anger. And her defiance.

He also felt the softness of her breasts beneath the back of his hand as she clutched it hard against her. It was an unconscious gesture on her part, he knew, a matter of hanging on to whatever support was available, of gleaning strength and some tiny measure of comfort from the only source offered.

Still, it had been a long time since he’d felt the softness of a woman’s body, and for a fleeting moment Hamish was aware that he missed the intimacy, and he thought perhaps it was time to open himself to the possibility of finding another wife. In recent months, there had certainly been enough hints from his friends in the congregation that he should be thinking of remarriage.

He would only marry for love, though, in spite of his circumstances, and he dreaded the thought of all the rituals and uncertainties involved in meeting and dating. He still couldn’t imagine being married to anyone but Maralynn, although she had been dead for two years now, and their daughters seemed barely to remember her.

His attention was stirred by the woman on the bed when she released his hand, and reached up to grip the bar. He thought that she was going to try to pull herself up as muscles flexed in her arm, but she abruptly lowered her hand again.

“You can go now,” she announced in her husky whisper, looking up at the ceiling.

“I thought you’d say that,” Hamish replied, letting his elbows rest on his thighs so his hands hung between his knees.

“Your job is done here.”

“You think so?” he asked mildly.

She studied him with eyes narrowed in wariness. “Definitely.”

He couldn’t leave. Nor could he explain the curious compulsion to linger where he wasn’t welcome. “I think I’ll stay awhile.”

“I don’t want visitors.”

“I know.”

Not only wasn’t he inclined to leave, but he actually felt comfortable sitting with this intriguing shrew of a woman.

“I’ll have you removed,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

But she didn’t.

“I don’t know you.” She was frowning now, her eyelids heavy with fatigue.

“That’s changing, though, isn’t it? Even as unpleasant as you are,” he quipped.

“Rude, Preacher. The word is rude,” she corrected, still studying him. “Doesn’t seem to work on you, does it?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, grinning. “If you want me to be impressed that life has been unfair to you, I am. If you want me to pray for your recovery, well, know that I will. If you want to be sure that I know how bitter you are, then rest assured you have persuaded me easily enough.”

She shook her head slightly and almost returned his grin. “You sure you’re a holy man?”

“I don’t think of myself as a holy man and I don’t recall the term in my job description,” he said. “I’m just a man who happens to be employed as a pastor.”

“Where’s your collar?”

“In our church, a pastor isn’t required to wear a collar except during services,” he explained. “They all know who I am, that I serve them, that they hired me and can fire me. There are some in my congregation, in fact, who think I should be replaced.”

She was quiet for several seconds, then asked, “Why?”

“I’m a bargain turned sour,” he said lightly. He certainly hadn’t intended to talk about himself, but he saw that she was interested and thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt to draw attention away from herself for a while.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“They hired my wife and me as a team. Two for the price of one, so to speak. Then we had two children, Emma and Annie, and Maralynn wasn’t able to spend as much time as she originally did on church matters. Soon after, she became ill with a serious heart condition, and we required a housekeeper to help out at an additional expense. Maralynn died two years ago, and now there is only one of us to serve the congregation.” He smiled to encourage the skepticism on her face. “Most of the congregation accepts the circumstances and seems inclined to let things ride, so, you see, I’m not in imminent danger of being discharged.”

“Sorry about your wife,” she said. “But you’re pulling my leg about the rest.”

He laughed without mirth at her directness. “It’s a business proposition, hiring a pastor,” he resumed. “They hired me under advantageous circumstances that are no longer advantageous for them. Why shouldn’t they be concerned that they’re paying for more than they’re getting? They would have a better bargain by replacing me with a married couple.”

“What would you do if that happens?”

“Find another position most likely,” he replied.

“Is that difficult?”

“I don’t know. This is my first position as pastor and I’ve had it for six years. I have no idea what the job market is like.”

“Why aren’t you investigating it? You should prepare for your future.” Her whispery voice was fading.

“If it comes to that, then I will,” he said, shrugging. It wasn’t that he wanted to downplay Maralynn’s tragic death or the vague element of truth in his declaration about his job security. Both were serious issues that affected his and his family’s lives. Still, he had learned to live without Maralynn, and he knew most people in his congregation appreciated him. Hadn’t the board hired him a part-time assistant when Annie was born? And hadn’t they elected to keep Medford Bantz on staff? He could afford to shrug off her concern, although, oddly, it touched him.

“You have one other option,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Get another wife.”

“Marry again? Funny…I’ve been thinking along those same lines.”

“Well, that should be easy for you…what’s your name again?”

Hamish had to remind himself that humility was a virtue. “Hamish Chandler,” he replied.

“Hmm, that’s no name for a pastor.” While he tried to think of how to reply, she continued. “You’re a regular guy, Hamish. You’re the first regular-guy holy man I ever met,” she said, her eyes flickering with what he recognized as fatigue. “But don’t come back, okay? I don’t want any visitors,” she added, barely audible, her eyes closed. “And I don’t tolerate praying.”

Before he realized what he was doing, he had clasped his big hand over her small one and squeezed. “We’ll see,” he said. “Maybe I won’t be able to stay away. I’ve always enjoyed a good time.”

He left his card with his home phone number written in pen and only later asked himself why. Obviously, she would simply discard it.

Hamish was barely out of the car when his two girls came flying across the lawn and threw themselves against him, six-year-old Emma hitting him first because she was older and had longer legs, three-year-old Annie close behind, both of them pressing their faces to his middle and holding on with small arms and dirty hands.

Emma was the first to pull away, her brown hair a windblown frizz of tangles, her thin, delicate face sweetly marred by smudges, her deep brown eyes wide with excitement. “We caught a frog and we’re keeping him,” she declared. He laughed at the importance of her announcement, for she had been trying all summer to gather the courage to pick one up and bring it to the punctured coffee tin that waited on the back porch.

“I fell off the swing,” Annie said, her straight strawberry blond hair framing a round face and dimpled cheeks, her blue eyes demure and shy, too big for her face, but balanced by a wide mouth. Already she was on her way to becoming a beauty.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

She nodded in serious warning, then asked, “Where were you?”

“I went to visit a lady in the hospital.”

“Is she going to die?” Emma asked.

“No, she’s getting better, but she’s been badly injured and she may never be able to walk again,” he told them.

Emma’s eyes were wide. “Will she have to stay in bed forever?”

“No,” he said, grinning. “She’ll have a chair with wheels and she can probably walk with crutches. Do you know what crutches are?”

“Jimmy Crowton had crutches. He’s in second grade,” Emma said.

He picked them up, one in each arm, and walked to the house. Annie reached down to open the door, and then he set them down in the big old back porch enclosed by windows, and they walked into the large, square farm kitchen where Mrs. Billings was cooking dinner.

He liked the smell of roasting meat and the slight tang of gas from the old range. He overlooked the worn vinyl on the floor and the chips in the porcelain of the stove, just as he ignored the rusty patterns stained into the bottom of the wall-hung sink and the dulled old faucets that leaked in spite of his efforts to replace worn gaskets and ancient stems.

The kitchen was immaculate and it was home, and he was lucky to have it And Mrs. Billings, who had happily made herself part of his family after her husband died four years ago. “How did it go?” she asked him, and he raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation, wondering how much she actually knew about B. J. Dolliver’s harsh, combative personality.

“I wasn’t welcome,” he said.

Mrs. B pursed her lips and folded her arms defiantly over her ample middle as if he had just threatened one of her own. “Will she be all right?”

“Possibly,” he replied, washing his hands in the sink. “She won’t be able to walk, though.”

“Not ever?” Mrs. Billings blanched and dropped her pot holder on the floor.

“Not ever,” he said as he retrieved the pot holder.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Her eyes watered, and she patted them with her apron as she sank onto a kitchen chair. He watched her closely, surprised at the extent of her grief over someone she had never known well and hadn’t seen for several years. “She’s such a lovely young woman, and so very kind. I’ve admired her so very much. Such a tragedy, isn’t it? Such a terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, it is,” he murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder, astonished that he should be offering her comfort because of the Dolliver woman who was hard as nails and angry as a cornered bobcat.

She made a quick swipe over her wrinkled cheeks.

“It seems as if you and I are talking about two different people,” he mused.

“Well, I know she can be very tough and outspoken. After all, she had a very bad childhood,” she snapped, then softened again. “No mother. A father who wanted a son and never had time for her.” Mrs. Billings patted her eyes again. “I remember enjoying how spunky she was, and I wanted my own niece to be like that. You know, able to take care of herself and give back as good as she got. B. J. Dolliver is a heroine for a lot of young women, Pastor, in spite of growing up unwanted. I don’t know whatever she’ll do with herself now. What a terrible tragedy. What a terrible thing to happen.”

“Why are you crying, Mrs. Billings?” Emma questioned, her eyes filled with concern.

“The lady I visited today,” Hamish explained. “Mrs. Billings knows her and is sad.”

Emma turned to the housekeeper. “But Daddy said she’s going to get well,” she assured Mrs. Billings, patting her on the knee. “She’s going to have crutches to help her walk around.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Billings said, sniffing. “Crippled for life, that wonderful, vital young woman.”

Emma looked up at her father for an answer, but he had none to give. He hadn’t quite thought of the young woman in the hospital bed as a heroine. Certainly not a role model. In fact, he wasn’t aware that he had ever heard of her before Mrs. B had asked him to visit. He didn’t even know her first name. All he knew was that people called her by her initials, and she apparently had quite a following, which came as a surprise to him because she seemed so alone in her hospital room, refusing visitors and keeping the truth from her own father.

“She isn’t going to die, is she, Daddy?” Emma quizzed, wanting reassurance, obviously stricken with the sense of doom she heard in Mrs. Billings’s voice.

But Mrs. Billings answered for him. “She might not like living anymore,” she said, returning to the stove.

“Why?” Emma looked to her father, and he put his hand gently on the top of her head.

He dropped to his haunches to explain, although he was having a little trouble with it himself. “This woman, B. J. Dolliver, was very active and traveled around the world taking photographs, running after big stories to be printed in newspapers and magazines. An now, well, she won’t be able to do any of those things when she has to walk with crutches, and Mrs. Billings means that, for B. J. Dolliver, not being able to do all the things she loves to do is very sad. Maybe.”

“But there’s lots of things she can still do, isn’t there?” Emma questioned. “She can still see and hear, can’t she? And read books? And watch television and walk around with crutches? And she could swing on a swing if she wanted to, couldn’t she? And go down a slide and ride on a merry-go-round? If she wanted to?”

“Yes, she could, if she wanted to. But maybe she isn’t interested in those things.”

“But maybe if she tried them, she might like them, and then she would be happy, wouldn’t she?”

He ruffled her hair. “You’re very wise, Emma, and I’m proud of you. Maybe someday you’ll get to meet B. J. Dolliver and you can tell her how great it is to be alive.”

It was a casual statement to appease the curiosity of a child, and he couldn’t begin to think that what he said was in any way applicable to the reality of the situation. It was obvious B. J. Dolliver wasn’t even thinking of dying. She was going to tangle aggressively with fate and challenge providence. She had sounded determined to battle with her own body to force it to do what the medical profession said it would never again be able to do.

Obviously, she was not making it easy for the hospital staff, including her own physician. She had locked herself into a self-imposed capsule, holding everyone else away and struggling with desperate ineffectiveness to make liars of her doctors.

He wondered what B. J. Dolliver was going to do when she discovered that the medical profession knew better than she did, and that she would never walk again without crutches, and that she damned well would never run again or wield a tennis racket or chase down a combat soldier to get his picture. He wondered how she was going to take that, accept defeat and the hopelessness of her future as she envisioned it.

Alone. Facing it alone.

As he sat down to dinner, B. J. Dolliver filled his thoughts, and he discovered with just a minimum of soul-searching that he wanted to be there when she finally fell. He wanted to be there to catch her and hold her and tell her there were still things to live for.

Chapter Two

The telephone awakened him late in the night.

Hamish answered the ring quickly, before he was entirely awake. There was a telephone next to his bed and getting late-night calls wasn’t uncommon in his line of work.

“Hi, Hamish,” she said, and he dropped back on his pillow and groaned. He hadn’t seen B. J. Dolliver for three days.

He glanced at his clock. “It’s nearly 3:00 a.m.,” he said, his voice still hoarse from sleep. “Where did you get my number?” He vaguely remembered giving her his card, but he believed she’d thrown it away.

“It’s in the yellow pages under righteous,” she quipped.

“What’s wrong, B.J.? Why are you calling me so late?”

“I’m moving out of this place,” she said. According to his fuzzy calculations, he had been visiting her every few days for nearly four weeks.

“Well, that’s great. They’re letting you go. You must be making good progress. How’s the arm?” Although she’d never appeared to accept his offer of friendship, she’d never followed through on her threat to have the hospital staff remove him.

“Arm’s getting better all the time.”

“Where are you going?”

“I get to pick the place.” He sensed a warning in the way her voice lilted up slightly on the last word, and he tried to shake off the fog of deep sleep that clouded his thoughts.

“So, have you made a decision?” he asked, wishing he could think clearly.

“I thought maybe you’d drop by and help me with that.”

“When?”

“In about an hour, preferably.”

“No more games, B.J. It’s nearly three in the morning. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, there is no problem!” she cried. “It’s all cut-and-dried, all decided! The medical profession is turning me loose. They’ve given me all these wonderful places to choose from for the next phase of my life. Beautiful places. One of them even has a swimming pool.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, pinching his eyes closed, wanting to know what was causing her distress.

“You wouldn’t. I don’t even know why I called you. See you around, Hamish.”

“Wait!” He was afraid she would hang up and he couldn’t allow that. He forced his mind to work, threw the covers back and turned to sit with his legs over the side of his old four-poster bed. “Give me time to dress. It’ll take me half an hour to drive—”

“No…that won’t be necessary,” she said, but her voice was suddenly soft and hoarse.

“What?”

“Forget I called.” He thought he heard a slight warble, but he couldn’t be sure. “Go back to sleep,” she said, clearing her throat. He closed his eyes again and stood on the cool hardwood floor, rotating his shoulders to stretch his muscles as he dressed. “Hamish?” she questioned when he didn’t answer.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“No. I didn’t mean it. Really, 1 didn’t mean it. I was just…it was stupid…I’ll never forgive you if you embarrass me by coming down here in the middle of the night. Besides, they just gave me a sleeping pill, and I won’t even know you’re here.”

“You wouldn’t have called if you weren’t in trouble,” he replied.

“Trouble?” she chided, but he detected a lack of force in her words. “You know me better than that. Now, go back to sleep. I’m going there myself.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t be so damned…serious. I swear I’ll never forgive you if you come down here at this time of night. I swear it.”

He was torn with indecision, and then she hung up, saying, “I’m getting very sleepy,” slurring her words slightly. “Very…sleepy.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the cool draft on his feet. He was now wide-awake, agitated because once again she had tied him in knots, and wondered what he should do. He knew in his heart that she had been desperate to call him. She had never called him before.

He dressed quickly and slipped out of the house into the pre-dawn night. As he drove to the hospital, he blamed her stubborn, prickly pride for how she had reached out in despair with one hand while insulting him and pushing him away with the other. Then he thought about her early life, the. trauma of her mother’s death, being neglected by an insensitive father. He remembered the fear he had seen in her eyes and suspected there were probably very few people she had learned to trust in her life. And yet she had become a strong, accomplished woman. He understood why she had wrapped her pride around herself like insulation from a hurtful world.

He fought a sense of foreboding while he drove to the hospital. He had a sickening feeling in his gut. She needed him. She must, he realized, to have called him like this.

He prayed for serenity and guidance while he hastened to her room. When he strode through the door, he found her sitting on the side of her bed, dangling her feet over the edge. She was beautiful, her hair tousled from sleep, the scar on her face fading to pink.

She wore one of those ugly, thin hospital gowns pulled off one shoulder, her legs bare to midthigh. Her muddy green eyes looked up at him. “You came,” she whispered, and then her eyes closed, and he knew he was in trouble. He wanted to touch her. He wanted very badly to touch her. “There,” she rasped, pointing to a messy array of colored pamphlets.

He reached out and picked up several, then glanced quickly through them. They were promotional brochures, glossy and brightly colored, featuring modern buildings, Victorian mansions, sterile bedrooms and lots of people in residence—people in wheelchairs, most of them with white hair, wrinkled skin and empty eyes.

He looked questioningly at her, fanning the brochures out in front of him. She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Nursing homes,” she confirmed. “I get to choose one.”

“Oh, my God,” he gasped, dropping them onto the bed. He picked her up impulsively, as if she were a child, and when he felt her good arm go around his neck, he held her against him, her legs dangling free over his thighs, her face nestled in his neck. He turned in a slow circle, burying his face in her hair, and he let his heart ache while his body reveled in holding her. Absently, he pulled her gown closed over her back and held it there with his arms clasped around her. She felt frail and soft. Helpless. Warm. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered into her tangled hair. She shook her head a little wildly, and he felt wetness on his neck. “They can’t send you away. You’re going to get well,” he whispered. “I won’t let them do this to you. I won’t let it happen.”

Lost in comforting her and not wanting to let her go, he failed to notice how much time had passed until his arms felt the strain, and he finally returned her to the bed.

Her mouth was open slightly in obvious bewilderment, and he noticed how very kissable it looked. She had felt good pressed against him. She had felt damned good in his arms. He might have intended to give her comfort, but there was something deeper going on, and he recognized it all too well.

Quickly, he went to the closet and got her robe. He helped her get her injured arm into it. She kept her face lowered, obviously unwilling to let him see the tears she had likely fought not to shed in the first place.

“I have money,” she said finally in her husky voice. “But I have nowhere to go. I can’t take care of myself yet.”

“Your father? Another relative? A friend?”

“No. No, I can’t Nobody would want me. I can’t.”

“We’ll think of something, dear lady,” he said, sitting alongside her on the bed. “We’ll think of something.”

“There’s a convalescent center nearby, but it’s all old people. They’re all old. And I’m young, damn it. I’ve never needed anyone to take care of me. Never. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

“We’ll find somewhere else,” he reassured her.

“They’ve given up on me because I haven’t made any progress lately. They think this is as good as I’m going to get. They’re wrong. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get much, much better.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re the only one who does.”

“Well, you called me,” he sighed. “I didn’t think you had kept the number.”

She reached over with her left hand and used it to raise her limp right hand. There, written across her palm was his telephone number in ballpoint pen, smudged but legible, as if she had traced over it many times. “It’s been there for weeks. Every day after my bath, I go over it again so it won’t fade, so I’ll always know where it is,” she said.

Something lurched in his chest when he looked at her palm and thought of her outlining his phone number in her flesh every day and only calling him in the middle of the night when she was desperate. He raised her chin and looked into her glistening eyes. He saw that something in her had been defeated, and even though she had consistently rejected his efforts to help, he was now apparently her last resort.

He remembered the day Maralynn had died. He’d stayed with her all night long, sitting beside her bed. At the time he’d felt there was something bleak and desperate about a hospital in the middle of the night when sounds echoed only occasionally through the halls, amplified by the absence of people talking and moving about. He’d thought then that it was best to be asleep. It had seemed to him that if you didn’t get to sleep before darkness descended on the hospital, you would not get to sleep at all.

He tried to imagine what B. J. Dolliver had gone through, and he decided she had agonized for a long time before she’d called him. He suspected her pride would not have let her call unless she was overwhelmed with fear.

“I can’t stay here,” she said.

“When did you get the pamphlets?”

“Two days ago. They expected me to make a decision by now. I think I’m supposed to be gone. I told them I could pay for the room if my insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“Why did you wait so long to call me?” he asked.

He watched her raise her chin in a weak reflection of defiance. “I vowed I would not call you at all.”

“But what about that?” He gestured toward her limp hand with his telephone number written on her skin.

“I never intended to use it,” she said after a long silence.

He sighed. “Your destructive pride driving you to the wall.” He looked at her. “How do you expect me to arrange something in less than twenty-four hours?”

“You believe in miracles. I know you do. I don’t know anybody else who believes in miracles,” she said in a tearful, jerky voice.

Deep in thought, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and ambled to the windows. There was only one place he wanted to take her, and it was probably the last place she ought to be. He could let her sleep on the daybed in his office, and probably Mrs. Billings and the children could help. He didn’t think some people in his congregation would like the idea, but then he didn’t like the idea much himself. And although Mrs. Billings would be thrilled at first to have her heroine under their roof, he was sure B.J.’s rough edges would wear her welcome thin in quick order.

It was an idea bordering on insanity, he realized. She wasn’t his responsibility. She was dangerous to him, in fact, a threat to the orderliness of his full, rich life. How could he even think of taking her home, now that he found himself attracted to her?

Still, there seemed nowhere else for her to go. She was terrified of a nursing home, so terrified that she had finally swallowed her pride and called him. What he feared most was her feeling defeated and helpless and taking an easy exit to avoid a fate worse than death. He remembered Mrs. B repeating Deborah’s fears, although until now he had assumed they were both mistaken. He had to know.

“What if I can’t find a place?” he asked.

“You said you would.” For the first time, he sensed the flatness in her husky voice.

“If I can’t, then what?” She hesitated. He listened closely to her voice, to each nuance and pause. His back to her, he kept his eyes shut to sharpen his perceptions of her. “Then what?” he insisted, not kindly.

“I won’t go,” she said, and he barely heard her.

“If I walk out this door today and say I can’t help you, what will you do?” She didn’t answer. “What will you do?” he demanded, letting frustration edge his words.

“I’ll wave goodbye,” she said, and although he recognized she was trying to be flippant, he caught another meaning in. her choice of words, and he wondered exactly what his options were. Was he being manipulated? Would she put a finish to the job if he left her now? It seemed unlikely since she was so determined to get well. But what if he was wrong?

He opened his eyes to see the shadowy street below illuminated by splashes of gold from streetlights and faint reflections from the pink horizon in the east. Dawn was breaking. Trying to focus his thoughts, he rubbed his chin, then clasped his hands.

What should I do? What’s my direction?

He reminded himself that he’d never been good at analyzing things, always ending up going in circles. The bald, fearsome truth was that he found it exciting—the thought of having B.J. close by in his home, under his protection, within reach of his touch. He hoped that it was his heart and mind speaking and not some other part of his anatomy.

He thought about Mrs. Billings having been a registered nurse most of her life, and he thought about the medical aids still in the house from his wife’s illness—the tub rails, the upstairs hall rails and the wheelchair ramp stored in the barn that served as a garage. They were all there, the pieces that fitted as if meant to be.

When he turned to look at B.J., she was lying still. Finally asleep, he thought. He left her then and found the cafeteria open. He drank some coffee, walked around the neighboring streets, watched the sunrise and finally visited the chapel.

The halls were alive with the usual daytime sights and sounds when he returned to the vicinity of B.J.’s room. He wanted to talk to her physician, Dr. Wahler, who was not available.

The nurse he had met before was at the station, however, and as free as ever with her opinions. “She’s being unreasonable,” she said, shaking her head sharply. “It isn’t a retirement home. It’s a convalescent center. Of course there are elderly people, but not entirely, and therapy can be continued. Or private nursing can be arranged for her.”

Hamish didn’t like the way she frowned and pursed her lips, as if she was exasperated with her patient.

“She can probably afford it, three shifts a day, installation of aids in her condo.” Her shrug was like a dismissal, and Hamish left her to call Mrs. B.

“I hope you’ll bring her home,” she suggested.

“There are other places for her to go. I don’t know whether to recommend a convalescent center or private care,” he told her.

“Neither is a good choice,” Mrs. B insisted. “Both are for people who have no one.”

“Well, that fits B. J. Dolliver pretty well. And it’s her choice to be alone,” he reminded her.

“So, who’s the one person who has successfully ignored her no-visitor plea?” she challenged.

When he did not reply, she charged ahead, “Who’s the one person she called when she needed help? Who’s there now trying to help her?”

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes against the obvious. It was what he wanted. And feared. B.J. in his home day and night, needing him, goading and arousing him while she healed under his family’s care. B.J.—making him feel alive, so alive.

“It’s your decision, Hamish, but if you’re taking votes, you know which way mine goes,” Mrs. B said.

“We’ll see,” he muttered before he broke the connection.

Back in her room, B.J. once again sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for him. He patiently explained the benefits of the options available to her, avoiding her eyes and finally rising abruptly from the chair and walking to the window, turning his back on her again so that she wouldn’t see that his heart wasn’t in what he was advising.

“It’s your decision,” he said at last.

“Go away,” she rasped.

Rudeness. Now that was something he could handle. “So we’re back to that, are we?” he charged, swinging around to face her.

“Just go away. Who needs you?”

He moved to her bedside and saw what a fragile mask she was presenting to him, and something melted behind his ribs and seeped, burning, into his midsection. “You do,” he said finally.

“I never needed you,” she whispered, but her lips quivered, almost imperceptibly.

“I think you do,” he insisted, swallowing hard against the urge to gather her in his arms.

“I can’t go to one of those…places. I can’t. I won’t.”

“You can have private care in the comfort of your condo.”

“Strangers, all of them, changing shifts every eight hours, talking to me as if I’m six years old. Breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve. Oops, can’t fix dinner, that’s for the next shift. Prodding and poking, taking my blood pressure in the middle of the night. What kind of home life would that be? They would hate me. I’m not an agreeable patient. It wouldn’t work.”

He stared hard at the tangle of her hair. Her face was turned away from him. “Okay,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Okay,” he amended, softening, “you can come home with me.”

She searched his face with despair and anxiety. She wondered if he saw what she felt, if he sensed how many sleepless nights she had tossed, dreading the dawn. Did he see that she was as near to defeat as she had ever been? Certainly she hadn’t tried to hide her wariness, but then she had called him, and that was because she had grown curiously attached to him. God knew, she didn’t want to trust anyone.

She watched him, the handsome, quiet strength in his face, the way he stood before her, unaware of how substantial and real he appeared, the only solid person in her life.

“Yeah, I’ll go home with you,” she said softly.

She stiffened when she saw a flash of regret, then thought suddenly that he was going to find a way to waltz around his decision. But the dreaded words did not come. If he thought he had made a mistake inviting her to his house, he wasn’t going to retract his offer.

Her body still tingled with the heady experience of being swept up in his arms when he’d charged in like an avenging angel at four o’clock in the morning. Now, she longed to be close to him, to feel the soothing power of his tenderness.

“There will be conditions,” he told her, his voice low, but not soft. This was a time for firmness and resolution, it seemed, a time for promises to be made.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she conceded softly before he realized what she had said. He would never know the damage to her precious pride, she realized.

“You will give me your word,” he said, “your solemn and sacred word that you will be courteous and sensitive with my children and Mrs. Billings. And that you will not insult, or in any way offend, a single member of my congregation.” She looked at him in mute misery, trying to hang on to the self-sufficiency that had deserted her. “I promise to take good care of you,” he added, but his voice was little more than a whisper. “I will do the best I can.”

She felt the trembling in her chin before she felt the hated tears spring into her eyes, then she dropped her head and felt her body convulse in sobs. It was her surrender although she wasn’t sure exactly what it was she was surrendering to. Tenderness? Trusting herself to the care of another? The loss of her independence? Was she going to find his care an alternate imprisonment, second only to three shifts of paid professionals in her own condo?

He came to her and held her against him, stroking her hair as she wept into his shirt, and she succumbed to his reassurance. For the first time in her life, she felt the full weight of her body and spirit being shared by another.

“You’ll be free to come and go as you please. We’ll make sure you can continue your therapy. We’ll help you get well. It won’t be the best of accommodations, but at least you won’t have to worry about steps. You can help out around the house if you want to, whatever you can manage from your wheelchair. And you don’t have to be nice to me. You can be as insulting and rude as you like with me.”

She pounded her good fist against his chest. “Damn you,” she cried between sobs. “You’re the damnedest man I ever met.”

“We won’t make you go to church, either,” he added as she pulled away from him and her sobs began to lessen. “And you don’t have to pray if you don’t want to,” he said. She wanted to scoff at that. She knew he wouldn’t be able to live up to that promise.

She took one last weak swing at his arm. “You are the most infuriating human being. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk away from your house and tell you where to stick it.” Her words came from habit and confusion, and a kind of familiar shame because she was being despicably weak.

He laughed and ruffled her tangled hair. “Then you’ve given me your word? And we’re checking you out of here?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she replied with renewed hope. “We have to stop and rent a wheelchair first. The crutches are mine. And I don’t have any clothes to wear. They cut me out of the ones I was wearing when I was brought in.”

“Like taking a new baby home,” he teased.

She didn’t like his reference, but she ignored it. She wanted to get far away from the hospital as fast as possible. “The key to my condo is in my purse. Maybe you could pick up a few things for me? It isn’t far.”

“I can handle that,” he said laughing. She thought she should be angry with him, but he was so damnably endearing. Most likely he would get all the wrong things, but she simply gave him the key.

Hamish Chandler had confounded, entertained, infuriated and motivated her from the moment she first opened her eyes and found him studying her face. She had fought him every minute, every inch of the way, over the past few weeks because it was her nature to fight for her independence and her achievements and any threat to them. And at the same time, she had found herself baffled that she could not imagine getting on with her life without his being a part of it.

The man was an enigma, and she wondered why she was so oddly attracted to him. Probably, she thought, because the car accident had addled her brain as well as damaged her body. And now she was going to his house because she had nowhere else to go.

She had seemed to come alive once the decision was made, although there seemed little of the feisty scrapper left in her, Hamish thought, as he drove to her condo.

His call to Mrs. B had been happily received. Things at home were even now being prepared for their new houseguest. He wondered if it was possible to prepare his family for B. J. Dolliver’s interesting personality and how long she would be able to abide by the conditions he had set down.

When he arrived at his destination, he let himself into B.J.’s condo and was fascinated by what he found. Photographs had been enlarged and framed in shiny chrome to decorate her walls. Awards were propped haphazardly on her dresser; clippings were in messy piles in the dining room and in her bedroom. He looked through some of them, then placed them carefully in a suitcase. Maybe it would give B.J. something to do, sorting them, reminding herself how good she was and what she would one day go back to.

The condo was an expensive place, and her furniture was exotic and eclectic, obviously collected from around the world. He took two large framed photos off the bedroom wall, wrapped them in a coverlet from her bed and carried them to his car trunk. He would hang them in his house so that she would feel more at home.

In the bedroom, he went through her dresser drawers and closet, trying to remember the kinds of things a woman needed and liked. He eventually filled two suitcases and then a grocery bag with shoes.

It dawned on him as he was packing that she was not going to be impressed with his house, not when she was accustomed to the luxury she had surrounded herself with. Maybe her long stay in the hospital would have dulled her expensive tastes, he thought. All her possessions looked costly, fashionable contemporary pieces mixed with beautiful antiques and exotic-looking imports. And there was the hot tub in the screened deck off her bedroom.

No, she wasn’t going to be very happy with his home.

On the way back, he stopped to pick up the electrically powered wheelchair that had been reserved for her by Dr. Wahler. When he finally got to the hospital, he carried in the overnight bag so B.J. could get dressed. He didn’t expect her to remove each item while he stood there, but that was exactly what she did, flinging bra, panties, blouse, skirt, comb and brush, sandals, deodorant and makeup down on the bed. “Well, I see you were in the right place at least,” she said wryly. “But I don’t usually wear lacy underwear when there isn’t anyone to impress.”

“I thought Mrs. Billings might have to help you undress,” he retorted. He didn’t want to hear that she had lacy underwear to impress a man. He didn’t want to think of her with another man. He tried to concentrate on how welcome it was to hear her displaying a little of her old abrasive spirit.

“By the way,” he added, “I had intended for you to sleep on the daybed in my office, but that simply won’t work. You’ll take over my bedroom, and I’ll stay in the office. I hope you won’t mind.”

“But it’s your bedroom. Why should I mind?”

“My bedroom is upstairs.”

“But I can’t…how will I—”

“I’ll have to carry you up and down,” he said, and then he looked away as curious sensations gripped him. He didn’t want to feel the heat that was coursing through him. He didn’t want to acknowledge how pleasant it had been to hold her against him and that what he was feeling for her was more than compassion.

Chapter Three

When B.J. saw his car, she knew there was going to be a lot of adjusting on her part. It reminded her of an old weathered hull, clean, big as sin, dull tan marred by rust corrosion along the bottom of the doors and fenders. Inside, it was spotless and worn, and when she’ looked around, thinking she deserved a medal for holding her tongue, he grinned at her and said, “It came with the rectory. You’ll like it. Smooth ride. Like sitting on a cloud.”

It was a smooth ride, and she could barely hear the engine running once he managed to get it started.

She hadn’t thought to ask where Kolstad was, hadn’t really cared. It was simply the place where Hamish lived and worked. In truth, he didn’t seem like a pastor at all. Not that she had had much contact with clergy in her years of living with a father who worshiped athletic prowess above all, and thought spirituality referred to poltergeists.

Hamish was a gorgeous man to look at, and she would never in all her life forget the magnificent charge she’d felt when he held her in his arms. Of course, she couldn’t tell him how his gentle ways affected her, because they touched something so deep in her she ached with it. No man in her life had ever made her feel so threatened, or so feminine. She had missed him between visits, and hated admitting that she did. Life in the hospital had taken on a chill when he wasn’t around. She’d felt adrift, missing his laughter and his confidence and the infuriating way he had of fielding her insults as if she were an amusing child punching at shadows.

Kolstad was only a half hour from downtown and the hospital, a straight shot down a country highway from the freeway. First she saw the cornfields, then the suburban housing developments and finally the small old town blooming within the ever-growing suburbia. On the east edge of the town, they pulled into the driveway of an old, squat, prairie-style farmhouse surrounded by a chain-link fence, precisely cut lawn and acres of hay field all around it.

Behind the house were two sheds, one large and apparently also serving as a garage, and the other smaller, converted into a children’s playhouse of some sort. Two little girls ran to meet Hamish, stopping only to struggle with the latch on the chain-link gate and then flying into him as he came around the back of the car.

He hunkered down to hug them both, then stood with one in each arm. He nodded toward her, and something caught in her chest at how tenderly he held his children and how much they adored him.

When he set them down, he pulled open the passenger door. “You’ll have to tell them your name,” he said. “I never did ask.”

She frowned at the lie, then looked at them. “B.J.,” she said.

“No, your real name,” he insisted with his beguiling soft laughter.

“It’s just B.J.,” she repeated.

“Belinda Jean? Begonia Jasmine? C’mon, let’s have it.”

“Brenda Jane,” she said reluctantly. “I hate it.”

“Brenda Jane is a beautiful name,” he countered. He spread a hand on the top of each little girl’s head, the taller one with the dark curly hair and the smaller one with the straight blond strands. “This is Emma, and this is Annie. Say hello to Brenda, girls.”

Emma moved forward, her eyes wide with innocent curiosity. “Hi,” she said. “My daddy said you have crutches.”

Annie hung back, fingers in her mouth, peeking around her father’s khaki trousers. He just stood there like a proud dad and grinned. It was plain to see which of the girls had his personality.

“Stand back,” Hamish said, pulling Emma away from her. “Brenda has to get out and stand up on her own. It’s very hard for her. Remember I told you she was hurt in a car accident?”

The girls stepped back in solemn obedience and clutched at his trousers, Emma at a pocket, Annie on a seam. B.J. didn’t particularly like having an audience to watch her awkward efforts, but nobody laughed. When she was perched on the edge of the seat with both feet on the ground, Emma stepped forward with her hand extended. “Can I help?”

B.J. looked at the innocent eagerness in the chocolate brown eyes, and smiled. “Sure.” She took the little girl’s hand. “Pull,” she said. Emma pulled and B.J. pushed until she was standing.

“Okay,” Hamish said, then lifted her and cradled her in his arms. “I’ll take you to see Mrs. Billings.”

The girls ran ahead, hopping and skipping and turning in circles. They opened the gate and then the back door. Hamish finally set her down on a wood chair at a wood table covered with oil cloth in an old-fashioned run-down kitchen. She hadn’t seen anything like it since she was a child visiting an ancient relative who still lived “in the country.” The only modern convenience she saw was a toaster.

Mrs. Billings was in her fifties now. Her hair was graying, and she wore polyester pants and a paisley overblouse that failed to hide her barrel waist. She smiled and jiggled as she spread her arms wide and gave B.J. a long, gentle hug. “Lemonade?” she offered. “Coffee?”

Not much had changed, B.J. thought. Here again was Deborah’s beloved aunt with her round, beaming face and warm, laughing eyes she remembered so well.

“We’re gonna get kittens,” Emma said. “Rainbow has ‘em in her tummy.”

B.J. smiled at Emma. “Are you going to have lemonade?”

“I don’t like lemonade. It’s too sour. Do you like kittens?”

“I don’t know. I never had one.”

The child’s brown eyes widened to saucers and her mouth dropped open. “You never had a kitten!” Her response connoted a ghastly deprivation—worse, it seemed, than her accident.

“What’s so bad about that?” B.J. challenged. “I never missed having one.”

But Emma’s astonishment knew no bounds. “Didn’t you ever hold one?”

“No, I don’t think so. Kittens weren’t my thing. Never cared for the little buggers,” she said.

“Never cared for a kitten!” Emma made a face to share her horror with Annie, whose blue eyes reflected concern as she, too, shook her head slowly. They were clearly in deep sympathy with her problem.

As B.J. rolled her eyes, she caught Mrs. Billings’s chuckle and felt for a moment as if she had been dropped into another world. Little girls liked juvenile hard rock and dressing Barbie dolls. Kittens were surely passé. Why weren’t they experimenting with makeup or watching television or stealing coins off the dresser like normal kids did? B.J. wondered. “I’ll have lemonade,” she said to Mrs. Billings.

“It’s really sour,” Emma warned, scrunching up her face.

“So am I. We’ll get along fine,” she said, watching Hamish come through the door with her suitcases.

“These are Brenda’s things,” he announced.

“Damn it, I’m B.J.”

“Don’t swear in front of the children,” he said softly, leaning toward her.

“Sorry. I’m not Brenda. I’ve never been Brenda. It’s the name of some soap opera person my mother liked before I was born,” she muttered.

“It’s a nice name, very feminine. Like you. Sometimes,” he said, and then added, “Brenda Jane.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dear Lord, help me, she sighed without reverence, then she heard his soft laugh.

“Catching on already?” he quipped.

Annie crawled up on a chair, folded her arms on the edge of the table, rested her chin in the middle of them and silently stared at her. Emma flitted around the room chattering about first grade, which she had just started, about riding the school bus like the big kids, about playing Chinese checkers and hating pineapple because it stung her mouth. She showed B.J. her loose tooth and said she didn’t have to change clothes after school today because B.J. was coming to stay and so it was okay to leave her good clothes on.

“My daddy’s going to sleep in his office,” she announced, skipping on one foot, holding the toes of the other one behind her.

“Is that all you do is talk?” B.J. asked. “You never stop talking.”

“Pretty much. Mrs. Billings calls me a chatterbox. Daddy said once I said my first word I never shut up.” Her high-pitched laughter sailed around the room. “That’s silly, ‘cause I don’t talk when I sleep, or in church. Or when I’m supposed to be quiet in school.”

“Why do you talk so much?” B.J. asked,’mesmerized by this miniature version of the reverend, with all his joy and open laughter bubbling out of her like soapsuds.

“There’s lots to say,” she said, hopping in a circle. “I bet you can’t do this.”

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